THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 Ada Nisbet 
 
 ENGLISH READING ROOM
 
 JUL171986
 
 PELHAM.
 
 PELHAM 
 
 OR 
 
 ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD BULWER \LYTTON 
 
 (LORD LYTTON) 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO. 
 31 EAST I;TH ST. (UNION SQUARE)
 
 
 
 THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, 
 RAHWAY, N. J. 
 
 . 
 .
 
 PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1828.* 
 
 I BELIEVE if we were to question every author upon the subject of his lit- 
 erary grievances, we should find that the most frequent of all complaints was 
 less that of being unappreciated, than that of being misunderstood. All of 
 us write perhaps with some secret object, for which the world cares not a 
 straw : and while each reader fixes his peculiar moral upon a book, no one, 
 By any chance, hits upon that which the author had in his own heart designed 
 to inculcate. Hence the edition of " Pelham " acquires that appendage in 
 the shape of an explanatory preface which the unprescient benevolence of the 
 author did not inflict on his readers when he first confided his work to their 
 candor and discretion. Even so, some Candidate for Parliamentary Honors 
 first braves the hustings relying only on the general congeniality of senti- 
 ment between himself and the Electors but alas ! once chosen, the liberal 
 confidence which took him upon trust is no more, and when he reappears to 
 commend himself to the popular suffrage, he is required to go into the ill-bred 
 egotisms of detail and explain all that he has done and all that he has failed 
 to do, to the satisfaction of an enlightened but too inquisitive constituency. 
 
 It is a beautiful part in the economy of this world that nothing is without 
 its use ; every weed in the great thoroughfares of life has~a honeyTwhicE 
 Observation can easily extract ; and we may glean no unimportant wisdom 
 from Folly itself, if we distinguish while we survey, and satirize while we 
 share it. It is in this belief that these volumes have their origin. I have 
 nfoTbeen willing that even the commonplaces of society should afford neither 
 a record nor a moral ; and it is therefore from the commonplaces of society 
 that the materials of this novel have been wrought. By treating trifles natu- 
 rally, they may be rendered amusing, and that which adherence to Nature 
 renders amusing, the same cause also may render instructive : for Nature is 
 the source of all morals, and the enchanted well, from which not a single drop 
 can be taken that has not the power of curing some of our diseases. 
 
 I have drawn for the hero of my Work such a person as seemed to me best 
 fitted to retail the opinions and customs of the class and age to which he be- 
 longs ; a personal combination of antitheses a fop and a philosopher, a 
 voluptuary and a moralist a trifler in appearance, but rather one to whom 
 trifles are instructive, than one to whom trifles are natural an Aristippus on 
 a limited scile, accustomed to draw sage conclusions from the follies he 
 adopts, and while professing himself a votary of Pleasure, desirous in reality 
 to become a disciple of Wisdom. Such a character I have found it more 
 difficult to portray than to conceive. I have found it more difficult still, be- 
 cause I have with it nothing in common, f except the taste for observation, 
 
 * Viz., the Second Edition. 
 
 I 1 regret extremely that by this remark I should be necessitated to relinquish the flat- 
 tering character I have for so many months borne, and to undeceive not a few of my most 
 indulgent critics who in reviewinc my work have literally considered the Author and the 
 Hero one flesh. " We have only, said one of them, " to complain of the Author's ego- 
 tisms ; he is perpetually talking of himself ! " Poor gentleman ! from the first page to the 
 last, the Author never utters a syllable [.The few marginal notes in which the Author 
 himself speaks, were not added till the present Edition.]
 
 iv PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1828. 
 
 and some experience in the scenes among which it has been cast ; and it will 
 readily be supposed that it is no easy matter to survey occurrences the most 
 familiar through a vision, as it were, essentially and perpetually different from 
 that through which oneself has been accustomed to view them. This diffi- 
 culty in execution will perhaps be my excuse in failure ; and some additional 
 indulgence may be reasonably granted to an author who has rarely found in 
 the egotisms of his hero a vent for his own. 
 
 With the generality of those into whose hands a novel upon manners is 
 A likely to fall, the lighter and less obvious the method in which reflection is 
 ;' conveyed, the greater is its chance to be received without distaste and remem- 
 bered without aversion. This will be an excuse, .perhaps , for the appearance 
 of frivolities not indulged for the sake of the frivolity ; under that which has 
 most the semblance of levity I have often been the most diligent in my en- 
 deavors to inculcate the substances of truth. The shallowest stream, whose 
 bed every passenger imagines he surveys, may deposit some golden grains on 
 the plain through which it flows ; and we may weave flowers not only into an 
 idle garland, but, like the thyrsus of the ancients, over a sacred weapon. 
 
 It now only remains for me to add my hope that this edition will present 
 the "Adventures of a Gentleman " in a less imperfect shape than the last, 
 and in the words of the erudite and memorable Joshua Barnes, * " So to be- 
 gin my intended discourse, if not altogether true, yet not wholly vain, for 
 perhaps deficient in what may exhilarate a witty fancy, or inform a bad 
 moralist." THE AUTHOR. 
 
 October, 1828. 
 
 * In the Preface to his Gerania.
 
 PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1840.* 
 
 THE holiday time of life, in which this novel was written, while account- 
 ing, perhaps in a certain gayety of tone, for the popularity it has received, 
 may perhaps also excuse, in some measure, its more evident deficiencies and 
 faults. Although I tiust the time has passed when it might seem necessary 
 to protest against those critical assumptions which so long confounded the 
 author with the hero ; although I equally trust that, even were such assump- 
 tions true, it would be scarcely necessary to dispute the justice of visiting 
 upon later and more sobered life the supposed foibles and levities of that 
 thoughtless age of eighteen in which this fiction was first begun, yet, per- 
 haps, some short sketch of the origin of a work, however idle, the success of 
 which determined the literary career of the author, may not be considered 
 altogether presumptuous or irrelevant. 
 
 While, yet, then a boy in years, but with some experience of the world, 
 which I entered prematurely, I had the good fortune to be confined to my 
 room by a severe illness, towards the end of a London season. All my friends 
 were out of town, and I was left to such resources as solitude can suggest to 
 the tedium of sickness. I amused myself by writing with incredible difficulty 
 and labor (for till then prose was a country almost as unknown to myself as 
 to Monsieur Jourdain) some half a dozen tales and sketches, Among them 
 was a story called " Mortimer, or the Memoirs of a Gentleman." Its com- 
 mencement was almost word for word the same as that of "Pelham"; but 
 the design was exactly opposite to that of the latter and later work. "Morti- 
 mer" was intended to show the manner in which the world deteriorates its 
 votary, and "_Efiliiam," on the contrary, conveys the newer, and, I believe, 
 sounder moral, of showing how a man of sense can subject the usages of the 
 world to himself instead of being conquered by them, and gradually grow 
 wise by the very foibles of his youth. 
 
 This tale, with the sketches written at the same period, was sent anony- 
 mously to a celebrated publisher, who considered the volume of too slight a 
 nature for separate publication, and recommended me to select the best of 
 the papers for a magazine. I was not at that time much inclined to a peri- 
 odical mode of publishing, and thought no more of what, if nugcz* to the 
 reader, had indeed been difficiles to the author. $oon afterwaids I went 
 abroad. On my return I sent a collection of letters to Mr. Col burn for pub- 
 lication, which, for various reasons, I afterwards worked up into a fiction, 
 and which (greatly altered from their original form) are now known to the 
 public under the name of " Falkland." 
 
 While correcting the sheets of that tale for the press, I was made aware of 
 many of its faults. But it was not till it had been fairly before the public 
 that I was sensible of its greatest ; namely, asombre coloring. of life, and the 
 indulgence of a vein of sentiment which, though common enough to all very 
 
 * Viz., in the first collected edition of the Author's prose works. 
 * Nugai, trifles ; difficiles, difficult.
 
 vi PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1840. 
 
 young minds in their first bitter experience of the disappointments of the 
 world, had certainly ceased to be new in its expression, and had never been 
 true in its philosophy. 
 
 The effect which the composition of that work produced upon my mind 
 was exactly similar to that which (if I may reverently quote so illustrious an 
 example) Goethe informs us the writing of "Werter" produced upon his 
 own. I had rid my bosom of its " perilous stuff " ; I had confessed my sins, 
 and was absolved ; I could return to real life and its wholesome objects. 
 Encouraged by the reception which " Falkland " met with, flattering though 
 not brilliant, I resolved to undertake a new and more important fiction. I 
 had long been impressed with the truth of an observation of Madame de 
 Stael, that a character at once gay and sentimental is always successful on 
 the stage. I resolved to attempt a similar character for a novel, making 
 the sentiment, however, infinitely less prominent than the gayety. My 
 boyish attempt of the " Memoirs of a Gentleman" occurred to me, and I 
 resolved upon this foundation to build my fiction. After a little consider- 
 ation I determined, however, to enlarge and ennoble the original character : 
 the character itself, of the clever man of the world corrupted by the world, 
 was not new ; it had already been represented by Mackenzie, by Moore in 
 "Zeluco," and in some measure by the master-genius of Richardson itself, 
 in the incomparable portraiture of Lovelace. The moral to be derived from 
 such a creation seemed to me also equivocal and dubious. It is a moral of 
 a gloomy and hopeless school, *"We live in the world ; the great majority of 
 us, in a state of civilization, must, more or less, be men of the world. It 
 struck me that it would be a new, an useful, and perhaps a happy, moral, to 
 show in what manner we might redeem and brighten the commonplaces of 
 life ; to prove (what is really the fact) that the lessons of society do not nee- 
 , essaiily corrupt, and that we may be both men of the world, and even, to a 
 certain degree, men of pleasure, and yet be something wiser nobler better. 
 With this idea I formed in my mind the character of Pelham ; revolving its 
 qualities long and seriously before I attempted to describe them on paper. 
 For the formation of my story I studied with no slight attention the great 
 works of my predecessors, and attempted to derive "from that study certain 
 rules and canons to serve me as a guide ; and if some of my younger contem- 
 poraries whom I could name would only condescend to take the same pre- 
 liminary pains that I did, I am sure that the result would be much more 
 brilliant. It often happens to me to be consulted by persons about to at- 
 t'empt fiction, and 1 invariably find that they imagine they have only to sit 
 down and write. They forget that art does not come by inspiration, and 
 that the novelist, dealing constantly with contrast and effect, must, in the 
 widest and deepest sense of the word, study to be an artist. They paint 
 pictures for Posterity without having learned to draw. 
 
 Few critics have, hitherto, sufficiently considered, and none, perhaps, have 
 accurately defined, the peculiar characteristics of prose fiction in its distinct 
 schools and multiform varieties : of the two principal species, the Narrative 
 and Dramatic, I chose for " Pelham " my models in the former ; and when 
 it was objected, at the first appearance of that work, that the^ plot was not 
 carried on through every incident and every scene, the critics evidently con- 
 founded the two classes of fiction I have referred to, and asked from a work 
 in one what ought only to be the attributes of a work in the other : the daz- 
 zling celebrity of Scott, who deals almost solely with the dramatic species of 
 fiction, made them forgetful of the examples, equally illustrious, in the nar- 
 rative" form of romance, to be found in Smollett, in Fielding, and Le Sage. 
 Perhaps, indeed, there is in " Pelham " more of plot and of continued in-
 
 PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1840. vii 
 
 terest, and less of those incidents that do not either bring out the character 
 of the hero, or conduce to the catastrophe, than the narrative order may be 
 said to require, or than is warranted by the great examples I have ventured 
 to name. 
 
 After due preparation, I commenced and finished the first volume of 
 " Pelham." Various circumstances then suspended my labors, till several 
 months afterwards I found myself quietly buried in the country, and with so 
 much leisure on my hands that I was driven, almost in self-defence from 
 ennui, to continue and conclude my attempt. 
 
 It may serve perhaps to stimulate the courage and sustain the hopes of 
 others to remark that "the Reader " to whom the MS. was submitted by the 
 publisher, pronounced the most unfavorable and damning opinion upon its 
 chances of success, an opinion fortunately reversed by Mr, Oilier, the able 
 and ingenious author of " Inesilla," to whom it was then referred. The book 
 was published, and I may add, that for about two months it appeared in a 
 fair way of perishing prematurely in its cradle. With the exception of two 
 most flattering and generously indulgent notices in thd Literary Gazette and 
 the Examiner and a very encouraging and friendly criticism in the Atlas, it 
 was received by the critics with indifference or abuse. They mistook its pur- 
 port, and translated its satire literally. But about the third month it rose 
 rapidly into the favor it has since continued to maintain. Whether it an- 
 swered all the objects it attempted I cannot pretend to say ; one at least I 
 imagine that it did answer : .1 think, above most works, it contributed to put 
 an end to the Satanic mania, to turn the thoughts and ambition of youpg 
 "gentlemen without neckcloths, and young clerks who were sallow, from play- 
 ing the Corsair, and boasting that they were villains. If, mistaking the irony 
 of Pelham, they went to the extreme of emulating the foibles which that hero 
 attributes to himself, those were foibles at least more harmless, and even more 
 manly and noble, than the conceit of a general detestation of mankind, or the 
 vanity of storming our pity by lamentations over imaginary sorrows, and 
 sombre hints at the fatal burthen of inexpiable crimes.* 
 
 Such was the history of a publication which, if not actually my first, was 
 the one whose fate was always intended to decide me whether to conclude 
 or continue my attempts as an author. 
 
 I can repeat, unaffectedly, that I have indulged this egotism, not only as 
 a gratification to that common curiosity which is felt by all relative to the 
 early works of an author, who, whatever be his faults and demerits, has once 
 obtained the popular ear ; but also as affording, perhaps, the following les- 
 sons to younger writers of less experience, but of more genius, than myself. 
 First, in attempting fiction, it may serve to show the use of a critical study 
 of its rules, for to that study I owe every success in literature I have ob- 
 tained ; and in the mere art of composition, if I have now attained to even 
 too rapid a facility, I must own that that facility has been purchased by a 
 most laborious slowness in the first commencement, and a resolute refusal to 
 write a second sentence until I had expressed my meaning in the best man- 
 ner I could in the first. And, secondly, it may prove the very little value of 
 those " cheers," of the want of which Sir Egerton Brydges f so feelingly 
 complains, and which he considers so necessary towards the obtaining for an 
 author, no matter what his talents, his proper share of popularity. I knew 
 not a single critic, and scarcely a single author, when I began to write. I 
 
 * Sir Reginald Glanville was drawn purposely of the would-be Byron School as 
 Pelham. For one who would think of imitating the first, ten thousand would be 
 attracted to the last. 
 
 t In the melancholy and painful pages of his autobiography. 
 
 a foil to 
 unaware*
 
 viii PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1840. 
 
 have never received to this day a single word of encouragement from any of 
 those writers who were considered at one time the dispensers of reputation. 
 Long after my name was not quite unknown in every other country where 
 English literature is received, the great quarterly journals of my own dis- 
 dained to recognize my existence. Let no man cry out then " for cheers," 
 or for literary patronage, and let those aspirants, who are often now pleased 
 to write to me, lamenting their want of interest and their non-acquaintance 
 with critics, learn from the author (insignificant though he be) who addresses 
 them in sympathy and fellowship, that a man's labors are his best patrons ; 
 that the public is the only critic that has no interest and no motive in under- 
 rating him ; that the world of an author is a mighty circle, of which enmity 
 and envy can penetrate but a petty segment, and that the pride of carving 
 with our own hands our own name is worth all the " cheers " in the world. 
 Long live Sidney's gallant and lofty motto, " Aut viam invettiam out 
 faciam !" * 
 
 * I will either find a way or make it.
 
 ADVERTISEMENT TO EDITION OF 1848. 
 
 No ! you cannot guess, my dear reader, how long my pen has rested over 
 the virgin surface of this paper, before even that " No," which now stands 
 out so bluffly and manfully, took heart and slept forth. If, peradventure, 
 thou shouldst, O reader, be that rarity in these days a reader who has 
 never been an author thou canst form no conception of the strange aspect 
 which the first page of a premeditated composition will often present to the 
 curious investigator into the initials of things. There is a sad mania now- 
 adays for collecting autographs would that some such collector would 
 devote his researches to the first pages of auctorial manuscripis ! He would 
 then form some idea of the felicitous significance of that idiomatic phrase, 
 "to cudgel the brains!" Out of what grotesque zig-zags, and fantastic 
 arabesques ; out of what irrelevant, dreamy illustrations from the sister 
 art, houses, and trees, and profile sketches of men, nightmares, and 
 chimeras ; out of what massacres of whole lines, prematurely and timidly 
 ventured forth as forlorn hopes, would he see the first intelligible words 
 creep into actual life shy streaks of light, emerging from the chaos ! For 
 that rash promise of mine that each work in this edition of works so numer- 
 ous, shall have its own new and special Preface, seems to me hard, in this 
 instance, to fulfil. Another Preface ! What for ? Two Prefaces to " Pel- 
 ham " already exist, wherein all that I would say is said ! And in going back 
 through that long and crowded interval of twenty years since the first ap- 
 pearance of this work, what shadows rise to beckon me away through the 
 glades and alleys in that dim labyrinth of the Past ! Infant Hopes, scarce 
 born ere fated, poor innocents, to die gazing upon me with reproachful 
 eyes, as if I myself had been their unfeeling butcher ; audacious Enterprises 
 boldly begun, to cease in abrupt whim, or chilling doubt looking now 
 through the mists, zoophital or amphibious, like those borderers on the ani- 
 mal and vegetable life, which flash on us with the seeming flutter of a wing, 
 to subside away into rooted stems and withering leaves. How can I escape 
 the phantom throng? How return to the starting-post, and recall the ardent 
 emotions with which youth sprang forth to the goal ? To write fitting Pref- 
 ace to this work, which, if not my first, was the first which won an audience 
 and secured a reader, I must myself become a phantom, with the phantom 
 crowd. It is the ghost of my youth that I must call up. What we are 
 alone hath flesh and blood what we have been, like what we shall be, is an 
 idea ; and no more ! An idea how dim and impalpable ! This our sense 
 of identity ; this " I " of ours, which is the single thread that continues from 
 first to last single thread that binds flowers changed every day, and with- 
 ered every night how thin and meagre is it of itself ! How difficult to lay 
 hold of ! When we say " I remember," how vague a sentiment we utter ! 
 How different it is to say, " I feel !" And when in this effort of memory 
 we travel back all the shadowland of years when we say " I remember," 
 what is it we retain but some poor solitary fibre in the airy mesh of that old.
 
 X ADVERTISEMENT TO EDITION OF 1848. 
 
 gossamer, which floated between earth and heaven, moist with the dews and 
 sparkling in the dawn ? Some one incident, some one affection we recall, 
 but not all the associations that surrounded it, all the companions of the 
 brain or the heart, with which it formed one of the harmonious contempo- 
 raneous ring. Scarcely even have we traced and seized one fine filament in the 
 broken web ere it is lost again. In the inextricable confusion of old ideas, 
 many that seem of the time we seek to grasp again, but were not so, seize 
 nnd distract us. From the clear effort we sink into the vague revery ; the 
 Present hastens to recall and dash us onward, and few, leaving the actual 
 world around them when they say " I remember," do not wake as from a 
 dream, with a baffled sigh, and murmur " No, I forget." And therefore, if 
 a new Preface to a work written twenty years ago, should contain some elu- 
 cidation of the aims and objects with which it was composed, or convey 
 some idea of the writer's mind at that time, my pen might well rest long over 
 the blank page ; and houses and trees, and profile sketches of men, night- 
 mares and chimeras, and whole passages scrawled and erased, might well 
 illustrate the barren travail of one who sits down to say " I remember ! " 
 
 What changes in the outer world since this book was written. What 
 changes of thrones and dynasties ! Through what cycles of hope and fear 
 has a generation gone ! And in that inner world of Thought what old ideas 
 have returned to claim the royalty of new ones ! What new ones (new ones 
 then) have receded out of sight, in the ebb and flow of the human mind, 
 which, whatever the cant phrase may imply, advances in no direct steadfast 
 progress, but gains here to lose there a tide, not a march. So, too, in that 
 slight surface of either world, " the manners," superficies alike of the action 
 and the thought of an age, the ploughshares of twenty years have turned up 
 a new soil, 
 
 The popular changes in the Constitution have brought the several classes 
 more intimately into connection with each other ; most of the old affectations 
 of fashion and exclusiveness are out of date. We have not talked of equal- 
 ity, like our neighbors, the French, but, insensibly and naturally, the tone 
 of manners has admitted much of the frankness of the principle, without the 
 unnecessary rudeness of the pretence. I am not old enough yet to be 
 among the indiscriminate praisers of the past, and therefore I recognize 
 cheerfully an extraordinary improvement in the intellectual and moral fea- 
 tures of the English world, since I first entered it as an observer. There is 
 a far greater earnestness of purpose, a higher culture, more generous and 
 genial views, amongst the young men of the rising generation than were 
 common in the last. The old divisions of party politics remain ; but among 
 all divisions there is greater desire of identification with the people. Rank 
 is more sensible of its responsibilities, Property of its duties. Amongst the 
 clergy of all sects the improvement in zeal, in education, in active care for 
 their flocks is strikingly noticeable ; the middle class have become more in- 
 structed and refined, and yet (while fused with the highest in their intellect- 
 ual tendencies, reading the same books, cultivating the same accomplish- 
 ments) they have extended their sympathies more largely among the hum- 
 blest. And. in our towns especially, what advances have been made amongst 
 the operative population ! 1 do not here refer to that branch of cultivation 
 which comprises the questions that belong to political inquiry, but to the 
 general growth of more refined and less polemical knowledge. Cheap books 
 have come in vogue as a fashion during the last twenty years books ad- 
 dressed, not as cheap books were once, to the passions, but to the under- 
 standing and the taste books not written down to the supposed level of 
 uninformed and humble readers, but such books as refine the gentleman and
 
 ADVERTISEMENT TO EDITION OF 1840*. XI 
 
 instruct the scholar. The arts of design have been more appreciated the 
 Beautiful has been admitted into the pursuits of labor as a principle Re- 
 ligion has been regaining the ground it lost in the latter half of the last cen- 
 tury. What is technically called education (education of the school and the 
 schoolmaster), has made less progress than it might. But that inexpressible 
 diffusion of oral information which is the only culture the old Athenians 
 knew, and which, in the ready transmission of ideas, travels like light from 
 lip to lip, has been insensibly educating the adult ge/ieration. In spite 
 of all the dangers that menace the advance of the present century, I am con- 
 vinced that classes amongst us are far more united than they were in the lat- 
 ter years of George the Fourth. A vast mass of discontent exists amongst 
 the operatives, it is true, and Chartism is but one of its symptoms ; yet that 
 that discontent is more obvious than formerly is a proof that men's eyes and 
 men's ears are more open to acknowledge its existence to examine and 
 listen to its causes. Thinking persons now occupy themselves with that 
 great reality the People ; and questions concerning their social welfare, 
 their health, their education, their interests, their rights, which philosophers 
 alone entertained twenty years ago, are now on the lips of practical men 
 and in the hearts of all. It is this greater earnestness, this profounder 
 gravity of purpose and of view, which forms the most cheering characteristic 
 of the present time ; and though that time has its peculiar faults and vices, 
 this is not the place to enlarge on them. I have done, and may yet do so, 
 elsewhere. This work is the picture of manners in certain classes of society 
 twenty years ago, and in that respect I believe it to be true and faithful. 
 Nor the less so, that under the frivolities of the hero it is easy to recognize 
 the substance of those more serious and solid qualities which Time has 
 educed from^the generation and the class he represents. Mr. Pelham study- 
 ing Mill OB Government and the Political Economists, was thought by 
 some an incongruity in character at the day in which Mr. Pelham first ap- 
 peared ; the truth of that conception is apparent now, at least to the observ- 
 ant. The fine gentlemen of that day were preparing themselves for the 
 after things, which were already foreshadowed ; and some of those, then 
 best known in clubs and drawing-rooms, have been since foremost and bold- 
 est, nor least instructed, in the great struggles of public life. 
 
 I trust that this work may now be read without prejudice from the silly 
 error that long sought to identify the author with the hero. 
 
 Rarely indeed, if ever, can we detect the real likeness of an author of fic- 
 tion in any single one of his creations. He may live in each of them, but 
 only for the time. He migrates into a new form with every new character he 
 creates. He may have in himself a quality, here and there, in common with 
 each, but others so widely opposite, as to destroy all the resemblance you 
 fancy for a moment you have discovered. However this be, the author has 
 the advantage over his work that the last remains stationary, with its faults 
 or merits, and the former has the power to improve. The one remains the 
 index of its day, the other advances with the century. That in a book writ- 
 ten in extreme youth there may be much that I would not write now in 
 mature manhood, is obvious ; that, in spite of its defects, the work should 
 have retained to this day the popularity it enjoyed in the first six months of 
 it* birth, is the best apology that can be made for its defects. E. B. L. 
 
 LONDCN, 1848.
 
 PELHAM; 
 
 OR, 
 
 ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " Ou peut-on etre mieux qu'au sein de sa famille?"* French Song. 
 
 I AM an only child. My father was the youngest son of one 
 of our oldest earls, my mother the dowerless daughter of a 
 Scotch peer. Mr. Pelham was a moderate whig, and gave 
 sumptuous dinners ; Lady Frances was a woman of taste, and 
 particularly fond of diamonds and old china. 
 
 Vulgar people know nothing of the necessaries required in 
 good society, and the credit they give is as short as their pedi- 
 gree. Six years after my birth there was an execution in our 
 house. My mother was just setting off on a visit to the Duchess 
 
 of D ; she declared it was impossible to go without her 
 
 diamonds. The chief of the bailiffs declared it was impossible 
 to trust them out of his sight. The matter was compromised 
 
 the bailiff went with my mother to C , and was introduced 
 
 as my tutor. " A man of singular merit," whispered my mother, 
 " but so shy ! " Fortunately, the bailiff was abashed, and by 
 losing his impudence he kept the secret. At the end of the 
 week the diamonds went to the jeweller's, and Lady Frances 
 wore paste. 
 
 I think it was about a month afterwards that a sixteenth 
 cousin left my mother twenty thousand pounds. "It will just 
 pay off our most importunate creditors, and equip me for Mel- 
 ton," said Mr. Pelham. 
 
 " It will just redeem my diamonds, and refurnish the house," 
 said Lady Frances. 
 
 The latter alternative was chosen. My father went down to 
 
 * Whore can one be better than in the bosom of on* 1 * family? 
 13
 
 14 PELHAM ; 
 
 run his last horse at Newmarket, and my mother received nine 
 hundred people in a Turkish tent. Both were equally fortu- 
 nate, the Greek and the Turk ; my father's horse lost, in con- 
 sequence of which he pocketed five thousand pounds ; and my 
 mother looked so charming as a Sultana, that Seymour Conway 
 fell desperately in love with her. j ^J< 
 
 Mr. Conway had just caused two divorces ; and of course all 
 the women in London were dying for him ; judge then of the 
 pride which Lady Frances felt at his addresses. The end of 
 the season was unusually dull, and my mother, after having 
 looked over her list of engagements, and ascertained that she 
 had none remaining worth staying for, agreed to elope with her 
 new lover. 
 
 The carriage was at the end of the square. My mother, for 
 the first time in her life, got up at six o'clock. Her foot was 
 on the step, and her hand next to Mr. Conway's heart, when 
 she remembered that her favorite china monster, and her 
 French dog, were left behind. She insisted on returning re- 
 entered the house, and was coming downstairs with one under 
 each arm, when she was met by my father and two servants. 
 My father's valet had discovered the flight (I forget how), and 
 awakened his master. 
 
 When my father was convinced of his loss, he called for his 
 dressing-gown searched the garret and the kitchen looked 
 in the maid's drawers and the cellaret and finally declared he 
 was distracted. I have heard that the servants were quite 
 melted by his grief, and I do not doubt it in the least, for he 
 was always celebrated for his skill in private theatricals. He 
 was just retiring to vent his grief in his dressing-room, when 
 he met my mother. It must altogether have been an awkward 
 encounter, and, indeed, for my father, a remarkably unfortu- 
 nate occurrence ; since Seymour Conway was immensely rich, 
 and the damages would, no doubt, have been proportionately 
 high. Had they met each other alone, the affair might easily 
 have been settled, and Lady Frances gone off in tranquillity 
 those confounded servants are always in the way ! 
 
 I have observed that the distinguishing trait of people ac- 
 customed to good society is a calm, imperturbable quiet, which 
 pervades all their actions and hatits, from the greatest to the 
 least : they eat in quiet, move in quiet, live in quiet, and lose 
 their wife, or even their money, in quiet ; while low persons 
 cannot take up either a spoon or an affront without making 
 such an amazing noise about it. To render this observation 
 good, and to return to the intended elopement, nothing farther
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 15 
 
 was said upon that event. My father introduced Conway to 
 Brookes's, and invited him to dinner twice a week for a whole 
 twelvemonth. 
 
 Not long after this occurrence, by the death of my grand- 
 father, my uncle succeeded to the title and estates of the family. 
 He was, as people rather justly observed, rather an odd man : 
 built schools for peasants, forgave poachers, and diminished his 
 farmers' rents ; indeed, on account of these and similar eccen- 
 tricities, he was thought a fool by some, and a madman by 
 others. However, he was not quite destitute of natural feeling ; 
 for he paid my father's debts, and established us in the secure 
 enjoyment of our former splendor. But this piece of generosity, 
 or justice, was done in the most unhandsome manner : he ob- 
 tained a promise from my father to retire from whist, and re- 
 linquish the turf ; and he prevailed upon my mother to con- 
 ceive an aversion to diamonds, and an indifference to china 
 monsters. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Tell arts they have no soundness, 
 
 But vary by esteeming ; 
 Tell schools they want profoundness, 
 
 And stand too much on seeming. 
 If arts and schools reply, 
 Give arts and schools the lie. " 
 
 The Sours Errmnd. 
 
 AT ten years old I went to Eton. I had been educated till 
 that period by my mother, who, being distantly related to 
 
 Lord (who had published " Hints upon the Culinary 
 
 Art "), imagined she possessed an hereditary claim to literary 
 distinction. History was her great forte ; for she had read 
 all the historical romances of the day ; and history accordingly 
 I had been carefully taught. 
 
 I think at this moment I see my mother before me, reclining 
 on her sofa, and repeating to me some story about Queen 
 Elizabeth and Lord Essex ; then telling me, in a languid 
 voice, as she sank back with the exertion, of the blessings of 
 a literary taste, and admonishing me never to read above half 
 an hour at a time for fear of losing my health. 
 
 Well, to Eton I went ; and the second day I had been there 
 I was half killed for refusing, with all the pride of a Pelham, to 
 wash tea-cups. I was rescued from the clutches of my tyrant
 
 j6 PELHAM ; 
 
 by a boy not much bigger than myself, but reckoned the best 
 fighter, for his size, in the whole school. His name was 
 Reginald Glanville ; from that period we became inseparable, 
 and our friendship lasted all the time he stayed at Eton, 
 which was within a year of my own departure for Cambridge. 
 
 His father was a baronet, of a very ancient and wealthy 
 family ; and his mother was a woman of some talent and more 
 ambition. She made her house one of the most attractive in 
 London. Seldom seen at large assemblies, she was eagerly 
 sought after in the well-winnowed soirees of the elect. Her 
 wealth, great as it was, seemed the least prominent ingredient 
 of her establishment. There was in it no uncalled-for ostenta- 
 tion, no purse-proud vulgarity, no cringing to great, and no 
 patronizing condescension to little people ; even the Sunday 
 newspapers could not find fault with her, and the querulous 
 wives of younger brothers could only sneer and be silent. 
 
 " It is an excellent connection," said my mother, when I 
 told her of my friendship with Reginald Glanville, " and will 
 be of more use to you than many of greater apparent conse- 
 quence. Remember, my dear, that in all the friends you 
 make at present, you look to the advantage you can derive 
 from them hereafter ; that is what we call knowledge of the 
 world, and it is to get the knowledge of the world that you 
 are sent to a public school." 
 
 I think, however, to my shame, that notwithstanding my moth- 
 er's instructions, very few prudential considerations were mingled 
 with my friendship for Reginald Glanville. I loved him with a 
 warmth of attachment which has since surprised even myself. 
 
 He was of a very singular character ; he used to wander by 
 the river in the bright days of summer, when all else were at 
 play, without any companion but his own thoughts ; and 
 these were tinged, even at that early age, with a deep and im- 
 passioned melancholy. He was so reserved in his manner, 
 that it was looked upon as coldness or pride, and was repaid 
 as such by a pretty general dislike. Yet to those he loved, no 
 one could be more open and warm ; more watchful to gratify 
 others, more indifferent to gratification for himself ; an utter 
 absence of all selfishness, and an eager and active benevolence, 
 were indeed the distinguishing traits of his character. I have 
 seen him endure with a careless good-nature the most provok- 
 ing affronts from boys much less than himself ; but if I, or any 
 other of his immediate friends, was injured or aggrieved, his 
 anger was almost implacable. Although he was of a slight 
 frame, yet early exercise had brought strength to his muscles,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 17 
 
 and activity to his limbs ; while there was that in his courage 
 and will which, despite his reserve and unpopularity, always 
 marked him out as a leader in those enterprises wherein we 
 test as boys the qualities which chiefly contribute to secure 
 hereafter our position amongst men. 
 
 Such, briefly and imperfectly sketched, was the character of 
 Reginald Glanville the one who, of all my early companions, 
 differed the most from myself ; yet the one whom I loved the 
 most, and the one whose future destiny was the most inter- 
 twined with my own. 
 
 I was in the head class when I left Eton. As I was reckoned 
 an uncommonly well-educated boy, it may not be ungratifying 
 to the admirers of the present system of education to pause 
 here for a moment, and recall what I then knew. I could make 
 fifty Latin verses in half an hour ; I could construe, without 
 an English translation, all the easy Latin authors, and many of 
 the difficult ones, with it ; I could read Greek fluently, and 
 even translate it through the medium of the Latin version 
 technically called a crib.* I was thought exceedingly clever, 
 for I had been only eight years acquiring all this fund of infor- 
 mation, which, as one need never recall it in the world, you have 
 every right to suppose that I had entirely forgotten before I was 
 five-and-twenty. As I was never taught a syllable of English 
 during this period ; as, when I once attempted to read Pope's 
 poems out of school hours, I was laughed at, and called " a 
 sap " ; as my mother, when I went to school, renounced her 
 own instructions ; and as, whatever schoolmasters may think 
 to the contrary, one learns nothing nowadays by inspiration : 
 so of everything which relates to English literature, English 
 laws, and English history (with the exception of the said story 
 of Queen Elizabeth and Lord Essex), you have the same right 
 to suppose that I was, at the age of eighteen, when I left Eton, 
 in the profoundest ignorance. 
 
 At this age, I was transplanted to Cambridge, where I bloomed 
 for two years in the blue and silver of a fellow commoner of 
 Trinity. At the end of that time (being of royal descent) I 
 became entitled to an honorary degree. I suppose the term is 
 in contradistinction to an honorable degree, which is obtained 
 by pale men in spectacles and cotton stockings, after thirty-six 
 months of intense application. 
 
 * It is but just to say that the educational system at public schools is greatly improved 
 since the above was written. And take those great seminaries altogether, it may be doubted 
 whether any institutions more philosophical in theory are better adapted to secure that 
 union of classical tastes with manly habits and honorable sentiments which distinguishes 
 the English gentleman.
 
 I do not exactly remember how I spent my time at Cam- 
 bridge. I had a piano-forte in my room, and a private billiard- 
 room at a village two miles off ; and, between these resources, 
 1 managed to improve my mind more than could reasonably have 
 been expected. To say truth, the whole place reeked with vul- 
 garity. The men drank beer by the gallon, and ate cheese by 
 the hundred weight ; wore jockey-cut coats, and talked slang ; 
 rode for wagers, and swore when they lost ; smoked in your 
 face, and expectorated on the floor. Their proudest glory was 
 to drive the mail; their mightiest exploit to box with the coach- 
 man ; their most delicate amour to leer at the barmaid.* 
 
 It will be believed that I felt little regret in quitting com- 
 panions of this description. I went to take leave of our col- 
 lege tutor. " Mr. Pelham," said he, affectionately squeezing 
 me by the hand, "your conduct has been most exemplary ; you 
 have not walked wantonly over the college grassplats, nor set 
 your dog at the proctor ; nor driven tandems by day, nor 
 broken lamps by night ; nor entered the chapel in order to 
 display your intoxication ; nor the lecture-room, in order to 
 caricature the professors. This is the general behavior of 
 young men of family and fortune ; but it has not been yours. 
 Sir, you have been an honor to your college." 
 
 Thus closed my academical career. He who does not allow 
 that it passed creditably to my teachers, profitably to myself, 
 and beneficially to the world, is a narrow-minded and illiterate 
 man, who knows nothing of the advantages of modern edu- 
 cation. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " Thus does a false ambition rule us, 
 
 Thus pomp delude, and folly fool us." SHENSTONE 
 
 "An open house, haunted with great resort." BISHOP HALL'S Satires. 
 
 I LEFT Cambridge in a very weak state of health ; and as 
 nobody had yet come to London, I accepted the invitation of 
 Sir Lionel Garrett to pay him a visit at his country seat. 
 Accordingly, one raw winter's day, full of the hopes of the 
 reviving influence of air and exercise, I found myself carefully 
 packed up in three great-coats, and on the high road to Gar- 
 rett Park. 
 
 * This, at that time, was a character that could only be applied to the gayest, that is the 
 worst, set at the University and perhaps now the character may scarcely exist.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 19 
 
 Sir Lionel Garrett was a character very common in England, 
 and, in describing him, I describe the whole species. He was 
 of an ancient family, and his ancestors had for centuries resided 
 on their estates in Norfolk. Sir Lionel, who came to his 
 majority and his fortune at the same time, went up to London 
 at the age of twenty-one, a raw, uncouth sort of young man, 
 with a green coat and lank hair. His friends in town were of 
 that set whose members are above Ion, whenever they do not 
 grasp at its possession, but who, whenever they do, lose at 
 once their aim and their equilibrium, and fall immeasurably 
 below it. I mean that set which I call "the respectable" con- 
 sisting of old peers of an old school ; country gentlemen, who 
 still disdain not to love their wine and to hate the French ; 
 generals who have served in the army ; elder brothers who suc- 
 ceed to something besides a mortgage ; and younger brothers 
 who do not mistake their capital for their income. To this set 
 you may add the whole of the baronetage for I have remarked 
 that baronets hang together like bees or Scotchmen ; and if I 
 go to a baronet's house, and speak to some one whom I have 
 not the happiness to know, I always say " Sir John! " 
 
 It was no wonder, then, that to this set belonged Sir Lionel 
 Garrett no more the youth with a green coat and lank hair, 
 but pinched in, and curled out ; abounding in horses and 
 whiskers ; dancing all night, lounging all day ; the favorite of 
 the old ladies, the Philander of the young. 
 
 One unfortunate evening Sir Lionel Garrett was introduced 
 to the celebrated Duchess of D. From that moment his head 
 was turned. Before then he had always imagined that he was 
 somebody that he was Sir Lionel Garrett, with a good look- 
 ing person and eight thousand a year ! he now knew that he 
 was nobody, unless he went to Lady G.'s, and unless he bowed 
 to Lady S. Disdaining all importance derived from himself, 
 it became absolutely necessary to his happiness that all his 
 importance should be derived solely from his acquaintance 
 with others. He cared not a straw that he was a man of for- 
 tune, of family, of consequence ; he must be a man of ton; or 
 he was an atom, a nonentity, a very worm, and no man. No 
 lawyer at Gray's Inn, no galley slave at the oar, ever worked 
 so hard at his task as Sir Lionel Garrett at his. Ton, to a 
 single man, is a thing attainable enough. Sir Lionel was just 
 gaining the envied distinction when he saw, courted, and mar- 
 ried Lady Harriet Woodstock. 
 
 His new wife was of a modern and not very rich family, and 
 striving like Sir Lionel for the notoriety of fashion ; but of this
 
 20 PELHAM ; 
 
 struggle he was ignorant. He saw her admitted into good 
 society he imagined she commanded it ; she was a hanger on 
 he believed she was a leader. Lady Harriet was crafty and 
 twenty-four ; had no objection to be married, nor to change 
 the name of Woodstock for Garrett. She kept up the baronet's 
 mistake till it was too late to repair it. 
 
 Marriage did not bring Sir Lionel wisdom. His wife was of 
 the same turn of mind as himself. They might have been 
 great people in the country ; they prefer^d being little people 
 in town. They might have chosen ffiet'^". among persons of 
 respectability and rank; they preferred being chosen as ac- 
 quaintance by persons of ton. Society was their being's end 
 and aim, and the only thing which brought them pleasure was 
 the pain of attaining it. Did I not say truly that I would de- 
 scribe individuals of a common species ? Is there one who reads 
 this who does not recognize that overflowing class of our popula- 
 tion, whose members would conceive it an insult to be thought 
 of sufficient rank to be respectable for what they are ? who take 
 it as an honor that they are made by their acquaintance ? who 
 renounce the ease of living for themselves, for the trouble of 
 living for persons who care not a pin for their existence? who 
 are wretched if thay are not dictated to by others ? and who 
 toil, groan, travail, through the whole course of life, in order 
 to forfeit their independence ? 
 
 I arrived at Garrett Park just time enough to dress for din- 
 ner. As I was descending the stairs after having performed 
 that ceremony, I heard my own name pronounced by a very 
 soft, lisping voice : " Henry Pelham ! Dev, what a pretty 
 name. Is he handsome?" 
 
 "Rather elegant than handsome," was the unsatisfactory re- 
 ply, couched in a slow, pompous accent, which I immediately 
 recognized to belong to Lady Harriet Garrett. 
 
 " Can we make something of him ? " resumed the first voice. 
 
 "Something?" said Lady Harriet indignantly; "he will be 
 Lord Glenmorris ! and he is son to Lady Frances Pelham." 
 
 "Ah," said the lisper carelessly ; "but can he write poetry, 
 and play proverbes?" 
 
 "No, Lady Harriet," said I, advancing; "but permit me, 
 through you, to assure Lady Nelthorpe that he can admire 
 those who do." 
 
 " So you know me, then ?" said the lisper: "I see we shall 
 be excellent friends"; and, disengaging herself from Lady 
 Harriet, she took my arm, and began discussing persons and 
 things, poetry and china, French plays and music, till I found
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 21 
 
 myself beside her at dinner, and most assiduously endeavoring 
 to silence her by the superior engrossments of a be'chamellc de 
 poisson. 
 
 I took the opportunity of the pause to survey the little circle 
 of which Lady Harriet was the centre. In the first place, there 
 was Mr. Davison, a great political economist, a short, dark, 
 corpulent gentleman, with a quiet, serene, sleepy countenance; 
 beside him was a quick, sharp little woman, all sparkle and bustle, 
 glancing a small gray, prying eye round the table, with a most 
 restless activity : this, Lady Nelthorpe afterwards informed 
 me, was a Miss Trafford, an excellent person for a Christmas in 
 the country, whom everybody was dying to have: she was an 
 admirable mimic, an admirable actress, and an admirable 
 reciter ; made poetry and shoes, and told fortunes by the cards, 
 which actually came true ! 
 
 There was also Mr. Wormwood, the noli-me-tangere of literary 
 lions an author who sowed his conversation not with flowers 
 but thorns. Nobody could accuse him of the flattery generally 
 imputed to his species : through the course of a long and 
 varied life he had never once been known to say a civil thing. 
 He was too much disliked not be sought after ; whatever is 
 once notorious, even for being disagreeable, is sure to be 
 courted. Opposite to him sat the really clever, and affectedly 
 pedantic, Lord Vincent, one of those persons who have been 
 " promising young men" all their lives ; who are found till four 
 o'clock in the afternon in a dressing-gown, with a quarto be- 
 fore them ; who go down into the country for six weeks every 
 session, to cram an impromptu reply ; and who always have a 
 work in the press which is never to be published. 
 
 Lady Nelthorpe herself I had frequently seen. She had 
 some reputation for talent, was exceedingly affected, wrote 
 poetry in albums, ridiculed her husband (who was a fox hunter), 
 and had a particular taste for the fine arts. 
 
 There were four or five others of the unknown vulgar, younger 
 brothers, who were good shots and bad matches ; elderly ladies, 
 who lived in Baker Street, and liked long whist ; and young 
 ones, who never took wine, and said " Sir ! " 
 
 I must, however, among this number, except the beautiful 
 Lady Roseville, the most fascinating woman, perhaps, of the 
 day. She was evidently the great person there, and, indeed, 
 among all people who paid due deference to ton, was always 
 sure to be so everywhere. I have never seen but one person 
 more beautiful. Her eyes were of the deepest blue ; her com- 
 plexion of the most delicate carnation ; her hair of the richest
 
 22 PELHAM J 
 
 auburn : nor could even Mr. Wormwood detect the smallest 
 fault in the rounded yet slender symmetry of her figure. 
 
 Although not above twenty-five, she was in that state in 
 which alone a woman ceases to be a dependant widowhood. 
 Lord Roseville, who had been dead about two years, had not 
 survived their marriage many months ; that period was, how- 
 ever, sufficiently long to allow him to appreciate her excellence, 
 and to testify his sense of it : the whole of his unentailed 
 property, which was very large, he bequeathed to her. 
 
 She was very fond of the society of literary persons, though 
 without the pretence of belonging to their order. But her 
 manners constituted her chief attraction : while they were 
 utterly different from those of every one else, you could not, 
 in the least minutiae, discover in what the difference consisted : 
 this is, in my opinion, the real test of perfect breeding. While 
 you are enchanted with the effect, it should possess so little 
 prominency and peculiarity, that you should never be able to 
 guess the cause. 
 
 " Pray," said Lord Vincent to Mr. Wormwood, " have you 
 been to P this year?" 
 
 " No," was the answer. 
 
 " I have," said Miss Trafford, who never lost an opportunity 
 of slipping in a word. 
 
 " Well, and did they make you sleep, as usual, at the Crown, 
 with the same infernal excuse, after having brought you fifty 
 miles from town, of small house no beds all engaged inn 
 close by ? Ah, never shall I forget that inn, with its royal 
 name, and its hard beds 
 
 ' Uneasy sleeps a head beneath the Crown ! ' " 
 
 *' Ha, ha ! Excellent ! " cried Miss Trafford, who was always 
 the first in at the death of a pun. " Yes, indeed they did : 
 poor old Lord Belton, with his rheumatism ; and that immense 
 General Grant, with his asthma ; together with three ' single 
 men,' and myself, were safely conveyed to that asylum for the 
 destitute." 
 
 " Ah ! Grant, Grant ! " said Lord Vincent eagerly, who saw 
 another opportunity of whipping in a pun. " He slept there 
 also the same night I did ; and when I saw his unwieldy person 
 waddling out of the door the next morning, I said to Temple, 
 * Well, that's the largest Grant I ever saw from the Crown' " * 
 
 "Very good," said Wormwood gravely. "I declare, Vin- 
 cent, you are growing quite witty. You know Jekyl, of course? 
 
 * It was from Mr. J. Smith that Lord Vincent purloined this pun.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 3 
 
 Poor fellow, what a really good punster he was ! Not agree- 
 able though, particularly at dinner no punsters are. Mr. 
 Davison, what is that dish next to you ?" 
 
 Mr. Davison was a great gourmand. " Salmi de perdrcaux 
 aux truffes," replied the political economist. 
 
 "Truffles ! " said Wormwood, " have_jw/ been eating any ?" 
 
 " Yes," said Davison, with unusual energy, " and they are 
 the best I have tasted for a long time." 
 
 " Very likely," said Wormwood, with a dejected air. " I am 
 particularly fond of them, but I dare not touch one truffles 
 are so very apoplectic. You, I make no doubt, may eat them 
 in safety." 
 
 Wormwood was a tall, meagre man, with a neck a yard long. 
 Davison was, as I have said, short and fat, and made without 
 any apparent neck at all only head and shoulders, like a cod- 
 fish. 
 
 Poor Mr. Davison turned perfectly white ; he fidgeted about 
 in his chair ; cast a look of the most deadly fear and aversion 
 at the fatal dish he had been so attentive to before ; and, 
 muttering " apoplectic ! " closed his lips, and did not open 
 them again all dinner-time. 
 
 Mr. Wormwood's object was effected. Two people were 
 silenced and uncomfortable, and a sort of mist hung over the 
 spirits of the whole party. The dinner went on and off, like all 
 other dinners ; the ladies retired, and the men drank, and talked 
 politics. Mr. Davison left the room first, in order to look out 
 the word "truffle," in the Encyclopaedia ; and Lord Vincent 
 and I went next, " lest (as my companion characteristically 
 observed) that d d Wormwood should, if we stayed a 
 moment longer, 'send us weeping to our beds.'" 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Oh ! la belle chose que la Poste ! " * Letires de Shrignt. 
 ' ' Ay but who is it ? " A s You Like It. 
 
 I HAD mentioned to my mother my intended visit to Garrett 
 Park, and the second day after my arrival there came the fol- 
 lowing letter : 
 " MY DEAR HENRY: 
 
 " I was very glad to hear you were rather better than 
 
 * Oh ! what a beautiful thing is the post-office.
 
 24 PELHAM J 
 
 you had been. I trust you will take great care of yourself. I 
 think flannel waistcoats might be advisable ; and, by-the-by, 
 they are very good for the complexion. Apropos of the com- 
 plexion : I did not like that blue coat you wore when I last 
 saw you ; you look best in black ; which is a great compliment, 
 for people must be very distinguished in appearance in order 
 to do so. 
 
 "You know, my dear, that those Garretts are in themselves 
 anything but unexceptionable ; you will, therefore, take care 
 not to be too intimate ; it is, however, a very good house : 
 most whom you meet there are worth knowing, for one thing 
 or the other. Remember, Henry, that the acquaintance (riot 
 the friends) of second or third-rate people are always sure to 
 be good : they are not independent enough to receive whom 
 they like their whole rank is in their guests : you may be also 
 sure that the manage will, in outward appearance at least, be 
 quite comme il faut, and for the same reason. Gain as much 
 knowledge de Part culinaire as you can : it is an accomplish- 
 ment absolutely necessary. You may also pick up a little ac- 
 quaintance with metaphysics, if you have any opportunity ; that 
 sort of thing is a good deal talked about just at present. 
 
 " I hear Lady Roseville is at Garrett Park. You must be 
 particularly attentive to her ; you will probably now have an 
 opportunity de faire votre cour that may never again happen. 
 In London, she is so much surrounded by all that she is quite 
 inaccessible to one ; besides, there you will have so many 
 rivals. Without flattery to you, I take it for granted that you 
 are the best-looking and most agreeable person at Garrett 
 Park, and it will, therefore, be a most unpardonable fault if 
 you do not make Lady Roseville of the same opinion. Noth- 
 ing, my dear son, is like a liaison (quite innocent, of course) 
 with a woman of celebrity in the world. In marriage a man 
 lowers a woman to his own rank ; in an affaire de caur he 
 raises himself to hers. I need not, I am sure, after what I 
 have said, press this point any further. 
 
 " Write to me and inform me of all your proceedings. If 
 you mention the people who are at Garrett Park, I can tell you 
 the proper line of conduct to pursue with each. 
 
 " I am sure that I need not add that I have nothing but your 
 real good at heart, and that I am your very affectionate mother, 
 
 " FRANCIS PELHAM. 
 
 " P. S. Never talk much to young men ; remember that it 
 is the women who make a reputation in society."
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 4$ 
 
 " Well," said I, when I had read this letter, " my mother is 
 very right, and so now for Lady Roseville." 
 
 I went downstairs to breakfast. Miss Trafford and Lady 
 Nelthorpe were in the room, talking with great interest, and, 
 on Miss Trafford's part, with still greater vehemence. 
 
 " So handsome," said Lady Nelthorpe, as I approached. 
 
 " Are you talking of me? " said I. 
 
 " Oh, you vanity of vanities ! " was the answer. " No, we 
 were speaking of a very romantic adventure which has hap- 
 pened to Miss Trafford and myself, and disputing about the 
 hero of it. Miss Trafford declares he is frightful ; J say that 
 he is beautiful. Now, you know, Mr. Pelham, as to you " 
 
 " There can be but one opinion ; but the adventure? " 
 
 " Is this ! " cried Miss Trafford, in great fright, lest Lady 
 Nelthorpe should, by speaking first, have the pleasure of the 
 narration : " We were walking, two or three days ago, by the 
 sea-side, picking up shells and talking about the ' Corsair,' 
 when a large, fierce " 
 
 " Man ! " interrupted I. 
 
 " No, dog " (renewed Miss Trafford), " flew suddenly out of 
 a cave, under a rock, and began howling at dear Lady Nel- 
 thorpe and me, in the most savage manner imaginable. He 
 would certainly have torn us to pieces if a very tall " 
 
 " Not so very tall either," said Lady Nelthorpe. 
 
 " Dear, how you interrupt one," said Miss Trafford pet- 
 tishly ; " well, a very short man, then, wrapped up in a 
 cloak " 
 
 " In a great-coat," drawled Lady Nelthorpe. Miss Trafford 
 went on without noticing the emendation, " had not, with 
 incredible rapidity, sprung down the rock and " 
 
 " Called him off," said Lady Nelthorpe. 
 
 "Yes, called him off," pursued Miss Trafford, looking round 
 for the necessary symptoms of our wonder at this very extra- 
 ordinary incident. 
 
 "What is the most remarkable," said Lady Nelthorpe, " is, 
 that though he seemed from his dress and appearance to be 
 really a gentleman, he never stayed to ask if we were alarmed 
 or hurt scarcely even looked at us " 
 
 (" I don't wonder at that !" said Mr. Wormwood, who, with 
 Lord Vincent, had just entered the room) ; 
 
 " and vanished among the rocks as suddenly as he 
 appeared." 
 
 " Oh, you've seen that fellow, have you ? " said Lord Vin- 
 cent : " so have I, and a devilish queer-looking person he is ;
 
 26 PELHAM ; 
 
 ' The balls of his broad eyes roll'd in his head, 
 And glar'd betwixt a yellow and a red ; 
 He looked a lion with a gloomy stare, 
 And o'er his eyebrows hung his matted hair.' 
 
 Well remembered, and better applied eh, Mr. Pelham ? " 
 
 "Really," said I, " I am not able to judge of the application, 
 since I have not seen the hero." 
 
 "Oh ! it's admirable," said Miss Trafford, "just the descrip- 
 tion I should have given of him in prose. But pray, where, 
 when, and how did you see him ? " 
 
 " Your question is religiously mysterious, tria juncta in un0," 
 replied Vincent ; " but I will answer it with the simplicity of 
 a Quaker. The other evening I was coming home from one 
 of Sir Lionel's preserves, and had sent the keeper on before, in 
 order more undisturbedly to " 
 
 " Con witticisms for dinner," said Wormwood. 
 
 "To make out the meaning of Mr. Wormwood's last work," 
 continued Lord Vincent. " My shortest way lay through that 
 churchyard about a mile hence, which is such a lion in this ugly 
 part of the country, because it has three thistles and a tree. 
 Just as I got there I saw a man suddenly rise from the earth, 
 where he appeared to have been lying ; he stood still for a mo- 
 ment, and then (evidently not perceiving me) raised his clasped 
 hands to heaven, and muttered some words I was not able dis- 
 tinctly to hear. As I approached nearer to him, which I did 
 with no very pleasant sensations, a large black dog, which, till 
 then had remained couchant, sprang towards me with a loud 
 growl : 
 
 4 Sonat hie de nare canina 
 Litera,' 
 
 as Persius has it. I was too terrified to move 
 ' Obstupui steteruntque comae ' 
 
 and I should most infallibly have been converted into dog's 
 meat, if our mutual acquaintance had not started from his 
 reverie, called his dog by the very appropriate name of Terror, 
 and then, slouching his hat over his face, passed rapidly by 
 me, dog and all. I did not recover the fright for an hour and 
 a quarter. I walked ye gods, how I did walk ! No wonder, 
 by the by, that I mended my pace, for, as Pliny says truly : 
 
 ' Timor est emendalor asperrimus.' " * 
 
 * Most of the quotations from Latin or French authors interspersed throughout this 
 work will be translated for the convenience of the general reader ; but exceptions will be made 
 nrhere such quotations (as is sometimes the case when from the mouth of LordVincent)merely
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 27 
 
 Mr. Wormwood had been very impatient during this recital, 
 preparing an attack upon Lord Vincent, when Mr. Davison, 
 entering suddenly, diverted the assault. 
 
 "Good heavens !" said Wormwood, dropping his roll, "how 
 very ill you look to-day, Mr. Davidson ; face flushed, veins 
 swelled, oh, those horrid truffles ! Miss Trafford, I'll trouble 
 you for the salt." 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " Be she fairer than the day, 
 Or the flowery meads in May ; 
 If she be not so to me, 
 What care I how fair she be ? " 
 
 GEORGE WITHERS. 
 
 " .... It was great pity, so it was, 
 That villainous saltpetre should be digged 
 Out of the bowels of the harmless earth, 
 Which many a good tall fellow had destroyed." 
 
 First Part of King Henry IV. 
 
 SEVERAL days passed. I had taken particular pains to in- 
 gratiate myself with Lady Roseville, and, so far as common 
 acquaintance went, I had no reason to be dissatisfied with my 
 success. Anything else, I soon discovered, notwithstanding 
 my vanity (which made no inconsiderable part in the composi- 
 tion of Henry Pelham), was quite out of the question. Her 
 mind was wholly of a different mould from my own. She 
 was like a being, not perhaps of a better, but of another world 
 than myself : we had not one thougnt or opinion in common ; 
 we looked upon things with a totally different vision ; I was 
 soon convinced that she was of a nature exactly contrary to 
 what was generally believed she was anything but the mere 
 mechanical woman of the world. She possessed great sensi- 
 bility, and even romance of temper, strong passions, and still 
 stronger imagination ; but over all these deeper recesses of 
 her character, the extreme softness and languor of her manners 
 threw a veil which no superficial observer could penetrate. 
 There were times when I could believe that she was inwardly 
 restless and unhappy ; but she was too well versed in the arts 
 
 contain a play upon words, which are pointless, out of the language employed, or which 
 only iterate or illustrate, by a characteristic pedantry, the sentence that precedes or fol- 
 lows them.
 
 28 PELHAM ; 
 
 of concealment, to suffer such an appearance to be more than 
 momentary. 
 
 I must own that I consoled myself very easily for my want, 
 in this particular instance, of that usual good fortune which at- 
 tends me with the divine sex ; the fact was, that I had another 
 object in pursuit. All the men at Sir Lionel Garrett's were 
 keen sportsmen. Now, shooting is an amusement I was never 
 particularly partial to, I was first disgusted with that species 
 of rational recreation at zbattue, where, instead of bagging any- 
 thing, I was nearly bagged, having been inserted, like wine in an 
 ice pail, in a wet ditch for three hours, during which time my hat 
 had been twice shot at for a pheasant, and my leather gaiters once 
 for a hare ; and to crown all, when these several mistakes were 
 discovered, my intended exterminators, instead of apologizing 
 for having shot at me, were quite disappointed at having 
 missed. 
 
 Seriously that same shooting is a most barbarous amusement, 
 only fit for majors in the army, and royal dukes, and that sort 
 of people ; the mere walking is bad enough, but embarrassing 
 one's arms, moreover, with a gun, and one's legs with turnip 
 tops, exposing oneself to the mercy of bad shots and the atrocity 
 of good, seems to me only a state of painful fatigue, enlivened 
 by the probability of being killed. 
 
 This digression is meant to signify that I never joined the 
 single men and double Mantons that went in and off among 
 Sir Lionel Garrett's preserves. I used, instead, to take long 
 walks by myself, and found, like virtue, my own reward in 
 the additional health and strength these diurnal exertions 
 produced me. 
 
 One morning chance threw into my way a bonne fortune, 
 which I took care to improve. From that time the family of 
 a Farmer Sinclair (one of Sir Lionel's tenants) was alarmed 
 by strange and supernatural noises ; one apartment in especial, 
 occupied by a female member of the household, was allowed, 
 even -by the clerk of the parish, a very bold man, and a bit of 
 a sceptic, to be haunted ; the windows of that chamber were 
 wont to open and shut, thin airy voices confabulate therein, 
 and dark shapes hover thereout, long after the fair occupant 
 had, with the rest of the family, retired to repose. But the 
 most unaccountable thing was the fatality which attended me, 
 and seemed to mark me out for an untimely death. /, who 
 had so carefully kept out of the way of gunpowder as a sports- 
 man, very narrowly escaped being twice shot as a ghost. 
 This was but a poor reward for a walk more than a mile long,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAM. 29 
 
 in nights by no means of cloudless climes and starry skies ; 
 accordingly I resolved to " give up the ghost " in earnest 
 rather than in metaphor, and to pay my last visit and adieus 
 to the mansion of Farmer Sinclair. The night on which I 
 executed this resolve was rather memorable in my future 
 history. 
 
 The rain had fallen so heavily during the day as to render 
 the road to the house almost impassable, and when it was 
 time to leave I inquired, with very considerable emotion, 
 whether there was not an easier way to return. The answer 
 was satisfactory, and my last nocturnal visit at Farmer Sin- 
 clair's concluded. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " Why sleeps he not, when others are at rest ? " BYRON. 
 
 ACCORDING to the explanation I had received, the road I 
 was now to pursue was somewhat longer, but much better, 
 than that which I generally took. It was to lead me home 
 
 through the churchyard of , the same, by-the-by, which 
 
 Lord Vincent had particularized in his anecdote of the mys- 
 terious stranger. The night was clear, but windy ; there were 
 a few light clouds passing rapidly over the moon, which was 
 at her full, and shone through the frosty air with all that cold 
 and transparent brightness so peculiar to our northern winters. 
 I walked briskly on till I came to the churchyard ; I could 
 not then help pausing (notwithstanding my total deficiency in 
 all romance) to look for a few moments at the exceeding 
 beauty of the scene around me. The church itself was ex- 
 tremely old, and stood alone and gray, in the rude simplicity 
 of the earliest form of gothic architecture ; two large, dark 
 yew-trees drooped on each side over tombs, which, from their 
 size and decorations, appeared to be the last possession of 
 some quondam lords of the soil. To the left the ground was 
 skirted by a thick and luxuriant copse of evergreens, in the 
 front of which stood one tall, naked oak, stern and leafless, 
 a very token of desolation and decay ; there were but few 
 gravestones scattered about, and these were, for the most part, 
 hidden by the long, wild grass which wreathed and climbed 
 round them. Over all, the blue skies and still moon shed 
 that solemn light, the effect of which, either on the scene or 
 the feelings, it is so impossible to describe.
 
 30 PELHAM J 
 
 I was just about to renew my walk, when a tall, dark figure, 
 wrapped up like myself, in a large French cloak, passed slowly 
 along from the other side of the church, and paused by the 
 copse I have before mentioned. I was shrouded at that mo- 
 ment from his sight by one of the yew trees ; he stood still only 
 for a few moments ; he then flung himself upon the earth, and 
 sobbed audibly, even at the spot where I was standing. I was 
 in doubt whether to wait longer or to proceed ; my way lay 
 just by him, and it might be dangerous to interrupt so sub- 
 stantial an apparition. However, my curiosity was excited, 
 and my feet were half frozen, two cogent reasons for proceed- 
 ing ; and, to say truth, I was never very much frightened by 
 anything dead or alive. 
 
 Accordingly I left my obscurity, and walked slowly onwards. 
 I had not got above three paces before the figure arose, and 
 stood erect and motionless before me. His hat had fallen off, and 
 the moon shone full upon his countenance ; it was not the wild 
 expression of intense anguish which dwelt on those hueless and 
 sunken features, nor their quick change to ferocity and defiance, 
 as his eye fell upon me, which made me start back and feel my 
 heart stand still ! Notwithstanding the fearful ravages graven 
 in that countenance, once so brilliant with the graces of boy- 
 hood, I recognized at one glance those still noble and striking 
 features. It was Reginald Glanville who stood before me ! 
 I recovered myself instantly ; I threw myself towards him, and 
 called him by his name. He turned hastily ; but I would not 
 suffer him to escape ; I put my hand upon his arm, and drew him 
 towards me. " Glanville ! " I exclaimed, " it is I ! it is your 
 old old friend, Henry Pelham. Good Heavene ! have I met 
 you at last, and in such a scene ? " 
 
 Glanville shook me from him in an instant, covered his face 
 with his hands, and sank down with one wild cry, which went 
 fearfully through that still place, upon the spot from which he 
 had but just risen. I knelt beside him ; I took his hand ; I spoke 
 to him in every endearing term that I could think of ; and, 
 roused and excited as my feelings were by so strange and sud- 
 den a meeting, I felt my tears involuntarily falling over the 
 hand which I held in my own. Glanville turned ; he looked at 
 me for one moment, as if fully to recognize me ; and then, 
 throwing himself in my arms, wept like a child. 
 
 It was but for a few minutes that this weakness lasted ; he 
 rose suddenly the whole expression of his countenance was 
 changed ; the tears still rolled in large drops down his cheeks, 
 but the proud, stern character which the features had assumed
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 31 
 
 seemed to deny the feelings which that feminine weakness had 
 betrayed. 
 
 " Pelham," he said, "you have seen me thus ; I had hoped 
 that no living eye would this is the last time in which I shall 
 indulge this folly. God bless you ; we shall meet again ; and 
 this night shall then seem to you like a dream." 
 
 I would have answered, but he turned swiftly, passed in one 
 moment through the copse, and in the next had disappeared. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " You reach a chilling chamber, where you dread 
 Damps." CRABBE'S Borough. 
 
 I COULD not sleep the whole of that night, and the next 
 morning I set off early, with the resolution of discovering where 
 Glanville had taken up his abode ; it was evident from his 
 having been so frequently seen that it must be in the immediate 
 neighborhood. 
 
 I went first to Farmer Sinclair's ; they had often remarked 
 him, but could give me no other information. I then proceeded 
 towards the coast ; there was a small public-house belonging to 
 Sir Lionel close by the sea-shore ; never had I seen a more 
 bleak and dreary prospect than that which stretched for miles 
 around this miserable cabin. How an innkeeper could live 
 there, is a mystery to me at this day ; I should have imagined 
 it a spot upon which anything but a sea-gull or a Scotchman 
 would have starved. 
 
 " Just the sort of place, however," thought I, " to hear some- 
 thing of Glanville." I went into the house ; I inquired, and 
 heard that a strange gentleman had been lodging for the last 
 two or three weeks at a cottage about a mile further up the 
 coast. Thither I bent my steps ; and after having met two 
 crows, and one officer on the preventive service, I arrived 
 safely at my new destination. 
 
 It was a house a little better, in outward appearance, than 
 the wretched hut I had just left, for I observe in all situations, 
 and in all houses, that " the public " is not too well served ; 
 but the situation was equally lonely and desolate. The house 
 itself, which belonged to an individual half-fisherman and half- 
 smuggler, stood in a sort of bay, between two tall, rugged, 
 black cliffs. Before the door hung various nets to dry beneath
 
 PELHAM 
 
 3 2 
 
 the genial warmth of a winter's sun ; and a broken boat, with 
 its keel uppermost, furnished an admirable habitation fora hen 
 and her family, who appeared to receive en pension an old 
 clerico-bachelor-looking raven. I cast a suspicious glance at 
 the last-mentioned personage, which hopped towards me with 
 a very hostile appearance, and entered the threshold with a 
 more rapid step in consequence of sundry apprehensions of a 
 premeditated assault. 
 
 *' I understand," said I to an old, dried, brown female, who 
 looked like a resuscitated red-herring, "that a gentleman is 
 lodging here." 
 
 " No, sir," was the answer ; " he left us this morning." 
 
 The reply came upon me like a shower-bath ; I was both 
 chilled and stunned by so unexpected a shock. The old woman, 
 on my renewing my inquiries, took me upstairs to a small, 
 wretched room^ to which the damps literally clung. In one 
 corner was a flock-bed, still unmade, and opposite to it a three- 
 legged stool, a chair, and an antique carved oak table, a dona- 
 tion, perhaps, from some squire in the neighborhood ; on this 
 last were scattered fragments of writing-paper, a cracked cup 
 half-full of ink, a pen, and a broken ramrod. As I mechanic- 
 ally took up the latter, the woman said, in a charming patois, 
 which I shall translate, since I cannot do justice to the original : 
 " The gentleman, sir, said he came here for a few weeks to 
 shoot ; he brought a gun, a large dog, and a small portmanteau. 
 He stayed nearly a month ; he used to spend all the mornings 
 in the fens, though he must have been but a poor shot, for he 
 seldom brought home anything ; and we fear, sir, that he was 
 rather out of his mind, for he used to go out alone at night, 
 and stay sometimes till moxning. However, he was quite quiet, 
 and behaved to us like a gentleman ; so it was no business of 
 ours, only my husband does think 
 
 " Pray," interrupted I, "why did he leave you so suddenly ? " 
 
 " Lord, sir, I don't know ! but he told us for several days 
 past that he should not stay over the week, and so we were not 
 surprised when he left us this morning at seven o'clock. Poor 
 gentleman, my heart bled for him when I saw him look so pale 
 and ill." 
 
 And here I did see the good woman's eyes fill with tears : 
 but she wiped them away, and took advantage of the additional 
 persuasion they gave to her natural whine to say, " If, sir, you 
 know of any young gentleman who likes fen-shooting, and 
 wants a nice, pretty, quiet apartment " 
 
 "I will certainly recommend this," said I.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 33 
 
 "You see it at present," rejoined the landlady, "quite in a 
 litter like ; but it is really a sweet place in summer." 
 
 " Charming," said I, with a cold shiver, hurrying down the 
 stairs, with a pain in my ear, and the rheumatism in my 
 shoulder. 
 
 "And this," thought I, "was Glanville's residence for nearly 
 a month ! I wonder he did not exhale into a vapor, or moisten 
 into a green damp." 
 
 I went home by the churchyard. I paused on the spot where 
 I had last seen him. A small gravestone rose above the mound 
 of earth on which he had thrown himself ; it was perfectly 
 simple. The date of the year and month (which showed that 
 many weeks had not elapsed since the death of the deceased), 
 and the initials G. D., made the sole inscription on the stone. 
 Beside this tomb was one of a more pompous description, to 
 the memory of a Mrs. Douglas, which had with the simple 
 tumulus nothing in common, unless the initial letter of the sur- 
 name, corresponding with the latter initial on the neighboring 
 gravestone, might authorize any connection between them, not 
 supported by that similitude of style usually found in the 
 cenotaphs of the same family : the one, indeed, might have 
 covered the grave of a humble villager ; the other, the resting- 
 place of the lady of the manor. 
 
 1 found, therefore, no clue for the labyrinth of surmise ; and 
 I went home more vexed and disappointed with my day's ex- 
 pedition than I liked to acknowledge to myself. 
 
 Lord Vincent met me in the hall. " Delighted to see you," 
 
 said he ; "I have just been to (the nearest town), in order 
 
 to discover what sort of savages abide there. Great prepara- 
 tions for a ball ; all the tallow candles in the town are 
 bespoken, and I heard a most uncivilized riddle, 
 
 1 Twang short and sharp, like the shrill swallow's cry.' 
 
 The one milliner's shop was full of fat squiresses, buying mus- 
 lin ammunition to make the ball go off ; and the attics, even at 
 four o'clock, were thronged with rubicund damsels, who were 
 already, as Shakspeare says of waves in a storm, 
 
 ' Curling their monstrous heads.' "
 
 34 
 
 PELHAM 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 " Jusqu'au revoir le ciel vous tienne tous en joie." * MoLitRE. 
 
 I WAS now pretty well tired of Garrett Park. Lady Rose- 
 
 ville was gone to H , where I also had an invitation. Lord 
 
 Vincent meditated an excursion to Paris. Mr. Davison had 
 already departed. Miss Trafford had been gone, God knows 
 how long, and I was not at all disposed to be left, like " the 
 last rose of summer," in single blessedness at Garrett Park. 
 Vincent, Wormwood, and myself all agreed to leave on the 
 same day. 
 
 The morning of our departure arrived. We sat down to 
 breakfast as usual. Lord Vincent's carriage was at the door ; 
 his groom was walking about his favorite saddle-horse. 
 
 " A beautiful mare that is of yours," said I, carelessly look- 
 ing at it, and reaching across the table to help myself to the 
 pdtf de foie gras. 
 
 " Mare ! " exclaimed the incorrigible punster, delighted with 
 my mistake : " I thought that you would have been better ac- 
 quainted with your propria qua maribus." 
 
 " Humph ! " said Wormwood, " when I look at you I am al- 
 ways at least reminded of the 'as in prcesenti ! ' ' 
 
 Lord Vincent drew up and looked unutterable anger. Worm- 
 wood went on with his dry toast, and Lady Roseville, who that 
 morning had, for a wonder, come down to breakfast, good- 
 naturedly took off the bear. Whether or not his ascetic nature 
 was somewhat modified by the soft smiles and softer voice of 
 the beautiful Countess, I cannot pretend to say ; but he cer- 
 tainly entered into a conversation with her, not much rougher 
 than that of a less gifted individual might have been. They 
 talked of literature, Lord Byron, conversaziones, and Lydia 
 White.f 
 
 " Miss White," said Lady Roseville, " has not only the best 
 command of language herself, but she gives language to other 
 people. Dinner parties, usually so stupid, are, at her house, 
 quite delightful. There, I have actually seen English people 
 look happy, and one or two even almost natural." 
 
 "Ah!" said Wormwood, "that is indeed rare. With us 
 everything is assumption. We are still exactly like the 
 English suitor to Portia, in the Merchant of Venice. We take 
 our doublet from one country, our hose from another, and our 
 
 * Heaven keep you merry till we meet again, 
 t Written before the death of that ladv.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OP A GENTLEMAN. 35 
 
 behavior everywhere. Fashion with us is like the man in 
 one of Le Sage's novels, who was constantly changing 
 his servants, and yet had but one suit of livery, which 
 every newcomer, whether he was tall or short, fat or 
 thin, was obliged to wear. We adopt manners, however 
 incongruous and ill-suited to our nature, and thus we always 
 seem awkward and constrained. But Lydia White's soirees are 
 indeed agreeable. I remember the last time I dined there, we 
 were six in number, and though we were not blessed with the 
 company of Lord Vincent, the conversation was without 'let or 
 flaw.' Every one, even S , said good things." 
 
 "Indeed ! " cried Lord Vincent, "and pray, Mr. Wormwood, 
 what did you say?" 
 
 " Why," answered the poet, glancing with a significant sneer 
 over Vincent's somewhat inelegant person, "I thought of your 
 lordship's figure, and said grace!" 
 
 " Hem hem ! ' Gratia malorum tarn infida est quam ipsi' as 
 Pliny says," muttered Lord Vincent, getting up hastily, and 
 buttoning his coat. 
 
 I took the opportunity of the ensuing pause to approach 
 Lady Roseville and whisper my adieus. She was kind and 
 even warm to me in returning them ; and pressed me, with 
 something marvellously like sincerity, to be sure to come and 
 see her directly she returned to London. I soon discharged 
 the duties of my remaining farewells, and in less than half an 
 hour was more than a mile distant from Garrett Park and its 
 inhabitants. I can't say that for one who, like myself, is fond 
 of being made a great deal of, there is anything very delightful 
 in those visits into the country. It may be all well enough for 
 married people, who, from the mere fact of being married, are 
 always entitled to certain consideration, put for instance 
 into a bed-room a little larger than a dog-kennel, and accom- 
 modated with a looking-glass that does not distort one's 
 features like a paralytic stroke. But we single men suffer a 
 plurality of evils and hardships in intrusting ourselves to the 
 casualties of rural hospitality. We are thrust up into any attic 
 repository exposed to the mercy of rats, and the incursions 
 of swallows. Our lavations are performed in a cracked basin, 
 and we are so far removed from human assistance that our 
 very bells sink into silence before they reach half-way down 
 the stairs. But two days before I left Garrett Park I myself 
 saw an enormous mouse run away with my shaving soap, with- 
 out any possible means of resisting the aggression. Oh ! the 
 hardships of a single man are beyond conception ; and what is
 
 36 PELHAM ' 
 
 worse, the very misfortune of being single deprives one of all 
 sympathy. " A single man can do this, and a single man ought 
 to do that, and a single man may be put here, and a single 
 man may be sent there," are maxims that I have been in the 
 habit of hearing constantly inculcated and never disputed 
 during my whole life ; and so, from our fare and treatment 
 being coarse in all matters, they have at last grown to be all 
 matters in course. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 " Therefore to France." Henry IV. 
 
 I WAS rejoiced to find myself again in London. I went to 
 my father's house in Grosvenor Square. All the family, viz., 
 
 he and my mother, were down at H ; and despite my 
 
 aversion to the country I thought I might venture as far as 
 
 Lady 's for a couple of days. Accordingly to H I 
 
 went. That is really a noble house such a hall such a gal- 
 lery ! I found my mother in the drawing-room, admiring the 
 picture of his late Majesty. She was leaning on the arm of a 
 tall, fair young man. " Henry," said she (introducing me to 
 him), " do you remember your old schoolfellow, Lord George 
 Clinton ? " 
 
 " Perfectly," said I (though I remembered nothing about him), 
 and we shook hands in the most cordial manner imaginable. 
 By the way, there is no greater bore than being called upon 
 to recollect men with whom one had been at school some ten 
 years back. In the first place, if they were not in one's own 
 set, one most likely scarcely knew them to speak to ;. and, in 
 the second place, if they were in one's own set, they are sure 
 to be entirely opposite to the nature we have since acquired ; 
 for I scarcely ever knew an instance of the companions of 
 one's boyhood being agreeable to the tastes of one's man- 
 hood a strong proof of the folly of people who send their 
 sons to Eton and Harrow to form connections. 
 
 Clinton was on the eve of setting out upon his travels. His 
 intention was to stay a year at Paris, and he was full of the 
 blissful expectations the idea of that city had conjured up. 
 We remained together all the evening, and took a prodigious 
 fancy to one another. Long before I went to bed he had per- 
 fectly inoculated me with his own ardor for Continental ad- 
 ventures ; and, indeed, I had half promised to accompany
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 37 
 
 him. My mother, when I first told her of my travelling inten- 
 tions, was in despair, but by degrees she grew reconciled to 
 the idea. 
 
 " Your health will improve by a purer air," said she, " and 
 your pronunciation of French is, at present, anything but cor- 
 rect. Take care of yourself, therefore, my dear son, and pray 
 lose no time in engaging Coulon as your mattre de danse. 
 
 My father gave me his blessing, and a check on his banker. 
 Within three days I had arranged everything with Clinton, 
 and, on the fourth, I returned with him to London. Thence 
 we set off to Dover embarked dined, for the first time in 
 our lives, on French ground were astonished to find so little 
 difference between the two countries, and still more so at 
 hearing even the little children talk French so well * pro- 
 ceeded to Abbeyville there poor Clinton fell ill ; for several 
 days we were delayed in that abominable town, and then 
 Clinton, by the advice of the doctors, returned to England. 
 1 went back with him as far as Dover, and then, impatient at 
 my loss of time, took no rest, night or day, till I found myself 
 at Paris. 
 
 Young, well born, tolerably good-looking, and never utterly 
 destitute of money, nor grudging whatever enjoyment it could 
 procure, I entered Paris with the ability and the resolution to 
 make the best of those beaux jours which so rapidly glide from 
 our possession. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " Seest thou how gayly my young maister goes ?" BISHOP HALL'S Satires. 
 " Qui vit sans folie, n'est pas si sage qu'il croit." f LA ROCHEFOUCAULT. 
 
 I LOST no time in presenting my letters of introduction, and 
 they were as quickly acknowledged by invitations to balls and 
 dinners. Paris was full to excess, and of a better description 
 of English than those who usually overflow that reservoir of 
 the world. My first engagement was to dine with Lord and 
 Lady Bennington, who were among the very few English inti- 
 mate in the best French houses. 
 
 On entering Paris I had resolved to set up " a character "; 
 for I was always of an ambitious nature, and desirous of being 
 distinguished from the ordinary herd. After various cogita- 
 
 * Sec Addison's Travels for this idea. 
 
 t Who Ijves without folly is not so wise as he thinks,
 
 38 PELHAM ; 
 
 tions as to the particular one I should assume, I thought noth- 
 ing appeared more likely to be obnoxious to men, and therefore 
 pleasing to women, than an egregious coxcomb : accordingly 
 I arranged my hair into ringlets, dressed myself with singular 
 plainness and simplicity (a low person, by the by, would have 
 done just the contrary), and, putting on an air of exceeding 
 languor, made my maiden appearance at Lord Bennington's. 
 The party was small, and equally divided between French and 
 English : the former had been all emigrants, and the conver- 
 sation was chiefly in our own tongue. 
 
 I was placed, at dinner, next to Miss Paulding, an elderly 
 young lady, of some notoriety at Paris, very clever, very talka- 
 tive, and very conceited. A young, pale, ill-natured looking 
 man sat on her left hand ; this was Mr. Aberton. 
 
 " Dear me ! " said Miss Paulding, " what a pretty chain that 
 is of yours, Mr. Aberton." 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Aberton, " I know it must be pretty, for I 
 got it at Breguet's with the watch." (How common people 
 always buy their opinions with their goods, and regulate the 
 height of the former by the mere price or fashion of the latter !) 
 
 " Pray, Mr. Pelham," said Miss Paulding, turning to me, 
 "have you got one of Breguet's watches yet?" 
 
 "Watch ! " said I : "do you think /could ever wear a watch ? 
 I know nothing so plebeian. What can any one, but a man of 
 business, who has nine hours for his counting-house and one 
 for his dinner, ever possibly want to know the time for ? ' An 
 assignation,' you will say : true, but if a man is worth having 
 he is surely worth waiting for ! " 
 
 Miss Paulding opened her eyes, and Mr. Aberton his mouth. 
 A pretty lively French woman opposite (Madame d'Anville) 
 laughed, and immediately joined in our conversation, which, 
 on my part, was during the whole dinner kept up exactly in 
 the same strain. 
 
 Madame d'Anville was delighted, and Miss Paulding aston- 
 ished. Mr. Aberton muttered to a fat, foolish Lord Lus- 
 combe, " What a damnation puppy ! " And every one, even 
 
 to old Madame de G s, seemed to consider me impertinent 
 
 enough to become the rage ! 
 
 As for me, I was perfectly satisfied with the effect I had pro- 
 duced, and I went away the first, in order to give the men an 
 opportunity of abusing me ; for whenever the men abuse, the 
 women, to support alike their coquetry and the conversation, 
 think themselves called upon to defend. 
 
 The next day \ rode into the Champs Elyse"es, I always
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 39 
 
 valued myself particularly upon my riding, and my horse was 
 both the most fiery and the most beautiful in Paris. The first 
 person I saw was Madame d'Anville. At that moment I was 
 reining in my horse, and conscious, as the wind waved my long 
 curls, that I was looking to the very best advantage, I made 
 my horse bound towards her carriage (which she immediately 
 stopped), and made at once my salutations and my court. 
 
 " I am going," said she, "to the Duchess D 's this even- 
 ing it is her night do come." 
 
 "I don't know her," said I. 
 
 " Tell me your hotel, and I'll send you an invitation before 
 dinner," rejoined Madame d'Anville. 
 
 " I lodge," said I, " at the Hotel de , Rue de Rivoli, on 
 
 the second floor at present ; next year, I suppose, according 
 to the usual gradations in the life of a gar {on, I shall be on the 
 third : for here the purse and the person seem to be playing 
 at see-saw the latter rises as the former descends." 
 
 We went on conversing for about a quarter of an hour, in 
 which I endeavored to make the pretty Frenchwoman believe 
 that all the good opinion I possessed of myself the day before, 
 I had that morning entirely transferred to her account. 
 
 As I rode home I met Mr. Aberton, with three or four other 
 men ; with that glaring good-breeding so peculiar to the Eng- 
 lish he instantly directed their eyes towards me in one mingled 
 and concentrated stare. " N'importe" thought I, " they must 
 be devilish clever fellows if they can find a single fault either 
 in my horse or myself." 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 " Lud ! what a group the motley scene discloses, 
 False wit, false wives, false virgins, and false spouses." 
 
 GOLDSMITH'S Epilogue on the Comedy of the Sisters. 
 
 MADAME D'ANVILLE kept her promise the invitation was 
 duly sent, and accordingly, at half-past ten, to the Rue d'Anjou 
 I drove. 
 
 The rooms were already full. Lord Bennington was stand- 
 ing by the door, and close by him, looking exceedingly 
 distrait, was my old friend Lord Vincent. They both came 
 towards me at the same moment. " Strive not," thought I, 
 looking at the stately demeanor of the one, and the humorous 
 expression of countenance in the other " strive not, Tragedy
 
 40 PELHAM ; 
 
 nor Comedy, to engross a Garrick." I spoke first to Lord 
 Bennington, for I knew he would be the sooner despatched, 
 and then for the next quarter of an hour found myself over- 
 flowed with all the witticisms poor Lord Vincent had for days 
 been obliged to retain. I made an engagement to dine with 
 him at Very's the next day, and then glided off towards 
 Madame d'Anville. 
 
 She was surrounded with men, and talking to each with that 
 vivacity which, in a Frenchwoman, is so graceful, and in an 
 Englishwoman would be so vulgar. Though her eyes were 
 not directed towards me, she saw me approach with that in- 
 stinctive perception which all coquettes possess, and suddenly 
 altering her seat, made way for me beside her. I did not lose 
 so favorable an opportunity of gaining her good graces, and 
 losing those of all the male animals around her. I sank down 
 on the vacant chair and contrived, with the most unabashed 
 effrontery, and yet with the most consummate dexterity, to 
 make everything that I said pleasing to her, revolting to some 
 one of her attendants. Wormwood himself could not have 
 succeeded better. One by one they dropped off, and we were 
 left alone among the crowd. Then, indeed, I changed the 
 whole tone of my conversation. Sentiment succeeded to satire, 
 and the pretence of feeling to that of affectation. In short, I 
 was so resolved to please that I could scarcely fail to succeed. 
 
 In this main object of the evening I was not, however, solely 
 employed. I should have been very undeserving of that 
 character for observation which I flatter myself I peculiarly 
 deserve, if I had not, during the three hours I stayed at 
 
 Madame D 's, conned over every person remarkable for 
 
 anything, from rank to a. riband. The Duchesse herself was a 
 fair, pretty, clever woman, with manners rather English than 
 French. She was leaning, at the time I paid my respects to 
 her, on the arm of an Italian count, tolerably well known at 
 
 Paris. Poor O i! I hear he is since married. He did 
 
 not deserve so heavy a calamity ! 
 
 Sir Henry Millington was close by her, carefully packed up 
 in his coat and waistcoat. Certainly that man is the best 
 padder in Europe. 
 
 "Come and sit by me, Millington," cried old Lady Oldtown ; 
 " I have a good story to tell you of the Due de ." 
 
 Sir Henry with difficulty turned round his magnificent head, 
 and muttered out some unintelligible excuse. The fact was, 
 that poor Sir Henry was not that evening made to sit down 
 he had only his standing-up coat on ! Lady Oldtown heaven
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 4! 
 
 knows is easily consoled. She supplied the place of the 
 baronet with a most superbly mustachioed German. 
 
 " Who," said I, to Madame d'Anville, "are those pretty girls 
 in white, talking with such eagerness to Mr. Aberton and Lord 
 Luscombe ?" 
 
 " What ! " said the Frenchwoman, " have you been ten days 
 in Paris and not been introduced to the Miss Carltons ? Let 
 me tell you that your reputation among your countrymen at 
 Paris depends solely upon their verdict." 
 
 " And upon your favor," added I. 
 
 "Ah," said she, "you must have had your origin in France ; 
 you have something about you almost Parisian" 
 
 "Pray," said I (after having duly acknowledged this com- 
 pliment, the very highest that a Frenchwoman can bestow), 
 " what did you really and candidly think of our countrymen 
 during your residence in England ?" 
 
 " I will tell you," answered Madame d'Anville ; " they are 
 brave, honest, generous, mats Us sont demi-barbares ! " * 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " Pia mater 
 
 Plus quam se sapere, et virtutibus esse priorem 
 Vult, et ait prope vera." f HOR. Sat. 
 
 Vere (y) mihi festus atras 
 
 Eximet curas." HOR. Or. 
 
 THE next morning I received a letter from my mother. 
 " My dear Henry," began my affectionate and incomparable 
 parent : 
 
 " MY DEAR HENRY : 
 
 " You have now fairly entered the world, and though at your 
 age my advice may be but little followed, my experience can- 
 not altogether be useless. I shall, therefore, make no apology 
 for a few precepts, which I trust may tend to make you a wiser 
 and a better man. 
 
 " I hope, in the first place, that you have left your letter at 
 the ambassador's, and that you will not fail to go there as often 
 
 * But they are half-barbarians. 
 
 t With sage advice, and many a sober truth. 
 The pious mother moulds to shape the youth. 
 
 HAWKE'S Paraphrase. 
 
 The application of the second motto rests solely upon an untranslatable play of words.
 
 42 PELHAM ; 
 
 as possible. Pay your court in particular to Lady . She 
 is a charming person, universally popular, and one of the very 
 few English people to whom one may safely be civil. Apropos 
 of English civility, you have, I hope, by this time discovered that 
 you have to assume a very different manner with French peo- 
 ple from that with our own countrymen ; with us, the least 
 appearance of feeling or enthusiasm is certain to be ridiculed 
 everywhere ; but in France, you may venture to seem not 
 quite devoid of all natural sentiments ; indeed, if you affect 
 enthusiasm they will give you credit for genius, and they will 
 place all the qualities of the heart to the account of the head. 
 You know that in England, if you seem desirous of a person's 
 acquaintance, you are sure to lose it ; they imagine you have 
 some design upon their wives or their dinners ; but in France 
 you can never lose by politeness ; nobody will call your civil- 
 ity forwardness and pushing. If the Princesse de T , and 
 
 the Duchesse de D , ask you to their houses (which indeed 
 
 they will, directly you have left your letters), go there two or 
 three times a week, if only for a few minutes in the evening. 
 It is very hard to be acquainted with great French people, but 
 when you are, it is your own fault if you are not intimate with 
 them. 
 
 "Most English people have a kind of diffidence and scruple 
 at calling in the evening this is perfectly misplaced ; the 
 French are never ashamed of themselves, like us, whose per- 
 sons, families, and houses are never fit to be seen, unless they 
 are dressed out for a party. 
 
 "Don't imagine that the ease of French manners is at all like 
 what we call ease ; you must not lounge on your chair nor 
 put your feet upon a stool nor forget yourself for one single 
 moment when you are talking with women. 
 
 " You have heard a great deal about the gallantries of the 
 French ladies, but remember that they demand infinitely 
 greater attention than English women do ; and that after a 
 month's incessant devotion you may lose everything by a mo- 
 ment's neglect. 
 
 " You will not, my dear son, misinterpret these hints. I sup- 
 pose, of course, that all your liaisons are Platonic. 
 
 " Your father is laid up with the gout, and dreadfully ill- 
 tempered and peevish ; however, I keep out of the way as 
 much as possible. I dined yesterday at Lady Roseville's : she 
 praised you very much, said your manners were particularly 
 good, and that no one, if he pleased, could be at once so bril- 
 liantly original, yet so completely ban ton. Lord Vincent is, I
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 4$ 
 
 understand, at Paris ; though very tiresome with his learning 
 and Latin, he is exceedingly clever and much in vogue ; be 
 sure to cultivate his acquaintance. 
 
 " If you are ever at a loss as to the individual character of a 
 person you wish to gain, the general knowledge of human 
 nature will teach you one infallible specific, flattery ! The 
 quantity and quality may vary according to the exact niceties 
 of art ; but, in any quantity and in any quality, it is more or 
 less acceptable, and therefore certain to please. Only never (or 
 at least very rarely) flatter when other people, besides the one 
 to be nattered, are by ; in that case you offend the rest, and 
 you make even your intended dupe ashamed to be pleased. 
 
 " In general, weak minds think only of others, and yet seem 
 only occupied with themselves ; you, on the contrary, must ap- 
 pear wholly engrossed with those about you, and yet never have a 
 single idea which does not terminate in yourself : a fool, my 
 dear Henry, flatters himself a wise man flatters the fool. 
 
 " God bless you, my dear child, take care of your health 
 don't forget Coulon ; and believe me your most affectionate 
 mother, F. P." 
 
 By the time I had read this letter, and dressed myself for the 
 evening, Vincent's carriage was at the door. I hate the affec- 
 tation of keeping people waiting, and went down so quickly 
 that I met his facetious lordship on the stairs. " Devilish 
 windy," said I, as we were getting in the carriage. 
 
 " Yes," said Vincent ; " but the moral Horace reminds us 
 of our remedies as well as our misfortune 
 
 ' Jam galeam Pallas, et aegida, 
 Currusque parat ' 
 
 viz. : ' Providence, that prepares the gale, gives us also a great 
 coat and a carriage.' " 
 
 We were not long driving to the Palais Royal. Ve*ry's was 
 crowded to excess : " A very low set ! " said Lord Vincent 
 (who, being half a liberal, is, of course, a thorough aristocrat), 
 looking round at the various English who occupied the apart- 
 ment. 
 
 There was, indeed, a motley congregation : country esquires ; 
 extracts from the universities ; half-pay officers ; city clerks 
 in frogged coats and mustachios ; two or three of a better-look- 
 ing description, but in reality half-swindlers, half gentlemen : 
 all, in short, fit specimens of that wandering tribe, which 
 spread over the Continent the renown and the ridicule of good 
 old England.
 
 44 PELHAM I 
 
 " Garfon, garfon" cried a stout gentleman, who made one 
 of three at the table next to us, " Donnez-nous une sole f rite pour 
 un, et des pommes de terre pour trois ! " 
 
 " Humph ! " said Lord Vincent ; " fine ideas of English 
 taste these garfons must entertain ; men who prefer fried soles 
 and potatoes to the various delicacies they can command here, 
 might, by the same perversion of taste, prefer Bloomfield's 
 poems to Byron's. Delicate taste depends solely upon the 
 physical construction ; and a man who has it not in cookery 
 must want it in literature, fried sole and potatoes !! If I 
 had written a volume whose merit was in elegance, I would not 
 show it to such a man ! but he might be an admirable critic 
 upon ' Cobbett's Register,' or ' Every Man his Own Brewer.' " 
 
 "Excessively true," said I ; "what shall we order?" 
 
 "JD'abord, des huitres d'Ostende" said Vincent; "as to the 
 rest," taking hold of the carte, " deliberare utilia mora ufi- 
 lissima est." * 
 
 We were soon engaged in all the pleasures and pains of a 
 dinner. 
 
 " Petimus" said Lord Vincent, helping himself to some 
 poulet a I'Austerlitz, " petimusbcnevivere y quodpetis, hicest? " \ 
 
 We were not, however, assured of that fact at the termina- 
 tion of dinner. If half the dishes were well conceived and 
 better executed, the other half were proportionately bad. 
 Very is, indeed, no longer the prince of restaurateurs. The 
 low English who have flocked thither have entirely ruined the 
 place. What waiter what cook can possibly respect men 
 who take no soup, and begin with a roti ; who know neither 
 what is good nor what is bad ; who eat rognons at dinner in- 
 stead of at breakfast, and fall into raptures over sauce Robert 
 and pieds de cochon j who cannot tell, at the first taste, whether 
 the Beaune \spremiere qualite", or the fricassee made of yester- 
 day's chicken ; who suffer in the stomach after a champignon, 
 and die with indigestion of a truffle? Oh, English people, 
 English people ! why can you not stay and perish of apoplexy 
 and Yorkshire pudding at home ? 
 
 By the time we had drunk our coffee it was considerably 
 past nine o'clock, and Vincent had business at the ambassa- 
 dor's before ten ; we therefore parted for the night. 
 
 " What do you think of Very's ? " said I, as we were at the 
 door. 
 
 "Why," replied Vincent, "when I recall the astonishing 
 
 *To deliberate on things useful is the most useful delay. 
 t We seek to live well what you seek is here.
 
 Ok, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 45 
 
 heat of the place, which has almost sent me to sleep ; the ex- 
 ceeding number of times in which that becasse had been 
 re-roasted, and the extortionate length of our bills, I say of 
 Very's, what Hamlet said of the world, ' Weary, stale, and 
 unprofitable ! ' ' 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 " I would fight with proad swords, and sink point on the first plood drawn 
 like a gentleman's" The Chronicles of the Canongate, 
 
 I STROLLED idly along the Palais Royal (which English 
 people, in some silly proverb, call the capital of Paris, whereas 
 no Frenchman of any rank, nor Frenchwoman of any respecta- 
 bility, is ever seen in its promenades) till, being somewhat 
 curious to enter some of the smaller cafe's, I went into one of 
 the meanest of them, took up a Journal des Spectacles, and 
 called for some lemonade. At the next table to me sat two or 
 three Frenchman, evidently of inferior rank, and talking very 
 loudly over England and the English. Their attention was 
 soon fixed upon me. 
 
 Have you ever observed that if people are disposed to think 
 ill of you, nothing so soon determines them to do so as any act 
 of yours, which, however innocent and inoffensive, differs 
 from their ordinary habits and customs ? No sooner had my 
 lemonade made its appearance than I perceived an increased 
 sensation among my neighbors of the next table. In the first 
 place, lemonade is not much drunk, as you may suppose, 
 among the French in winter ; and, in the second, my beverage 
 had an appearance of ostentation, from being one of the dear- 
 est articles I could have called for. Unhappily I dropped my 
 newspaper it fell under the Frenchmen's table ; instead of 
 calling {\\Qgarfon, I was foolish enough to stoop for it myself. 
 It was exactly under the feet of one of the Frenchmen ; I asked 
 him, with the greatest civility, to move : he made no reply. I 
 could not, for the life of me, refrain from giving him a slight, 
 very slight push ; the next moment he moved in good earnest ; 
 the whole party sprang up as he set the example. The offended 
 leg gave three terrific stamps upon the ground, and I was 
 immediately assailed by a whole volley of unintelligible abuse. 
 At that time I was very little accustomed to French vehemence, 
 and perfectly unable to reply to the vituperations I received. 
 
 Instead of answering them, I therefore deliberated what was
 
 46 
 
 best to be done. If, thought I, I walk away, they will think 
 me a coward, and insult me in the streets ; if I challenge them, 
 I shall have to fight with men probably no better than 
 shopkeepers ; if I strike this most noisy amongst them, 
 he may be silenced, or he may demand satisfaction : if the 
 former, well and good ; if the latter, why I shall have a better 
 excuse for fighting him than I should have now. 
 
 My resolution was therefore taken. I was never more free 
 from passion in my life, and it was, therefore, with the utmost 
 calmness and composure that, in the midst of my antagonist's 
 harangue, I raised my hand and quietly knocked him down. 
 
 He rose in a moment. " Sortons" said he, in a low tone, " a 
 Frenchman never forgives a blow ! " 
 
 At that moment, an Englishman, who had been sitting un- 
 noticed in a obscure corner of the cafe", came up and took me 
 aside. 
 
 "Sir," said he, "don't think of fighting the man; he is a 
 tradesman in the Rue St. Honor/. I myself have seen him 
 behind the counter ; remember that ' a ram may kill a 
 butcher' " 
 
 " Sir," I replied, " I thank you a thousand times for your 
 information. Fight, however, I must, and I'll give you, like 
 the Irishman, my reasons afterwards : perhaps you will be my 
 second." 
 
 " With pleasure," said the Englishman (a Frenchman would 
 have said, " with pain ! ") 
 
 We left the cafe together. My countryman asked them if he 
 should go to the gunsmith's for the pistols. 
 
 "Pistols!" said the Frenchman's second: "we will only 
 fight with swords." 
 
 " No, no," said my new friend. " ' On ne prend pas le lih)re 
 au tambourin.' We are the challenged, and therefore have the 
 choice of weapons." 
 
 Luckily I overheard this dispute, and called to my second : 
 "Swords or pistols," said I ; " it is quite the same to me. I am 
 not bad at either, only do make haste." 
 
 Swords, then, were chosen, and soon procured. Frenchmen 
 never grow cool upon their quarrels : and as it was a fine, clear, 
 starlight night, we went forthwith to the Bois de Boulogne. We 
 fixed our ground on a spot tolerably retired, and, I should 
 think, pretty often frequented for the same purpose. I was 
 exceedingly confident, for I knew myself to have few equals in 
 the art of fencing ; and I had all the advantage of coolness, 
 which my hero was a great deal too much in earnest to possess.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 47 
 
 We joined swords, and in a very few moments I discovered 
 that my opponent's life was at my disposal. 
 
 " C'est bien" thought I ; " for once I'll behave handsomely." 
 
 The Frenchman made a desperate lunge. I struck his sword 
 from his hand, caught it instantly, and, presenting it to him 
 again, said : 
 
 " I think myself peculiarly fortunate that I may now apolo- 
 gize for the affront I have put upon you. Will you permit my 
 sincerest apologies to suffice ? A man who can so well resent 
 an injury, can forgive one." 
 
 Was there ever a Frenchman not taken by a fine phrase ? 
 My hero received the sword with a low bow the tears came 
 into his eyes. 
 
 " Sir," said he, " you have twice conquered." 
 
 We left the spot with the greatest amity and affection, and 
 re-entered, with a profusion of bows, our several fiacres. 
 
 " Let me," I said, when I found myself alone with my sec- 
 ond, " let me thank you most cordially for your assistance ; and 
 allow me to cultivate an acquaintance so singularly begun. I 
 
 lodge at the Hotel de Rue de Rivoli ; my name is Pelham. 
 
 Yours is " 
 
 " Thornton," replied my countryman. " I will lose no time 
 in profiting by an offer of acquaintance which does me so much 
 honor." 
 
 With these and various other fine speeches we employed the 
 time till I was set down at my hotel ; and my companion, 
 drawing his cloak round him, departed on foot, to fulfil (he 
 said, with a mysterious air) a certain assignation in the fau- 
 bourg St. Germain. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 " Erat homo ingeniosus, acutus, acer, et qui plurimum et salis haberet et 
 fellis, nee candoris minus." * PLINY. 
 
 I DO not know a more difficult character to describe than 
 Lord Vincent's. Did I imitate certain writers, who think that 
 the whole art of portraying individual character is to seize hold 
 of some prominent peculiarity, and to introduce this distin- 
 guishing trait in all times and in all scenes, the difficulty would 
 be removed. I should only have to present to the reader a 
 man whose conversation was nothing but alternate jest and 
 
 * " He was a clever and able man acute, sharp with abundance of wit and no less o/ 
 candor." COOKK.
 
 48 PELHAM ; 
 
 quotation a due union of Yorick and Partridge. This would, 
 however, be rendering great injustice to the character I wish to 
 delineate. There were times when Vincent was earnestly en- 
 grossed in discussion, in which a jest rarely escaped him, and 
 quotation was introduced only as a serious illustration, 
 not as a humorous peculiarity. He possessed great miscella- 
 neous erudition, and a memory perfectly surprising for its fidelity 
 and extent. He was a severe critic, and had a peculiar art of 
 quoting from each author he reviewed some part that particu- 
 larly told against him. Like most men, if in the theory of 
 philosophy he was tolerably rigid, in its practice he was more 
 than tolerably loose. By his tenets you would have considered 
 him a very Cato for stubbornness and sternness ; yet was he a 
 very child in his concession to the whim of the moment. Fond 
 of meditation and research, he was still fonder of mirth and 
 amusement ; and while he was among the most instructive, he 
 was also the boonest of companions. When alone with me, or with 
 men whom he imagined like me, his pedantry (for more or less, 
 he always was pedantic) took only a jocular tone ; with the 
 savant or the be I esprit it became grave, searching, and sarcastic. 
 He was rather a contradictor than a favorer of ordinary opin- 
 ions : and this, perhaps, led him not unoften into paradox : yet 
 was there much soundness, even in his most vehement notions, 
 and the strength of mind which made him think only for him- 
 self, was visible in all the productions it created. I have 
 hitherto only given his conversation in one of its moods ; hence- 
 forth I shall be just enough occasionally to be dull, and to 
 present it sometimes to the reader in a graver tone. 
 
 Buried deep beneath the surface of his character was a hid- 
 den, yet a restless, ambition : but this was perhaps, at present, 
 a secret even to himself. We know not our own characters till 
 time teaches us self-knowledge : if we are wise, we may thank 
 ourselves ; if we are great, we must thank fortune. 
 
 It was this insight into Vincent's nature which drew us 
 closer together. I recognized in the man, who as yet was 
 playing a part, a resemblance to myself, while he, perhaps, saw 
 at times that I was somewhat better than the voluptuary, and 
 somewhat wiser than the coxcomb, which were all that at 
 present it suited me to appear. 
 
 In person Vincent was short, and ungracefully formed, but 
 his countenance was singularly fine. His eyes were dark, 
 bright, and penetrating, and his forehead (high and thoughtful) 
 corrected the playful smile of his mouth, which might other- 
 wise have given to his features too great an expression of levity^
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 49 
 
 He was not positively ill dressed, yet he paid no attention to 
 any external art except cleanliness. His usual garb was a 
 brown coat, much too large for him, a colored neckcloth, a 
 spotted waistcoat, gray trousers, and short gaiters : add to 
 these gloves of most unsullied doeskin, and a curiously thick 
 cane, and the portrait is complete. 
 
 In manners he was civil or rude, familiar or distant, just as 
 the whim seized him ; never was there any address less com- 
 mon, and less artificial. What a rare gift, by the by, is that of 
 manners ! How difficult to define how much more difficult 
 to impart ! Better for a man to possess them than wealth, 
 beauty, or even talent, if it fall short of genius they will more 
 than supply all. He who enjoys their advantages in the highest 
 degree ; viz., he who can please, penetrate, persuade, as the 
 object may require, possesses the subtlest secret of the diplo- 
 matist and the statesman, and wants nothing but luck and 
 opportunity to become "great" 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 " Le plaisir de la socie'te entre les amis se cultive parune ressemblance de 
 gout sur ce qui regarde les moeurs, et par quelque difference d'opinions sur 
 les sciences ; par la ou Ton s'affermit dans ses sentiments, ou Ton s'exerce et 
 1'on s'instruit par la dispute." * LA BRUYERE. 
 
 THERE was a party at Monsieur de V e's, to which 
 
 Vincent and myself were the only Englishmen invited : accord- 
 ingly, as the Hotel de V. was in the same street as my hotel, 
 we dined together at my rooms, and walked from thence to the 
 minister's house. 
 
 The party was as stiff and formal as such assemblies invaria- 
 bly are, and we were both delighted when we espied Monsieur 
 d'A , a man of much conversational talent, and some celeb- 
 rity as an ultra writer, forming a little group in one corner of 
 the room. 
 
 We took advantage of our acquaintance with the urbane 
 Frenchman to join his party ; the conversation turned almost 
 entirely on literary subjects. Allusion being made toSchlegel's 
 History of Literature, and the severity with which he speaks 
 of Helvetius, and the philosophers of his school, we began to 
 
 * The pleasure of society amongst friends is cultivated by resemblance of taste as to 
 manners, but some difference of opinion as to mental acquisitions. Thus while it is con- 
 Armed by congeniality of sentiments, it gains exercise and instruction by intellectual 
 discus$ion,
 
 50 PELHAM J 
 
 discuss what harm the free thinkers in philosophy had 
 effected. 
 
 " For my part," said Vincent, " I am not able to divine why 
 we are supposed, in works where there is much truth and little 
 falsehood, much good and a little evil, to see only the evil and 
 the falsehood, to the utter exclusion of the truth and the good. 
 All men whose minds are sufficiently laborious or acute to love 
 the reading of metaphysical inquiries, will by the same labor 
 and acuteness separate the chaff from the corn the false from 
 the true. It is the young, the light, the superficial who are 
 easily misled by error and incapable of discerning its fallacy ; 
 but tell me if it is the light, the young, the superficial, who are 
 in the habit of reading the abstruse and subtle speculations of 
 the philosopher. No, no ! believe me that it is the very studies 
 Monsieur Schlegel recommends which do harm to morality and 
 virtue ; it is the study of literature itself, the play, the poem, 
 the novel, which all minds, however frivolous, can enjoy and 
 understand, that constitute the real foes of religion and moral 
 improvement." 
 
 "Ma foi" cried Monsieur de G. (who was a little writer, 
 and a great reader, of romances), "why, you would not deprive 
 us of the politer literature ; you would not bid us shut up our 
 novels, and burn our theatres ! " 
 
 "Certainly not !" replied Vincent ; "and it is in this par- 
 ticular that I differ from certain modern philosophers of our 
 own country, for whom, for the most part, I entertain the 
 highest veneration. I would not deprive life of a single grace, 
 or a single enjoyment, but I would counteract whatever is per- 
 nicious in whatever is elegant : if among my flowers there is a 
 snake, I would not root up my flowers, I would kill the snake. 
 Thus, who are they that derive from fiction and literature a 
 prejudicial effect? We have seen already the light and 
 superficial ? But who are they that derive profit from them ? 
 they who enjoy well regulated and discerning minds ; who 
 pleasure? all mankind! Would it not therefore be better, 
 instead of depriving some of profit, and all of pleasure, by 
 banishing poetry and fiction from our Utopia, to correct the 
 minds which find evil, where, if they were properly instructed, 
 they would find good ? Whether we agree with Helvetius, that 
 all men are born with an equal capacity of improvement, or 
 merely go the length with all other metaphysicians, that educa- 
 tion can improve the human mind to an extent yet incalculable, 
 it must be quite clear, that we can give sound views, instead 
 of fallacies, and make common truths as easy to discern an<J
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 5! 
 
 adopt as common errors. But if we effect this, which we all 
 allow is so easy, with our children ; if we strengthen their 
 minds, instead of weakening them, and clear their vision, rather 
 than confuse it, from that moment we remove the prejudicial 
 effects of fiction, and just as we have taught them to use a 
 knife without cutting their fingers, we teach them to make use 
 of fiction without perverting it to their prejudice. What 
 
 philosopher was ever hurt by reading the novels of L , or 
 
 seeing the comedies of Moliere ? You understand me, then, 
 Monsieur de G., I do, it is true, think that polite literature (as 
 it is termed) is prejudicial to the superficial, but, for that 
 reason, I would not do away with the literature, I would do 
 away with the superficial." 
 
 " I deny," said M. d'A , " that this is so easy a task you 
 
 cannot make all men wise." 
 
 " No," replied Vincent ; " but you can all children, at least 
 to a certain extent. Since you cannot deny the prodigious 
 effects of education, you must allow that they will at least give 
 common-sense ; for if they cannot do this, they can do nothing. 
 Now common-sense is all that is necessary to distinguish what 
 is good and evil, whether it be in life or in books ; but then 
 your education must not be that of public teaching and private 
 fooling ; you must not counteract the effects of common-sense 
 by instilling prejudice, or encouraging weakness ; your edu- 
 cation may not be carried to the utmost goal, but as far as it 
 does go, you must see that the road is clear. Now, for 
 instance, with regard to fiction, you must not first, as is done 
 in all modern education, admit the disease, and then dose 
 with warm water to expel it : you must not put fiction into 
 your child's hands, and not give him a single principle to guide 
 his judgment respecting it till his mind has got wedded to the 
 poison, and too weak, by its long use, to digest the antidote. 
 No ; first fortify his intellect by reason, and you may then 
 please his fancy by fiction. Do not excite his imagination 
 with love and glory, till you can instruct his judgment as to 
 what love and glory are. Teach him, in short, to reflect, 
 before you permit him full indulgence to imagine" 
 
 Here there was a pause. Monsieur d'A looked very 
 
 ill-pleased, and poor Monsieur de G thought that some- 
 how or other his romance writing was called into question. In 
 order to soothe them, I introduced some subject which per- 
 mitted a little national flattery ; the conversation then turned 
 insensibly on the character of the French people. 
 " Never," said Vincent, " has there been a character more
 
 52 PELHAM ; 
 
 often described never one less understood. You have been 
 termed superficial. I think, of all people, that you least 
 deserve the accusation. With regard to the few, your philoso- 
 phers, your mathematicians, your men of science, are consulted 
 by those of other nations, as some of their profoundest author- 
 ities. With regard to the many, the charge is still more un- 
 founded. Compare your mob, whether of gentlemen or 
 plebeians, to those of Germany, Italy even England and I 
 own, in spite of my national prepossessions, that the compar- 
 ison is infinitely in your favor. The country gentleman, the 
 lawyer, the petit maitre of England, are proverbially inane and 
 ill-informed. With you the classes of society that answer to 
 those respective grades have much information in literature, 
 and often not a little in science. In like manner, your trades- 
 men, and your servants, are of better cultivated and less prej- 
 udiced minds than those ranks in England. The fact is, that 
 all with you pretend to be savans, and this is the chief reason 
 why you have been censured as shallow. We see your fine 
 gentleman, or your petit bourgeois, give himself the airs of a 
 critic or a philosopher ; and because he is neither a Scaliger 
 nor a Newton we forget that he is only the bourgeois or the petit 
 maitre, and brand all your philosophers and critics with the 
 censure of superficiality, which this shallow individual of a 
 shallow order may justly have deserved. We, the English, it 
 is true, do not expose ourselves thus : our dandies, our trades- 
 men, do not vent second-rate philosophy "on the human mind, 
 nor on les beaux arts : but why is this ? Not because they are 
 better informed than their correspondent ciphers in France, 
 but because they are much worse informed ; not because they 
 can say a great deal more on the subject, but because they can 
 say nothing at all." 
 
 " You do us more than justice," said Mons. d'A , "in 
 
 this instance ; are you disposed to do us justice in another? 
 It is a favorite propensity of your countrymen to accuse us of 
 heartlessness and want of feeling. Think you that this ac- 
 cusation is deserved ? " 
 
 " By no means," replied Vincent. "The same cause that 
 brought on you the erroneous censure we have before men- 
 tioned, appears to me also to have created this ; viz., a sort of 
 Palais Royal vanity, common to all your nation, which induces 
 you to make as much display at the shop window as possible. 
 You show great cordiality, and even enthusiasm, to strangers ; 
 you turn your back on them you forget them. 'How heart- 
 less ! ' cry we. Not at all ! The English show no cordiality,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 53 
 
 no enthusiasm to strangers, it is true : but they equally turn 
 their backs on them, and equally forget them ! The only re- 
 spect, therefore, in which they differ from you, is the previous 
 kindness : now if we are to receive strangers, I can really see 
 no reason why we are not to be as civil to them as possible ; 
 and so far from imputing the desire to please them to a bad 
 heart, I think it a thousand times more amiable and benevolent 
 than telling them a VAnglaise, by your morosity and reserve, 
 that you do not care a pin what becomes of them. If I am 
 only to walk a mile with a man, why should I not make that 
 mile as pleasant to him as I can : or why, above all, if I choose 
 to be sulky, and tell him to go and be d d, am I to swell out my 
 chest, color with conscious virtue, and cry, See what a good 
 
 heart I have ? * Ah, Monsieur d'A , since benevolence is 
 
 inseparable from all morality, it must be clear that there is a 
 benevolence in little things as well as in great, and that he who 
 strives to make his fellow-creatures happy, though only for an 
 instant, is a much better man than he who is indifferent to, or 
 (what is worse) despises it. Nor do I, to say truth, see that 
 kindness to an acquaintance is at all destructive to sincerity to 
 a friend ; on the contrary, I have yet to learn that you are (ac- 
 cording to the customs of your country) worse friends, worse 
 husbands, or worse fathers than we are ! " 
 
 " What ! " cried I, " you forget yourself, Vincent. How can 
 the private virtues be cultivated without a coal fire ? Is not 
 domestic affection a synonymous term with domestic hearth ? 
 and where do you find either, except in honest old England ?" 
 
 " True," replied Vincent ; "and it is certainly impossible for 
 a father and his family to be as fond of each other on a bright 
 day in the Tuileries, or at Versailles, with music and dancing, 
 and fresh air, as they would be in a back parlor, by a smoky 
 hearth, occupied entirely by le bon ptre, et la bonne niere ; while 
 the poor little children sit at the other end of the table, whis- 
 pering and shivering, debarred the vent of all natural spirits, 
 for fear of making a noise : and strangely uniting the idea of 
 the domestic hearth with that of a hobgoblin, and the associa- 
 tion of dear papa with that of a birch rod." 
 
 We all laughed at this reply, and Monsieur d'A , rising 
 
 to depart, said, " Well, well, milord, your countrymen are great 
 generalizers in philosophy ; they reduce human actions to two 
 grand touchstones. All hilarity they consider the sign of a 
 shallow mind ; and all kindness the token of a false heart." 
 
 * Mr. Pelham, it will be remembered, has prevised the reader, that Lord Vincent w^ 
 somewhat addicted to paradox. His opinions on the French character are t be taken wi 
 certain reserve. Ant/tor.
 
 PELHAM 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 . . . . " Quis sapiens bono 
 Confidat fragili ? " * SENECA. 
 
 " Grammatici certant, et adhuc sub judice lis est."f HOR. 
 
 WHEN I first went to Paris I took a French master to per- 
 fect me in the Parisian pronunciation. This " Haberdasher 
 of pronouns" was a person of the name of Margot. He was a 
 tall, solemn man, with a face of the most imperturbable gravity. 
 He would have been inestimable as an undertaker. His hair 
 was a pale yellow ; you would have thought it had caught a 
 bilious complaint from his complexion ; the latter was, indeed, 
 of so sombre a saffron, that it looked as if ten livers had been 
 forced into a jaundice, in order to supply its color. His fore- 
 head was high, bald, and very narrow. His cheekbones were 
 extremely prominent, and his cheeks so thin, that they seemed 
 happier than Pyramus and Thisbe, and kissed each other in- 
 side without any separation or division. His face was as sharp 
 and almost as long as an inverted pyramid, and was garnished 
 on either side by a miserable half-starved whisker, which 
 seemed scarcely able to maintain itself amidst the general 
 symptoms of atrophy and decay. This charming countenance 
 was supported by a figure so long, so straight, so shadowy, that 
 you might have taken it for the monument in a consump- 
 tion ! 
 
 But the chief characteristic of the man was the utter and 
 wonderful gravity I have before spoken of. You could no 
 more have coaxed a smile out of his countenance than you 
 could out of the poker ; and yet Monsieur Margot was by no 
 means a melancholy man. He loved his joke, and his wine, 
 and his dinner, just as much as if he had been of a fatter frame ; 
 and it was a fine specimen of the practical antithesis, to hear a 
 good story, or a jovial expression, leap friskily out of that long, 
 curved mouth ; it was at once a paradox and a bathos it was 
 the mouse coming out of its hole in Ely Cathedral. 
 
 I said that this gravity was M. Margot's most especial char- 
 acteristic. I forgot ; he had two others equally remarkable ; 
 the one was an ardent admiration for the chivalrous, the other 
 an ardent admiration for himself. Both of these are traits 
 
 * What wise man conficies in the fragile ? 
 t Grammarians dispute, and the matter is still under consideration of the judge.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 55 
 
 common enough in a Frenchman, but in Monsieur Margot their 
 excesses rendered them uncommon. He was a most ultra spec- 
 imen of le chevalier amoureux a mixture of Don Quixote and 
 the Due de Lauzun. Whenever he spoke of the present tense, 
 even en professeur, he always gave a sigh to the preterite, and 
 an anecdote of Bayard ; whenever he conjugated a verb, he 
 paused to tell me that the favorite one of his female pupils was 
 je faime. 
 
 In short, he had tales of his own good fortune, and of other 
 people's brave exploits, which, without much exaggeration, 
 were almost as long, and had perhaps as little substance, as him- 
 self ; but the former was his favorite topic : to hear him, one 
 would have imagined that his face, in borrowing the sharpness 
 of the needle, had borrowed also its attraction ; and then the 
 prettiness of Monsieur Margot's modesty ! 
 
 "It is very extraordinary," said he, "very extraordinary, for 
 I have no time to give myself up to those affairs : it is not, 
 Monsieur, as if I had your leisure to employ all the little pre- 
 liminary arts of creating la belle passion. Non, Monsieur, I go 
 to church, to the play, to the Tuileries, for a brief relaxation 
 and me voild partout accable" with my good fortune. I am not 
 handsome, Monsieur, at least not very ; it is true, that I have 
 expression, a certain air noble (my first cousin, Monsieur, is the 
 Chevalier de Margot), and above all, soul in my physiognomy ; 
 the women love soul, Monsieur something intellectual and 
 spiritual always attracts them ; yet my success certainly is 
 singular." 
 
 "Bah! Monsieur" replied I : " withdignity, expression, and 
 soul, how could the heart of any Frenchwoman resist you ? 
 No, you do yourself injustice. It was said of Caesar, that he 
 was great without an effort ; much more, then, may Monsieur 
 Margot be happy without an exertion." 
 
 " Ah, Monsieur ! " rejoined the Frenchman, still looking 
 
 " As weak, as earnest, and as gravely out 
 As sober Lanesbro' dancing with the gout." 
 
 " Ah, Monsieur, there is a depth and truth in your remarks 
 worthy of Montaigne. As it is impossible to account for the 
 caprices of women, so it is impossible for ourselves to analyze 
 the merit they discover in us; but, Monsieur, hear me at the 
 house where I lodge there is an English lady en pension. Eh 
 bien, Monsieur, you guess the rest ; she has taken a caprice for 
 me, and this very night she will admit me to her apartment. 
 She is very handsome. Ah qu'elle est belle ! une jolie petite
 
 56 PELHAM ; 
 
 louche, une denture tblouissante, un nez tout a fait grec, in fine, 
 quite a bouton de rose." 
 
 I expressed my envy at Monsieur Margot's good fortune, 
 and when he had sufficiently dilated upon it, he withdrew. 
 Shortly afterwards Vincent entered : " I have a dinner invita- 
 tion for both of us to-day," said he ; " you will come ?" 
 
 " Most certainly," replied I ; " but who is the person we are 
 to honor?" 
 
 " A Madame Laurent," replied Vincent ; one of those ladies 
 only found at Paris, who live upon anything rather than their 
 income. She keeps a tolerable table, haunted with Poles, Rus- 
 sians, Austrians, and idle Frenchmen, peregrina gentis amxnum 
 hospitium. As yet she has not the happiness to be acquainted 
 with any Englishmen (though she boards one of our country- 
 women) and (as she is desirous of making her fortune as soon as 
 possible) she is very anxious of having that honor. She has 
 heard vast reports of our wealth and wisdom, and flatters herself 
 that we are so many ambulatory Indies : in good truth, a French- 
 woman thinks she is never in want of a fortune as long as 
 there is a rich fool in the world. 
 
 ' Stultitiam patiuntur opes,' 
 is her hope : and 
 
 ' Ut \\ifortunam, sic nos te, Celse, feremus.' 
 
 is her motto." 
 
 " Madame Laurent ! " repeated I, " why, surely that is the 
 name of Mons. Margot's landlady." 
 
 " I hope not," cried Vincent, " for the sake of our dinner ; 
 he reflects no credit on her good cheer 
 
 4 Who eats fat dinners, should himself be fat.' " 
 
 i " At all events," said I, " we can try the good lady for once. 
 I am very anxious to see a countrywoman of ours, probably the 
 very one you speak of, whom Mons. Margot eulogizes in glow- 
 ing colors, and who has, moreover, taken a violent fancy for 
 my solemn preceptor. What think you of that, Vincent ? " 
 
 "Nothing extraordinary," replied Vincent ; "the lady only 
 exclaims with the moralist 
 
 ' Love, virtue, valor, yea, all human charms, 
 Are shrunk and centred in that heap of bones, 
 Oh ! there are wondrous beauties in the grave ! ' ' 
 
 I made some punning rejoinder, and we sallied out to earn 
 an appetite in the Tuileries for Madame Laurent's dinner.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 57 
 
 At the hour of half-past five we repaired to our engagement. 
 Madame Laurent received us with the most evident satisfac- 
 tion, and introduced us forthwith to our countrywoman. She 
 was a pretty, fair, shrewd-looking person, with an eye and lip 
 which, unless it greatly belied her, showed her much more in- 
 clined to be merry and wise, than honest and true. 
 
 Presently Monsieur Margot made his appearance. Though 
 very much surprised at seeing me, he did not appear the least 
 jealous of my attentions to his inamorata. Indeed, the good 
 gentleman was far too much pleased with himself to be suscep- 
 tible to the suspicions common to less fortunate lovers. At 
 dinner I sat next to the pretty Englishwoman, whose name was 
 Green. 
 
 "Monsieur Margot," said I, "has often spoken to me of you 
 before I had the happiness of being personally convinced how 
 true and unexaggerated were his sentiments." 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Mrs. Green, with an arch laugh, " you are ac- 
 quainted with Monsieur Margot, then ? " 
 
 " I have that honor," said I. " I receive from him every 
 morning lessons both in love and languages. He is perfect 
 master of both." 
 
 Mrs. Green burst out laughing. 
 
 " Ah, le pauvre Professeur ! " cried she. " He is too absurd ! " 
 
 " He tells me," said I gravely, "that he is quite accable" with 
 his bonnes fortunes possibly he flatters himself that even you 
 are not perfectly inaccessible to his addresses." 
 
 " Tell me, Mr. Pelham," said the fair Mrs. Green, " can you 
 pass by this street about half-past twelve to-night ? " 
 
 " I will make a point of doing so," replied I, not a little sur- 
 prised by the question. 
 
 " Do," said she, " and now let us talk of old England." 
 
 When we went away I told Vincent of my appointment. 
 
 " What ! " said he, " eclipse Monsieur Margot ! Impossible ! " 
 
 "You are right," replied I, " nor is it my hope; there is 
 some trick afloat to which we may as well be spectators." 
 
 " With all my heart ! " answered Vincent ; "let us go till then 
 
 to the Duchesse de G ." I assented, and we drove to the 
 
 Rue de . 
 
 The Duchesse de G was a fine relic of the anricn 
 
 regime tall and stately, with her own gray hair crtpe", and sur- 
 mounted by a high cap of the most dazzling blonde. She had 
 been one of the earliest emigrants, and had stayed for many 
 months with my mother, whom she professed to rank amongst 
 her dearest friends. The Duchesse possessed to perfection that
 
 58 PELHAM J 
 
 singular melange of ostentation and ignorance which was so 
 peculiar to the ante-revolutionists. She would talk of the last 
 tragedy with the emphatic tone of a connoisseur, in the same 
 breath that she would ask, with Marie Antoinette, why the poor 
 people were so clamorous for bread, when they might buy such 
 nice cakes for twopence apiece ? " To give you an idea of the 
 Irish," said she one day to an inquisitive marquess, " know 
 that \\\zy prefer potatoes to mutton ! " 
 
 Her soirees were among the most agreeable at Paris : she 
 united all the rank and talent to be found in the ultra party, 
 for she professed to be quite a female Maecenas ; and whether 
 it was a mathematician or a romance writer, a naturalist or a 
 poet, she held open house for all, and conversed with each with 
 equal fluency and self-satisfaction. 
 
 A new play had just been acted, and the conversation, after 
 a few preliminary hoverings, settled upon it. 
 
 " You see," said the Duchesse, " that we have actors, you 
 authors ; of what avail is it that you boast of a Shakspeare, 
 since your Liseton, great as he is, cannot be compared with 
 our Talma?" 
 
 "And yet," said I, preserving my gravity with a pertinacity 
 which nearly made Vincent and the rest of our compatriots as- 
 sembled lose theirs, " Madame must allow that there is a strik- 
 ing resemblance in their persons, and the sublimity of their 
 acting ? " 
 
 "Pour (a, fen conviens" replied this critique de FEcole des 
 Femmes. " Mais cependant Liselon n'a pas la nature, rdme, 
 la grandeur de Talma ! " * 
 
 " And will you then allow us no actors of merit ? " asked 
 Vincent. 
 
 " Mais oui! dans le genre comique, par exemple votre buffo 
 Kean met dix fois plus esprit et de drollerie dans ses rdles que 
 La Porte "\ 
 
 " The impartial and profound judgment of Madame admits 
 of no further discussion on this point," said I. "What does 
 she think of the present state of our dramatic literature?" 
 
 "Why," replied Madame, "you have many great poets ; but 
 when they write for the stage they lose themselves entirely : 
 your Valter Scote's play of Robe Roi is very inferior to his 
 novel of the same name." 
 
 " It is a great pity," said I, " that Byron did not turn his 
 
 * I grant that ; but Listen, however, has not the nature, the soul, the grandeur, of 
 Talma. 
 
 t Yes. in comedy, for instance, your Kean has ten times more vivacity and drcllerv tham 
 La Porte.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 59 
 
 Childe Harold into a tragedy it has so much energy, action 
 variety ! " 
 
 " Very true," said Madame, with a sigh ; " but the tragedy 
 is, after all, only suited to our nation we alone carry it to 
 perfection." 
 
 "Yet," said I, " Goldoni wrote a. few fine tragedies." 
 
 " Eh bien ! " said Madame, " one rose does not constitute a 
 garden ! " 
 
 And satisfied with this remark, la femme savante turned to a 
 celebrated traveller to discuss with him the chance of discover- 
 ing the North Pole. 
 
 There were one or two clever Englishmen present ; Vincent 
 and I joined them. 
 
 " Have you met the Persian prince yet ? " said Sir George 
 Lynton to me ; "he is a man of much talent, and great desire 
 of knowledge. He intends to publish his observations on Paris, 
 and I suppose we shall have an admirable supplement to Mon- 
 tesquieu's Lettres Pe rsanne s ! " 
 
 " I wish we had," said Vincent : " there are few better satires 
 on a civilized country than the observations of visitors less pol- 
 ished ; while on the contrary the civilized traveller, in de- 
 scribing the manners of the American barbarian, instead of 
 conveying ridicule upon the visited, points the sarcasm on the 
 visitor ; and Tacitus could not have thought of a finer or 
 nobler satire on the Roman luxuries than that insinuated by 
 his treatise on the German simplicity." 
 
 "What," said Monsieur d'E (an intelligent ci-dmant 
 
 /migre'), " what political writer is generally esteemed as your 
 best ? " 
 
 " It is difficult to say," replied Vincent, " since with so many 
 parties we have many idols ; but I think I might venture to 
 name Bolingbroke as among the most popular. Perhaps, in- 
 deed, it would be difficult to select a name more frequently 
 quoted and discussed than his ; and yet his political works are 
 not very valuable from political knowledge ; they contain many 
 lofty sentiments, and many beautiful yet scattered truths ; but 
 they were written when legislation, most debated, was least un- 
 derstood, and ought to be admired rather as excellent for the 
 day than admirable in themselves. The life of Bolingbroke 
 would convey a juster moral than all his writings : and the 
 author who gives us a full and impartial memoir of that extra- 
 ordinary man will have afforded both to the philosophical and 
 political literature of England one of its greatest desiderata." 
 
 "It seems to me," said Monsieur d'E , " that your
 
 60 PELHAM ; 
 
 national literature is peculiarly deficient in biography am I 
 right in my opinion ? " 
 
 " Indubitably ! " said Vincent ; " we have not a single work 
 that can be considered a model in biography (excepting, 
 perhaps, Middleton's Life of Cicero). This brings on a re- 
 mark I have often made in distinguishing your philosophy 
 from ours. It seems to me that you who excel so admirably 
 in biography, memoirs, comedy, satirical observation on pe- 
 culiar classes, and pointed aphorisms, are fonder of consider- 
 ing man in his relation to society and the active commerce of 
 the world, than in the more abstracted and metaphysical 
 operations of the mind. Our writers, on the contrary, love to 
 indulge rather in abstruse speculations on their species to re- 
 gard man in an abstract and isolated point of view, and to see 
 him think alone in his chamber, while you prefer beholding 
 him act with the multitude in the world." 
 
 " It must be allowed," said Monsieur d'E , " that if this 
 
 be true, our philosophy is the most useful, though yours may 
 be the most profound." 
 
 Vincent did not reply. 
 
 "Yet," said Sir George Lynton," the-re will be a disadvantage 
 attending your writings of this description, which, by dimin- 
 ishing their general applicability, diminish their general utility. 
 Works which treat upon man in his relation to society can 
 only be strictly applicable so long as that relation to society 
 treated upon continues. For instance, the play which satirizes 
 a particular class, however deep its reflections and accurate 
 its knowledge upon the subject satirized, must necessarily be 
 obsolete when the class itself has become so. The political 
 pamphlet, admirable for one state, may be absurd in another; 
 the novel which exactly delineates the present age may seem 
 strange and unfamiliar to the next ; and thus works which 
 treat of men relatively, and not man in se, must often confine 
 their popularity to the age and even the country in which they 
 were written. While, on the other hand, the work which treats 
 of man himself, which seizes, discovers, analyzes the human 
 mind, as it is, whether in the ancient or the modern, the sav- 
 age or the European, must evidently be applicable, and conse- 
 quently useful, to all times and all nations. He who discovers 
 the circulation of the blood, or the origin of ideas, must be a 
 philosopher to every people who have veins or ideas ; but he 
 who even most successfully delineates the manners of one 
 country, or the actions of one individual, is only the philosopher 
 of a single country, or a single age. If, Monsieur d'E- ,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 6l 
 
 you will condescend to consider this, you will see perhaps that 
 the philosophy which treats of man in his relations is not so 
 useful, because neither so permanent nor so invariable, as that 
 which treats of man in himself."* 
 
 I was now somewhat weary of this conversation, and though 
 it was not yet twelve, I seized upon my appointment as an 
 excuse to depart accordingly I rose for that purpose. " I 
 suppose," said I to Vincent, "that you will not leave your 
 discussion." 
 
 " Pardon me," said he, " amusement is quite as profitable 
 to a man of sense as metaphysics. Allans" 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 " I was in this terrible situation when the basket stopped. " 
 
 Oriental Tales History of the Basket. 
 
 WE took our way to the street in which Madame Laurent 
 resided. Meanwhile suffer me to get rid of myself, and to 
 introduce you, dear Reader, to my friend, Monsieur Margot, 
 the whole of whose adventures were subsequently detailed to 
 me by the garrulous Mrs. Green. 
 
 At the hour appointed he knocked at the door of my fair 
 countrywoman, and was carefullyadmitted. He was attired in a 
 dressing-gown of sea-green silk, in which his long, lean, hungry 
 body looked more like a starved pike than anything human. 
 
 "Madame," said he, with a solemn air, "I return you my 
 best thanks for the honor you have done me behold me at 
 your feet ! " and so saying, the lean lover gravely knelt down 
 on one knee. 
 
 " Rise, sir," said Mrs. Green, " I confess that you have won 
 my heart ; but that is not all, you have yet to show that you 
 are worthy of the opinion I have formed of you. It is not, 
 Monsieur Margot, your person that has won me no ! it is your 
 chivalrous and noble sentiments. Prove that these are genuine, 
 and you may command all from my admiration." 
 
 " In what manner shall I prove it, madame? "said Monsieur 
 
 * Yet Hume holds the contrary opinion to this, and considers a good comedy more 
 durable than a system of philosophy. Hume is right, if by a system of philosophy is 
 understood a pile of guesses, false, but plausible, set up by one age to be destroyed by 
 the next. Ingenuity cannot rescue error from oblivion ; but the moment Wisdom has 
 discovered Truth, she has obtained immortality. But is Hume right when he suggests 
 that there may come a time when Addison will be read with delight, but Locke be utterly 
 forgotten ? For my part, if the two were to be matched for posterity, I think the odds 
 would be in favor of Locke. I very much doubt whether, five hundred years hence, Addi- 
 son will be read at all, and I am quite sure that, a thousand years hence, Locke will not be 
 forgotten.
 
 62 PELHAM ; 
 
 Margot, rising, and gracefully drawing his sea-green gown more 
 closely around him. 
 
 " By your courage, your devotion, and gallantry ! I ask but 
 one proof you can give it me on the spot. You remember, 
 monsieur, that in the days of romance, a lady threw her glove 
 upon the stage on which a lion was exhibited, and told her 
 lover to pick it up. Monsieur Margot, the trial to which I 
 shall put you is less severe. Look (and Mrs. Green threw 
 open the window) look, 1 throw my glove out into the street 
 descend for it." 
 
 " Your commands are my law," said the romantic Margot. 
 " I will go forthwith," and so saying, he went to the door. 
 
 " Hold, sir ! " said the lady, " it is not by that simple manner 
 that you are to descend ; you must go the same way as my 
 glove, out of the window" 
 
 "Out of the window, madame ! " said Monsieur Margot, 
 with astonished solemnity ; ".that is impossible, because this 
 apartment is three stories high, and consequently I shall be 
 dashed to pieces." 
 
 " By no means," answered the dame ; " in that corner of the 
 room there is a basket, to which (already foreseeing your de- 
 termination) I have affixed a rope ; by that basket you shall 
 descend. See, monsieur, what expedients a provident love can 
 suggest." 
 
 " H-e-m ! " said, very slowly, Monsieur Margot, by no 
 means liking the airy voyage imposed upon him ; " but the 
 rope may break, or your hand may surfer it to slip." 
 
 "Feel the rope," cried the lady, "to satisfy you as to your 
 first doubt ; and, as to the second, can you can you imagine 
 that my affections would not make me twice as careful of your 
 person as of my own ? Fie ! ungrateful Monsieur Margot ! fie!" 
 
 The melancholy chevalier cast a rueful look at the basket. 
 " Madame," said he, ''I own that I am very averse to the plan 
 you propose : suffer me to go downstairs in the ordinary way ; 
 your glove can easily be picked up whether your adorer goes 
 out of the door or the window. It is only, madame, when 
 ordinary means fail, that we should have recourse to the ex- 
 traordinary." 
 
 " Begone, sir !" exclaimed Mrs. Green "begone! I now 
 perceive that your chivalry was only a pretence. Fool that I 
 was to love you as I have done ! fool that I was to imagine a 
 hero where I now find a " 
 
 " Pause, madame, I will obey you my heart is firm see 
 that the rope is ! "
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 63 
 
 " Gallant Monsieur Margot ! " cried the lady ; and going to 
 her dressing-room, she called her woman to her assistance. 
 The rope was of the most unquestionable thickness, the basket 
 of the most capacious dimensions. The former was fastened 
 to a strong hook and the latter lowered. 
 
 " I go, madame," said Monsier Margot, feeling the rope ; 
 but it really is a most dangerous exploit." 
 
 " Go, monsieur ! and St. Louis befriend you ! " 
 
 "Stop!" said Monsieur Margot, "let me fetch my coat : 
 the night is cold, and my dressing-gown thin." 
 
 " Nay, nay, my chevalier," returned the dame, " I love you 
 in that gown : it gives you an air of grace and dignity quite 
 enchanting." 
 
 "It will give me my death of cold, madame," said Monsieur 
 Margot earnestly. 
 
 " Bah ! " said the Englishwoman : " what knight ever feared 
 cold ? Besides, you mistake ; the night is warm, and you look 
 so handsome in your gown." 
 
 " Do I ! " said the vain Monsieur Margot, with an iron ex- 
 pression of satisfaction. "If that is the case, I will mind it 
 less ; but may I return by the door ? " 
 
 "Yes," replied the lady ; " you see that I do not require too 
 much from your devotion enter." 
 
 " Behold me ! " said the French master, inserting his body 
 into the basket, which immediately began to descend. 
 
 The hour and the police of course made the street empty ; 
 the lady's handkerchief waved in token of encouragement and 
 triumph. When the basket was within five yards of the 
 ground, Mrs. Green cried to her lover, who had been hitherto 
 elevating his serious countenance towards her, in sober, yet 
 gallant, sadness : 
 
 " Look, look, monsieur straight before you." 
 
 The lover turned round, as rapidly as his habits would allow 
 him, and at that instant the window was shut, the light extin- 
 guished, and the basket arrested. There stood Monsieur Mar- 
 got, upright in the basket, and there stopped the basket, 
 motionless in the air ! 
 
 What were the exact reflections of Monsieur Margot, in that 
 position, I cannot pretend to determine, because he never fav- 
 ored me with them ; but about an hour aftenvards,/Vincent and 
 I (who had been delayed on the road), strolling up the street, 
 according to our appointment, perceived, by the dim lamps, 
 some opaque body leaning against the wall of Madame Laurent's 
 house, at about the distance of fifteen feet from the ground..
 
 64 PELHAM ; 
 
 We hastened our steps towards it ; a measured and serious 
 voice, which I well knew, accosted us : 
 
 " For God's sake, gentlemen, procure me assistance. I am 
 the victim of a perfidious woman, and expect every moment 
 to be precipitated to the earth." 
 
 " Good heavens ! " said I, " surely it is Monsieur Margot 
 whom I hear. What are you doing there ? " 
 
 " Shivering with cold," answered Monsieur Margot, in a tone 
 tremulously slow. 
 
 " But what are you in ? for I can see nothing but a dark 
 substance." 
 
 "I am in a basket," replied Monsieur Margot, "and I should 
 be very much obliged to you to let me out of it." 
 
 " Well indeed," said Vincent (for I was too much engaged 
 in laughing to give a ready reply), "your Chateau Margot has 
 but a cool cellar. But there are some things in the world 
 easier said than done. How are we to remove you to a more 
 desirable place ? " 
 
 " Ah," returned Monsieur Margot, " how indeed ! There 
 is, to be sure, a ladder in the porter's lodge long enough to de- 
 liver me ; but then, think of the gibes and jeers of the porter! 
 It will get wind ; I shall be ridiculed, gentlemen I shall be 
 ridiculed ; and what is worse, I shall lose my pupils." 
 
 " My good friend," said I, "you had better lose your pupils 
 than your life ; and the daylight will soon come, and then, in- 
 stead of being ridiculed by the porter, you will be ridiculed 
 by the whole street ! " 
 
 Monsieur Margot groaned. "Go, then, my friend," said 
 he, " procure the ladder ! Oh, those she-devils ! What could 
 make me such a fool ! " 
 
 Whilst Monsieur Margot was venting his spleen in a scarce- 
 ly articulate mutter, we repaired to the lodge, knocked up the 
 porter, communicated the accident, and procured the ladder. 
 However, an observant eye had been kept upon our proceed- 
 ings, and the window above was re-opened, though so silently 
 that I only perceived the action. The porter, a jolly, bluff, 
 hearty-looking fellow, stood grinning below with a lantern, 
 while we set the ladder (which only just reached the basket) 
 against the wall. 
 
 The chevalier looked wistfully forth, and then, by the light 
 of the lantern, we had a fair view of his ridiculous figure. His 
 teeth chattered woefully, and the united cold without and 
 anxiety within threw a double sadness and solemnity upon his 
 withered countenance. The night was very windy, and every
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 65 
 
 instant a rapid current seized the unhappy sea-green vesture, 
 whirled it in the air, and threw it, as if in scorn, over the very 
 face of the miserable professor. The constant recurrence of 
 this sportive irreverence of the gales the high sides of the 
 basket, and the trembling agitation of the inmate, never too 
 agile, rendered it a work of some time for Monsieur Margot to 
 transfer himself from the basket to the ladder. At length, 
 he had fairly got out one thin, shivering leg. 
 
 " Thank Heaven ! " said the pious professor when at that 
 instant the thanksgiving was checked, and, to Monsieur Mar- 
 got's inexpressible astonishment and dismay, the basket rose 
 five feet from the ladder, leaving its tenant with one leg dang- 
 ling out, like a flag from a balloon. 
 
 The ascent was too rapid to allow Monsieur Margot even time 
 for an exclamation, and it was not till he had had sufficient 
 leisure in his present elevation to perceive all its consequences, 
 that he found words to say, with the most earnest tone of 
 thoughtful lamentation : " One could not have foreseen this ! 
 It is really extremely distressing would to Heaven that I could 
 get my leg in, or my body out ! " 
 
 While we were yet too convulsed with laughter to make any 
 comment upon the unlooked-for ascent of the luminous Mon- 
 sieur Margot, the basket descended with such force as to dash 
 the lantern out of the hand of the porter, and to bring the pro- 
 fessor so precipitously to the ground that all the bones in his 
 skin rattled audibly. 
 
 " Mon Dieu!" said he, " I am done for ! Be witness how 
 inhumanly I have been murdered." 
 
 We pulled him out of the basket, and carried him between us 
 into the porter's lodge. But the woes of Monsieur Magot 
 were not yet at their termination. The room was crowded. 
 There was Madame Laurent ; there was the German count, 
 whom the professor was teaching French ; there was the French 
 viscount, whom he was teaching German ; there were all his 
 fellow-lodgers, the ladies whom he had boasted of, the men he 
 had boasted to. Don Juan, in the infernal regions, could not 
 have met with a more unwelcome set of old acquaintances 
 than Monsieur Margot had the happiness of opening his bewil- 
 dered eyes upon in the porter's lodge. 
 
 "What!" cried they all, " Monsieur Margot, is that you who 
 have been frightening us so ? We thought the house was at- 
 tacked. The Russian general is at this very moment loading 
 his pistols ; lucky for you that you did not choose to stay 
 longer in that situation. Pray, monsieur, what could induce
 
 66 PELHAM J 
 
 you to exhibit yourself so, in your dressing-gown too, and the 
 night so cold ? Ar'n't you ashamed of yourself? " 
 
 All this, and infinitely more, was levelled against the miserable 
 professor, who stood shivering with cold and fright ; and turn- 
 ing his eyes first on one, and then on another, as the exclama- 
 tions circulated round the room. 
 
 " I do assure you," at length he began. 
 
 "No, no," cried one, "it is of no use explaining now ! " 
 
 " Mais, Messieurs " querulously recommenced the unhappy 
 Margot. 
 
 " Hold your tongue," exclaimed Madame Laurent, "you 
 have been disgracing my house." 
 
 " Mais , Madame, e"coutez-moi " 
 
 "No, no," cried the German, " we saw you we saw you." 
 
 " Mais, Monsieur le Comte " 
 
 " Fie, fie ! " cried the Frenchman. 
 
 " Mais, Monsieur le Vicomte " 
 
 At this every mouth was opened, and the patience of Mon- 
 sieur Margot being by this time exhausted, he flew into a violent 
 rage; his tormentors pretended an equal indignation, and at 
 length he fought his way out of the room as fast as his shattered 
 bones would allow him, followed by the whole body, screaming, 
 and shouting and scolding, and laughing after him. 
 
 The next morning passed without my usual lesson from 
 Monsieur Margot : lha.t was natural enough ; but when the 
 next day, and the next, rolled on, and brought neither Monsieur 
 Margot nor his excuse, I began to be uneasy for the poor man. 
 Accordingly I sent to Madame Laurent's to inquire after him : 
 judge of my surprise at hearing that he had, early the day after 
 his adventure, left his lodgings with his small possession of 
 books and clothes, leaving only a note to Madame Laurent, 
 enclosing the amount of his debt to her, and that none had since 
 seen or heard of him. 
 
 From that day to this I have never once beheld him. The 
 poor professor lost even the little money due to him for his 
 lessons so true is it, that in a man of Monsieur Margot's tem- 
 per, even interest is a subordinate passion to vanity !
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 6| 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 " It is good to be merry and wise, 
 
 It's good to be honest and true ; 
 It is good to be off with the old love, 
 Before you be on with the new." Song. 
 
 ONE morning when I was riding to the Bois de Boulogne (the 
 celebrated place of assignation), in order to meet Madame 
 d'Anville, I saw a lady on horseback, in the most imminent 
 danger of being thrown. Her horse had taken fright at an 
 English tandem, or its driver, and was plunging violently ; the 
 lady was evidently much frightened, and lost her presence of 
 mind more and more every moment. A man who was with her, 
 and who could scarcely manage his own horse, appeared to be 
 exceedingly desirous, but perfectly unable, to assist her ; and 
 a great number of people were looking on, doing nothing, and 
 saying, "Man Dieu, how dangerous ! " 
 
 I have always had a great horror of being a hero in scenes, 
 and a still greater antipathy to "females in distress." However, 
 so great is the effect of sympathy upon the most hardened of 
 us, that I stopped for a few moments, first to look on, and 
 secondly to assist. Just when a moment's delay might have 
 been dangerous, I threw myself off my horse, seized hers with 
 one hand by the rein which she no longer had the strength to 
 hold, and assisted her with the other to dismount. When all 
 the peril was over, monsieur, her companion, managed also to 
 find his legs ; and I did not, I confess, wonder at his previous 
 delay, when I discovered that the lady in danger had been his 
 wife. He gave me a profusion of thanks, and she made them 
 more than complimentary by the glance which accompanied 
 them. Their carriage was in attendance at a short distance 
 behind. The husband went for it I remained with the lady. 
 
 " Mr. Pelham," she said, " I have heard much of you from 
 my friend Madame d'Anville, and have long been anxious for 
 your acquaintance. I did not think I should commence it 
 with so great an obligation." 
 
 Flattered by being already known by name, and a subject of 
 previous interest, you may be sure that I tried every method to 
 improve the opportunity I had gained; and when I handed my 
 new acquaintance into her carriage, my pressure of her hand 
 was somewhat more than slightly returned. 
 
 " Shall you be at the English ambassador's to-night ?" said 
 the lady, as they were about to shut the door of the carriage.
 
 68 PELHAM J 
 
 "Certainly, if you are to be there," was my answer. 
 
 "We shall meet then," said madame, and her look said more. 
 
 I rode into the Bois ; and giving my horse to my servant, as 
 I came near Passy, where I was to meet Madame d'Anville, I 
 proceeded thither on foot. I was just in sight of the spot, and 
 indeed of my inamorata, when two men passed, talking very 
 earnestly ; they did not remark me, but what individual could 
 ever escape my notice ? The one was Thornton ; the other 
 who could he be ? Where had I seen that pale and remark- 
 able countenance before? I looked again. / was satisfied 
 that I was mistaken in my first thought ; the hair was of a 
 completely different color. "No, no," said I, " it is not he : 
 yet how like ! " 
 
 I was distrait and absent during the whole time I was with 
 Madame d'Anville. The face of Thornton's companion 
 haunted me like a dream ; and, to say the truth, there were also 
 moments when the recollection of my new engagement for the 
 evening made me tired with that which I was enjoying the 
 troublesome honor of keeping. 
 
 Madame d'Anville was not slow in perceiving the coldness 
 of my behavior. Though a Frenchwoman, she was rather 
 grieved than resentful. 
 
 " You are growing tired of me, my friend," she said ; " and 
 when I consider your youth and temptations, I cannot be sur- 
 prised at it yet, I own, that this thought gives me much 
 greater pain than I could have supposed." 
 
 "Bah! ma belle amie" cried I, "you deceive yourself I 
 adore you I shall always adore you ; but it's getting very late!" 
 
 Madame d'Anville sighed, and we parted. "She is not half 
 so pretty or agreeable as she was," thought I, as I mounted my 
 horse, and remembered my appointment at the ambassador's. 
 
 I took unusual pains with my appearance that evening, and 
 drove to the ambassador's hotel in the Rue Faubourg St. 
 Honore", full half an hour earlier than I had ever done before. 
 I had been some time in the rooms without discovering my 
 heroine of the morning. The Duchess of H n passed by. 
 
 " What a wonderfully beautiful woman !" said Mr. Howard de 
 Howard, a lean gentleman, who valued himself on his ances- 
 tors, to Mr. Aberton. 
 
 "Ay," answered Aberton, " but to my taste, the Duchess de 
 Perpignan is quite equal to her do you know her ? " 
 
 " No yes ! " said Mr. Howard de Howard ; " that is, not ex- 
 actly not well." An Englishman never owns that he does not 
 know a duchess.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 69 
 
 "Hem!" said Mr. Aberton, thrusting his large hand th augh 
 his lank light hair. " Hem could one do anything, do you 
 think, in that quarter ? " 
 
 " I should think one might, with a tolerable person !" an- 
 swered the spectral aristocrat, looking down at a pair of most 
 shadowy supporters. 
 
 "Pray," said Aberton, "what do you think of Miss ? 
 
 They say she is an heiress." 
 
 " Think of her ! " said Mr. Howard de Howard, who was as 
 poor as he was thin, " why, I have thought of her ! " 
 
 "They say that fool Pelham makes up to her. ? (Little 
 did Mr. Aberton imagine, when he made this remark, that I 
 was close behind him.) 
 
 "I should not imagine that was true," said the secretary; 
 "he is so occupied with Madame d'Anville." 
 
 " Pooh ! " said Aberton dictatorially, " she never had any- 
 thing to say to him." 
 
 " Why are you so sure ? " said Mr. Howard de Howard. 
 
 " Why because he never showed any notes from her, nor 
 ever even said he had a liaison with her ! " 
 
 "Ah ! that is quite enough !" said Mr. Howard de Howard. 
 " But is not that the Duchess de Perpignan?" 
 
 Mr. Aberton turned, and so did I our eyes met his fell ; 
 well they might, after his courteous epithet to my name ; how- 
 ever, I had far too good an opinion of myself to care one 
 straw about his ; besides, at that moment, I was wholly lost in 
 my surprise and pleasure in finding that this Duchess de Per- 
 pignan was no other than my acquaintance of the morning. 
 She caught my gaze and smiled as she bowed. " Now," 
 thought I, as I approached her, " let us see if we cannot eclipse 
 Mr. Aberton." 
 
 All love-making is just the same, and, therefore, I shall spare 
 the reader my conversation that evening. When he recollects 
 that it was Henry Pelham who was the gallant, I am persuaded 
 that he will be pretty certain as to the success.
 
 PELHAM 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 " Alea sequa vorax species certissima furti 
 
 Non contenta bonis, animum quoque perfida mergit ; 
 Furca, furax infamis, iners, furiosa, ruina." * PETR. Dial. 
 
 I DINED the next day at the Freres Prover^aux ; an excel' 
 lent restaurateur's, by-the-by, where one gets irreproachable 
 gibier, and meets few English. f After dinner I strolled into 
 the various gambling-houses with which the Palais Royal 
 abounds. 
 
 In one of these the crowd and heat were so great that I should 
 immediately have retired if I had not been struck with the 
 intense expression of interest in the countenance of one of the 
 spectators at the rouge et noir table. He was a man about forty 
 years of age ;-his complexion was dark and sallow ; the features 
 prominent, and what are generally called handsome ; but there 
 was a certain sinister expression in his eyes and mouth which 
 rendered the effect of his physiognomy rather disagreeable 
 than prepossessing. At a small distance from him, and play- 
 ing with an air which, in its carelessness and nonchalance, 
 formed a remarkable contrast to the painful anxiety of the man 
 I have just described, sate Mr. Thornton. 
 
 At first sight these two appeared to be the only Englishmen 
 present beside myself ; I was more struck by seeing the former 
 in that scene than I was at meeting Thornton there ; for there 
 was something distinguished in the mien of the stranger, which 
 suited far worse with the appearance of the place than the air 
 and dress of my ci-devanl second. 
 
 " What ! another Englishman ? " thought I, as I turned round 
 and perceived a thick, rough great-coat, which could possibly 
 belong to no Continental shoulders. The wearer was standing 
 directly opposite the seat of the swarthy stranger ; his hat was 
 slouched over his face ; I moved in order to get a clearer view 
 of his countenance. It was the same person I had seen with 
 Thornton that morning. Never to this moment have I forgot- 
 ten the stern and ferocious expression with which he was gazing 
 upon the keen and agitated features of the gambler opposite. 
 In the eye and lip there was neither pleasure, hatred, nor scorn, 
 
 * Gaming, that direst felon of the breast, 
 
 Steals more than fortune from its wretched thrall, 
 Spreads o'er the soul the inert devouring pest, 
 And gnaws, and rots, and taints, and ruins all. PARAPHRASE. 
 
 t &r. Pelham could not say as much for the Freres Provettfaux at present.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 71 
 
 in their simple and unalloyed elements ; but each seemed blent 
 and mingled into one deadly concentration of evil passions. 
 
 This man neither played, nor spoke, nor moved. He ap- 
 peared utterly insensible of every feeling in common with 
 those around. There he stood, wrapped in his own dark and 
 inscrutable thoughts, never, for one instant, taking his looks 
 from the varying countenance which did not observe their 
 gaze, nor altering the withering character of their almost de- 
 moniacal expression. I could not tear myself from the spot. 
 I felt chained by some mysterious and undefinable interest ; 
 my attention was first diverted into a new channel by a loud 
 exclamation from the dark-visaged gambler at the table ; it 
 was the first he had uttered, notwithstanding his anxiety ; and, 
 from the deep, thrilling tone in which it was expressed, it 
 conveyed a keen sympathy with the overcharged feelings which 
 it burst from. 
 
 With a trembling hand he took from an old purse the few 
 Napoleons that were still left there. He set them all at one 
 hazard on the rouge. He hung over the table with a dropping 
 lip ; his hands were tightly clasped in each other ; his nerves 
 seemed strained into the last agony of excitation. I ventured 
 to raise my eyes upon the gaze, which I felt must still be upon 
 the gambler there it was fixed, and stern as before ! but it 
 now conveyed a deeper expression of joy than it had hitherto 
 assumed ; yet a joy so malignant and fiendish that no look of 
 mere anger or hatred could have equally chilled my heart. I 
 dropped my eyes. I redoubled my attention to the cards 
 the last two were to be turned up. A moment more ! the 
 fortune was to the noir. The stranger had lost! He did not 
 utter a single word. He looked with a vacant eye on the long 
 mace with which the marker had swept away his last hopes 
 with his last coin, and then, rising, left the room, and dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 The other Englishman was not long in following him. He 
 uttered a short, low laugh, unheard, perhaps, by any one but 
 myself; and, pushing through the atmosphere of sacrSs ! and 
 tnille tonnerres! which filled that pandemonium, strode quickly 
 to the door. I felt as if a load had been taken from my bosom 
 when he vas gone.
 
 72 PELHAM J 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 " Reddere person* scit convenientia cuique." * HOR. Ars Poet. 
 
 I WAS loitering over my breakfast the next morning and 
 thinking of the last night's scene, when Lord Vincent was an- 
 nounced. 
 
 " How fares the gallant Pelham ? " said he, as he entered the 
 room. 
 
 " Why, to say the truth," I replied, " I am rather under the 
 influence of blue devils this morning, and your visit is like a 
 sunbeam in November." 
 
 " A bright thought," said Vincent, " and I shall make you a 
 very pretty little poet soon ; publish you in a neat octavo, and 
 
 dedicate you to Lady D e. Pray, by the by, have you ever 
 
 read her plays ? You know they were only privately printed ? " 
 
 " No," said I (for in good truth, had his lordship interrogated 
 me touching any other literary production, I should have es- 
 teemed it a part of my present character to return the same 
 answer). 
 
 " No ! " repeated Vincent ; " permit me to tell you that you 
 must never seem ignorant of any work not published. To be 
 admired, one must always know what other people don't and 
 then one has full liberty to sneer at the value of what other 
 people do know. Renounce the threshold of knowledge. 
 There, every new proselyte can meet you. Boast of your ac- 
 quaintance with the sanctum, and not one in ten thousand can 
 dispute it with you. Have you read Monsieur de C 's pam- 
 phlet ? " 
 
 " Really," said I, " I have been so busy ! " 
 
 " Ah, nwn ami!" cried Vincent, " the greatest sign of an idle 
 man is to complain of being busy. But you have had a loss : 
 the pamphlet is good. C , by the way, has an extraordi- 
 nary, though not an expanded, mind : it is like a citizen's gar- 
 den near London ; a pretty parterre here, and a Chinese pa- 
 goda there ; an oak-tree in one corner, and a mushroom bed in 
 the other : and above all, a Gothic Ruin opposite the bay-win- 
 dow ! You may traverse the whole in a stride ; it is the four 
 quarters of the globe in a mole-hill. Yet everything is good 
 in its kind ; and is neither without elegance nor design in its 
 arrangement." 
 
 * The appropriate justice sorts each shade and hue. 
 And gives tp each the exact proportion due. PARAPHRASE.
 
 6k, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 7$ 
 
 " What do you think," said I, " of the Baron de , the 
 
 minister of ?" 
 
 " Of him ! " replied Vincent 
 
 " 'His soul 
 Still sits at squat, and peeps not from its hole.' 
 
 It is dark and bewildered full of dim visions of the ancient 
 regime ; it is a bat hovering about the cells of an old abbey. 
 Poor, antique little soul ! but I will say nothing more about 
 it 
 
 ' For who would be satirical 
 Upon a thing so very small ' 
 
 as the soul of the Baron de ! " 
 
 Finding Lord Vincent so disposed to the biting mood, I im- 
 mediately directed his rabies towards Mr. Aberton. 
 
 " Aberton," said Vincent, in answer to my question if he knew 
 that amiable young gentleman : " yes ! a sort of man who, 
 speaking of the best society, says we who sticks his best cards 
 on his chimney-piece, and writes himself billets-doux f rom duch- 
 esses. A duodecimo of ' precious conceits,' bound in calf- 
 skin I know the man well ; does he not dress decently, Pel- 
 ham ? " 
 
 "His clothes are well made," said I candidly. 
 
 " Ah ! " said Vincent, " I should think he went to the best 
 tailor, and said, 'Give me a collar like Lord So and So's" ; 
 one who would not dare to have anew waistcoat till it had been 
 authoritatively patronized, and who took his fashions, like 
 his follies, from the best proficients. Such fellows are always 
 too ashamed of themselves not to be proud of their clothes ; 
 like the Chinese mariners, they burn incense before the needle !" 
 
 " And Mr. Howard de Howard," said I laughing, " what do 
 you think of him ? " 
 
 " What ! the thin Eupatrid ? " cried Vincent. " He is the 
 mathematical definition of a straight line length without 
 breadth. His inseparable friend, Mr. Aberton, was running up 
 the Rue St. Honore" yesterday in order to catch him, and when 
 I saw him chasing that meagre apparition, I said to Benning- 
 ton, ' I have found out the real Peter Schlemil ! ' 'Whom?' 
 (asked his" grave lordship, with serious naivete"} ' Mr. Aber- 
 ton,' said I ; ' don't you see him running after his shadow ? ' 
 But the pride of the lean thing is so amusing ! He is fifteenth 
 cousin to the duke, and so his favorite exordium is, ' Whenever 
 I succeed to the title of my ancestors.' It was but the other 
 day that he heard two or three silly young men discussing
 
 74 PELHAM ; 
 
 Church and State, and they began by talking irreligion (Mr. 
 Howard de Howard is too unsubstantial not to be spiritually 
 inclined); however, he only fidgeted in his chair. They then 
 proceeded to be exceedingly disloyal. Mr. Howard de How- 
 ard fidgeted again. They tnen passed to vituperation on the 
 aristocracy ; this the attenuated pomposity (magni nominis 
 umbra) could brook no longer. He rose up, cast a severe look 
 on the abashed youths, and thus addressed them : ' Gentle- 
 men, I have sate by in silence, and heard my King derided, 
 and my God blasphemed ; but now, when you attack the aris- 
 tocracy, I can no longer refrain from noticing so obviously in- 
 tentional an insult. You have become personal." 
 
 " Pray, Vincent," said I after a short pause, " did you ever 
 meet with a Mr. Thornton at Paris ? " 
 
 " Thornton, Thornton," said Vincent musingly ; " What, 
 Tom Thornton ? " 
 
 " I should think very likely," I replied ; " just the sort of man 
 who would be Tom Thornton has a broad face, with a color, 
 and wears a spotted neckcloth ; Tom what could his name 
 be but Tom ?" 
 
 " Is he about five-and-thirty ? " asked Vincent, " rather 
 short, and with reddish-color hair and whiskers ? " 
 
 " Precisely," said I ; "are not ail Toms alike ? " 
 
 " Ah," said Vincent, " I know him well : he is a clever, 
 shrewd fellow, but a most unmitigated rascal. He is the son 
 of a steward in Lancashire, and received an attorney's educa- 
 tion ; but being a humorous, noisy fellow, he became a great, 
 favorite with his father's employer, who was a sort of Maecenas 
 to cudgel-players, boxers, and horse-jockeys. At his house 
 Thornton met many persons of rank, but of a taste similar to 
 their host's : and they, mistaking his vulgar coarseness for hon- 
 esty, and his quaint proverbs for wit, admitted him into their 
 society. It was with one of them that I have seen him. I be- 
 lieve of late that his character has been of a very indifferent 
 odor : and whatever has brought him among the English at Paris 
 those whitewashed abominations those ' innocent black- 
 nesses,' as Charles Lamb calls chimney-sweepers, it does not 
 argue well for his professional occupations. I should think, 
 however, that he manages to live here ; for wherever there are 
 English fools, there are fine pickings for an English rogue." 
 
 "Ay," said I, "but are there enough fools here to feed the 
 rogues ? " 
 
 " Yes, because rogues are like spiders, and eat each other, when 
 there is nothing else to catch ; and Tom Thornton is safe as
 
 6k, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 75 
 
 long as the ordinary law of nature lasts, that the greater knave 
 preys on the lesser, for there cannot possibly be a greater 
 knave than he is ! If you have made his acquaintance, my 
 dear Pelham, I advise you most soberly to look to yourself, for 
 if he doth not steal, beg, or borrow of you, Mr. Howard de 
 Howard will grow fat, and even Mr. Aberton cease to be a fool. 
 And now, most noble Pelham, farewell. // est plus aist d'etre 
 sage pour les autres que de I' fare pour soi- meme." * 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 " This is a notable couple and have met 
 But for some secret knavery." The Tanner of Tyburn. 
 
 I HAD now been several weeks in Paris, and I was not alto- 
 gether dissatisfied with the manner in which they had been 
 spent. I had enjoyed myself to the utmost, while I had, as 
 much as possible, combined profit with pleasure ; viz., if I went 
 to the Opera in the evening, I learned to dance in the morn- 
 ing ; if I drove to a soiree at the Duchesse de Perpignan's, it 
 was not till I had fenced an hour at the Salon des Assauts 
 (fArmes; in short, I took the greatest pains to complete my 
 education. I wish all young men who frequented the Conti- 
 nent for that purpose could say the same. 
 
 One day (about a week after the conversation with Vincent 
 recorded in my last chapter) I was walking slowly along one of 
 the paths in the Jar din des Plantes, meditating upon the various 
 excellences of the Rocher de Cancale and the Duchesse de Per- 
 pignan, when I perceived a tall man, with a thick, rough coat, 
 of a dark color (which I recognized long before I did the face 
 of the wearer) emerging from an intersecting path. He stopped 
 a few moments, and looked round as if expecting some one. 
 Presently a woman, apparently about thirty, and meanly dressed, 
 appeared in an opposite direction. She approached him ; they 
 exchanged a few words, and then, the woman taking his arm, 
 they struck into another path, and were soon out of sight. I 
 suppose that the reader has already discovered that this man 
 was Thornton's companion in the Bois de Boulogne and the 
 hero of the gaming-house in the Palais Royal. I could not 
 have supposed that so noble a countenance, even in its frowns, 
 could ever have wasted its smiles upon a mistress of the low 
 
 * It is more easy to be wise for others than for oneself.
 
 76 PELHAM ; 
 
 station to which the woman who had met him evidently be- 
 longed. However, we all have our little foibles, as the French- 
 man said when he boiled his grandmother's head in a pipkin. 
 
 I myself was, at that time, the sort of person that is always 
 taken by a pretty face, however coarse may be the garments 
 which set it off ; and although I cannot say that I ever stooped 
 so far as to become amorous of a chambermaid, yet I could be 
 tolerably lenient to any man under thirty who did. As a proof 
 of this gentleness of disposition, ten minutes after I had wit- 
 nessed so unsuitable a rencontre I found myself following a 
 pretty little grisette into a small sort of cabaret, which was, at 
 the time I speak of (and most probably still is), in the midst 
 of the gardens. I sat down and called for my favorite drink 
 of lemonade ; the little grisette, who was with an old woman, 
 possibly her mother, and un beau gros garfon, probably her 
 lover, sat opposite, and began, with all the ineffable coquetries 
 of her country, to divide her attention between the said garfon 
 and myself. Poor fellow, he seemed to be very little pleased 
 by the significant glances exchanged over his right shoulder, 
 and at last, under pretence of screening her from the draught 
 of the opened window, placed himself exactly between us. 
 This, however ingenious, did not at all answer his expecta- 
 tions ; for he had not sufficiently taken into consideration that 
 / also was endowed with the power of locomotion ; accord- 
 ingly I shifted my chair about three feet, and entirely defeated 
 the countermarch of the enemy. 
 
 But this flirtation did not last long : the youth and the old 
 wman appeared very much of the same opinion as to its im- 
 propriety ; and accordingly, like experienced generals, resolved 
 to conquer by a retreat ; they drank up their orgeat, paid for 
 it, placed the wavering regiment in the middle, and quitted the 
 field. I was not, however, of a disposition to break my heart 
 at such an occurrence, and I remained by the window, drink- 
 ing my lemonade, and muttering to myself, " After all, women 
 are a bore ! " 
 
 On the outside of the cabaret, and just under my window, 
 was a bench, which, for a certain number of sous, one might 
 appropriate to the entire and unparticipated use of one's self 
 and party. An old woman (so at least I suppose by her voice, 
 for I did not give myself the trouble of looking, though, in- 
 deed, as to that matter, it might have been the shrill treble of 
 Mr. Howard de Howard !) had been hitherto engrossing this 
 settlement with some gallant or other. In Paris no woman is 
 too old to get an amant, either by love or money. This couple
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OP A GENTLEMAN. 77 
 
 soon paired off, and was immediately succeeded by another. 
 The first tones of the man's voice, low as they were, made me 
 start from my seat. I cast one quick glance before I resumed 
 it. The new pair were the Englishman I had before noted in 
 the garden, and the female companion who had joined him. 
 
 " Two hundred pounds, you say ? " muttered the man ; " we 
 must have it all." 
 
 " But," answered the woman, in the same whispered voice, 
 " he says that he will never touch another card." 
 
 The man laughed. " Fool," said he, "the passions are not 
 so easily quelled how many days is it since he had this remit- 
 tance from England ? " 
 
 "About three," replied the woman. 
 
 " And is it absolutely the very last remnant of his property ? l 
 
 " The last." 
 
 " I am then to understand, that when this is spent there is 
 nothing between him and beggary?" 
 
 " Nothing," said the woman, with a half-sigh. 
 
 The man laughed again, and then rejoined in an altered 
 tone: "Then, then will this parching thirst be quenched at 
 last. I tell you, woman, that it is many months since I have 
 known a day night hour, in which my life has been as the 
 life of other men. My whole soul has been melted down into 
 one burning, burning thought. Feel this hand ay, you may 
 well start but what is the fever of the frame to that within ? " 
 
 Here the voice sank so low as to be inaudible. The woman 
 seemed as if endeavoring to soothe him ; at length she said : 
 
 " But poor Tyrrell you will not, surely, suffer him to starve, 
 of actual want, abandoned and alone ! " 
 
 " Alone ! no ! " cried her companion fiercely. " When the 
 last agonies shall be upon that man ; when, sick with weari- 
 ness, pain, disease, hunger he lies down to die ; when the 
 death-gurgle is in the throat, and the eye swims beneath the 
 last dull film ; when remembrance peoples the chamber with 
 Hell, and his cowardice would falter forth its dastard recanta- 
 tion to Heaven then may I be there ! ' ' 
 
 There was a 'long pause, only broken by the woman's sobs, 
 which she appeared endeavoring to stifle. At last the man 
 rose, and in a tone so soft that it seemed literally like music, 
 addressed her in the most endearing terms. She soon yielded 
 to their persuasion, and replied to them with interest. 
 
 " Spite of the stings of my remorse," she said, " as long as I 
 lose not you, I will lose life, honor, hope, even soul itself !." 
 
 They both quitted the spot as she said this.
 
 78 PfcLHAM 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 " At length the treacherous snare was laid, 
 Poor Pug was caught to town convey 'd ; 
 There sold. How envied was his doom, 
 Made captive in a lady's room. GAY'S Fables. 
 
 I WAS sitting alone a morning or two after this adventure, 
 when Bedos, entering, announced une dame. 
 
 This dame was a fine, tall thing, dressed out like a print in 
 the Magasin des Modes. She sate herself down, threw up her 
 veil, and, after a momentary pause, asked me if I liked my 
 apartment? 
 
 " Very much," said I, somewhat surprised at the nature of 
 the interrogatory. 
 
 " Perhaps you would wish it altered in some way ?" rejoined 
 the lady. 
 
 " Non mille remercimens ! " said I " you are very good to 
 be so interested in my accommodation." 
 
 " Those curtains might be better arranged ; that sofa re- 
 placed with a more elegant one," continued my new superin- 
 tendent. 
 
 "Really," said I, "I am too, too much flattered. Perhaps 
 you would like to have my rooms altogether ; if so, make at 
 least no scruple of saying it." 
 
 " Oh, no," replied the lady, " I have no objection to your 
 staying here." 
 
 " You are too kind," said I, with a low bow. 
 
 There was a pause of some moments ; I took advantage 
 of it. 
 
 "I think, madame, I have the honor of speaking to to 
 to" 
 
 " The mistress of the hotel," said the lady quietly. " I 
 merely called to ask you how you did, and hope you were well 
 accommodated." 
 
 " Rather late, considering I have been six weeks in the 
 house," thought I revolving in my mind various reports I had 
 heard of my present visitor's disposition to gallantry. How- 
 ever, seeing it was all over with me, I resigned myself, with the 
 patience of a martyr, to the fate that I foresaw ; I rose, 
 approached her chair, took her hand (very hard and thin it 
 was too), and thanked her with a most affectionate squeeze. 
 
 " I have seen much English ! " said the lady, for the first 
 time speaking in our language.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 7$ 
 
 "Ah ! " said I, giving another squeeze. 
 
 " You are a handsome garfon" renewed the lady. 
 
 "I am so," I replied. 
 
 At that moment Bedos entered, and whispered that Madame 
 d'Anville was in the ante-room. 
 
 " Good heavens ! " said I, knowing her jealousy of disposi- 
 tion, '' what is to be done ? Oblige me, madame," seizing the 
 unfortunate mistress of the hotel, and opening the door to the 
 back entrance. " There," said I, " you can easily escape. 
 Bon jour ." 
 
 Hardly had I closed the door, and put the key in my pocket, 
 before Madame d'Anville entered. 
 
 "Is it by your order that your servant keeps me waiting in 
 your ante-room ?' 1 said she haughtily. 
 
 I endeavored to make my peace ; but all my complaisance 
 was in vain ; she was jealous of my intimacy with the Duchesse 
 de Perpignan and glad of any excuse to vent her pique. For- 
 tunately, however, she was going to the Luxembourg; and my 
 only chance of soothing her anger was to accompany her. 
 
 Downstairs, therefore, we went, and drove to the Luxem- 
 bourg ; I gave Bedos, before my departure, various little com- 
 missions, and told him he need not be at home till the evening. 
 Long before the expiration of an hour Madame d'Anville's ill 
 humor had given me an excuse for affecting it myself. Tired 
 to death of her, and panting for release, I took a high tone 
 complained of her ill-temper, and her want of love spoke 
 rapidly waited for no reply, and, leaving her at the Luxem- 
 bourg, proceeded forthwith to Galignani's, like a man just 
 delivered from a strait waistcoat. 
 
 Leave me now, for a few minutes, in the reading-room at 
 Galignani's, and return to the mistress of the hotel, whom I 
 had so unceremoniously thrust out of my salon. The passage 
 into which she had been put communicated by one door with 
 my rooms, and by another with the staircase. Now it so hap- 
 pened that Bedos was in the habit of locking the latter door, and 
 keeping the key ; the other egress, it will be remembered, I 
 myself had secured ; so that the unfortunate mistress of the 
 hotel was no sooner turned into this passage than she found 
 herself in a sort of dungeon, ten feet by five, and surrounded, 
 like Eve in Paradise, by a whole creation not of birds, beasts, 
 and fishes, but of brooms, brushes, linen for the laundress, 
 and a wood basket ! What she was to do in this dilemma 
 was utterly inconceivable ; scream, indeed, she might, but 
 then the shame and ridicule of being discovered in so equivo-
 
 cal a situation were somewhat more than our discreet landlady 
 could endure. Besides, such an expost might be attended with 
 a loss the good woman valued more than reputation, viz., 
 lodgers ; for the possessors of the two best floors were both 
 Englishwomen of a certain rank ; and my landlady had heard 
 such accounts of our national virtue that she feared an instan- 
 taneous emigration of such inveterate prudes, if her screams 
 and situation reached their ears. 
 
 Quietly then, and soberly, did the good lady sit, eyeing the 
 brooms and brushes as they grew darker and darker with the 
 approach of the evening, and consoling herself with the cer- 
 tainty that her release must eventually take place. 
 
 Meanwhile, to return to myself. I found Lord Vincent at 
 Galignani's, carefully looking over "Choice Extracts from the 
 best English Authors." 
 
 "Ah, my good fellow!" said he, "I am delighted to see 
 you : I made such a capital quotation just now : the young 
 Benningtons were drowning a poor devil of a puppy ; the 
 youngest (to whom the mother belonged) looked on with a 
 grave, earnest face, till the last kick was over, and then burst 
 into tears. ' Why do you cry so ? ' said I. ' Because it was so 
 cruel in us to drown the poor puppy ! ' replied the juvenile 
 Philocunos. ' Pooh ! ' said I ; " Quid juvat errores mersdjam 
 puppe fateri ? " Was it not good ? You remember it in Clau- 
 dian, eh, Pelham ? Think of its being thrown away on those 
 Latinless young lubbers ! Have you seen anything of Mr. 
 Thornton lately ? " 
 
 " No," said I, " I've not ; but I am determined to have that 
 pleasure soon." 
 
 " You will do as you please," said Vincent, "but you will be 
 like the child playing with edged tools." 
 
 " I am not a child," said I, " so the simile is not good. He 
 must be the devil himself, or a Scotchman at least, to take 
 me in." 
 
 Vincent shook his head. " Come and dine with me at the 
 Rocher," said he ; " we are a party of six choice spirits all." 
 
 "Volontiers ; but we can stroll in the Tuileries first, if you 
 have no other engagement." 
 
 " None," said Vincent, putting his arm in mine. 
 
 After an hour's walk Vincent suddenly recollected that he 
 had a commission of a very important nature in the Rue J. J. 
 Rousseau. This was to buy a monkey. "It is for Wormwood," 
 said he, " who has written me a long letter, describing its 
 qualities and qualifications. I suppose he wants it for some
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. Si 
 
 practical joke some embodied bitterness. Heaven forbid I 
 should thwart him in so charitable a design ! " 
 
 "Amen," said I ; and we proceeded together to the monkey- 
 fancier. After much deliberation, we at last decided upon the 
 most hideous animal I ever beheld it was of a no, I will not 
 attempt to describe it, it would be quite impossible ! Vincent 
 was so delighted with our choice, that he insisted upon carry- 
 ing it away immediately. 
 
 " Is it quite quiet ? " I asked. 
 
 " Comme un oiseau" said the man. 
 
 We called & fiacre, paid for monsieur Jocko, and drove to 
 Vincent's apartments ; there we found, however, that his valet 
 had gone out and taken the key. 
 
 " Hang it," said Vincent, " it does not signify ! We'll carry 
 le petit-monsieur with us to the Rocher." 
 
 Accordingly we all three once more entered the fiacre, and drove 
 to the celebrated restaurateur's of the Rue Mont Orgueil. O, 
 blissful recollections of that dinner ! How at this moment 
 you crowd upon my delighted remembrance ! Lonely and 
 sorrowful as I now sit, digesting with many a throe the iron 
 thews of a British beefsteak more Anglico immeasurably 
 tough I see the grateful apparitions of JEscallopes de Saumon 
 and Laitances de Carpes rise in a gentle vapor before my eyes ! 
 breathing a sweet and pleasant odor, and contrasting the 
 dream-like delicacies of their hue and aspect with the dire and 
 dure realities which now weigh so heavily on the region below 
 my heart ! And thou, most beautiful of all thou evening star 
 of entremets thou that delightest in truffles, and gloriest in a 
 dark cloud of sauces exquisite foie gras! Have I forgotten 
 thee ? Do I not, on the contrary, see thee smell thee taste 
 thee and almost die with rapture of thy possession ? What 
 though the goose, of which thou art a part, has, indeed, been 
 roasted alive by a slow fire, in order to increase thy divine pro- 
 portions y^t has not our Almanack the Almanack des Gour- 
 mands truly declared that the goose rejoiced amid all her 
 tortures because of the glory that awaited her ? Did she not, in 
 prophetic vision, behold her enlarged and ennobled foie dilate 
 into pates and steam into saute's the companion of truffles 
 the glory of dishes the delight the treasure the transport 
 of gourmands ! O, exalted among birds apotheosized goose, 
 did not thy heart exalt even when thy liver parched and swelled 
 within thee, from that most agonizing death ; and didst thou 
 not, like the Indian at the stake, triumph in the very torments 
 which alone could render thee illustrious ?
 
 82 PELHAM J 
 
 After dinner we grew exceedingly merry. Vincent punned 
 and quoted; we laughed and applauded; and our Burgundy 
 went round with an alacrity to which every new joke gave an 
 additional impetus. Monsieur Jocko was by no means the 
 dullest in the party ; he cracked his nuts with as much grace 
 as we did our jests, and grinned and chattered as facetiously 
 as the best of us. After coffee we were all so pleased with one 
 another that we resolved not to separate, and accordingly we 
 adjourned to my rooms, Jocko and all, to find new revelries 
 and grow brilliant over Curapoa punch. 
 
 We entered my salon with a roar, and set Bedos to work at 
 the punch forthwith. Bedos, that Ganymede of a valet, had 
 himself but just arrived, and was unlocking the door as we 
 entered. We soon blew up a glorious fire, and our spirits 
 brightened in proportion. Monsieur Jocko sate on Vincent's 
 knee " Ne monstrum," as he classically termed it. One of 
 our compotatores was playing with it. Jocko grew suddenly 
 in earnest a grin a scratch, and a bite, were the work of a 
 moment. 
 
 " Ne quid nimis now," said Vincent gravely, instead of 
 endeavoring to soothe the afflicted party, who grew into a 
 towering passion. Nothing but Jocko's absolute disgrace 
 could indeed have saved his life from the vengeance of the 
 sufferer. 
 
 " Whither shall we banish him?" said Vincent. 
 
 *' Oh," I replied, " put him out in that back passage ; the 
 outer door is shut ; he'll be quite safe "; and to the passage he 
 was therefore immediately consigned. 
 
 It was in this place, the reader will remember, that the 
 hapless dame du chdteau was at that very instant in "durance 
 vile." Unconscious of this fact, I gave Bedos the key ; he 
 took the condemned monkey, opened the door, thrust Jocko 
 in, and closed it again. Meanwhile we resumed our merri- 
 ment. 
 
 " Nunc est bibendum" said Vincent, as Bedos placed the 
 punch on the table. " Give us a toast, Dartmore." 
 
 Lord Dartmore was a young man, with tremendous spirits, 
 which made up for wit. He was just about to reply, when a 
 loud shriek was heard from Jocko's place of banishment : a 
 sort of scramble ensued, and the next moment the door was 
 thrown violently open, and in rushed the terrified landlady, 
 screaming like a sea-gull, and bearing Jocko aloft upon her 
 shoulders, from which "bad eminence " he was grinning and 
 chattering with the fury of fifty devils., She ran twice, round
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 83 
 
 the room, and then sank on the floor in hysterics, feigned or 
 real. We lost no time in hastening to her assistance ; but the 
 warlike Jocko, still sitting upon her, refused to permit one of 
 us to approach. There he sat, turning from side to side, 
 showing his sharp, white teeth, and uttering from time to time 
 the most menacing and diabolical sounds. 
 
 " What the deuce shall we do ?" cried Dartmore. 
 
 " Do?" said Vincent, who was convulsed with laughter, and 
 yet endeavoring to speak gravely ; " why, watch like L. 
 Opimius, ' ne quid respublica detriments caperet' " 
 
 "By Jove, Pelham, he will scratch out the lady's beaux yeux" 
 cried the good-natured Dartmore, endeavoring to seize the 
 monkey by the tail, for which he very narrowly escaped with 
 an unmutilated visage. But the man who had before suffered 
 by Jocko's ferocity, and whose breast was still swelling with re- 
 venge, was glad of so favorable an opportunity and excuse for 
 wreaking it. He seized the poker, made three strides to 
 Jocko, who set up an ineffable cry of defiance and with a sin- 
 gle blow split the skull of the unhappy monkey in twain. It 
 fell with one convulsion on the ground and gave up the ghost. 
 
 We then raised the unfortunate landlady, placed her on the 
 sofa, and Dartmore administered a plentiful potation of the Cu- 
 racoa punch. By slow degrees she revived, gave three most 
 doleful suspirations, and then, starting up, gazed wildly around 
 her. Half of us were still laughing my unfortunate self 
 among the number ; this the enraged landlady no sooner per- 
 ceived than she imagined herself the victim of some precon- 
 certed villany. Her lips .trembled with passion ; she uttered 
 the most dreadful imprecations ; and had I not retired into a 
 corner, and armed myself with the dead body of Jocko, which 
 I wielded with exceeding valor, she might, with the simple 
 weapons with which nature had provided her hands, have for- 
 ever demolished the loves and graces that abide in the face of 
 Henry Pelham. 
 
 When at last she saw that nothing hostile was at present to 
 be effected, she drew herself up, and giving Bedos a tremendous 
 box on the ear, as he stood grinning beside her, marched out 
 of the room. 
 
 We then again rallied around the table, more than ever dis- 
 posed to be brilliant, and kept up' till daybreak a continued 
 fire of jests upon the heroine of the passage : " cum qud (as Vin- 
 cent happily observed) clauditur adversis innoxia simia fatis ! "
 
 84 PELHAM 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 " Show me not thy painted beauties, 
 These impostures I defy." GEORGE WITHERS. 
 
 The cave of Falri smelt not more delicately ; on every side appeared the 
 marks of drunkenness and gluttony, At the upper end of the cave the sor- 
 cerer lay extended," etc. Mirglip the Persian, in the Tales of the Genii. 
 
 I WOKE the next morning with an aching head and feverish 
 frame. Ah, those midnight carousals, how glorious they 
 would be if there were no next morning ! I took my sauterne 
 and soda-water in my dressing-room : and, as indisposition 
 always makes me meditative, I thought over all I had done 
 since my arrival at Paris. I had become (that, Heaven knows, 
 I soon manage to do) rather a talked-of and noted character. 
 It is true that I was everywhere abused one found fault with 
 my neckcloth, another with my mind the lank Mr. Aberton 
 declared that I put my hair in papers, and the stuffed Sir 
 Henry Millington said I was a thread-paper myself. One 
 blamed my riding, a* second my dancing, a third wondered 
 how any woman could like me, and a fourth said that no 
 woman ever could. 
 
 On one point, however, all friends and foes were alike 
 agreed : viz., that I was a consummate puppy, and excessively 
 well satisfied with myself. Perhaps they were not much mis- 
 taken there. Why is it, by the by, that to be pleased with one- 
 self is the surest way of offending everybody else ? If any 
 one, male or female, an evident admirer of his or her own 
 perfections, enter a room, how perturbed, restless, and un- 
 happy every individual of the offender's sex instantly becomes : 
 for them not only enjoyment but tranquillity is over, and if 
 they could annihilate the unconscious victim of their spleen, I 
 fully believe no Christian toleration would come in the way of 
 that last extreme of animosity. For a coxcomb there is no 
 mercy, for a coquette no pardon. They are, as it were, the 
 dissenters of society ; no crime is too bad to be imputed to 
 them ; they do not believe the religion of others they set up 
 a deity of their own vanity all the orthodox vanities of others 
 are offended. Then comes the bigotry, the stake, the auto-da- 
 fe of scandal. What, alas ! is so implacable as the rage of 
 vanity ? What so restless as its persecution ? Take from a 
 man his fortune, his house, his reputation, but flatter his vanity 
 in each, and he will forgive you. Heap upon him benefits, fill 
 him with blessings : but irritate his self-love, and you have
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN 85 
 
 made the very best man ungrateful. He will sting you if he 
 can : you cannot blame him ; you yourself have instilled the 
 venom. This is one reason why you must rarely reckon upon 
 gratitude in conferring an obligation. It is a very high mind 
 to which gratitude is not a painful sensation. If you wish to 
 please, you will find it wiser to receive solicit even favors, 
 than accord them : for the vanity of the obliger is always flat- 
 tered, that of the obligee rarely. 
 
 Well, this is an unforeseen digression ; let me return ! I 
 had mixed, of late, very little with the English. My mother's 
 introduction had procured me the entree of the best French 
 houses ; and to them, therefore, my evenings were usually de- 
 voted. Alas ! that was a happy time, when my carriage used to 
 await me at the door of the Rocher de Cancale, and then whirl 
 me to a succession of visits, varying in their degree and nature 
 as the whim prompted : now to the brilliant soirees of Madame de 
 
 , or to the appartement au troistime of some less celebrated 
 
 daughter of dissipation and ecarte 1 ; now to the literary conver- 
 saziones of the Duchess de D s, or the Vicomte d' , 
 
 and then to the feverish excitement of the gambling-house. 
 Passing from each with the appetite for amusement kept alive 
 by variety ; finding in none a disappointment, and in every one 
 a welcome ; full of the health which supports, and the youth 
 which colors, all excess or excitement, I drained with an un- 
 sparing lip whatever enjoyment that enchanting metropolis 
 could afford. 
 
 I have hitherto said but little of the Duchesse de Perpignan ; 
 I think it necessary now to give some account of that person- 
 age. Ever since the evening I had met her at the ambassa- 
 dor's I paid her the most unceasing attentions. I soon dis- 
 covered that she had a curious sort of liaison with one of the 
 attache's a short, ill-made gentleman, with high shoulders and 
 a pale face, who wore a blue coat and buff waistcoat, wrote bad 
 verses, and thought himself handsome. All Paris said she was 
 excessively enamoured of this youth. As for me, I had not 
 known her four days before I discovered that she could not be 
 excessively enamoured of anything but an oyster /a/^ and Lord 
 Byron's " Corsair." Her mind was the most marvellous //- 
 lange of sentiment and its opposite. In her amours she was 
 Lucretia herself ; in her epicurism Apicius^would have yielded 
 to her. She was pleased with sighs, but she adored suppers. 
 She would leave everything for her lover, except her dinner. 
 The attach^ soon quarrelled with her, and I was installed into 
 the platonic honors of his office-
 
 86 JPELHAM ; 
 
 At first 1 own I was flattered by her choice, and though she 
 was terribly exacting of my petits soins, I managed to keep up 
 her affection, and, what is still more wonderful, my own, for 
 the better part of a month. What then cooled me was the 
 following occurrence : 
 
 I was in her boudoir one evening when her femme de chambre 
 came to tell us that the Due was in the passage. Notwith- 
 standing the innocence of our attachment, the Duchesse was 
 in a violent fright ; a small door was at the left of the otto- 
 man, on which we were sitting. " Oh, no, no, not there," cried 
 the lady ; but I, who saw no other refuge, entered it forthwith, 
 and before she could ferret me out, the Due was in the room. 
 
 In the mean while, I amused myself by examining the won- 
 ders of the new world into which I had so abruptly immerged : 
 on a small table before me was deposited a remarkably con- 
 structed night-cap ; I examined it as a curiosity ; on each side 
 was placed une petite cotelette de veau cru, sewed on with green- 
 colored silk (I remember even the smallest minutias) ; a beau- 
 tiful golden wig (the Duchesse never liked me to play with her 
 hair) was on a block close by, and on another table was a set 
 of teeth, (Tune blancheur eblouissante. In this manufactory of 
 a beauty I remained for a quarter of an hour ; at the end of 
 that time, the abigail (the Duchesse had the grace to disappear) 
 released me, and I flew downstairs like a spirit from purgatory. 
 
 From that moment the Duchesse honored me with her most 
 deadly abhorrence. Equally silly and wicked, her schemes of 
 revenge were as ludicrous in their execution as remorseless in 
 their design : at one time I narrowly escaped poison in a cup 
 of coffee ; at another she endeavored to stab me to the heart 
 with a paper-cutter. 
 
 Notwithstanding my preservation from these attacks, my fair 
 enemy had resolved on my destruction, and another means of 
 attempting it still remained, which the reader will yet have the 
 pleasure of learning. 
 
 Mr. Thornton had called upon me twice, and twice I had re- 
 turned the visit, but neither of us had been at home to benefit 
 by these reciprocities of politeness. His acquaintance with my 
 mysterious hero of the gambling-house and the Jardin des 
 Plantes, and the keen interest I took, in spite of myself, in that 
 unaccountable person, whom I was persuaded I had seen before 
 in some very different scene, and under very different circum- 
 stances, made me desirous to improve an acquaintance which, 
 from Vincent's detail, I should otherwise have been anxious to 
 avoid. I therefore resolved to make another attempt to find
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 8? 
 
 him at home ; and my headache being somewhat better, I took 
 my way to his apartments in the Faubourg St. Germain. 
 
 I love that quartier ! If ever I go to Paris again, I shall re- 
 side there. It is a different world from the streets usually 
 known to, and tenanted by, the English there, indeed, you 
 are among the French, the fossilized remains of the old regime ; 
 the very houses have an air of desolate, yet venerable, gran- 
 deur ; you never pass by the white and modern mansion of a 
 nouveau riche ; all, even to the ruggedness of the/tff'/, breathes 
 a haughty disdain of innovation. You cross one of the numer- 
 ous bridges and you enter into another time you are inhal- 
 ing the atmosphere of a past century ; no flaunting boutique, 
 French in its trumpery, English in its prices, stares you in the 
 face ; no stiff coats and unnatural gaits are seen anglicising up 
 the melancholy streets. Vast hotels, with their gloomy front- 
 als, and magnificent contempt of comfort : shops, such as shops 
 might have been in the aristocratic days of Louis Quatorze, 
 ere British contamination made them insolent and dear ; public 
 edifices, still eloquent of the superb charities of le grande 
 nwnarque j carriages with their huge bodies and ample deco- 
 rations ; horses, with their Norman dimensions and undocked 
 honors ; men, on whose more high, though not less courteous, 
 demeanor the Revolution seems to have wrought no demo- 
 cratic plebeianism all strike on the mind with a vague and 
 nameless impression of antiquity ; a something solemn even in 
 gaiety, and faded in pomp, appears to linger over all you be- 
 hold ! there are the Great French People unadulterated by 
 change, unsullied with the commerce of the vagrant and various 
 tribes that throng their mighty mart of enjoyments. 
 
 The strangers who fill the quartiers on this side the Seine 
 pass not there ; between them and the Faubourg there is a 
 gulf ; the very skies seem different your own feelings, 
 thoughts, nature itself alter, when you have passed that Styx 
 which divides the wanderers from the habitants ; your spirits 
 are not so much damped, as tinged, refined, ennobled, by a 
 certain inexpressible awe ; you are girt with the stateliness of 
 eld, and you tread the gloomy streets with the dignity of a 
 man who is recalling the splendors of an ancient court where 
 he once did homage.* 
 
 I arrived at Thornton's chambers in the Rue St. Dominique. 
 " Monsieur, est-il chez lui ? " said I to the ancient porteresjS, 
 who was reading one of Crebillon's novels. 
 
 * It was in 1827 that this was first published ; the glory (by this time) has probably left 
 the Faubourg.
 
 88 PELHAM ; 
 
 " Out', Monsieur, au quatrieme" was the answer. I turned to 
 the dark and unclean staircase, and, after incredible exertion 
 and fatigue, arrived at last at the elevated abode of Mr. 
 Thornton. 
 
 " JSntrez" cried a voice in answer to my rap. I obeyed the 
 signal, and found myself in a room of tolerable dimensions and 
 multiplied utilities. A decayed silk curtain of a dingy blue, 
 drawn across a recess, separated the chambre a coucherirom the 
 salon. It was at present only half drawn, and did not, there- 
 fore, conceal the mysteries of the den within ; the bed was still 
 unmade, and apparently of no very inviting cleanliness ; a red 
 handkerchief, that served as a night-cap, hung pendent from the 
 foot of the bed : at a little distance from it, more towards the 
 pillow, were a shawl, a parasol, and an old slipper. On a table, 
 which stood between the two dull, filmy windows, were placed 
 a cracked bowl, still reeking with the lees of gin-punch, two 
 bottles half full, a mouldy cheese, and a salad dish : on the 
 ground beneath the table lay two huge books, and a woman's 
 bonnet. 
 
 Thornton himself sat by a small, consumptive fire, in an easy- 
 chair ; another table, still spread with the appliances of break- 
 fast, viz., a coffee-pot, a milk-jug, two cups, a broken loaf, and 
 an empty dish, mingled with a pack of cards, one dice, and an 
 open book de mauvais gout, stood immediately before him. 
 
 Everything around bore some testimony of low debauchery ; 
 and the man himself, with flushed and sensual countenance, his 
 unwashed hands, and the slovenly rakishness of his whole ap- 
 pearance, made no unfitting representation of the genius loci. 
 
 All that I have described, together with a flitting shadow of 
 feminine appearance, escaping through another door, my quick 
 eye discovered in the same instant that I made my salutation. 
 
 Thornton rose, with an air half careless and half abashed, 
 and expressed, in more appropriate terms than his appearance 
 warranted, his pleasurable surprise at seeing me at last. There 
 was, however, a singularity in his conversation which gave it an 
 air both of shrewdness and vulgarity. This was, as may before 
 have been noted, a profuse intermixture of proverbs, some 
 stale, some new, some sensible enough, and all savoring of a 
 vocabulary carefully eschewed by every man of ordinary re- 
 finement in conversation. 
 
 "I have but a small tenement," said he, smiling; "but, 
 thank Heaven, at Paris a man is not made by his lodgings. 
 Small house, small care. Few garfons have indeed a more 
 sumptuous apartment than myself."
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 89 
 
 "True," said I ; "and if I may judge by the bottles on the 
 opposite table, and the bonnet beneath it, you find that no 
 abode is too humble or too exalted for the solace of the 
 senses." 
 
 " 'Fore Gad, you are in the right, Mr. Pelham," replied Thorn- 
 ton, with a loud, coarse, chuckling laugh, which, more than a 
 year's conversation could have done, let me into the secrets of his 
 character. " I care not a rush for the decorations of the table, 
 so that the cheer be good ; nor for the gewgaws of the head- 
 dress, so long as the face is pretty ' the taste of the kitchen is 
 
 better than the smell.' Do you go much to Madame B 's 
 
 in the Rue Gretry eh, Mr. Pelham ? Ah, I'll be bound 
 you do." 
 
 "No," said I, with a loud laugh, but internal shiver; "but 
 you know where to find le bon vin et les jolies filles. As for me, 
 I am still a stranger in Paris, and amuse myself but very indif- 
 ferently." 
 
 Thornton's face brightened. "I tell you what, my good 
 fellow I beg pardon I mean Mr. Pelham I can show you 
 the best sport in the world, if you can only spare me a little of 
 your time this very evening, perhaps?" 
 
 " I fear," said I, " I am engaged all the present week ; but I 
 long for nothing more than to cultivate an acquaintance, Seem- 
 ingly so exactly to my own taste" 
 
 Thorton's gray eyes twinkled. " Will you breakfast with me 
 on Saturday ? " said he. 
 
 " I shall be too happy," I replied. 
 
 There was now a short pause. I took advantage of it. " I 
 think," said I, " I have seen you once or twice with a tall, 
 handsome man, in a loose great-coat of very singular color. 
 Pray, if not impertinent, who is he ? I am sure I have seen 
 him before in England." 
 
 I looked full upon Thornton as I said this ; he changed 
 color, and answered my gaze with a quick glance from his 
 small, glittering eye, before he replied, " I scarcely know who 
 you mean, my acquaintance is so large and miscellaneous at 
 Paris. It might have been Johnson, or Smith, or Howrad, or 
 anybody, in short." 
 
 " It is a man nearly six feet high," said I, " thin, and re- 
 markably well made, of a pale complexion, light eyes, and very 
 black hair, mustachios, and whiskers. I saw him with you 
 once in the Bois de Boulogne, and once in a hell in the Palais 
 Royal. Surely, now you will recollect who he is ? " 
 
 Thornton, was evidently disconcerted. " Oh ! " said he
 
 90 PELHAM J 
 
 after a short pause, and another of his peculiarly quick, sly 
 glances. "Oh, that man; I have known him a very short 
 time. What is his name? let me see I " and Mr. Thornton af- 
 fected to look down in a complete reverie of dim remem- 
 brances. 
 
 I saw, however, that from time to time his eye glanced up to 
 me, with a restless, inquisitive expression, and as instantly re- 
 tired. 
 
 "Ah," said I carelessly, " I think I know who he is! " 
 
 "Who ?" cried Thornton eagerly, and utterly off his guard. 
 
 "And yet," I pursued, without noticing the interruption, "it 
 scarcely can be the color of the hair is so very different." 
 
 Thornton again appeared to relapse into his recollections. 
 
 "War Warbur ah, I have it now !" cried he, "Warbur- 
 ton that's it that's the name. Is it the one you supposed, 
 Mr. Pelham?" 
 
 " No," said I, apparently perfectly satisfied. " I was quite 
 mistaken. Good-morning, I did not think it was so late. On 
 Saturday, then, Mr. Thornton auflaisir!" 
 
 " A cunning dog ! " said I to myself, as I left the apartments. 
 " However, on pent fare trop fin. I shall have him yet." 
 
 The surest way to make a dupe is to let your victim suppose 
 you are his. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 " Voili de 1'erudition."* Les Femmes Savantes. 
 
 I FOUND, on my return, covered with blood, and foaming 
 with passion, my inestimable valet Bedos ! 
 
 "What's the matter?" said I. 
 
 " Matter ! " repeated Bedos, in a tone almost inarticulate 
 with rage ; and then, rejoicing at the opportunity of unbosom- 
 ing his wrath, he poured out a vast volley of ivrognes and ca- 
 rogncs, against our dame du chateau, of monkey reminiscence. 
 With great difficulty, I gathered at last, from his vituperations, 
 that the enraged landlady, determined to wreak her venge- 
 ance on some one, had sent for him into her appai'tement, 
 accosted him with a smile, bade him sit down, regaled him with 
 cold vol-au-vent and a glass of Cura9oa, and, while he was 
 felicitating himself on his good fortune, slipped out or the 
 room: presently, three tall fellows entered with sticks. 
 
 * There's erudition for you.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 9! 
 
 " We'll teach you," said the biggest of them " we'll teach 
 you to lock up ladies, for the indulgence of your vulgar amuse- 
 ment"; and, without one other word, they fell upon Bedos 
 with incredible zeal and vigor. The valiant valet defended 
 himself, tooth and nail, for some time, for which he only got 
 the more soundly belabored. In the mean while the landlady 
 entered, and, with the same gentle smile as before, begged him 
 to make no ceremony, to proceed with his present amusement, 
 and when he was tired with the exercise, hoped he would 
 refresh himself with another glass of Curafoa. 
 
 "It was this," said Bedos, with a whimper, "which hurt me 
 the most, to think she should serve me so cruelly, after I had 
 eaten so plentifully of the vol-au-vent ; envy and injustice I 
 can bear, but treachery stabs me to the heart." 
 
 When these threshers of men were tired, the lady satisfied, 
 and Bedos half dead, they suffered the unhappy valet to with- 
 draw ; the mistress of the hotel giving him a note, which she 
 desired, with great civility, that he would transmit to me on 
 my return. This, I found, inclosed my bill, and informed me 
 that, my month being out on the morrow, she had promised 
 my rooms to a particular friend, and begged I would, therefore, 
 have the bontd to choose another apartment. 
 
 "Carry my luggage forthwith," said I, "to the Hotel de 
 Mirabeau" : and that very evening I changed my abode. 
 
 I was engaged that day to a literary dinner at the Marquis 
 
 d'Al ; and as I knew I should meet Vincent, I felt some 
 
 pleasure in repairing to my entertainer's hotel. They were 
 just going to dinner as I entered. A good many English were 
 of the party. The good-natured, in all senses of the word, 
 
 Lady , who always affected to pet me, cried aloud, " Pel- 
 
 ham, mon joli petit migjion^ I have not seen you for an age do 
 give me your arm." 
 
 Madame d'Anville was just before me, and, as I looked at 
 her, I saw that her eyes were full of tears ; my heart smote me 
 for my late inattention, and going up to her, I only nodded to 
 
 Lady , and said, in reply to her invitation, " Non,perfide, 
 
 it is my turn to be cruel now. Remember your flirtation with 
 Mr. Howard de Howard." 
 
 " Pooh ! " said Lady , taking Lord Vincent's arm, 
 
 your jealousy does indeed rest upon ' a trifle light as air.' " 
 
 " Do you forgive me ? " whispered I to Madame d'Anville, 
 as I handed her to the salle a manger. 
 
 " Does not love forgive everything ? " was her answer. 
 
 "At least," thought I, "it never talks in those pretty phrases !"
 
 92 PELHAM J 
 
 The conversation soon turned upon books. As for me, I 
 rarely at that time took a share in those discussions ; indeed, 
 I have long laid it down as a rule, that when your fame, or 
 your notoriety, is once established, you never gain by talking 
 to more than one person at a time. If you don't shine, you 
 are a fool ; if you do, you are a bore. You must become 
 either ridiculous or unpopular either hurt your own self-love 
 by stupidity, or that of others by wit. I therefore sat in silence, 
 looking exceedingly edified, and now and then muttering 
 " Good ! " "True ! " Thank Heaven, however, the suspension 
 of one faculty only increases the vivacity of the others ; my 
 eyes and ears always watch like sentinels over the repose of my 
 lips. Careless and indifferent as I seem to all things, nothing 
 ever escapes me : I have two peculiarities which serve me, it 
 may be, instead of talent ; / observe, and I remember. 
 
 "You have seen Jouy's ' Hermitedela Chaussee d Antin ? " 
 said our host to Lord Vincent. 
 
 " I have, and think meanly of it. There is a perpetual aim 
 at something pointed, which as perpetually merges into some- 
 thing dull. He is like a bad swimmer, strikes out with great 
 force, makes a confounded splash, and never gets a yard the fur- 
 ther for it. It is a great effort not to sink. Indeed, Monsieur 
 d'A , your literature is at a very reduced ebb : bombas- 
 tic in the drama, shallow in philosophy, mawkish in poetry, your 
 writers in the present day seem to think, with Boileau 
 
 ' Souvent de tous nos manx la raison est le pire.' " * 
 
 " Surely," cried Madame d'Anville, " you will allow De la 
 Marline's poetry to be beautiful ? " 
 
 "I allow it," said he, "to be among the best you have ; and 
 I know a very few lines in your language equal to the two first 
 stanzas in his ' Meditation on Napoleon,' or to those exquisite 
 verses called '-<? Lac'j but you will allow, also, that he wants 
 originality and nerve. His thoughts are pathetic, but not 
 deep ; he whines, but sheds no tears. He has in his imitation 
 of Lord Byron reversed the great miracle ; instead of turning 
 water into wine, he has turned wine into water. Besides, he is 
 so unpardonably obscure. He thinks with Baccnus (you re- 
 member, D'A , the line in Euripides, which I will not 
 
 quote), that ' there is something august in the shades '; but he 
 has applied this thought wrongly in his obscurity there is 
 nothing sublime it is the background of a Dutch picture. It 
 
 * Often of all our ills the worst is reason.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 93 
 
 is only a red herring, or an old hat, which he has invested with 
 such pomposity of shadow and darkness." 
 
 "But his verses are so smooth," said Lady . 
 
 "Ah ! " answered Vincent 
 
 " ' Quand la rime enfin se trouve au bout des vers, 
 Qu' importe que le reste y soil mis de travers ? ' " * 
 
 "Helas!" said the Viscount d'A , an author of no small 
 
 celebrity himself ; " I agree with you we shall never again see 
 a Voltaire or a Rousseau." 
 
 "There is but little justice in those complaints, often as they 
 are made," replied Vincent. " You may not, it is true, see a 
 Voltaire or a Rousseau, but you will see their equals. Genius 
 can never be exhausted by one individual. In our country, the 
 poets. after Chaucer in the fifteenth century complained of the 
 decay of their art they did not anticipate Shakspeare. In 
 Hayley's time, who ever dreamt of the ascension of Byron ? 
 Yet Shakspeare and Byron came like the bridegroom ' in the 
 dead of night'; and you have the same probability of produc- 
 ing not, indeed, another Rousseau, but a writer to do equal 
 honor to your literature." 
 
 " I think," said Lady , "that Rousseau's 'Julie' is over- 
 rated. I had heard so much of ' La Nouvelle Heloise ' when 
 I was a girl, and been so often told that it was destruction to 
 read it, that I bought the book the very day after I was mar- 
 ried. I own to you that I could not get through it." 
 
 "I am not surprised at it," answered Vincent ; "but Rous- 
 seau is not the less a genius for all that. There is no plot in 
 his novel to bear out the style, and he himself is right when he 
 says, ' this book will suit few readers.' One letter would de- 
 light every one four volumes of them are a surfeit it is the 
 tonjours perdrix. But the chief beauty of that wonderful con- 
 ception of an impassioned and meditative mind is to be found 
 in the inimitable manner in which the thoughts are embodied, 
 and in the tenderness, the truth, the profundity of the thoughts 
 themselves. When Lord Edouard says, ' f'est lechemin dcs pas- 
 sions qiri m'a conduit a la philosophic J \ he inculcates, in one 
 simple phrase, a profound and unanswerable truth. It is in 
 these remarks that nature is chiefly found in the writings of 
 Rousseau. Too much engrossed in himself to be deeply 
 skilled in the characters of others, that very self -study had yet 
 
 * No matter what the stuff, if good the rhyme 
 The rubble stands cemented with the lime. 
 
 PAKAPIIIJASK. 
 t It is the path of the passions which has conducted me to philosophy.
 
 94 PELHAM ; 
 
 given him a knowledge of the more hidden recesses of the 
 heart. He could perceive at once the motive and the cause of 
 actions, but he wanted the patience to trace the elaborate and 
 winding progress of their effects. He saw the passions in their 
 home, but he could not follow them abroad. He knew man- 
 kind in the general, but not men in the detail. Thus, when he 
 makes an aphorism, or reflection, it comes home at once to you 
 as true, but when he would analyze that reflection when he 
 argues, reasons, and attempts to prove, you reject him as unnat- 
 ural, or you refute him as false. It is then that he partakes of 
 that manic commune which he imputes to other philosophers, 
 ' denier ce qui est, et d'expliquer ce qtii n' est pas.' " * 
 
 There was a short pause. " I think," said Madame d'An- 
 ville, " that it is in those reflections which you admire so much 
 in Rousseau, that our authors in general excel." 
 
 "You are right," said Vincent, "and for this reason with 
 you men of letters are nearly always men of the world. Hence 
 their quick perceptions are devoted to human beings as well as 
 to books. They make observations acutely, and embody them 
 with grace ; but it is worth remarking, that the same cause which 
 produced the aphorism frequently prevents its being profound. 
 These literary gtns du monde have the tact to observe, but not 
 the patience, perhaps not the time, to investigate. They 
 make the maxim, but they never explain to you the train of 
 reasoning which led to it. Hence they are more brilliant than 
 true. An English writer will seldom dare to make a maxim, 
 involving, perhaps, in two lines, one of the most important 
 of moral problems, without bringing pages to support his dic- 
 tum. A French essayist leaves it wholly to itself. He tells 
 you neither how he came by his reasons, nor their conclusion : 
 ' le plus fou souvent est le plus satisfait. ' f Consequently, if 
 less tedious than the English, your reasoners are more dangerous, 
 and ought rather to be considered as models of terseness than 
 of reflection. A man might learn to think sooner from your 
 writers, but he will learn to think justly sooner from ours. 
 Many observations of La Bruyere and Rochefoucault the latter 
 especially have obtained credit for truth solely from their 
 point. They possess exactly the same merit as the very sen- 
 sible permit me to add, very French line in Corneille : 
 
 ' Ma plus douce esperance est de perdre 1'espoir.' " \ 
 The Marquis took advantage of the silence which followed 
 
 * To deny that which is, and explain that which is not. 
 t He who has the least sense is the most satisfied, 
 % My sweetest hoping is to forfeit hope,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 95 
 
 Vincent's criticism to rise from table. We all (except Vincent, 
 who took leave) adjourned to the salon. " Qui est cet homme 
 la ? " said one, " comme il est fyris de lui-meme ! " " How silly 
 he is," cried another. " How ugly" said a third. " What a 
 taste in literature such a talker such shallowness, and such 
 assurance not worth the answering could not slip in a word 
 disagreeable, revolting, awkward, slovenly," were the most 
 complimentary opinions bestowed upon the unfortunate Vin- 
 cent. The old railed at his mauvais godt, and the young at his 
 mauvais cceur, for the former always attribute whatever does 
 net correspond to their sentiments to a perversion of taste ; and 
 the latter, whatever does not come up to their enthusiasm to a 
 depravity of heart. 
 
 As for me, I went home, enriched with two new observa- 
 tions : first, that one may not speak of anything relative to a 
 foreign country, as one would if one were a native. National 
 censures become particular affronts. Secondly, that those who 
 know mankind in theory, seldom know it in practice ; the very 
 wisdom that conceives a rule is accompanied with the abstrac- 
 tion, or the vanity, which destroys it. I mean, that the philos- 
 opher of the cabinet is often too diffident to put into action his 
 observations, or too eager for display to conceal their design. 
 Lord Vincent values himself upon his science du monde. He 
 has read much upon men, he has reflected more ; he lays down 
 aphorisms to govern or to please them. He goes into society ; 
 he is cheated by the one half, and the other half he offends. 
 The sage in the cabinet is but a fool in the salon ; and the 
 most consummate men of the world are those who have con- 
 sidered the least on it. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 " Falstaff. What money is in my purse ? 
 Page. Seven groats and two-pence." Second Part of Hemy IV. 
 
 ' En iterum Crispinus ! " 
 
 THE next day a note was brought me, which had been sent 
 to my former lodgings in the Hotel de Paris ; it was from 
 Thornton. 
 
 "My DEAR SIR :" (it began) 
 
 " I am very sorry that particular business will prevent me 
 the pleasure of seeing you at my rooms on Saturday, J hope
 
 96 PELHAM J 
 
 to be more fortunate some other day. I should be glad to 
 introduce you, the first opportunity, to my friends in the Rue 
 Gretry, for I like obliging my countrymen. I am sure, if you 
 were to go there, you would cut and come again one shoulder 
 of mutton drives down another. 
 
 " I beg you to accept my repeated excuses, and remain, dear 
 sir, Your very obedient servant, 
 
 " THOMAS THORNTON. 
 
 " Rue St. Dominique, Friday Morning." 
 
 This letter produced in me many and manifold cogitations. 
 What could possibly have induced Mr. Tom Thornton, rogue 
 as he was, to postpone thus, of his own accord, the plucking of 
 a pigeon, which he had such good reason to believe he had 
 entrapped ? There was evidently no longer the same avidr;y 
 to cultivate my acquaintance as before ; in putting off our 
 appointment with so little ceremony he did not even fix a day 
 for another meeting. What had altered his original designs 
 towards me ? For, if Vincent's account were true, it was 
 natural to suppose that he wished to profit by any acquaintance 
 he might form with me, and therefore such an acquaintance 
 his own interests would induce him to continue and confirm. 
 
 Either, then, he no longer had the same necessity for a dupe, 
 or he no longer imagined I should become one. Yet neither 
 of these suppositions was probable. It was not likely that he 
 should grow suddenly honest, or suddenly rich : nor had I, on 
 the other hand, given him any reason to suppose I was a jot 
 more wary than any other individual he might have imposed 
 upon. On the contrary, I had appeared to seek his acquaint- 
 ance with an eagerness which said but little for my knowledge 
 of the world. The more I reflected, the more I should have 
 been puzzled, had I not connected his present backwardness 
 with his acquaintance with the stranger, whom he termed 
 Warburton. It is true that I had no reason to suppose so : it 
 was a conjecture wholly unsupported, and, indeed, against my 
 better sense ; yet, from some unanalyzed associations, I could 
 not divest myself of the supposition. 
 
 " I will soon see," tho-ught I ; and, wrapping myself in my 
 cloak, for the day was bitterly cold, I bent my way to Thorn- 
 ton's lodgings. I could not explain to myself the deep interest 
 I took in whatever was connected with (the so-called) Warbur- 
 ton, or whatever promised to discover more clearly any 
 particulars respecting him. His behavior in the gambling- 
 house ; his conversation with the woman in the Jardin des
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 97 
 
 Planter ; and the singular circumstance that a man of so very 
 aristocratic an appearance should be connected with Thornton, 
 and only seen in such low scenes, and with such low society, 
 would not have been sufficient so strongly to occupy my mind, 
 had it not been for certain dim recollections, and undefinable 
 associations, that his appearance when present, and my thoughts 
 of him when absent, perpetually recalled. 
 
 As, engrossed with meditations of this nature, I was pass- 
 ing over the Pont Neuf, I perceived the man whom Warbur- 
 ton had so earnestly watched in the gambling-house, and whom 
 my conjectures identified with the " Tyrrell " who had formed 
 the subject of conversation in the Jar din des Plantes, pass 
 slowly before me. There was an appearance of great exhaust- 
 ion in his swarthy and strongly marked countenance. He 
 walked carelessly on, neither looking to the right nor the left, with 
 that air of thought and abstraction common to all men in the habit 
 of indulging any engrossing and exciting passion. 
 
 We were just on the other side of the Seine when I perceived 
 the woman of the Jardin des Plantes approach. Tyrrell (for 
 that, I afterwards discovered, was really his name) started as 
 she came near, and asked her in a tone of some asperity where 
 she had been ? As I was but a few paces behind, I had a clear, 
 full view of the woman's countenance. She was about twenty- 
 eight or thirty years of age. Her features were decidedly 
 handsome, though somewhat too sharp and aquiline. Her 
 eyes were light and rather sunken ; and her complexion be- 
 spoke somewhat of the paleness and languor of ill-health. On 
 the whole, the expression of her face, though decided, was not 
 unpleasing, and when she returned Tyrrell's rather rude salu- 
 tation, it was with a smile, which made her, for the moment, 
 absolutely beautiful. 
 
 " Where have I been to ?" she said, in answer to his inter- 
 rogatory ; "why, I went to look at the New Church, which 
 they told me was so superbe." 
 
 "Methinks," replied the man, "that ours are not precisely 
 the circumstances in which such spectacles are amusing." 
 
 " Nay, Tyrrell," said the woman, as, taking his arm, they 
 walked on together a few paces before me, " nay, we are quite 
 rich now to what we have been ; and, if you do play again, our 
 two hundred pounds may swell into a fortune. Your losses 
 have brought you skill, and you may now turn them into actual 
 advantages." 
 
 Tyrrell did not reply exactly to these remarks, but appeared 
 as if debating with himself. "Two hundred pounds twenty
 
 98 PELHAM J 
 
 already gone ! In a few months all will have melted away. 
 What is it then now but a respite from starvation ? but with 
 luck it may become a competence." 
 
 " And why not have luck ? Many a fortune has been made 
 with a worse beginning," said the woman. 
 
 "True, Margaret," pursued the gambler, "and even without 
 luck, our fate can only commence a month or two sooner 
 better a short doom than a lingering torture." 
 
 " What think you of trying some new game where you have 
 more experience, or where the chances are greater than in that 
 of rouge et noir ?" asked the woman. "Could you not make 
 something out of that tall, handsome man, who, Thornton says 
 is so rich ? " 
 
 " Ah, if one could ! " sighed Tyrrell wistfully. " Thornton 
 tells me that he has won thousands from him, and that they 
 are mere drops in his income. Thornton is a good, easy, care- 
 less fellow, and might let me into a share of the booty ; but 
 then, in what games can I engage him ?" 
 
 Here I passed this well-suited pair, and lost the remainder 
 of their conversation. " Well," thought I, " if this precious 
 personage does starve at last, he will most richly deserve it, 
 partly for his designs on the stranger, principally for his 
 opinion of Thornton. If he were a knave only, one might 
 pity him ; but a knave and fool both are a combination of 
 evil for which there is no intermediate purgatory of opinion 
 nothing short of utter damnation." 
 
 I soon arrived at Mr. Thornton's abode. The same old 
 woman, poring over the same novel of Crebillon, made me 
 the same reply as before ; and accordingly again I ascended 
 the obscure and rugged stairs, which seemed to indicate that 
 the road to vice is not so easy as one generally supposes. I 
 knocked at the door, and, receiving no answering acknowledg- 
 ment, opened it at once. The first thing I saw was the dark, 
 rough coat of Warburton : that person's back was turned to 
 me, and he was talking with some energy to Thornton (who 
 lounged idly in a chair, with one ungartered leg thrown over 
 the elbow). 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Pelham," exclaimed the latter, starting from his 
 not very graceful position, " it gives me great pleasure to see 
 you Mr. Warburton, Mr. Pelham Mr. Pelham, Mr. War- 
 burton." 
 
 My new-made and mysterious acquaintance drew himself 
 up to his full height, and bowed very slightly to my own 
 acknowledgment of the introduction. A low person would
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 99 
 
 have thought him rude. I only supposed him ignorant of the 
 world. No man of the world is uncivil. He turned round, 
 after this stiff condescension, and sank down on the sofa, with 
 his back towards me. 
 
 " I was mistaken," thought I, " when I believed him to b< 
 above such associates as Thornton they are well matched." 
 
 "My dear sir," said Thornton, "I am very sorry I could 
 not see you to breakfast a particular engagement prevented 
 me verbum sap. Mr. Pelham, you take me, I suppose black 
 eyes, white skin, and such an ankle !" and the fellow rubbed 
 his great hands and chuckled. 
 
 " Well," said I, " I cannot blame you, whatever may be my 
 loss a dark eye and a straight ankle are powerful excuses. 
 What says Mr. Warburton to them?" and I turned to the ob- 
 ject of my interrogatory. 
 
 " Really," he answered drily (but in a voice that struck me 
 as feigned and artificial), and without moving from his un- 
 courteous position, " Mr. Thornton only can judge of the nice- 
 ties of his peculiar tastes, or the justice of his general excuses." 
 
 Mr. Warburton said this in a sarcastic, bitter tone. Thorn- 
 ton bit his lips, more, I should think, at the manner than the 
 words, and his small gray eyes sparkled with a malignant and 
 stern expression, which suited the character of his face far 
 better than the careless levity which his glances usually denoted. 
 
 " They are no such great friends, after all," thought I ; 
 " and now let me change my attack. Pray," I asked, "among 
 all your numerous acquaintances at Paris, did you ever meet 
 with a Mr. Tyrrell?" 
 
 Warburton started from his chair, and as instantly re-seated 
 himself. Thornton eyed me with one of those peculiar looks 
 which so strongly reminded me of a dog, in deliberation 
 whether to bite or run away. 
 
 " I do know a Mr. Tyrrell ! " he said, after a short pause. 
 
 " What sort of a person is he?" I asked with an indifferent 
 air " great gamester, is he not ? " 
 
 " He does slap it down on the colors now and then," replied 
 Thornton. " I hope you don't know him, Mr. Pelham ! " 
 
 "Why? "said I, evading the question. "His character is 
 not affected by a propensity so common, unless, indeed, you 
 suppose him to be more a gambler than a gamester, viz., more 
 acute than unlucky." 
 
 " Heaven forbid that I should say any such thing," replied 
 Thornton ; " you wont catch an old lawyer in any such im- 
 prudence."
 
 106 PfcLHAM { 
 
 " The greater the truth, the greater the libel," said Warbur- 
 ton, with a sneer. 
 
 "No," resumed Thornton, "I know nothing against Mr. 
 Tyrrell nothing! He may be a very good man, and I believe 
 he is ; but as a friend, Mr. Pelham (and Mr. Thornton grew 
 quite affectionate), I advise you to have as little as possible to 
 do with that sort of people" 
 
 " Truly," said I, " you have now excited my curiosity. 
 Nothing, you know, is half so inviting as mystery." 
 
 Thornton looked as if he had expected a very different 
 reply ; and Warburton said, in an abrupt tone : 
 
 " Whoever enters an unknown road in a fog may easily lose 
 himself." 
 
 " True," said I; "but that very chance is more agreeable 
 than a road where one knows every tree ! Danger and novelty 
 are more to my taste than safety and sameness. Besides, as I 
 rarely gamble myself, I can lose little by an acquaintance with 
 those who do." 
 
 Another pause ensued ; and, finding I had got all from Mr. 
 Thornton and his uncourteous guest that I was likely to do, I 
 took my hat and my departure. 
 
 " I do not know," thought I, " whether I have profited much 
 by this visit. Let me consider. In the first place, I have not 
 ascertained why I was put off by Mr. Thornton for as to his 
 excuse, it could only have availed one day, and had he been 
 anxious for my acquaintance he would have named another. 
 I have, however, discovered, first, that he does not wish me to 
 form any connection with Tyrrell ; secondly, from Warbur- 
 ton's sarcasm, and his glance of reply, that there is but little 
 friendship between these two, whatever be the intimacy ; and, 
 thirdly, that Warburton, from his dorsal positions, so studiously 
 preserved, either wished to be uncivil or unnoticed." . The 
 latter, after all, was the most probable supposition ; and, upon 
 the whole, I felt more than ever convinced that he was th& 
 person I suspected him to be. 

 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. IOI 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 " TeR how the fates my giddy course did guide, 
 The inconstant turns of every changing hour." 
 
 Piers Gaveston, by M. DRAYTON. 
 
 "Je me retire done. Adieu, Paris, adieu !" BOILEAU. 
 
 WHEN I returned home, I found on my table the following 
 letter from my mother : 
 
 " MY DEAR HENRY : 
 
 "I am rejoiced to hear you are so well entertained at Paris ; 
 
 that you have been so often to the D s and C s ; that 
 
 Coulon says you are his best pupil ; that your favorite horse is 
 so much admired ; and that you have only exceeded your al- 
 lowance by pTiooo. With some difficulty I have persuaded 
 your uncle to transmit you an order for ^1500, which will, I 
 trust, make up all your deficiencies. 
 
 " You must not, my dear child, be so extravagant for the future, 
 and for a very good reason, viz., I do not see how you can. 
 Your uncle, I fear, will not again be so generous, and your 
 father cannot assist you. You will therefore see more clearly 
 than ever the necessity of marrying an heiress : there are only two 
 in England (the daughters of gentlemen) worthy of you the 
 most deserving of these has ^10,000 a year, the other has 
 ^"100,000. The former is old, ugly, and very ill-tempered ; 
 the latter tolerably pretty, and agreeable, and just of age : but 
 you will perceive the impropriety of even thinking of her till 
 we have tried the other. I am going to ask both to my Sunday 
 soirees, where I never admit any single men, so that there, at 
 least, you will have no rivals. 
 
 "And now, my dear son, before I enter into a subject of 
 great importance to you, I wish to recall to your mind that 
 pleasure is never an end, butj a means viz., that in your 
 horses and amusements at Paris, your visits and your liaisons, 
 you have always, I trust, remembered that these were only so 
 far desirable as the methods of shining in society. I have 
 now a new scene on which you are to enter, with very different 
 objects in view, and where any pleasures you may find have 
 nothing the least in common with those you at present enjoy. 
 
 "I know that this preface will not frighten you, as it might 
 many silly young men. Your education has been too carefully 
 attended to for you to imagine that any step can be rough or 
 unpleasant which raises you in the world.
 
 102 PELHAM ; 
 
 " To come at once to the point. One of the seats in your 
 uncle's borough of Buyemall is every day expected to be va- 
 cated ; the present member, Mr. Toolington, cannot possibly 
 live a week, and your uncle is very desirous that you should 
 fill the vacancy which Mr. Toolington's death will create. 
 Though I called it Lord Glenmorris's borough, yet it is not 
 entirely at his disposal, which I think very strange, since my 
 father, who was not half so rich as your uncle, could send two 
 members to Parliament without the least trouble in the world 
 but I don't understand these matters. Possibly your uncle 
 (poor man) does not manage them well. However, he says no 
 time is to be lost. You are to return immediately to England, 
 
 and come down to his house in shire. It is supposed you 
 
 will have some contest, but be certain*eventually to come in. 
 
 " You will also, in this visit to Lord Glenmorris, have an 
 excellent opportunity of securing his affection ; you know it is 
 some time since he saw you, and the greater part of his prop- 
 erty is unentailed. If you come into the House, you must 
 devote yourself wholly to it, and I have no fear of your succeed- 
 ing ; for I remember, when you were quite a child, how well 
 yon spoke, ' My name is Norval,' and ' Romans, countrymen, 
 and lovers,' etc. I heard Mr. Canning speak the other day, 
 and I think his voice is quite like yours. In short, I make no 
 doubt of seeing you in the ministry in a very few years. 
 
 "You see, my dear son, that it is absolutely necessary you 
 
 should set out immediately. You will call on Lady , and 
 
 you will endeavor to make firm friends of the most desirable 
 among your present acquaintance ; so that you may be on the 
 same footing you are now, should you return to Paris. This a 
 little civility will easily do ; nobody (as I before observed), 
 except in England, ever loses by politeness ; by the by, that 
 last word is one you must never use, it is too Gloucester Place 
 like. 
 
 " You will also be careful, in returning to England, to make 
 very little use of French phrases ; no vulgarity is moreunpleas- 
 ing. I could not help being exceedingly amused by a book 
 written the other day, which professes to give an accurate 
 description of good society. Not knowing what to make us 
 say in English, the author has made us talk nothing but French. 
 I have often wondered what common people think of us, since 
 in their novels they always affect to portray us so different 
 from themselves. I am very much afraid we are in all things 
 exactly like them, except in being more simple and unaffected. 
 The higher the rank, indeed, the less pretence, because there
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. IOJ 
 
 is less to pretend to. This is the chief reason why our man- 
 ners are better than low persons' ; ours are more natural, 
 because they imitate no one else ; theirs are affected, because 
 they think to imitate ours ; and whatever is evidently borrowed 
 becomes vulgar. Original affectation is sometimes good ton, 
 imitated affectation, always bad. 
 
 "Well, my dear Henry, I must now conclude this letter, 
 already too long to be interesting. I hope to see you about 
 ten days after you receive this ; and if you can bring me a 
 Cachemire shawl, it would give me great pleasure to see your 
 taste in its choice. God bless you, my dear son. 
 " Your very affectionate, 
 
 "FRANCES PELHAM." 
 
 "P.S. I hope you go to church sometimes : I am sorry to 
 see the young men of the present day so irreligious ; it is very 
 bad taste ! Perhaps you could get my old friend, Madame 
 de , to choose the Cachemire. Take care of your health." 
 
 This letter, which I read carefully twice over, threw me into 
 a most serious meditation. My first feeling was regret at leav- 
 ing Paris ; my second, was a certain exultation at the new 
 prospects so unexpectedly opened to me. The great aim of a 
 philosopher is to reconcile every disadvantage by some counter- 
 balance of good ; where he cannot create this, he should 
 imagine it. I began, therefore, to consider less what I should 
 lose than what I should gain, by quitting Paris. In the first 
 place, I was tolerably tired of its amusements : no business is 
 half so fatiguing as pleasure. I longed for a change : behold, 
 a change was at hand ! Then, to say truth, I was heartily glad 
 of a pretence of escaping from a numerous cohort of folles 
 amours, with Madame d'Anville at the head ; and the very 
 circumstance which men who play the German flute and fall 
 in love would have considered the most vexatious, I regarded 
 as the most consolatory. 
 
 My mind being thus relieved from its primary regret at my 
 departure, I now suffered it to look forward to the advantages 
 of my return to England. My love of excitement and variety 
 made an election, in which I was to have both the importance 
 of the contest and the certainty of the success, a very agree- 
 able object of anticipation. 
 
 I was also by this time wearied with my attendance upon 
 women, and eager to exchange it for the ordinary objects of 
 ambition to men : and my vanity whispered that my success 
 in the one was no unfavorable omen of my prosperity in the
 
 IO4 PELHAM ; 
 
 other. On my return to England, with a new scene and a new 
 motive for conduct, I resolved that I would commence a dif- 
 ferent character from that I had hitherto assumed. How far 
 I kept this resolution the various events hereafter to be shown 
 will testify- For myself, I felt that I was now about to enter 
 a more crowded scene upon a more elevated ascent ; and my 
 previous experience of human nature was sufficient to convince 
 me that my safety required a more continual circumspection, 
 and my success a more dignified bearing. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 " Je noterai cela, madame, dans mon livre." MoufeRE. 
 
 I AM not one of those persons who are many days in decid- 
 ing what may be effected in one. " On the third day from 
 this," said I to Bedos, "at half -past nine in the morning, I 
 shall leave Paris for England." 
 
 "Oh, my poor wife ! " said the valet, "she will break her 
 heart if I leave her." 
 
 " Then stay," said I. Bedos shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "I prefer being with monsieur to all things." 
 
 " What, even to your wife ? " The courteous rascal placed 
 his hand to his heart and bowed. "You shall not suffer by 
 your fidelity you shall take your wife with you." 
 
 The conjugal valet's countenance fell. " No," he said, "no ; 
 he could not take advantage of monsieur's generosity." 
 
 " I insist upon it not another word." 
 
 " I beg a thousand pardons of monsieur ; but but my wife 
 js very ill, and unable to travel." 
 
 " Then, in that case, so excellent a husband cannot think of 
 leaving a sick and destitute wife." 
 
 " Poverty has no law ; if I consulted my heart, and stayed, 
 I should starve, et il faut vivre." * 
 
 " Je n'en vois pas la necessite" \ replied I, as I got into my 
 carriage. That repartee, by the way, I cannot claim as my 
 own ; it is the very unanswerable answer of a judge to an ex- 
 postulating thief. 
 
 I made the round of reciprocal regrets, according to the 
 orthodox formula. The Duchesse de Perpignan was the last 
 
 * One must live. 
 t I don't see the necessity of that.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 105 
 
 (Madame d'Anville I reserved for another day) ; that virtuous 
 and wise personage was in the boudoir of reception. I glanced 
 at the fatal door as I entered. I have a great aversion, after 
 anything has once happened and fairly subsided, to make any 
 allusion to its former existence. I never, therefore, talked to 
 the Duchesse about our ancient tgaremens. I spoke, this morn- 
 ing, of the marriage of one person, the death of another, and 
 lastly, the departure of my individual self. 
 
 " When do you go? " she said eagerly. 
 
 " In two days ; my departure will be softened, if I can exe- 
 cute any commissions in England for madame." 
 
 " None," said she, and then in a low tone (that none of the 
 idlers, who were always found at her morning lev&es, should 
 hear), she added : " You will receive a note from me this 
 evening." 
 
 I bowed, changed the conversation, and withdrew. I dined 
 in my own rooms, and spent the evening in looking over the 
 various billets-doux received during my sejour at Paris. 
 
 "Where shall I put all these locks of hair ?" asked Bedos, 
 opening a drawer-full. 
 
 " Into my scrap-book." 
 
 "And all these letters?" 
 
 " Into the fire." 
 
 I was just getting into bed when the Duchesse de Perpig- 
 nan's note arrived. It was as follows : 
 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND : 
 
 " For that word, so doubtful in our language, I may at least 
 call you in your own. I am unwilling that you should leave 
 this country with those sentiments you now entertain of me, 
 unaltered, yet I cannot imagine any form of words of suffi- 
 cient magic to change them. Oh ! if you knew how much I 
 am to be pitied ; if you could look for one moment into this 
 lonely and blighted heart ; if you could trace, step by step, 
 the progress I have made in folly and sin, you would see 
 how much of what you now condemn and despise I have 
 owed to circumstances, rather than to the vice of my disposi- 
 tion. I was born a beauty, educated a beauty, owed fame, 
 rank, power to beauty ; and it is to the advantages I have 
 derived from person that I owe the ruin of my mind. You 
 have seen how much I now derive from art ; I loathe myself 
 as I write that sentence ; but no matter : from that moment 
 you loathed me too. You did not take into consideration 
 that I had been living on excitement all my youth, and that
 
 106 PELHAM J 
 
 in my maturer years I could not relinquish it. I had reigned 
 by my attractions, and I thought every art preferable to re- 
 signing my empire ; but, in feeding my vanity, I had not been 
 able to stifle the dictates of my heart. Love is so natural to 
 a woman that she is scarcely a woman who resists it ; but in 
 me it has been a sentiment, not a passion. 
 
 " Sentiment, then, and vanity, have been my seducers. I 
 said that I owed my errors to circumstances, not to nature. 
 You will say that in confessing love and vanity to be my 
 seducers I contradict this assertion you are mistaken. I 
 mean that though vanity and sentiment were in me, yet the 
 scenes in which I have been placed, and the events which 1 
 have witnessed, gave to those latent currents of action a 
 wrong and a dangerous direction. I was formed to loi>e ; for 
 one whom I did love I could have made every sacrifice. I 
 married a man I hated, and I only learnt the depths of my 
 heart when it was too late. 
 
 " Enough of this ; you will leave this country ; we shall 
 never meet again never ! You may return to Paris, but I 
 shall then be no more : rfimporte I shall be unchanged to 
 the last. Je mourrai en reine. 
 
 " As a latest pledge of what I have felt for you, I send you 
 the enclosed chain and ring ; as a latest favor I request you to 
 wear them for six months, and, above all, for two hours in the 
 Tuileries to-morrow. You will laugh at this request : it seems 
 idle and romantic perhaps it is so. Love has many exagger- 
 ations in sentiment, which reason would despise. What won- 
 der, then, that mine, above that of all others, should conceive 
 them ? You will not, I know, deny this request. Farewell ! 
 In this world we shall never meet again. Farewell ! E. P." 
 
 " A most sensible effusion," said I to myself, when I had 
 read this billet ; " and yet, after all, it shows more feeling and 
 more character than I could have supposed she possessed." I 
 took up the chain : it was of Maltese workmanship ; not very 
 handsome, nor, indeed, in any way remarkable, except for a 
 plain hair ring which was attached to it, and which I found 
 myself unable to take off without breaking. "It is a very 
 singular request," thought I, " but then it comes from a very 
 singular person ; and as it rather partakes of adventure and 
 intrigue, I shall at all events appear in the Tuileries to-morrow, 
 chained and ringed"
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 " Thy incivility shall not make me fail to do what becomes me ; and since 
 thou hast more valor than courtesy, I for thee will hazard that life which 
 thou wouldst take from me." Cassandra, "elegantly done into English by 
 SIR CHARLES COTTKRELL." 
 
 ABOUT the usual hour for the promenade in the Tuileries I 
 conveyed myself thither. I set the chain and ring in full dis- 
 play, rendered still more conspicuous by the dark-colored 
 dress which I always wore. I had not been in the gardens ten 
 minutes, before I perceived a young Frenchman, scarcely 
 twenty years of age, look with a very peculiar air at my new 
 decorations. He passed and repassed me much oftener than 
 the alternations of the walk warranted ; and at last, taking off 
 his hat, said in a low tone, that he wished much for the honor of 
 exchanging a few words with me in private. I saw, at the first 
 glance, that he was a gentleman, and accordingly withdrew 
 with him among the trees, in the more retired part of the garden. 
 
 " Permit me," said he, " to inquire how that ring and chain 
 came into your possession?" 
 
 "Monsieur,"! replied, "you will understand me, when 1 
 say that the honor of another person is implicated in my con- 
 cealment of that secret." 
 
 " Sir," said the Frenchman, coloring violently, " I have seen 
 them before in a word, they belong to me ! " 
 
 " I smiled my young hero fired at this. " Out, monsieur," 
 said he, speaking very loud, and very quick, " they belong to 
 me, and I insist upon your immediately restoring them, or vin- 
 dicating your claim to them by arms." 
 
 "You leave me but one answer, monsieur," said I ; "I will 
 find a friend to wait upon you immediately. Allow me to in- 
 quire your address ? " The Frenchman, who was greatly 
 Agitated, produced a card. We bowed and separated. 
 
 I was glancing over the address I held in my hand, which 
 
 was C. de Vautran, Rue de Bourbon, Nume"ro , when my 
 
 ears were saluted with : 
 
 ' Now do you know me ? Thou shouldst be Alonzo." 
 
 I did not require the faculty of sight to recognize Lord 
 Vincent. "My dear fellow," said I, "I am rejoiced to see 
 you ! " and thereupon I poured into his ear the particulars of 
 my morning adventure. Lord Vincent listened to me with 
 much apparent interest, and spoke very unaffectedly of his 
 readiness to serve me, and his regret at the occasion.
 
 ioS PELHAM ; 
 
 " Pooh ! " said I, "a duel in France is not like one in Eng- 
 land ; the former is a matter of course ; a trifle of common 
 occurrence ; one makes an engagement to fight in the same 
 breath as an engagement to dine ; but the latter is a thing of 
 state and solemnity long faces early rising and will-making. 
 But do get this business over as soon as you can, that we may 
 dine at the Rocher afterwards." 
 
 "Well, my dear Pelham," said Vincent, " I cannot refuse you 
 my services ; and as I suppose Monsieur de Vautran will choose 
 swords, I venture to augur everything from your skill in that 
 species of weapon. It is the first time I have ever interfered 
 in affairs of this nature, but I hope to get well through the 
 present. 
 
 ' Nobilis ornatur lauro collega secundo.' 
 
 as Juvenal says : au revoir" and away went Lord Vincent, half 
 forgetting all his late anxiety for my life in his paternal pleasure 
 for the delivery of his quotation. 
 
 Vincent is the only punster I ever knew with a good heart. 
 No action, to that race in general, is so serious an occupation 
 as the play upon words ; and the remorseless habit of murder- 
 ing a phrase renders them perfectly obdurate to the simple 
 death of a friend. I walked through every variety the straight 
 paths of the Tuileries could afford, and was beginning to get 
 exceedingly tired, when Lord Vincent returned. He looked 
 very grave, and I saw at once that he was come to particular- 
 ize the circumstances of the last extreme. " The Bois de 
 Boulogne pistols in one hour" were the three leading features 
 of his detail. 
 
 "Pistols ! " said I ; "well, be it so. I would rather have had 
 swords, for the young man's sake as much as my own : but 
 thirteen paces and a steady aim will settle the business as soon. 
 We will try a bottle of the Chambertin to-day, Vincent." The 
 punster smiled faintly, and for once in his life made no reply. 
 We walked gravely and soberly to my lodgings for the pistols, 
 and then proceeded to the engagement as silently as philoso- 
 phers should do. 
 
 The Frenchman and his second were on the ground first. I 
 saw that the former was pale and agitated, not, I think, from 
 fear, but passion. When we took our ground Vincent came to 
 me, and said, in a low tone, " For Heaven's sake, suffer me to 
 accommodate this, if possible ! " 
 
 " It is not in our power," said I, receiving the pistol. I 
 looked steadily at de Vautran, and took my aim. His pistol
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OP A GENTLEMAN. 160 
 
 owing, I suppose, to the trembling of his hand, went off a 
 moment sooner than he had anticipated the ball grazed my 
 hat. My aim was more successful I struck him in the shoul- 
 der the exact place I had intended. He staggered a few- 
 paces, but did not fall. 
 
 We hastened towards him his cheek assumed a still more 
 livid hue as I approached. He muttered some half-formed 
 curses between his teeth, and turned from me to his second. 
 
 " You will inquire whether Monsieur de Vautran is satisfied," 
 said I to Vincent, and retired to a short distance. 
 
 " His second," said Vincent (after a brief conference with 
 that person), " replies to my question that Monsieur de Vau- 
 tran's wound has left him, for the present, no alternative." 
 Upon this answer I took Vincent's arm, and we returned forth- 
 with to my carriage. 
 
 " I congratulate you most sincerely on the event of this 
 duel," said Vincent. " Monsieur de M (de Vautran's sec- 
 ond) informed me, when I waited on him, that your antagonist 
 was one of the most celebrated pistol shots in Paris, and that a 
 lady, with whom he had been long in love, made the death of 
 the chain-bearer the price of her favors. Devilish lucky for 
 you, my good fellow, that his hand trembled so ; but I did not 
 know you were so good a shot." 
 
 " Why," I answered, " I am not what is vulgarly termed ' a 
 crack shot ' I cannot split a bullet on a penknife ; but I am 
 sure of a target somewhat smaller than a man : and my hand 
 is as certain in the field as it is in the practice-yard." 
 
 " Le sentiment de nos forces les cmgmentc" * replied Vincent. 
 " Shall I tell the coachman to drive to the Rocher ? " 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 " Here's a kind host, that makes the invitation 
 To your own cost, to his fort bonne collation." 
 
 WYCHERI.Y'S Gent. Dancing Master. 
 
 " Vous pouvez bien juger que je n'aurai pas" grande peine a me consoler 
 d'une chose dont je me suis deja console tante de fois. " Lettres de BOILEAU. 
 
 As I was walking home with Vincent, from the Rue Mont- 
 orgueil, I saw, on entering the Rue St. Honore, two figures be- 
 fore us ; the tall and noble stature of the one I could not for 
 
 * The conviction of our forces augment them.
 
 110 PELHAM ; 
 
 a moment mistake. They stopped at the door of an hotelj 
 which opened in that noiseless manner so peculiar to the con- 
 ciergerie of France. I was at the door the moment they dis- 
 appeared, but not before I had caught a glance of the dark 
 locks and pale countenance of Warburton, my eye fell upon 
 the number of the hotel. 
 
 "Surely," said I, " I have been in that house before." 
 
 " Likely enough," growled Vincent, who was gloriously 
 drunk. " It is a house of two-fold utility you may play with 
 cards, or coquet with women, which you please." 
 
 At these words I remembered the hotel and its inmates im- 
 mediately. It belonged to an old nobleman, who, though on 
 the brink of the grave, was still grasping at the good things on 
 the margin. He lived with a pretty and clever woman, who 
 bore the name and honors of his wife. They kept up two 
 salons, one pour le petit souper, and the other, pour le petijeu. 
 You saw much /cart/ and more love-making, and lost your 
 heart and your money with equal facility. In a word, the 
 marquis and h is jolie petite fenimc were a wise and prosperous 
 couple, who made the best of their lives, and lived decently and 
 honorably upon other people. 
 
 " Allans, Pelham," cried Vincent, as I was still standing at 
 the door in deliberation ; " how much longer will you keep me 
 to congeal in this ' eager and nipping air ' ' Quamdiu patien- 
 tiam nostram abutere, Catilina.' " 
 
 "Let us enter," said I. "I have the run of the house, and 
 we may find " 
 
 "Some young vices some fair iniquities,'" interrupted 
 Vincent, with a hiccup 
 
 " ' Leade on, good fellowe,' quoth Robin Hood, 
 ' Lead on, I do bid thee.' " 
 
 And with these words, the door opened in obedience to my 
 rap, and we mounted to the marquis's tenement au premiere. 
 
 The room was pretty full : the soi-disante Marquise was 
 flitting from table to table, betting at each, and coquetting 
 with all ; and the Marquis himself, with a moist eye and a 
 shaking hand, was affecting the Don Juan with the various 
 Elviras and Annas with which his salon was crowded. Vincent 
 was trying to follow me through the crowd, but his confused 
 vision and unsteady footing led him from one entanglement to 
 another, till he was quite unable to proceed. A tall, corpulent 
 Frenchman, six foot by five, was leaning (a great and weighty 
 objection), just before him, utterly occupied in the vicissitudes 
 of an /cart/ table, and unconscious of Vincent's repeated
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. lit 
 
 efforts, first on one side, and then on the other, to pass him. 
 At last, the perplexed wit, getting more irascible as he grew 
 more bewildered, suddenly seized the vast encumbrance by the 
 arm, and said to him, in a sharp, querulous tone, "Pray, monsieur, 
 why are you like the lotc tree in Mahomet's Seventh heaven?" 
 
 "Sir/" cried the astonished Frenchman. 
 
 " Because " (continued Vincent, answering his own enigma), 
 " Because beyond you there is no passing!" 
 
 The Frenchman (one of that race who always forgive any- 
 thing for a bon mot} smiled, bowed, and drew himself aside. 
 Vincent steered by, and joining me, hiccuped out, "Fortiaque 
 adversis opponite pectora rebus." 
 
 Meanwhile I had looked round the room for the objects of 
 my pursuit : to my great surprise I could not perceive them ; 
 they may be in the other room, thought I, and to the other 
 room I went ; the supper was laid out, and an old bonne was 
 quietly helping herself to some sweetmeat. All other human 
 beings (if, indeed, an old woman can be called a human being!) 
 were, however, invisible, and I remained perfectly bewildered 
 as to the non-appearance of Warburton and his companion, 
 I entered the gamin g-room once more I looked round in 
 every corner I examined every face but in vain ; and with 
 a feeling of disappointment very disproportioned to my loss, I 
 took Vincent's arm, and we withdrew. 
 
 The next morning I spent with Madame d'Anville. A 
 Frenchwoman easily consoles herself for the loss of a lover : she 
 converts him into a friend, and thinks herself (nor is she much 
 deceived) benefited by the exchange. We talked of our grief 
 in maxims, and bade each other adieu in antitheses. Ah ! it 
 is a pleasant thing to drink with Alcidonis (in Marmontel's 
 Tale) of the rose-colored phial to sport with the fancy, not to 
 brood over the passion of youth. There is a time when the 
 heart, from very tenderness, runs over, and (so much do our 
 virtues as well as vices flow from our passions) there is, per- 
 haps, rather hope than anxiety for the future in that excess 
 Then, if Pleasure errs, it errs through heedlessness, not design ; 
 and Love, wandering over flowers, "proffers honey, but bears 
 not a sting." Ah ! happy time ! in the lines of one who can c& 
 well translate feeling into words : 
 
 " Fate has not darkened thee Hope has not made 
 The blossoms expand it but opens to fade ; 
 Nothing is known of those wearing fears 
 Which will shadow the light of our after~years." 
 
 Thf Improvisatrice.
 
 112 frfcLHAM ; 
 
 Pardon this digression not much, it must be confessed, in 
 my ordinary strain but let me, dear reader, very seriously ad- 
 vise thee not to judge of me yet. When thou hast got to the 
 end of my book, if thou dost condemn it or its hero why " I 
 will let thee alone" (as honest Dogberry advises) "till thou 
 art sober ; and, if thou make me not, then, the better answer, 
 thou art not the man I took thee for." 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 " It must be confessed, that flattery comes mightily easy to one's mouth 
 in the presence of royalty." Letters 0/ STEPHEN MONTAGUE. 
 
 " 'Tis he. How came he thence what doth he here?" Lara. 
 
 I HAD received for that evening (my last at Paris) an invita- 
 tion from the Duchesse de B . I knew that the party was 
 
 to be small, and that very few besides the royal family would 
 compose it. I had owed the honor of this invitation to my in- 
 timacy with the s, the great friends of the Duchesse, and 
 
 I promised myself some pleasure in the engagement. 
 
 There were but eight or nine persons present when I entered 
 the royal chamber. The most distinguished I recognized imme- 
 diately as the . He came forward with much grace as I 
 
 approached, and expressed his pleasure at seeing me. 
 
 " You were presented, I think, about a month ago," added 
 
 the , with a smile of singular fascination ; " I remember it 
 
 well." 
 
 I bowed low to this compliment. 
 
 " Do you propose staying long at Paris ? " continued 
 the . 
 
 " I protracted," I replied, " my departure solely for the honor 
 
 this evening affords me. In so doing, please your , I have 
 
 followed the wise maxim of keeping the greatest pleasure to 
 the last." 
 
 The royal chevalier bowed to my answer with a smile still 
 sweeter than before, and began a conversation with me which 
 
 lasted for several minutes. I was much struck with the 's 
 
 air and bearing. They possess great dignity, without any affec- 
 tation of its assumption. He speaks peculiarly good English, and 
 the compliment of addressing me in that language was there- 
 fore as judicious as delicate. His observations owed little to 
 his rank ; they would have struck you as appropriate, and the air
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 113 
 
 which accompanied them pleased you as graceful, even in a 
 simple individual. Judge, then, if they charmed me in 
 
 the . The upper part of his countenance is prominent 
 
 and handsome, and his eyes have much softness of expression. 
 His figure is slight and particularly well knit ; perhaps he is al- 
 together more adapted to strike in private than with public 
 effect. Upon the whole, he is one of those very few persons 
 of great rank whom you would have had pride in knowing as 
 an equal, and have pleasure in acknowledging as a superior.* 
 
 As the paused, and turned with great courtesy to the 
 
 Due de , I bowed my way to the Duchesse de B . 
 
 That personage whose liveliness and piquancy of manner always 
 make one wish for one's own sake that her rank was Jess ex- 
 alted, was speaking with great volubility to a tall, stupid-look- 
 ing man, one of the ministers, and smiled most graciously upon 
 me as I drew near. She spoke to me of our national amuse- 
 ments. " You are not," said she, " so fond of dancing as we 
 are." 
 
 " We have not the same exalted example to be at once our 
 motive and our model," said I, in allusion to the Duchesse's 
 well-known attachment to that accomplishment. The Duch- 
 esse d'A came up as I said this, and the conversation 
 
 flowed on evenly enough till the 's whist party was formed. 
 
 His partner was Madame de la R , the heroine of La Ven- 
 
 de"e. She was a tall and very stout woman, singularly lively 
 and entertaining, and appeared to possess both the moral and 
 the physical energy to accomplish feats still more noble than 
 those she performed. 
 
 I soon saw that it would not do for me to stay very long. I 
 had already made a favorable impression, and, in such cases, 
 it is my constant rule immediately to retire. Stay, if it be whole 
 hours, until you have pleased, but leave the moment after your 
 success. A great genius should not linger too long either in 
 the salen or the world. He must quit each with e'clat. In 
 obedience to this rule, I no sooner found that my court had 
 been effectually made than I rose to withdraw. 
 
 "You will return soon to Paris," said the Duchesse de 
 
 "I cannot resist it," I replied. " Mon corps reviendra pour 
 chercher mon cceur." 
 
 * The sketch of these unfortunate members of an exiledand illustrious family may not 
 be the less interesting from the reverses which, since the first publication of this work, 
 placed the Orleans family on the Bourbon throne. As for the erring Charles X., he was 
 neither a great monarch nor a wise man, but he was, in air, grace, and manner, the most 
 thoroughbred gentleman I ever met,//, f.
 
 114 FELHAM J 
 
 " We shall not forget you," said the Duchesse. 
 
 " Your Royal Highness has now given me my only induce- 
 ment not to return," I answered as I bowed out of the room. 
 
 It was much too early to go home ; at that time I was too 
 young and restless to sleep till long after midnight ; and while 
 I was deliberating in what manner to pass the hours, I sud- 
 denly recollected the hotel in the Rue St. Honore\ to which 
 Vincent and I had paid so unceremonious a visit the night be- 
 fore. Impressed with the hope that I might be more success- 
 ful in meeting Warburton than I had then been, I ordered the 
 coachman to drive to the abode of the old Marquis . 
 
 The salon was crowded as usual. I lost a few Napoleons at 
 faarte in order to pay my entree, and then commenced a de- 
 sultory flirtation with one of the fair decoys. In this occupa- 
 tion my eye and my mind frequently wandered. I could not 
 divest myself of the hope of once more seeing Warburton be- 
 fore my departure from Paris, and every reflection which con- 
 firmed my suspicions of his identity redoubled my interest in 
 his connection with Tyrrell and the vulgar de'bauche" of the Rue 
 St. Dominique. I was making some languid reply to my Cyn- 
 thia of the minute, when my ear was suddenly greeted by an 
 English voice. I looked around and saw Thornton in close 
 conversation with a man whose back was turned to me, but 
 whom I rightly conjectured to be Tyrrell. 
 
 "Oh ! he'll be here soon," said the former, "and we'll bleed 
 him regularly to-night. It is very singular that you who play 
 so much better should not have floored him yesterday evening." 
 
 Tyrrell replied in a tone so low as to be inaudible, and a 
 minute afterwards the door opened, and Warburton entered. 
 He came up instantly to Thornton and his companion ; and 
 after a few words of ordinary salutation, Warburton said, in 
 one of those modulated but artificial tones so peculiar to him- 
 self, " I am sure, Tyrrell, that you must be eager for your re- 
 venge. To lose to such a mere tyro as myself is quite enough 
 to double the pain of defeat, and the desire of retaliation." 
 
 I did not hear Tyrrell's reply, but the trio presently moved 
 towards the door, which till then I had not noticed, and which 
 was probably the entrance to our hostess's boudoir. The sot- 
 disante Marquise opened it herself, for which kind office 
 Thornton gave her a leer and a wink, characteristic of his 
 claims to gallantry. When the door was again closed upon 
 them, I went up to the Marquise, and after a few compliments, 
 asked whether the room Messieurs les Anglais had entered was 
 equally open to all guests ?
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 1 15 
 
 "Why," said she, with a slight hesitation, "those gentlemen 
 play for higher stakes than we usually do here, and one of 
 them is apt to get irritated by the advice and expostulations of 
 the lookers-on ; and so after they had played a short time in 
 the salon last night, Monsieur Thornton, a very old friend of 
 mine (here the lady looked down), asked me permission to 
 occupy the inner room ; and as I knew him so well, I could 
 have no scruple in obliging him." 
 
 "Then, I suppose," said I, "that, as a stranger, I have not 
 permission to intrude upon them?" 
 
 "Shall I inquire?" answered the Marquise. 
 
 "No," said I, "it is not worth while" ; and accordingly I re- 
 seated myself, and appeared once more occupied in saying 
 des belles choses to my kind-hearted neighbor. I could not, 
 however, with all my dissimulation, sustain a conversation 
 from which my present feelings were so estranged for more 
 than a few minutes ; and I was never more glad than when my 
 companion, displeased with my inattention, rose, and left me 
 to my own reflections. 
 
 What could Warburton (if he were the person I suspected) 
 gain by the disguise he had assumed? He was too rich to 
 profit by any sums he could win from Tyrrell, and too much 
 removed from Thornton's station in life to derive any pleasure 
 or benefit from his acquaintance with that person. His dark 
 threats of vengeance in the Jardin des Plantes, and his refer- 
 ence to the two hundred pounds Tyrrell possessed, gave me, 
 indeed, some clue as to hi:> real object ; but then why this 
 disguise ! Had he known Tyrrell before, in his proper sem- 
 blance, and had anything passed between them which rendered 
 this concealment now expedient? This, indeed, seemed prob- 
 able enough; but was Thornton entrusted with the secret? 
 And, if revenge was the object, was that low man a partaker 
 in its execution ? Or was he not, more probably, playing the 
 traitor to both ? As for Tyrrell himself, his own designs upon 
 Warburton were sufficient to prevent pity for any fall into the 
 pit he had digged for others. 
 
 Meanwhile time passed on, the hour grew late, and the 
 greater part of the guests were gone ; still I could not tear 
 myself away ; I looked from time to time at the door with an 
 indescribable feeling of anxiety. I longed, yet dreaded, for ifc 
 to open ; I felt as if my own fate were in some degree impli- 
 cated in what was then agitating within, and I could not 
 resolve to depart until I had formed some conclusions on the 
 result.
 
 Il6 PELHAM ; 
 
 At length the door opened ; Tyrrell came forth his coun- 
 tenance was perfectly hueless, his cheek was sunk and hollow, 
 the excitement of two hours had been sufficient to make it so. 
 I observed that his teeth were set, and his hands clenched, as 
 they are when we idly seek, by the strained and extreme ten- 
 sion of the nerves, to sustain the fever and the agony of the 
 mind. Warburton and Thornton followed him ; the latter with 
 his usual air of reckless indifference ; his quick rolling eye 
 glanced from the Marquis to myself, and though his color 
 changed slightly, his nod of recognition was made with its 
 wonted impudence and ease ; but Warburton passed on, like 
 Tyrrell, without noticing or heeding anything around. He 
 fixed his large bright eye upon the figure which preceded him, 
 without once altering its direction, and the extreme beauty of 
 his features, which not all the dishevelled length of his hair 
 and whiskers could disguise, was lighted up with a joyous but 
 savage expression, which made me turn away, almost with a 
 sensation of fear. 
 
 Just as Tyrrell was leaving the room, Warburton put his 
 hand upon his shoulder : " Stay," said he, " I am going your 
 way and will accompany you." He turned round to Thornton 
 (who was already talking with the Marquis) as he said this, and 
 waved his hand, as if to prevent his following ; the next mo- 
 ment Tyrrell and himself had left the room. 
 
 I could not now remain longer. I felt a feverish restless- 
 ness which impelled me onwards. I quitted the salon, and was 
 on the staircase before the gamesters had descended. War- 
 burton was, indeed, but a few steps before me ; the stairs were 
 but very dimly lighted by one expiring lamp ; he did not turn 
 round to see me, and was probably too much engrossed to 
 hear me. 
 
 "You may yet have a favorable reverse," said he to Tyrrell. 
 
 " Impossible ! " replied the latter, in a tone of such deep an- 
 guish that it thrilled me to the very heart. " I am an utter 
 beggar I have nothing in the world I have no expectation 
 but to starve ! " 
 
 While he was saying this I perceived by the faint and uncer- 
 tain light that Warburton's hand was raised to his own coun- 
 tenance. 
 
 " Have you no hope no spot wherein to look lor comfort ? 
 Is beggary your absolute and only possible resource from fam- 
 ine ? " he replied in a low and suppressed tone. 
 
 At that moment we were just descending into the courtyard. 
 Warburton was but one step behind Tyrrell : the latter made
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. llf 
 
 no answer ; but as he passed from the dark staircase into the 
 clear moonlight of the court, I caught a glimpse of the big 
 tears which rolled heavily and silently down his cheeks. War- 
 burton laid his hand upon him. 
 
 44 Turn," he cried suddenly ; " your cup is not yet full look 
 upon me and remember /" 
 
 I pressed forward. The light shone full upon the counte- 
 nance of the speaker the dark hair was gone my suspicions 
 were true I discovered at once the bright locks and lofty 
 brow of Reginald Glanville. Slowly Tyrrell gazed, as if he 
 were endeavoring to repel some terrible remembrance, which 
 gathered, with every instant, more fearfully upon him ; until, 
 as the stern countenance of Glanville grew darker and darker 
 in its mingled scorn and defiance, he uttered one low cry, and 
 sank senseless upon the earth. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 " Well, he is gone, and with him go these thoughts." SHAKSPEARE. 
 "What ho ! for England ! " 
 
 I HAVE always had an insuperable horror of being placed in 
 what the vulgar call a predicament. In a predicament I was 
 most certainly placed at the present moment. A man at my 
 feet in a fit the cause of it having very wisely disappeared, 
 devolving upon me the charge of watching, recovering, and 
 conducting home the afflicted person made a concatenation 
 of disagreeable circumstances as much unsuited to the temper 
 of Henry Pelham as his evil fortune could possibly have con- 
 trived. 
 
 After a short pause of deliberation I knocked up the porter, 
 procured some cold water, and bathed Tyrrell's temples for 
 several moments before he recovered. He opened his eyes 
 slowly, and looked carefully around with a fearful and suspi- 
 cious glance : " Gone gone (he muttered) ay what did 
 he here at such a moment ? vengeance for what ? / could 
 not tell it would have killed her let him thank his own folly. 
 I do not fear ; I defy his malice." And with these words 
 Tyrrell sprung to his feet. 
 
 44 Can I assist you to your home?" said I; "you are still 
 unwell ; pray suffer me to have that pleasure." 
 
 I spoke with some degree of warmth and sincerity ; the un
 
 Il8 PELHAM J 
 
 fortunate man stared wildly at me for a moment before he re- 
 plied. "Who," said he, at last, " who speaks to me the lost 
 the guilty the ruined, in the accents of interest and kind- 
 ness ?" 
 
 I placed his arm in mine, and drew him out of the yard into 
 the open street. He looked at me with an eager and wistful 
 survey, and then, by degrees, appearing to recover his full con- 
 sciousness of the present, and recollection of the past, he 
 pressed my hand warmly, and after a short silence, during 
 which he moved on slowly towards the Tuileries, he said : 
 " Pardon me, sir, if I have not sufficiently thanked you for 
 your kindness and attention. I am now quite restored ; the 
 close room in which I have been sitting for so many hours, 
 and the feverish excitement of play, acting upon a frame 
 much debilitated by ill health, occasioned my momentary in- 
 disposition. I am now, I repeat, quite recovered, and will no 
 longer trespass upon your good-nature." 
 
 " Really," said I, " you had better not discard my services 
 yet. Do suffer me to accompany you home ? " 
 
 " Home ! " muttered Tyrrell, with a deep sigh ; " no no ! " 
 and then, as if recollecting himself, he said, " I thank you, sir, 
 but but " 
 
 I saw his embarrassment, and interrupted him. 
 
 "Well, if I cannot assist you any further, I will take your 
 dismissal. I trust we shall meet again under auspices better 
 calculated for improving acquaintance." 
 
 Tyrrell bowed, once more pressed my hand, and we parted. 
 I hurried on up the long street towards my hotel. 
 
 When I had got several paces beyond Tyrrell I turned back 
 to look at him. He was standing in the same place in which 
 I had left him. I saw by the moonlight that his face and 
 hands were raised towards Heaven. It was but for a moment: 
 his attitude changed while I was yet looking, and he slowly 
 and calmly continued his way in the same direction as myself. 
 When I reached my chambers I hastened immediately to bed, 
 but not to sleep : the extraordinary scene I had witnessed ; 
 the dark and ferocious expression of Glanville's countenance, 
 so strongly impressed with every withering and deadly passion ; 
 the fearful and unaccountable remembrance that had seemed 
 to gather over the livid and varying face of the gamester; the 
 mystery of Glanville's disguise ; the intensity of a revenge so 
 terribly expressed, together with the restless and burning 
 anxiety I felt not from idle curiosity, but, from my early and 
 intimate friendship for Glanville, to fathom its cause all
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 1 1() 
 
 crowded upon my mind with a feverish confusion, that effect- 
 ually banished repose. 
 
 It was with that singular sensation of pleasure which none 
 but those who have passed frequent nights in restless and pain- 
 ful agitation can recognize, that I saw the bright sun penetrate 
 through my shutters, and heard Bedos move across my room. 
 
 " What hour will monsieur have the post-horses ? " said that 
 praiseworthy valet. 
 
 " At eleven," answered I, springing out of bed with joy at 
 the change of scene which the very mention of my journey 
 brought before my mind. 
 
 I was turning listlessly, as I sat at breakfast, over the pages 
 of Galignani's Messenger, when the following paragraph caught 
 my attention : 
 
 " It is rumored among the circles of the Faubourg that a 
 
 duel was fought on , between a young Englishman and 
 
 Monsieur D ; the cause of it is said to be the pretensions 
 
 of both to the beautiful Duchesse de P , who, if report be 
 
 true, cares for neither of the gallants, but lavishes her favors 
 upon a certain attach^ to the English embassy." 
 
 " Such," thought I, "are the materials for all human histories. 
 Every one who reads will eagerly swallow this account as true : 
 if an author were writing the memoirs of the court, he would 
 compile his facts and scandal from this very collection of 
 records ; and yet, though so near the truth, how totally false 
 it is ! Thank Heaven, however, that, at least, I am not sus- 
 pected of the degradation of the Duchess's love : to fight for 
 her may make me seem a fool, to be loved by her would con- 
 stitute me a villain." 
 
 " The horses, sir !" said Bedos; and "The bill, sir?" said 
 the garfon. Alas ! that those and that should be so coupled 
 together ; and that we can never take our departure without 
 such awful witnesses of our sojourn. Well, to be brief, the 
 bill for once was discharged the horses snorted the carriage- 
 door was opened I entered Bedos mounted behind crack 
 went the whips off went the steeds, and so terminated my 
 adventures at dear Paris.
 
 120 PELHAM 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 "Oh, cousin, you know him the fine gentleman they talk of so much in 
 town ." WYCHERLY'S Dancing Master. 
 
 BY the bright days of my youth, there is something truly 
 delightful in the quick motion of four, ay, or even two post- 
 horses ! In France, where one's steeds are none of the swift- 
 est, the pleasures of travelling are not quite so great as in Eng- 
 land ; still, however, to a man who is tired of one scene 
 panting for another in love with excitement, and yet not 
 wearied of its pursuit, the turnpike road is more grateful than 
 the easiest chair ever invented, and the little prison we entitle 
 a carriage more cheerful than the state rooms of Devonshire 
 House. 
 
 We reached Calais in safety and in good time the next day. 
 
 " Will Monsieur dine in his rooms, or at the table d'hote? " 
 
 "In his rooms, of course," said Bedos, indignantly deciding 
 the question. A French valet's dignity is always involved in 
 his master's. 
 
 " You are too good, Bedos," said I, " I shall dine at the 
 table d'hote whom have you there in general ?" 
 
 " Really," said the garfon, " we have such a swift succession 
 of guests, that we seldom see the same faces two days running. 
 We have as many changes as an English administration." 
 
 " You are facetious," said I. 
 
 " No," returned the garcon, who was a philosopher as well as 
 a wit ; " no, my digestive organs are very weak, and par conse*- 
 quence, I am naturally melancholy. Ah, ma foi, tres triste ! " 
 and with these words the sentimental plate-changer placed his 
 hand I can scarcely say, whether on his heart or his stomach, 
 and sighed bitterly ! 
 
 " How long," said I, "does it want to dinner?" My ques- 
 tion restored the garfon to himself. 
 
 "Two hours, monsieur, two hours," and twirling his serviette 
 with an air of exceeding importance, off went my melancholy 
 acquaintance to compliment new customers, and complain of 
 his digestion. 
 
 After I had arranged my toilet, yawned three times, and 
 drunk two bottles of soda-water, I strolled into the town. As 
 I was sauntering along leisurely enough, I heard my name pro- 
 nounced behind me. I turned, and saw Sir Willoughby Town- 
 shend, an old baronet of an antediluvian age a fossil witness of 
 the wonders of England before the deluge of French manners
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 121 
 
 swept away ancient customs, and created, out of the wrecks of 
 what had been, a new order of things, and a new race of man- 
 kind. 
 
 " Ah ! my dear Mr. Pelham, how are you ? And the worthy 
 Lady Frances, your mother, and your excellent father, all well ? 
 I'm delighted to hear it. Russelton," continued Sir Willoughby, 
 turning to a middle-aged man, whose arm he held, "you re- 
 member Pelham true Whig great friend of Sheridan's? Let 
 me introduce his son to you. Mr. Russelton, Mr. Pelham ; 
 Mr. Pelham, Mr. Russelton." 
 
 At the name of the person thus introduced to me a thousand 
 recollections crowded upon my mind ; the contemporary and 
 rival of Napoleon ; the autocrat of the great world of fashion 
 and cravats ; the mighty genius before whom aristocracy hath 
 been humbled and ton abashed ; at whose nod the haughtiest 
 noblesse of Europe had quailed ; who had introduced by a sin- 
 gle example starch into neckcloths, and had fed the pampered 
 appetite of his boot-tops on champagne ; whose coat and 
 whose friend were cut with an equal grace ; and whose name 
 was connected with every triumph that the world's great virtue 
 of audacity could achieve the illustrious, the immortal Rus- 
 selton, stood before me ! I recognized in him a congenial, 
 though a superior, spirit, and I bowed with a profundity of 
 veneration with which no other human being has ever in- 
 spired me. 
 
 Mr. Russelton seemed pleased with my evident respect, and 
 returned my salutation with a mock dignity which enchanted 
 me. He offered me his disengaged arm ; I took it with tran- 
 sport, and we all three proceeded up the street. 
 
 " So," said Sir Willoughby ; "so, Russelton, you like your 
 quarters here ; plenty of sport among the English, I should 
 think : you have not forgot the art of quizzing ; eh, old 
 fellow?" 
 
 "Even if I had," said Mr. Russelton, speaking very slowly, 
 " the sight of Sir Willoughby Townshend would be quite suffi- 
 cient to refresh my memory. Yes," continued the venerable 
 wreck, after a short pause; "yes, I like my residence pretty 
 well ; I enjoy a calm conscience, and a clean shirt : what more 
 can man desire ? I have made acquaintance with a tame 
 parrot, and I have taught it to say, whenever an English fool 
 with a stiff neck and a loose swagger passes him : ' True 
 Briton true Briton.' I take care of my health, and reflect 
 upon old age. I have read Gil Bias, and the Whole Duty of 
 Man ; and, in short, what with instructing my parrot, arid im-
 
 122 PELHAM j 
 
 proving myself, I think I pass my time as creditably and 
 
 decorously as the Bishop of Winchester, or my Lord of A 
 
 himself. So you have just come from Paris, I presume, Mr. 
 Pelham ?" 
 
 "I left it yesterday !" 
 
 " Full of those horrid English, I suppose ; thrusting their 
 broad hats and narrow minds into every shop in the Palais 
 Royal j winking their dull eyes at the damsels of the counter, 
 and manufacturing their notions of French into a higgle for 
 sous. Oh ! the monsters ! they bring on a bilious attack when- 
 ever I think of them : the other day one of them accosted me, 
 and talked me into a nervous fever about patriotism and roast 
 pigs : luckily I was near my own house, and reached it before 
 the thing became fatal ; but only think, had I wandered too 
 far when he met me ! at my time of life, the shock would have 
 been too great ; I should certainly have perished in a fit. I 
 hope, at least, they would have put the cause of my death in 
 my epitaph : ' Died, of an Englishman, John Russelton, Esq., 
 aged/ etc. Pah ! You are not engaged, Mr. Pelham ; dine 
 with me to-day ; Willoughby and his umbrella are coming." 
 
 " Volontiers" said I, "though I was going to make observa- 
 tions on men and manners at the table d'hdte of my hotel." 
 
 " I am most truly grieved," replied Mr. Russelton, " at de- 
 priving you of so much amusement. With me you will only 
 find some tolerable Lafitte, and an anomalous dish mycuisinttre 
 calls a mutton chop. It will be curious to see what variation 
 in the monotony of mutton she will adopt to-day. The first 
 time I ordered 'a chop,' I thought I had amply explained every 
 necessary particular ; a certain portion of flesh, and a gridiron : 
 at seven o'clock up came a ctitelette pande ! Fautt de tm'eux, I 
 swallowed the composition, drowned as it was in a most perni- 
 cious sauce. I had one hour's sleep, and the nightmare, in 
 consequence. The next day I imagined no mistake could be 
 made : sauce was strictly prohibited ; all extra ingredients laid 
 under a most special veto, and a natural gravy gently recom- 
 mended : the cover was removed, and lo ! a breast of mutton, 
 all bone and gristle, like the dying gladiator ! This time my 
 heart was too full for wrath ; I sat down and wept ! To-day 
 will be the third time I shall make the experiment, if French 
 cooks will consent to let one starve upon nature. For my 
 part, I have no stomach left now for art : I wore out my diges- 
 tion in youth, swallowing Jack St. Leger's suppers, and Sheri- 
 dan's promises to pay. Pray, Mr. Pelham, did you try Staub 
 when you were at Paris ? "
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 123 
 
 " Yes ; and thought him one degree better than Stultz, whom, 
 indeed, I have long condemned, as fit only for minors at Ox- 
 ford, and majors in the infantry." 
 
 " True," said Russelton, with a very faint smile at a pun 
 somewhat in his own way, and levelled at a tradesman of whom 
 he was, perhaps, a little jealous; "true; Stultz aims at mak- 
 ing /////#<?#, not coats j there is a degree of aristocratic pre- 
 tension in his stitches which is vulgar to an appalling degree. 
 You can tell a Stultz coat anywhere, which is quite enough to 
 damn it : the moment a man's known by an invariable cut, and 
 that not original, it ought to be all over with him. Give me 
 the man who makes the tailor, not the tailor who makes the 
 man." 
 
 " Right, by Jove ! " cried Sir Willoughby, who was as badly 
 
 dressed as one of Sir E 's dinners. "Right; just my 
 
 opinion. I have always told my Schneiders to make my clothes 
 neither in the fashion nor out of it ; to copy no other man's 
 coat, and to cut their cloth according to my natural body, not 
 according to an isosceles triangle. Look at this coat, for in- 
 stance," and Sir Willoughby Townshend made a dead halt, 
 that we might admire his garment the more accurately. 
 
 "Coat ! " said Russelton, with an appearance of the most 
 naive surprise, and taking hold of the collar, suspiciously, by 
 the finger and thumb; "coat, Sir Willoughby! Do you call 
 this thin* a coat ? " 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 " J'ai toujours cru que le bon n'etoit que le beau mis en action." ROUSSEAU. 
 
 SHORTLY after Russelton's answer to Sir Willoughby's eulo- 
 gistic observations on his own attire, I left those two worthies 
 till I was to join them at dinner ; it wanted three hours yet to 
 that time, and I repaired to my quarters to bathe and write 
 letters. I scribbled one to Madame d'Anville, full of antithe- 
 ses and maxims, sure to charm her ; another to my mother, to 
 prepare her for my arrival ; and a third to Lord Vincent, giv- 
 ing him certain commissions at Paris, which I had forgotten 
 personally to execute. 
 
 My pen is not that of a ready writer ; and what with yawn- 
 ing, and stretching, and putting pen to paper, it was time to 
 bathe and dress before my letters were completed. I set off to 
 Russelton's abode in high spirits, and fully resolved to make 
 the most of a character so original,
 
 124 PELHAM J 
 
 It was a very small room in which I found him ; he was 
 stretched in an easy-chair before the fireplace, gazing com- 
 placently at his feet, and apparently occupied in anything but 
 listening to Sir Willoughby Townshend, who was talking with 
 great vehemence about politics and the corn-laws. Notwith- 
 standing the heat of the weather, there was a small fire on fhe 
 hearth, which, aided by the earnestness of his efforts to con- 
 vince his host, put poor Sir Willoughby into a most intense 
 perspiration. Russelton, however, seemed enviably cool, and 
 hung over the burning wood like a cucumber on a hotbed. Sir 
 Willoughby came to a full stop by the window, and (gasping 
 for breath) attempted to throw it open. 
 
 " What are you doing ? For Heaven's sake, what are you 
 doing ? " cried Russelton, starting up ; " do you mean to 
 kill me ? " 
 
 " Kill you ! " said Sir Willoughby, quite aghast. 
 
 " Yes ; kill me ! Is it not quite cold enough already in this 
 d d seafaring place, without making my only retreat, humble 
 as it is, a theatre for thorough draughts ? Have I not had the 
 rheumatism in my left shoulder, and the ague in my little 
 finger, these last six months ? And must you now terminate 
 my miserable existence at one blow by opening that abomin- 
 able lattice ? Do you think, because your great frame, fresh 
 from the Yorkshire wolds, and compacted of such materials 
 that one would think, in eating your beeves, you had digested 
 their hide into skin do you think, because your limbs might 
 be cut up into planks. for a seventy-eight, and warranted water- 
 proof without pitch, because of the density of their pores do 
 you think, because you are as impervious as an araphorostic 
 shoe, that I, John Russelton, am equally impenetrable, and 
 that you are to let easterly winds play about my room like 
 children, begetting rheums and asthmas and all manner of 
 catarrhs? I do beg, Sir Willoughby Townshend, that you will 
 suffer me to die a more natural and civilized death "; and so 
 saying, Russelton sank down into his chair, apparently in the 
 last stage of exhaustion. 
 
 Sir Willoughby, who remembered the humorist in all his 
 departed glory, and still venerated him as a temple where the 
 deity yet breathed, though the altar was overthrown, made to 
 this extraordinary remonstrance no other reply than a long 
 whiff, and a "Well, Russelton, damme, but you're a queer 
 fellow." 
 
 Russelton now turned to me, and invited me, with a tone of 
 the most lady-like languor, to sit down near the fire. As 1 am
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 125 
 
 naturally of a chilly disposition, and fond, too, of beating peo- 
 ple in their own line, I drew a chair close to the hearth, declared 
 the weather was very cold, and requested permission to ring 
 the bell for some more wood. Russelton stared for a moment, 
 and then, with a politeness he had not deigned to exert before, 
 approached his chair to mine, and began a conversation, which, 
 in spite of his bad witticisms and peculiarity of manner, I found 
 singularly entertaining. 
 
 Dinner was announced, and we adjourned to another room. 
 Poor Sir Willoughby, with his waistcoat unbuttoned, and 
 breathing like a pug in a phthisis, groaned bitterly, when he 
 discovered that this apartment was smaller and hotter than 
 the one before. Russelton immediately helped him to some 
 scalding soup, and said, as he told the servant to hand Sir 
 Willoughby the cayenne, " You will find this, my dear Town- 
 shend, a very sensible potagc for this severe season." 
 
 Dinner went off tamely enough, with the exception of " our 
 fat friend's " agony, which Russelton enjoyed most luxuriously. 
 The threatened mutton-chops did not make their appearance, 
 and the dinner, though rather too small, was excellently cooked, 
 and better arranged. With the dessert the poor baronet rose, 
 and pleading sudden indisposition, tottered out of the door. 
 
 When he was gone Russelton threw himself back in his chair 
 and laughed for several minutes with a low, chuckling sound, 
 till the tears ran down his cheek. 
 
 After a few jests at Sir Willoughby our conversation turned 
 upon other individuals. I soon saw that Russelton was a 
 soured and disappointed man ; his remarks on people were all 
 sarcasms his mind was overflowed with a suffusion of ill- 
 nature he bit as well as growled. No man of the world ever, 
 I am convinced, becomes a real philosopher in retirement. 
 People who have been employed for years upon trifles have 
 not the greatness of mind which could alone make them indif- 
 ferent to what they have coveted all their lives as most enviable 
 and important. 
 
 " Have you read 's memoirs ? " said Mr. Russelton. 
 
 " No ! Well, I imagined every one had at least dipped into 
 them. I have often had serious thoughts of dignifying my 
 own retirement by the literary employment of detailing my 
 adventures in the world. I think I could throw a new light 
 upon things and persons, which my contemporaries will shrink 
 back like owls at perceiving." 
 
 "Your life," said I, "must indeed furnish matter of equal 
 instruction and amusement,"
 
 126 PELHAM; 
 
 " Ay," answered Russelton ; " amusement to the fools, but 
 instruction to the knaves. I am, indeed, a lamentable example 
 of the fall of ambition. I brought starch into all the neck- 
 cloths in England, and I end by tying my own at a three-inch 
 looking-glass at Calais. You are a young man, Mr. Pelham, 
 about to commence life, probably with the same views as 
 (though greater advantages than) myself; perhaps, in indulg- 
 ing my egotism, I shall not weary without recompensing you. 
 
 " I came into the world with an inordinate love of glory, and 
 a great admiration of the original ; these propensities might 
 have made me a Shakspeare they did more, they made me a 
 Russelton ! When I was six years old I cut my jacket into a 
 coat, and turned my aunt's best petticoat into a waistcoat. I 
 disdained at eight the language of the vulgar, and when my 
 father asked me to fetch his slippers, I replied that my soul 
 swelled beyond the limits of a lackey's. At nine, I was self- 
 inoculated with propriety of ideas. I rejected malt with the 
 air of His Majesty, and formed a violent affection for maras- 
 chino ; though starving at school, I never took twice of pud- 
 ding, and paid sixpence a week out of my shilling to have my 
 shoes blacked. As I grew up my notions expanded. I gave 
 myself, without restraint, to the ambition that burnt within me ; 
 I cut my old friends, who were rather envious than emulous of 
 my genius, and I employed three tradesmen to make my 
 gloves one for the hand, a second for the fingers, and a third 
 for the thumb ! These two qualities made me courted and 
 admired by a new race for the great secrets of being courted 
 are to shun others, and seem delighted with yourself. The 
 latter is obvious enough ; who the deuce should be pleased 
 with you, if you are not pleased with yourself ? 
 
 " Before I left college, I fell in love. Other fellows, at my 
 age, in such a predicament, would have whined, shaved only 
 twice a week, and written verses. I did none of the three ; 
 the last indeed I tried, but, to my infinite surprise, I found my 
 genius was not universal. I began with 
 
 ' Sweet nymph, for whom I wake my muse.' 
 
 " For this, after considerable hammering, I could only think 
 of the rhyme ' shoes' ; so I began again, 
 
 ' Thy praise demands much softer lutes.' 
 
 And the fellow of this verse terminated like myself in ' boots.* 
 Other efforts were equally successful ' bloom ' suggested to 
 my imagination no rhyme but ' perfume ! ' ' Despair ' only re-
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 127 
 
 minded me of my 'hair'; and 'hope' was met, at the second 
 verse, by the inharmonious antithesis of 'soap.' Finding, there- 
 fore, that my forte was not in the Pierian line, I redoubled my 
 attention to my dress ; J coated and cravatied with all the atten- 
 tion the very inspiration of my rhymes seemed to advise ; in 
 short, I thought the best pledge I could give my Dulcinea of 
 my passion for her person would be to show her what affec- 
 tionate veneration I could pay to my own. 
 
 " My mistress could not withhold from me her admiration, 
 but she denied me her love. She confessed Mr. Russelton was 
 the best-dressed man at the university, and had the whitest 
 hands ; and two days after this avowal she ran away with a 
 great rosy-cheeked extract from Leicestershire. 
 
 " I did not blame her I pitied her too much but I made a 
 vow never to be in love again. In spite of all advantages I 
 kept my oath, and avenged myself on the species for the insult 
 of the individual. 
 
 " Before I commenced a part which was to continue through 
 life, I considered deeply on the humors of the spectators. I 
 saw that the character of the more fashionable of the English was 
 servile to rank, and yielding to pretension ; they admire you for 
 your acquaintance, and cringe to you for your conceit. The 
 first thing, therefore, was to know great people ; the second, to 
 control them. I dressed well, and had good horses that was 
 sufficient to make me sought by the young of my own sex. I 
 talked scandal, and was never abashed that was more than 
 enough to make me admired among the matrons of the other. 
 It is single men, and married women, to whom are given the St. 
 Peter's keys of Society. I was soon admitted into its heaven 
 I was more I was one of its saints. I became imitated as well 
 as initiated. I was the rage, the lion. Why? Was I better was I 
 richer was I handsomer was I cleverer,than my kind ? No,no 
 (and here Russelton ground his teeth with a strong and wrathful 
 expression. of scorn); and had I been all had I been a very 
 concentration and monopoly of all human perfections they 
 would not have valued me at half the price they did set on me. 
 It was I will tell you the simple secret, Mr. Pelham it was 
 because I trampled on them, that, like crushed herbs, they sent 
 up a grateful incense in return. 
 
 "Oh, it was balm to my bitter and loathing temper, to see 
 those who would have spurned me from them, if they dared, 
 writhe beneath my lash, as I withheld or inflicted it at will ! I 
 was the magician who held the great spirits that longed to tear 
 me to pieces by one simple spell which a superior hardi-
 
 128 PELHAM ; 
 
 hood had won me ; and, by Heaven ! I did not spare to 
 exert it. 
 
 " Well, well, this is but an idle recollection now ; all human 
 power, says the proverb of every language, is but of short du- 
 ration. Alexander did not conquer kingdoms forever ; and 
 Russelton's good fortune deserted him at last. Napoleon died 
 in exile, and so shall I ; but we have both had our day, and 
 mine was the brightest of the two, for it had no change till the 
 evening. I am more happy than people would think for Je 
 ne suis pas souvent oil man corps est I live in a world of recol- 
 lections ; I trample again upon coronets and ermine, the glories 
 of the small great ! I give once more laws which no libertine 
 is so hardy as not to feel exalted in adopting ; I hold my court 
 and issue my fiats ; I am like the madman, and out of the very 
 straws of my cell I make my subjects and my realm ; and when 
 I wake from these bright visions, and see myself an old, de- 
 serted man, forgotten, and decaying inch by inch in a foreign 
 village, I can at least summon sufficient of my ancient regality 
 of spirit not to sink beneath the reverse. If I am inclined to 
 be melancholy, why I extinguish my fire, and imagine I have 
 demolished a duchess ; I steal up to my solitary chamber, 
 to renew again, in my sleep, the phantoms of my youth ; 
 to carouse with princes ; to legislate for nobles ; and to wake 
 in the morning (here Russelton's countenance and manner 
 suddenly changed to an affectation of methodistical grav- 
 ity), and thank Heaven that I have still a coat to my stom- 
 ach, as well as to my back, and that I am safely delivered of 
 such villanous company ; 'to forswear sack and live cleanly,' 
 during the rest of my sublunary existence." 
 
 After this long detail of Mr. Russelton's the conversation 
 was but dull and broken. I could not avoid indulging a 
 reverie upon what I had heard, and my host was evidently 
 still revolving the recollections his narration had conjured up ; 
 we sat opposite each other for several minutes as abstracted 
 and distracted as if we had been a couple two months married ; 
 till at last I rose, and tendered my adieus. Russelton received 
 them with his usual coldness, but more than his usual civility, 
 for he followed me to the door. 
 
 Just as they were about to shut it, he called me back. " Mr. 
 Pelham," said he; "Mr. Pelham, when you come back this 
 way, do look in upon me, and and as you will be going a 
 good deal into society, just find out what people say of my man- 
 ner of life ! " * 
 
 * It will be perceived by those readers who are kind and patient enough to reach the
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 129 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 " An old worshipful gentleman, that had a great estate, 
 And kept a brave old house at a hospitable rate." Old Song. 
 
 I THINK I may, without much loss to the reader, pass in 
 silence over my voyage, the next day, to Dover. (Horrible 
 reminiscence !) I may also spare him an exact detail of all 
 the inns and impositions between that seaport and London ; 
 nor will it be absolutely necessary to the plot of this history 
 to linger over every milestone between the metropolis and 
 Glenmorris Castle, where my uncle and my mother were im- 
 patiently awaiting the arrival of the candidate to be. 
 
 It was a fine bright evening when my carriage entered the 
 park. I had not seen the place for years ; and I felt my 
 heart swell with something like family pride as I gazed on the 
 magnificent extent of hill and plain that opened upon me, as 
 I passed the ancient and ivy-covered lodge. Large groups 
 of trees, scattered on either side, seemed, in their own antiquity, 
 the witness of that of the family which had given them exist- 
 ence. The sun set on the waters which lay gathered in a lake 
 at the foot of the hill, breaking the waves into unnumbered 
 sapphires, and tingeing the dark firs that overspread the mar- 
 gin, with a rich and golden light, that put me excessively in 
 mind of the Duke of 's livery ! 
 
 When I descended at the gate, the servants, who stood ar- 
 ranged in an order so long that it almost startled me, received 
 me with a visible gladness and animation, which showed me, 
 at one glance, the old-fashioned tastes of their master. Who, 
 in these days, ever inspires his servants with a single sentiment 
 of regard or interest for himself or his whole race ? That 
 tribe one never, indeed, considers as possessing a life separate 
 from their services to us : beyond that purpose of existence, 
 we know not even if they exist. As Providence made the stars 
 for the benefit of earth, so it made servants for the use of gen- 
 tlemen ; and, as neither stars nor servants appear except when 
 we want them, so I suppose they are in a sort of suspense from 
 being, except at those important and happy moments. 
 
 To return for if I have any fault, it is too great a love for 
 abstruse speculation and reflection I was formally ushered 
 
 conclusion of this work, that Russelton is specified as one of my few dramatis personae of 
 which only theyfrj/ outline is taken from real life, and from a very noted personage ; all 
 the rest all, indeed, which forms and marks th character thus briefly delineated is 
 drawn solely from imagination,
 
 130 PELHAM J 
 
 through a great hall, hung round with huge antlers and rusty 
 armor, through a lesser one, supported by large stone columns, 
 and without any other adornment than the arms of the family ; 
 then through an ante-room, covered with tapestry, represent- 
 ing the gallantries of King Solomon to the Queen of Sheba ; 
 and lastly, into the apartment honored by the august presence 
 of Lord Glenmorris. That personage was dividing the sofa 
 with three spaniels and a setter ; he rose hastily when I was 
 announced, and then checking the first impulse which hurrie'd 
 him, perhaps, into an unseemly warmth of salutation, held out 
 his hand with a stately air of kindly protection, and while he 
 pressed mine, surveyed me from head to foot, to see how far 
 my appearance justified his condescension. 
 
 Having, at last, satisfied himself, he proceeded to inquire 
 after the state of my appetite. He smiled benignantly when I 
 confessed that I was excessively well prepared to testify its ca- 
 pacities (the first idea of all kind-hearted, old-fashioned people, 
 is to stuff you), and, silently motioning to the gray-headed 
 servant who stood in attendance, till, receiving the expected 
 sign, he withdrew, Lord Glenmorris informed me that dinner 
 was over for everybody but myself ; that for me it would be 
 prepared in an instant ; that Mr. Toolington had expired four 
 days since ; that my mother was, at that moment, canvassing 
 for me, and that my own electioneering qualities were to open 
 their exhibition with the following day. 
 
 After this communication there was a short pause. "What 
 a beautiful place this is ! " said I, with great enthusiasm. Lord 
 Glenmorris was pleased with the compliment, simple as it was. 
 
 "Yes," said he, " it is, and I have made it still more so than 
 you have yet been able to perceive." 
 
 "You have been planting, probably, on the other side of the 
 park ? " 
 
 "No," said my uncle, smiling ; " Nature had done everything 
 for this spot when I came to it but one; and the addition of 
 that one ornament is the only real triumph which art ever can 
 achieve." 
 
 " What is it?" asked I ; "oh, I know water." 
 
 " You are mistaken," answered Lord Glenmorris ; " it is the 
 ornament of happy faces." 
 
 I looked up to my uncle's countenance in sudden surprise. 
 I cannot explain how I was struck with the expression which 
 it wore : so calmly bright and open ! It was as if the very 
 daylight had settled there. 
 
 " You don't understand this at present, Henry," said he,
 
 Oft, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 13! 
 
 after a moment's silence ; " but you will find it, of all rules for 
 the improvement of property, the easiest to learn. Enough of 
 this now. Were you not in despair at leaving Paris ? " 
 
 " I should have been some months ago ; but when I received 
 my mother's summons, I found the temptations of the Conti- 
 nent very light in comparison with those held out to me here." 
 
 " What, have you already arrived at that great epoch when 
 vanity casts off its first skin, and ambition succeeds to pleas- 
 ure ? Why but thank Heaven that you have lost my moral 
 your dinner is announced." 
 
 Most devoutly did I thank Heaven, and most earnestly did I 
 betake myself to do honor to my uncle's hospitality. 
 
 I had just finished my repast when my mother entered. She 
 was, as you might well expect from her maternal affection, 
 quite overpowered with joy, first, at finding my hair grown so 
 much darker, and, secondly, at my looking so well. We spent 
 the whole evening in discussing the great business for which 
 I had been summoned. Lord Glenmorris promised me money, 
 ; and my mother advice ; and I, in my turn, enchanted them, by 
 promising to make the best use of both. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 " Cor. Your good voice, sir what say you ? 
 
 3d Cit. You shall have it, worthy sir." Coriolanus. 
 
 THE borough of Buyemall had long been in undisputed pos- 
 session of the lords of Glenmorris, till a rich banker, of the 
 name of Lufton, had bought a large estate in the immediate 
 neighborhood of Glenmorris Castle. This event, which was 
 the precursor of a mighty revolution in the borough of Buyem- 
 iill. took place in the first year of my uncle's accession to his 
 property. A few months afterwards a vacancy in the borough 
 occurring, my uncle procured the nomination of one of his 
 own political party. To the great astonishment of Lord Glen- 
 morris, and the great gratification of the burghers of Buyem- 
 all, Mr. Lufton offered himself in opposition to the Glenmor- 
 ris candidate. In this age of enlightenment, innovation has no 
 respect for the most sacred institutions of antiquity. The 
 burghers, for the only time since their creation as a body, were 
 cast first into doubt, and secondly into rebellion. The Lufton 
 faction, horresco referens, were triumphant, and the rival candi-
 
 132 PELHAM J 
 
 date was returned. From that hour the Borough of Buyemall 
 was open to all the world. 
 
 My uncle, who was a good easy man, and had some strange 
 notions of free representation and liberty of election, professed 
 to care very little for this event. He contented himself, hence- 
 forward, with exerting his interest for one of the members, and 
 left the other seat entirely at the disposal of the line of Luf- 
 ton, which, from the time of the first competition, continued 
 peaceably to monopolize it. 
 
 During the last two years my uncle's candidate, the late Mr. 
 Toolington, had been gradually dying of a dropsy, and the 
 Luftons had been so particularly attentive to the honest 
 burghers, that it was shrewdly suspected a bold push was to be 
 made for the other seat. During the last month these doubts 
 were changed into certainty. Mr. Augustus Leopold Lufton, 
 eldest son to Benjamin Lufton, Esq., had publicly declared his 
 intention of starting at the decease of Mr. Toolington ; against 
 this personage behold myself armed and arrayed. 
 
 Such is, in brief, the history of the borough, up to the time 
 in which I was to take a prominent share in its interests and 
 events. 
 
 On the second day after my arrival at the castle the follow- 
 ing advertisement appeared at Buyemall : 
 
 " To the Independent Electors of the Borough of Buyemall. 
 GENTLEMEN : 
 
 In presenting myself to your notice, I advance a claim not 
 altogether new and unfounded. My family have for centuries 
 been residing amongst you, and exercising that interest which 
 reciprocal confidence, and good offices, may fairly create. 
 Should it be my good fortune to be chosen your representative, 
 you may rely upon my utmost endeavors to deserve that honor. 
 One word upon the principles I espouse : they are those which 
 have found their advocates among the wisest and the best : 
 they are those which, hostile alike to the encroachments of the 
 crown and the licentiousness of the people, would support the 
 real interests of both. Upon these grounds, gentlemen, 1 have 
 the honor to solicit your votes ; and it is with the sincerest 
 respect for your ancient and honorable body, that I subscribe 
 myself your very obedient servant, HENRY PELHAM. 
 
 "Glenmorris Castle," etc., etc. 
 
 Such was the first public signification of my intentions ; it 
 was drawn up by Mr. Sharpen, our lawyer, and considered by 
 our friends as a masterpiece : for, as my mother sagely ob-
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 133 
 
 served, it did not commit me in a single instance espoused no 
 principle, and yet professed principles which all parties would 
 allow were the best. 
 
 At the first house where I called, the proprietor was a clergy- 
 man of good family, who had married a lady from Baker 
 Street : of course the Reverend Combermere St. Quintin and 
 his wife valued themselves upon being "genteel." I arrived 
 at an unlucky moment ; on entering the hall a dirty footboy 
 was carrying a yellow-ware dish of potatoes into the back 
 room. Another Ganymede (a sort of footboy-major), who 
 opened the door, and who was still settling himself into his 
 coat, which he had slipped on at my tintinnabulary summons, 
 ushered me with a mouthful of bread and cheese into this said 
 back room. I gave up everything as lost when I entered and 
 saw the lady helping her youngest child to some ineffable 
 trash, which I have since heard is called "blackberry pud- 
 ding." Another of the tribe was bawling out, with a loud, 
 hungry tone : "A tatoe, pa !" The father himself was carving 
 for the little group, with a napkin stuffed into the top button- 
 hole of his waistcoat, and the mother, with a long bib, plenti- 
 fully bespattered with congealing gravy, and the nectarian 
 liquor of the "blackberry pudding," was sitting, with a sort of 
 presiding complacency, on a high stool, like Juno on Olympus, 
 enjoying, rather than stilling, the confused hubbub of the little 
 domestic deities, who ate, clattered, spattered, and squabbled 
 around her. 
 
 Amidst all this din and confusion, the candidate for the 
 borough of Buyemall was ushered into the household privacy 
 of the genteel Mr. and Mrs. St. Quintin. Up started the lady 
 at the sound of my name. The Rev. Combermere St. Quintin 
 seemed frozen into stone. The plate between the youngest 
 child and the blackberry pudding stood as still as the sun in 
 Ajalon. The morsel between the mouth of the elder boy and 
 his fork had a respite from mastication. The Seven Sleepers 
 could not have been spellbound more suddenly and completely. 
 
 "Ah," cried I, advancing eagerly, with an air of serious and 
 yet abrupt gladness ; " how lucky that I should find you all at 
 luncheon. I was up and had finished breakfast so early this 
 morning that I am half famished. Only think how fortunate, 
 Hardy (turning round to one of the members of my committee 
 who accompanied me) ; I was just saying what would I not give 
 to find Mr. St. Quintin at luncheon. Will you allow me, madam, 
 to make one of your party?" 
 
 Mrs. St. Quintin colored and faltered, and muttered out some-
 
 134 PELHAM ; 
 
 thing which I was fully resolved not to hear. I took a chair, 
 looked round the table, not too attentively, and said : " Cold 
 veal ; ah ! ah ! nothing I like so much. May I trouble you, 
 Mr. St. Quintin? Hollo, my little man, let's see if you can't 
 give me a potato. There's a brave fellow. How old are you, 
 my young hero? To look at your mother, I should say two ; to 
 look a.\.you, six." 
 
 " He is four next May," said his mother, coloring, and this 
 time not painfully. 
 
 " Indeed?" said I, surveying him earnestly ; and then, in a 
 graver tone, I turned to the Rev. Combermere with, " I think 
 you have a branch of your family still settled in France. I met 
 a St. Quintin (the Due de Poictiers) abroad." 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Couibermere ; "yes, the name is still in 
 Normandy, but I was not aware of the title." 
 
 " No ! " said I, with surprise ; "and yet (with another look 
 at the boy), it is astonishing how long family likenesses last. 
 I was a great favorite with all the Due's children. Do you 
 know, I must trouble you for some more veal, it is so very good, 
 and I am so very hungry." 
 
 "How long have you been abroad ?" said Mrs. St. Quintin, 
 who had slipped off her bib, and smoothed her ringlets ; for 
 which purposes I had been most adroitly looking in an opposite 
 direction the last three minutes. 
 
 "About seven or eight months. The fact is, that the Con- 
 tinent only does for us English people to see not to inhabit ; 
 and yet, there are some advantages there, Mr. St. Quintin ! 
 Among others, that of the due respect ancient birth is held in. 
 Here, you know, 'money makes the man,' as the vulgar pro- 
 verb has it ! " 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. St. Quintin, with a sigh, "it is really dread- 
 ful to see those upstarts rising around us, and throwing every- 
 thing that is respectable and ancient into the background. 
 Dangerous time these, Mr. Pelham dangerous times ; nothing 
 but innovation upon the most sacred institutions. I am sure, 
 Mr. Pelham, that your principles must be decidedly against 
 these new-fashioned doctrines, which lead to nothing but anarchy 
 and confusion absolutely nothing." 
 
 *' I'm delighted to find you so much of my opinion ! " said I. 
 "I cannot endure anything that leads to anarchy and confusion." 
 
 Here Mr. Combermere glanced at his wife, who rose, called 
 the children, and, accompanied by them, gracefully withdrew. 
 
 "Now then," said Mr. Combermere, drawing his chair nearer 
 to me ; " now, Mr. Pelham, we can discuss these matters,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 135 
 
 Women are no politicians " ; and at this sage aphon^m, the 
 Rev. Combermere laughed a low, solemn laugh, which could 
 have come from no other lips. After I had joined in this grave 
 merriment for a second or two, I hemmed thrice, and with a 
 countenance suited to the subject and the host, plunged at 
 once in medias res. 
 
 "Mr. St. Quintin," said I, " you are already aware, I think, 
 of my intention of offering myself as a candidate for the borough 
 of Buyemall. I .could not think of such a measure without 
 calling upon you, the very first person, to solicit the honor of 
 your vote." Mr. Combermere looked pleased, and prepared to 
 reply. " You are the very first person I called upon," repeated I. 
 
 Mr. Combermere smiled. " Well, Mr. Pelham," said he, 
 " our families have long been on the most intimate footing." 
 
 "Ever since," cried I, "ever since Henry the Seventh's time 
 have the houses of St. Quintin and Glenmorris been allied ! 
 Your ancestors, you know, were settled in the county before ours, 
 and my mother assures me that she has read, in some old book 
 or another, a long account of your forefather's kind reception of 
 mine at the castle of St. Quintin. I do trust, sir, that we have 
 done nothing to forfeit a support so long afforded us." 
 
 Mr. St. Quintin bowed in speechless gratification ; at length 
 he found voice. "But your principles, Mr. Pelham ?" 
 
 "Quite yours, my dear sir: quite against anarchy and con- 
 fusion." 
 
 " But the Catholic question, Mr. Pelham ? " 
 
 "Oh ! the Catholic question," repeated I, "is a question of 
 great importance ; it won't be carried no, Mr. St. Quintin, 
 no, it won't be carried ; how did you think, my dear sir, that I 
 could, in so great a question, act against my conscience ? " 
 
 I said this with warmth, and Mr. St. Quintin was either too 
 convinced or too timid to pursue so dangerous a topic any 
 further. I blessed my stars when he paused, and not giving him 
 time to think of another piece of debatable ground continued : 
 " Yes, Mr. St. Quintin, I called upon you the very first person. 
 Your rank in the county, your ancient birth, to be sure, 
 demanded it ; but /only considered the long, long time the St. 
 Quintins and Pelhams had been connected." 
 
 " Well," said the Rev. Combermere, " well, Mr. Pelham, you 
 shall have my support ; and I wish, from my very heart, all 
 success to a young gentleman of such excellent principles."
 
 136 PELHAM ; 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 " More voices ! 
 
 ****** 
 
 Sic. How now, my masters, have you chosen him ? 
 Cit. He has our voices, sir ! " Coriolanus. 
 
 FROM Mr. Combermere St. Quintin's we went to a bluff, 
 hearty, radical wine-merchant, whom I had very little proba- 
 bility of gaining ; but my success with the clerical Armado had 
 inspired me, and I did not suffer myself to fear, though I could 
 scarcely persuade myself to hope. How exceedingly impos- 
 sible it is, in governing men, to lay down positive rules, even 
 where we know the temper of the individual to be gained ! 
 " You must be very stiff and formal with the St. Quintins," 
 said my mother. She was right in the general admonition, and 
 had I found them all seated in the best drawing-room, Mrs. St. 
 Quintin in her best attire, and the children on their best 
 behavior, I should have been as stately as Don Quixote in a 
 brocade dressing-gown ; but finding them in such dishabille, I 
 could not affect too great a plainness and almost coarseness of 
 bearing, as if I had never been accustomed to anything more 
 refined than I found there ; nor might I, by any appearance of 
 pride in myself, put them in mind of the wound their own 
 pride had received. The difficulty was to blend with this 
 familiarity a certain respect, just the same as a French ambas- 
 sador might have testified towards the august person of George 
 the Third, had he found his Majesty at dinner at one o'clock, 
 over mutton and turnips. 
 
 In overcoming this difficulty, I congratulated myself with as 
 much zeal and fervor as if I had performed the most impor- 
 tant victory ; for, whether it be innocent or sanguinary, in war 
 or at an election, there is no triumph so gratifying to the 
 viciousness of human nature, as the conquest of our fellow- 
 beings. 
 
 But I must return to my wine-merchant, Mr. Briggs. His 
 house was at the entrance of the town of Buyemall ; it stood 
 enclosed in a small garden, flaming with crocuses and sun- 
 flowers, and exhibiting an arbor to the right, where, in the 
 summer evenings, the respectable owner might be seen, with 
 his waistcoat unbuttoned, in order to give that just and rational 
 liberty to the subordinate parts of the human commonwealth 
 which the increase of their consequence, after the hour of 
 dinner, naturally demands. Nor, in those moments of dignified
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. itf 
 
 ease, was the worthy burgher without the divine inspirations 
 of complacent contemplation which the weed of Virginia 
 bestoweth. There, as he smoked and puffed, and looked out 
 upon the bright crocuses, and meditated over the dim recollec- 
 tions of the hesternal journal, did Mr. Briggs revolve in his 
 mind the vast importance of the borough of Buyemall to the 
 British empire, and the vast importance of John Briggs to the 
 borough of Buyemall. 
 
 When I knocked at the door a prettyish maid-servant opened 
 it with a smile, and a glance which the vendor of wine might 
 probably have taught her himself after too large potations of 
 his own spirituous manufactures. I was ushered into a small 
 parlor where sat, sipping brandy and water, a short, stout, 
 monosyllabic sort of figure, corresponding in outward shape to 
 the name of Briggs even unto a very nicety. 
 
 " Mr. Pelham," said this gentleman, who was dressed in a 
 brown coat, white waistcoat, buff-colored inexpressibles, with 
 long strings, and gaiters of the same hue and substance as the 
 breeches ; " Mr. Pelham, pray be seated excuse my rising, 
 I'm like the bishop in the story, Mr. Pelham, too old to rise " ; 
 and Mr. Briggs grunted out a short, quick, querulous, " he 
 he he," to which, of course, I replied to the best of my 
 cachinnatory powers. 
 
 No sooner, however, did I begin to laugh, than Mr. Briggs 
 stopped short, eyed me with a sharp, suspicious glance, shook 
 his head, and pushed back his chair at least four feet from the 
 spot it had hitherto occupied. Ominous signs, thought I I 
 must sound this gentleman a little further, before I venture to 
 treat him as the rest of his species. 
 
 " You have a nice situation here, Mr. Briggs," said I. 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Pelham, and a nice vote too, which is somewhat 
 more to your purpose, I believe." 
 
 " Why," said I, " Mr. Briggs, to be frank with you, I do call 
 upon you for the purpose of requesting your vote ; give it me, 
 or not, just as you please. You may be sure I shall not make 
 use of the vulgar electioneering arts to coax gentlemen out of 
 their votes. I ask you for yours as one freeman solicits 
 another: if you think my opponent a fitter person to represent 
 your borough, give your support to him in Heaven's name : if 
 not, and you place confidence in me, I will, at least, endeavor 
 not to betray it." 
 
 " Well done, Mr. Pelham," exclaimed Mr. Briggs : " I love 
 candor you speak just after my own heart ; but you must be 
 aware that one does not like to be bamboozled out of one's
 
 I3& 1>ELHAM j 
 
 right of election by a. smooth-tongued fellow, who sends one tOi 
 the devil the moment the election is over or still worse, to be: 
 frightened out of it by some stiff-necked proud coxcomb, withs 
 his pedigree in his hand, and his acres in his face, thinking 
 he does you a marvellous honor to ask you at all. Sad times 
 these for this free country, Mr. Pelham, when a parcel of con-- 
 ceited paupers, like Parson Quinny (as I call that reverend! 
 fool, Mr. Combermere St. Quintin), imagine they have a right: 
 to dictate to warm, honest men, who can buy their whole' 
 family out and out. I tell you what, Mr Pelham, we shall 
 never do anything for this country till we get rid of those 
 landed aristocrats, with their ancestry and humbug. I hope 
 you're of my mind, Mr. Pelham." 
 
 " Why," answered I, " there is certainly nothing so respect- 
 able in Great Britain as our commercial interest. A man who 
 makes himself is worth a thousand men made by their fore- 
 fathers." 
 
 "Very true, Mr. Pelham," said the wine-merchant, advancing 
 his chair to me ; and then, laying a short, thickset finger upon 
 my arm, he looked up in my face with an investigating air, and 
 said : " Parliamentary Reform what do you say to that ? 
 You're not an advocate for ancient abuses, and modern cor- 
 ruption, I hope, Mr. Pelham?" 
 
 " By no means," cried I, with an honest air of indignation ; 
 "I have a conscience, Mr. Briggs, I have a conscience as a 
 public man, no less than as a private one ! " 
 
 " Admirable ! " cried my host. 
 
 "No," I continued, glowing as I proceeded, " no, Mr. Briggs ; 
 I disdain to talk too much about my principles before they are 
 tried ; the proper time to proclaim them is when they have 
 effected some good by being put into action. I won't sup 
 plicate your vote, Mr. Briggs, as my opponent may do ; there 
 must be a mutual confidence between my supporters and 
 myself. When I appear before you a second time, you will 
 have a right to see how far I have wronged that trust reposed 
 in me as your representative. Mr. Briggs, I dare say it may 
 seem rude and impolitic to address you in this manner ; but 1 
 am a plain, blunt man, and I disdain the vulgar arts of elec- 
 tioneering, Mr. Briggs." 
 
 "Give us your fist, sir," cried the wine-merchant, in a trans- 
 port ; "give us your fist ; I promise you my support, and 1 
 am delighted to vote for a young gentleman of such excellent 
 principles." 
 
 So much, dear reader, for Mr. Briggs, who became frorr
 
 6R, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 139 
 
 that interview my staunchest supporter. I will not linger 
 longer upon this part of my career : the above conversations 
 may serve as a sufficient sample of my electioneering qualifi- 
 cations ; and so I shall merely add, that after the due quan- 
 tum of dining, drinking, spouting, lying, equivocating, bribing, 
 rioting, head-breaking, promise-breaking, and thank the god 
 Mercury who presides over elections chairing of successful 
 candidateship, I found myself fairly chosen member for the 
 borough of Buyemall ! * 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 " Political education is like the keystone to the arch the strength of the 
 whole depends upon it. Encycl. Britt. Sup. Art. Education. 
 
 I WAS sitting in the library of Glenmorris Castle about a 
 week after all the bustle of contest and the 6clat of victory had 
 begun to subside, and quietly dallying with the dry toast, 
 which constituted then, and does to this day, my ordinary 
 breakfast, when I was accosted by the following speech from 
 my uncle : 
 
 " Henry, your success has opened to you a new career ; I 
 trust you intend to pursue it ? " 
 
 " Certainly," was my answer. 
 
 "But you know, my dear Henry, that though you have 
 great talents, which, I confess, I was surprised in the course 
 of the election to discover, yet they want that careful cultiva- 
 tion, which, in order to shine in the House of Commons, they 
 must receive. Entre nous, Henry, a little reading would do 
 you no harm." 
 
 " Very well," said I, " suppose I begin with Walter Scott's 
 novels ; I am told they are extremely entertaining." 
 
 "True," answered my uncle, "but they don't contain the 
 most accurate notions of history, or the soundest principles of 
 political philosophy in the world. What did you think of 
 doing to-day, Henry ?" 
 
 " Nothing ! " said I very innocently. 
 
 * It is fortunate that Mr. Pelham's election was not for a rotten borough ; so that the 
 satire of this chapter is not yet obsolete nor unsalutary. Parliamentary Reform has not 
 terminated the tricks of canvassing and Mr. Pelham's descriptions are as applicable 
 now as when first written. All persona! canvassing is but for the convenience of cunning 
 the opportunity for manner to disguise principle. Public meetings, in which expositions 
 of opinion must be clear and will be cross-examined, are the only legitimate mode of can- 
 vass. The English begin to discover this truth ; may these scenes serve to quicken their 
 apprehension. THE AUTHOR.
 
 140 PELHAM J 
 
 " I should conceive that to be an usual answer of yours, 
 Henry, to any similar question." 
 
 " I think it is," replied I, with great naive t/. 
 
 " Well, then, let us have the breakfast things taken away, 
 and do something this morning." 
 
 " Willingly," said I, ringing the bell. 
 
 The table was cleared, and my uncle began his examination. 
 Little, poor man, had he thought, from my usual bearing, and 
 the character of my education, that in general literature there 
 were few subjects on which I was not to the full as well read 
 as himself. I enjoyed his surprise, when, little by little, he 
 began to discover the extent of my information ; but I was 
 mortified to find it was only surprise, not delight. 
 
 "You have," said he, " a considerable store of learning: far 
 more than I could possibly have imagined you possessed ; but 
 it is knowledge, not learning, in which I wish you to be skilled. 
 I would rather, in order to gift you with the former, that you 
 were more destitute of the latter. The object of education is 
 to instil principles which are hereafter to guide and instruct us ; 
 facts are only desirable, so far as they illustrate those prin- 
 ciples ; principles ought therefore to precede facts ! What 
 then can we think of a system which icverses this evident order, 
 overloads the memory with facts, and those of the most doubt- 
 ful description, while it leaves us entirely in the dark with re- 
 gard to the principles which could alone render this hetero- 
 geneous mass of any advantage or avail ? Learning, without 
 knowledge, is but a bundle of prejudices ; a lumber of inert 
 matter set before the threshold of the understanding to the 
 exclusion of common-sense. Pause for a moment, and recall 
 those of your contemporaries who are generally considered 
 well-informed ; tell me if their information has made them a 
 whit the wiser; if not, it is only sanctified ignorance. Tell me 
 if names with them are not a sanction for opinion ; quotations, 
 the representatives of axioms? All they have learned only 
 serves as an excuse for all they are ignorant of. In one month, 
 I will engage that you shall have a juster and deeper insight 
 into wisdom than they have been all their lives acquiring ; the 
 great error of education is to fill the mind first with antiquated 
 authors, and then to try the principles of the present day by 
 the authorities and maxims of the past. We will pursue, for 
 our plan, the exact reverse of the ordinary method. We will 
 learn the doctrines of the day, as the first and most necessary 
 step, and we will then glance over those which have passed 
 away, as researches rather curious than useful.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. l4t 
 
 " You see this very small pamphlet ; it is a paper by Mr. 
 Mill, upon Government. We will know this thoroughly, and 
 when we have done so, we may rest assured that we have a far 
 more accurate information upon the head and front of all 
 political knowledge than two-thirds of the young men whose 
 cultivation of mind you have usually heard panegyrized." 
 
 So saying, my uncle opened the pamphlet. He pointed out 
 to me its close and mathematical reasoning, in which no flaw 
 could be detected, nor deduction controverted ; and he filled 
 up, as we proceeded, from the science of his own clear and en 
 larged mind, the various parts which the political logician had 
 left for reflection to complete. My uncle had this great virtue 
 of an expositor, that he never over-explained ; he never made 
 a parade of his lecture, nor confused what was simple by un- 
 necessary comment. 
 
 When we broke off our first day's employment I was quite 
 astonished at the new light which had gleamed upon me. I 
 felt like Sinbad the sailor, when, in wandering through the 
 cavern in which he had been buried alive, he caught the first 
 glimpse of the bright day. Naturally eager in everything I 
 undertook, fond of application, and addicted to reflect over 
 the various bearings of any object that once engrossed my at- 
 tention, I made great advance in my new pursuit. After my 
 uncle had brought me to be thoroughly conversant with certain 
 and definite principles, we proceeded to illustrate them from 
 fact. For instance, when we had finished the " Essay upon 
 Government," we examined into the several constitutions of 
 England, British America, and France ; the three countries 
 which pretend the most to excellence in their government : 
 and we were enabled to perceive and judge the defects and 
 meri!.s of each, because we had, previously to our examination, 
 established certain rules, by which they were to be investigated 
 and tried. Here my sceptical indifference to facts was my 
 chief reason for readily admitting knowledge. I had no pre- 
 judices to contend with ; no obscure notions gleaned from the 
 past ; no popular maxims cherished as truths. Everything was 
 placed before me as before a wholly impartial inquirer freed 
 from all the decorations and delusions of sects and parties : 
 every argument was stated with logical precision, every opinion 
 referred to a logical test. Hence, in a very short time, I owned 
 the justice of my uncle's assurance as to the comparative con- 
 centration of knowledge. We went over the whole of Mill's 
 admirable articles in the Encyclopaedia, over the more popular 
 works of Bentham, and thence we plunged into the recesses of
 
 *42 PELHAM J 
 
 political economy. I know not why this study has been termed 
 uninteresting. No sooner had I entered upon its consideration 
 than I could scarcely tear myself from it. Never from that 
 moment to this have I ceased to pay the most constant atten- 
 tion, not so much as a study as an amusement ; but at that 
 time my uncle's object was not to make me a profound political 
 economist. "I wish, "said he, "merely to give you an ac- 
 quaintance with the principles of the science ; not that you 
 may be entitled to boast of knowledge, but that you may be 
 enabled to avoid ignorance ; not that you may discover truth, 
 but that you may detect error. Of all sciences, political 
 economy is contained in the fewest books, and yet is the most 
 difficult to master ; because all its higher branches require 
 earnestness of reflection, proportioned to the scantiness of read- 
 ing. Ricardo's work, together with some conversational en- 
 largement on the several topics he treats of, will be enough for 
 our present purpose. I wish, then, to show you how inseparably 
 allied is the great science of public policy with that of private 
 morality. And this, Henry, is the grandest object of all. Now 
 to our present study." 
 
 Well, gentle reader (I love, by the by, as you already per- 
 ceive, that old-fashioned courtesy of addressing you) ; well, to 
 finish this part of my life, which, as it treats rather of my at- 
 tempts at reformation than my success in error, must begin to 
 weary you exceedingly, I acquired, more from my uncle's con- 
 versation than the books we read, a sufficient acquaintance 
 with the elements of knowledge to satisfy myself and to please 
 my instructor. And I must say, in justification of my studies 
 and my tutor, that I derived one benefit from them which has 
 continued with me to this hour, viz., I obtained a clear knowl- 
 edge of moral principle. Before that time, the little ability I 
 possessed only led me into acts, which, I fear, most benevolenti 
 reader, thou hast already sufficiently condemned : my good 
 feelings for I was not naturally bad never availed me the 
 least when present temptation came into my way. I had no 
 guide but passion ; no rule but the impulse of the moment. 
 What else could have been the result of my education ? If II 
 was immoral, it was because I was never taught morality. 
 Nothing, perhaps, is less innate than virtue. I own that the 
 lessons of my uncle did not work miracles ; that, living in the 
 world, I have not separated myself from its errors and its fol- 
 lies : the vortex was too strong, the atmosphere too contagious ; 
 but I have at least avoided the crimes into which my temper 
 would most likely have driven me. I ceased to look upon the
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAtf. 143 
 
 world as a game one was to play fairly, if possible, but where 
 a little cheating was readily allowed ; I no longer divorced the 
 interests of other men from my own : if I endeavored to blind 
 them, it was neither by unlawful means, nor fora purely selfish 
 end ; if but come, Henry Pelham, thou hast praised thyself 
 enough for the present ; and, after all, thy future adventures 
 will best tell if thou art really amended. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 " Mihi jam non regia Roma, 
 Sed vacuum Tibur placet." HOR. 
 
 " MY dear child," said my mother to me affectionately, 
 " you must be very much bored here. To say truth, I am so 
 myself. Your uncle is a very good man, but he does not 
 make his house pleasant ; and I have, lately, been very much 
 afraid tha 4 : he should convert you into a mere bookworm ; after 
 all, my dear Henry, you are quite clever enough to trust to 
 your own ability. Your great geniuses never read." 
 
 " True, my dear mother," said I, with a most unequivocal 
 yawn, and depositing on the table Mr. Bentham on Popular 
 Fallacies ; "true, and I am quite of your opinion. Did you 
 see in the Post of this morning how full Cheltenham was?" 
 
 " Yes, Henry ; and, now you mention it, I don't think you 
 could do better than to go there for a month or two. As for 
 
 me, I must return to your father, whom I left at Lord H 's : 
 
 a place, entre nous, very little more amusing than this but 
 then one does get one's e'carte table, and that dear Lady Rose- 
 ville, your old acquaintance, is staying there." 
 
 " Well," said I musingly, "suppose we take our departure 
 the beginning of next week ? Our way will be the same as far 
 as London, and the plea of attending you will be a good excuse 
 to my uncle for proceeding no farther in these confounded 
 books." 
 
 " Cest une affaire finie" replied my mother, " and I will 
 speak to your uncle myself." 
 
 Accordingly the necessary disclosure of our intentions was 
 made. Lord Glenmorris received it with proper indifference, 
 so far as my mother was concerned ; but expressed much pain 
 at my leaving him so soon. However, when he found I was 
 not so much gratified as honored by his wishes for my longer 
 stjour, he gave up the point with a delicacy that enchanted me.
 
 144 PELHAM ; 
 
 The morning of our departure arrived. Carriage at the 
 door bandboxes in the passage breakfast on the table 
 myself in my great-coat my uncle in his great chair. " My 
 dear boy," said he, " I trust we shall meet again soon : you 
 have abilities that may make you capable of effecting much 
 good to your fellow-creatures ; but you are fond of the world, 
 and, though not averse to application, devoted to pleasure, and 
 likely to pervert the gifts you possess. At all events, you have 
 now learned, both as a public character and a private individual, 
 the difference between good and evil. Make but this distinc- 
 tion : that whereas, in political science, the rules you have 
 learned may be fixed and unerring, yet the application of them 
 must vary with time and circumstance. We must bend, tem- 
 porize, and frequently withdraw, doctrines which, invariable 
 in their truth, the prejudices of the time will not invariably 
 allow, and even relinquish a faint hope of obtaining a great 
 good for the certainty of obtaining a lesser ; yet in the science 
 of private morals, which relate for the main part to ourselves 
 individually, we have no right to deviate one single iota from 
 the rule of our conduct. Neither time nor circumstance must 
 cause us to modify or to change. Integrity knows no varia- 
 tion ; honesty no shadow of turning. We must pursue the 
 same course stern and uncompromising in the full persua- 
 sion that the path of right is like the bridge from earth to 
 heaven in the Mahometan creed ; if we swerve but a single 
 hair's breadth, we are irrevocably lost." 
 
 At this moment my mother joined us with a "Well, my dear 
 Henry, everything is ready we have no time to lose." 
 
 My uncle rose, pressed my hand, and left in it a pocket-book, 
 which I afterwards discovered to be most satisfactorily fur- 
 nished. We took an edifying and affectionate farewell of each 
 other, passed through the two rows of servants, drawn up in 
 martial array, along the great hall, and I entered the carriage 
 and went off with the rapidity of a novel upon "fashionable life." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 " Die si grave non est 
 Quae prima iratum ventrem placaverit esca." HOR. 
 
 I DID not remain above a day or two in town. I had never 
 seen much of the humors of a watering-place, and my love of
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 145 
 
 observing character made me exceedingly impatient for that 
 pleasure. Accordingly the first bright morning I set off for 
 Cheltenham. I was greatly struck with the entrance to that 
 town : it is to these watering-places that a foreigner should be 
 taken in order to give him an adequate idea of the magnificent 
 opulence and universal luxury of England. Our country has, 
 in every province, what France only has in Paris a capital, 
 consecrated to gayety, idleness, and enjoyment. London is 
 both too busy in one class of society, and too pompous in an- 
 other, to please a foreigner who has not excellent recommen- 
 dations to private circles. But at Brighton, Cheltenham, Has- 
 tings, Bath, he may, as at Paris, find all the gayeties of society 
 without knowing a single individual. 
 
 My carriage stopped at the Hotel. A corpulent and 
 
 stately waiter.with gold buckles to a pair of very tight pantaloons, 
 showed me upstairs. I found myself in a tolerable room facing 
 the street, and garnished with two pictures of rocks and rivers, 
 with a comely flight of crows hovering in the horizon of both, 
 as natural as possible only they were a little larger than the 
 trees. Over the chimney-piece, where I had fondly hoped to 
 find a looking-glass, was a grave print of General Washington, 
 with one hand stuck out like the spout of a teapot. Between 
 the two windows (unfavorable position ! ) was an oblongmirror, 
 to which I immediately hastened, and had the pleasure of see- 
 ing my complexion catch the color of the curtains that over- 
 hung the glass on each side, and exhibit the pleasing rurality 
 of a pale green. 
 
 I shrunk back aghast, turned, and beheld the waiter. Had 
 I seen myself in a glass delicately shaded by rose-hued curtains, 
 I should gently and smilingly have said ; " Have the goodness 
 to bring me the bill of fare." As it was, I growled out ; 
 " Bring me the bill." 
 
 The stiff waiter bowed solemnly, and withdrew slowly. I 
 looked round the room once more, and discovered the addi- 
 tional adornments of a tea-urn, and a book. " Thank Heaven," 
 thought I, as I took up the latter, "it can't be one of Jeremy 
 Bentham's." No ! it was the Cheltenham Guide. I turned to 
 
 the head of amusements "Dress ball at the rooms every " 
 
 some day or other which of the seven I utterly forget ; but 
 it was the same as that which witnessed my first arrival in the 
 small drawing-room of the Hotel. 
 
 " Thank Heaven ! " said I to myself, as Bedos entered with 
 my things, and was ordered immediately to have all in prepara- 
 tion for " the dress-ball at the rooms," at the hour of half-past
 
 146 PELHAM ; 
 
 ten. The waiter entered with the bill. " Soups, chops, cutlets, 
 steaks, roast joints, etc., etc. lion, birds." 
 
 " Get some soup," said I, " a slice or two of lion, and half 
 a dozen birds." 
 
 " Sir," said the solemn waiter, " you can't have less than a 
 whole lion, and we have only two birds in the house." 
 
 " Pray," asked I, " are you in the habit of supplying your 
 larder from Exeter 'Change, or do you breed lions here like 
 poultry ?" 
 
 " Sir," answered the grim waiter, never relaxing into a smile, 
 " we have lions brought us from the country every day." 
 
 " What do you pay for them ?" said I. 
 
 " About three and sixpence apiece, sir." 
 
 " Humph ! market in Africa over-stocked," thought I. 
 
 " Pray, how do you dress an animal of that description?" 
 
 " Roast and stuff him, sir, and serve him up with currant 
 jelly." 
 
 " What ! like a hare ! " 
 
 "A lion is a hare, sir." 
 
 " What ! " 
 
 " Yes, sir, it is a hare ! but we call it a lion, because of the 
 Game Laws." 
 
 "Bright discovery," thought I ; " they have a new language 
 in Cheltenham ; nothing's like travelling to enlarge the mind." 
 "And the birds," said I, aloud, "are neither humming-birds 
 nor ostriches, I suppose ? " 
 
 " No, sir ; they are partridges." 
 
 " Well, then, give me some soup, a cutlet, and a ' bird,' as 
 you term it, and be quick about it." 
 
 " Jt shall be done with despatch," answered the pompous 
 attendant, and withdrew. 
 
 Is there, in the whole course of this pleasant and varying 
 life, which young gentlemen and ladies write verses to prove 
 same and sorrowful is there in the whole course of it, one 
 half-hour really and genuinely disagreeable ? If so, it is the 
 half-hour before dinner at a strange inn. Nevertheless, by the 
 help of philosophy and the window, I managed to endure it 
 with great patience: and, though I was famishing with hunger, 
 I pretended the indifference of a sage, even when the dinner 
 was at length announced. I coquetted a whole minute with 
 my napkin before I attempted the soup, and I helped myself 
 to the potatory food with a slow dignity that must have per- 
 fectly won the heart of the solemn waiter. The soup was a 
 little better than hot water, and the sharp-sauced cutlet than
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTi,EMK. 147 
 
 leather and vinegar ; howbeit, I attacked them with the vigor 
 of an Irishman, and washed them down with a bottle of the 
 worst liquor ever dignified with the venerabile nomen of claret. 
 The bird was tough enough to have passed for an ostrich in 
 miniature ; and I felt its ghost hopping about the stomachic 
 sepulchre to which I consigned it the whole of that evening, 
 and a great portion of the next day, when a glass of curafoa 
 laid it at rest. 
 
 After this splendid repast I flung myself back on my chair 
 with the complacency of a man who has dined well, and dozed 
 away the time till the hour of dressing. 
 
 " Now," thought I, as I placed myself before my glass, 
 " shall I gently please, or sublimely astonish the 'fashionables' 
 of Cheltenham ? Ah, bah ! the latter school is vulgar, Byron 
 spoilt it. Don't put out that chain, Bedos, I wear the black 
 coat, waistcoat, and trousers. Brush my hair as much out of 
 curl as you can, and give an air of graceful negligence to my 
 tout ensemble" 
 
 "Out, monsieur, je comprends" answered Bedos. 
 
 I was soon dressed, for it is the design, not the execution, of 
 all great undertakings which requires deliberation and delay. 
 Action cannot be too prompt. A chair was called, and Henry 
 Pelham was conveyed to the rooms. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 " Now see, prepared to lead the sprightly dance, 
 The lovely nymphs, and well-dress'd youths advance ; 
 The spacious room receives its jovial guest, 
 And the floor shakes, with pleasing weight oppress'd." Art of Dancing 
 
 Page. " His name, my lord, is Tyrrell." Richard III. 
 
 UPON entering, I saw several heads rising and sinking to the 
 tune of " Cherry Ripe." A whole row of stiff necks, in cravats 
 of the most unexceptionable length and breadth, were just be- 
 fore me. A tall, thin young man, with dark, wiry hair brushed 
 on one side, was drawing on a pair of white Woodstock gloves, 
 and affecting to look round the room with the supreme indif- 
 ference of ban ton. 
 
 "Ah, Ritson," said another young Cheltenhamian to him of 
 the Woodstock gauntlets, " haven't you been dancing yet?" 
 
 " No, Smith, 'pon honor," answered Mr. Ritson ; " it is so
 
 148 PELHAM J 
 
 overpoweringly hot ; no fashionable man dances now ; it isnt 
 the thing." 
 
 "Why," replied Mr. Smith, who was a good-natured looking 
 person, with a blue coat and brass buttons, and a gold pin in 
 his neckcloth, " why, they dance at Almack's, don't they ?" 
 
 " No, 'pon honor," murmured Mr. Ritson ; "no, they just 
 walk a quadrille or spin a waltz, as my friend, Lord Bobadob, 
 calls it ; nothing more no, hang dancing, 'tis so vulgar." 
 
 A stout, red-faced man, about thirty, with wet auburn hair, 
 a marvellously fine waistcoat, and a badly washed frill, now 
 joined Messrs. Ritson and Smith. 
 
 "Ah, Sir Ralph," cried Smith, "how d'ye do? Been hunt- 
 ing all day, I suppose ?" 
 
 "Yes, old cock," replied Sir Ralph ; "been after the brush 
 till I am quite done up; such a glorious run ! By G , you 
 should have seen my gray mare, Smith ; by G , she's a glori- 
 ous fencer." 
 
 "You don't hunt, do you, Ritson?" interrogated Mr. Smith. 
 
 "Yes, I do," replied Mr. Ritson, affectedly playing with his 
 Woodstock glove ; "yes, but I only hunt in Leicestershire, with 
 my friend, Lord Bobadob ; 'tis not the thing to hunt anywhere 
 else." 
 
 Sir Ralph stared at the speaker with mute contempt : while 
 Mr. Smith, like the ass between the hay, stood balancing be- 
 twixt the opposing merits of the Baronet and the beau. Mean- 
 while, a smiling, nodding, affected female thing, in ringlets 
 and flowers, flirted up to the trio. 
 
 "Now, reelly, Mr. Smith, you should deence ; a feeshionable 
 young man, like you I don't know what the young leedies 
 will say to you." And the fair seducer laughed bewitchingly. 
 
 "You are very good, Mrs. Dollimore," replied Mr. Smith, 
 with a blush and a low bow; "but Mr. Ritson tells me it is 
 not the thing to dance." 
 
 "Oh," cried Mrs. Dollimore, "but then he's seech a naughty, 
 conceited creature don't follow his example, Meester Smith " ; 
 and again the good lady laughed immoderately. 
 
 "Nay, Mrs. Dollimore," said Mr. Ritson, passing his hand 
 through his abominable hair, "you are too severe ; but tell me, 
 Mrs. Dollimore, is the Countess coming here ?" 
 
 "Now, reelly, Mr. Ritson, ^w/, who are the pink of feeshion, 
 ought to know better than I can ; but I hear so." 
 
 " Do you know the Countess ? " said Mr. Smith, in respectful 
 surprise, to Ritson. 
 
 "Oh, very well," replied the Coryphaeus of Cheltenham,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 149 
 
 swinging his Woodstock glove to and fro; "I have often 
 danced with her at Alrnack's." 
 
 "Is she a good deencer?" asked Mrs. Dollimore. 
 
 "Oh, capital," responded Mr. Ritson ; "she's such a nice 
 genteel little figure," 
 
 Sir Ralph, apparently tired of this " feeshionabie " conver- 
 sation, swaggered away. 
 
 "Pray," said Mrs. Dollimore, "who is that geentleman?" 
 
 "Sir Ralph Rumford," replied Smith eagerly, "a particular 
 friend of mine at Cambridge." 
 
 "I wonder if he's going to make a long steey?" said Mrs. 
 Dollimore. 
 
 "Yes, I believe so," replied Mr. Smith, "if we make it 
 agreeable to him." 
 
 "You must poositively introduce him to me," said Mrs. 
 Dollimore. 
 
 "I will, with great pleasure," said the good-natured Mr. Smith. 
 
 "Is Sir Ralph a man of fashion?" inquired Mr. Ritson. 
 
 " He's a Baronet ! " emphatically pronounced Mr. Smith. 
 
 "Ah!" replied Ritson, "but he may be a man of rank, 
 without being a man of fashion." 
 
 "True," lisped Mrs. Dollimore. 
 
 " I don't know," replied Smith, with an air of puzzled won- 
 derment, "but he has ^7000 a year." 
 
 "Has he, indeed?" cried Mrs. Dollimore, surprised into 
 her natural tone of voice ; and, at that moment, a young lady, 
 ringletted and flowered like herself, joined her, and accosted 
 her by the endearing appellation of "Mamma." 
 
 " Have you been dancing, my love ? " inquired Mrs. Dol- 
 limore. 
 
 " Yes, ma ; with Captain Johnson." 
 
 "Oh," said the mother, with a toss of her head ; and, giving 
 her daughter a significant push, she walked away with her to 
 another end of the room, to talk about Sir Ralph Rumford, 
 and his ^7000 a-year. 
 
 " Well ! " thought I, " odd people these ; let us enter a little 
 farther into this savage country." In accordance with this 
 reflection, I proceeded towards the middle of the room. 
 
 " Who's that ? " said Mr. Smith, in a loud whisper as I 
 passed him. 
 
 "Ton honor," answered Ritson, " I don't know! but he's a 
 deuced neat-looking fellow." 
 
 " Thank you, Mr. Ritson," said my vanity ; "you are not so 
 offensive after all."
 
 150 PELHAM ; 
 
 I paused to look at the dancers; a middle-aged, respectable- 
 looking gentleman was beside me. Common people, after they 
 have passed forty, grow social. My neighbor hemmed twice, 
 and made preparation for speaking. " I may as well encourage 
 him," was my reflection ; accordingly I turned round, with a 
 most good-natured expression of countenance. 
 
 " A fine room this, sir," said the man immediately. 
 
 "Very," said I, with a smile, " and extremely well rilled." 
 
 " Ah, sir," answered my neighbor, " Cheltenham is not as it 
 used to be some fifteen years ago. I have seen as many as one 
 thousand two hundred and fifty persons within these walls 
 (certain people are always so d d particularizing) ; ay, sir," 
 pursued my laudator temporis acti, " and half the peerage here 
 into the bargain." 
 
 " Indeed ! " quoth I, with an air of surprise suited to the 
 information I received, "but the society is very good still, is 
 it not?" 
 
 " Oh, very genteel" replied the man ; " but not so dashing 
 as it used to be." (Oh ! those two horrid words ! low enough 
 to suit even the author of " .") 
 
 " Pray," asked I, glancing at Messrs. Ritson and Smith, "do 
 you know who those gentlemen are ? " 
 
 " Extremely well J." replied my neighbor; "the tall young 
 man is Mr. Ritson ; his mother has a house in Baker Street, and 
 gives quite elegant parties. He's a most genteel young man ; 
 but such an insufferable coxcomb." 
 
 " And the other ? " said I. 
 
 " Oh ! he's a Mr. Smith ; his father was an eminent brewer, 
 and is lately dead, leaving each of his sons thirty thousand 
 pounds ; the young Smith is a knowing hand, and wants to 
 spend his money with spirit. He has a great passion for ' high 
 life,' and therefore attaches himself much to Mr. Ritson, who 
 is quite that way inclined." 
 
 " He could not have selected a better model," said I. 
 
 " True," rejoined my Cheltenham Asmodeus, with naive sim- 
 plicity ; " but I hope he won't adopt his conceit as well as his 
 elegance." 
 
 "I shall die," said I to myself, "if I talk with this fellow 
 any longer," and I was just going to glide away, when a tall, 
 stately dowager, with two lean, scraggy daughters, entered 
 the room ; I could not resist pausing to inquire who they 
 were. 
 
 My friend looked at me with a very altered and disrespectful 
 air at this interrogation. " Who ? " said he, " why, the Countess
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 15! 
 
 of Babbleton and her two daughters, the Honorable Lady 
 Jane Babel, and the Honorable Lady Mary Babel. They are 
 the great people of Cheltenham," pursued he, "and it's a fine 
 thing to get into their set." 
 
 Meanwhile Lady Babbleton and her two daughters swept up 
 the room, bowing and nodding to the riven ranks on each side, 
 who made their salutations with the most profound respect. 
 My experienced eye detected in a moment that Lady Babble- 
 ton, in spite of her title and her stateliness, was exceedingly the 
 reverse of good ton, and the daughters (who did not resemble 
 the scrag of mutton, but its ghost) had an appearance of sour 
 affability which was as different from the manners of proper 
 society as it possibly could be. 
 
 I wondered greatly who and what they were. In the eyes 
 of the Cheltenhamians they were the Countess and her daugh- 
 ters ; and any further explanation would have been deemed 
 quite superfluous ; further explanation I was, however, deter- 
 mined to procure, and was walking across 1 the room in pro- 
 found meditation as to the method in which the discovery 
 should be made, when I was startled by the voice of Sir 
 Lionel Garrett ; I turned round, and, to my inexpressible joy, 
 beheld that worthy Baronet. 
 
 "Bless me, Pelham," said he, "how delighted I am to see 
 you ! Lady Harriet, here's your old favorite, Mr. Pelham." 
 
 Lady Harriet was all smiles and pleasure. " Give me your 
 arm," said she ; " I must go and speak to Lady Babbleton 
 odious woman ! " 
 
 " Do, my dear Lady Harriet," said I, " explain to me what 
 Lady Babbleton was." 
 
 " Why she was a milliner, and took in the late lord, who 
 was an idiot. Voilci tout!" 1 
 
 " Perfectly satisfactory," replied I. 
 
 " Or, short and sweet, as Lady Babbleton would say," re- 
 plied Lady Harriet, laughing. 
 
 " In antithesis to her daughters, who are long and sour." 
 
 "Oh, you satirist !" said the affected Lady Harriet (who 
 was only three removes better than the Cheltenham Countess), 
 " but tell me, how long have you been at Cheltenham ? " 
 
 " About four hours and a half ! " 
 
 "Then you don't know any of the lions here?" 
 
 " None, except (I added to myself) the lion I had for dinner." 
 
 " Well, let me despatch Lady Babbleton, and I'll then de- 
 vote myself to being your nomenclator." 
 
 We walked up to Lady Babbleton, who had already disposed
 
 152 PELHAM ; 
 
 of her daughters, and was sitting in solitary dignity at the end 
 of the room. 
 
 " My dear Lady Babbleton," cried Lady Harriet, taking 
 both the hands of the dowager, " I am so glad to see you, and 
 how well you are looking ; and your charming daughters, how 
 are they ? sweet girls ! and how long have you been 
 here ? " 
 
 " We have only just come," replied the ci-devant milliner, 
 half-rising, and rustling her plumes in stately agitation like a 
 nervous parrot ; " we must conform to modern 'ours, Lady 
 ' Arriett, though, for my part, I like the old-fashioned plan of 
 dining early, and finishing one's gayeties before midnight ; but 
 I set the fashion of good 'ours as well as I can. I think it's a 
 duty we owe to society, Lady 'Arriett, to encourage moralitv 
 by our own example. What else do we have rank for? " And 
 so saying, the counter-countess drew herself up with a most edi- 
 fying air of moral dignity. 
 
 Lady Harriet looked at me, and perceiving that my eye 
 said " Go on," as plainly as eye could possibly speak, she con- 
 tinued : " Which of the wells do you attend, Lady Babbleton? " 
 
 " All," replied the patronizing dowager. " I like to en- 
 courage the poor people here ; I've no notion of being proud 
 because one has a title, Lady 'Arriett" 
 
 " No," rejoined the worthy helpmate of Sir Lionel Garrett ; 
 "everybody talks of your condescension, Lady Babbleton ; 
 but are you not afraid of letting yourself down by going 
 everywhere ? " 
 
 "Oh," answered the Countess, "I admit very few into my 
 set at home, but \ go out promiscuously" ; and then, looking at 
 me, she said, in a whisper, to Lady Harriet, " Who is that 
 nice young gentleman ? " 
 
 " Mr. Pelham," replied Lady Harriet ; and, turning to me, 
 formally introduced us to each other. 
 
 " Are you any relation (asked the dowager) to Lady Frances 
 Pelham ? " 
 
 "Only her son," said I. 
 
 " Dear me," replied Lady Babbleton, " how odd. What a 
 nice elegant woman she is ! She does not go much out, does 
 she ? I don't often meet her." 
 
 "I should not think it likely that your ladyship did meet her 
 much. She does not visit promiscuously." 
 
 " Every rank has its duty," said Lady Harriet gravely ; 
 "your mother, Mr. Pelham, may confine her circle as much as 
 she pleases ; but the high rank of Lady Babbleton requires
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 153 
 
 greater condescension ; just as the Dukes of Sussex and 
 Gloucester go to many places where you and I would 
 not." 
 
 "Very true!" said the innocent dowager; "and that's a 
 very sensible remark ! Were you at Bath last winter, Mr. 
 Pelham?" continued the Countess, whose thoughts wandered 
 from subject to subject in the most rudderless manner. 
 
 "No, Lady Babbleton, I was unfortunately at a less dis- 
 tinguished place." 
 
 "What was that?" 
 
 "Paris." 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! I've never been abroad ; I don't think per- 
 sons of a certain rank should leave England ; they should stay 
 at home and encourage their own manufactories." 
 
 " Ah ! " cried I, taking hold of Lady Babbleton's shawl, 
 " what a pretty Manchester pattern this is." 
 
 " Manchester pattern ! " exclaimed the petrified peeress ; 
 " why, it is real cachemire : you don't think J wear anything 
 English, Mr. Pelham?" 
 
 " I beg your ladyship ten thousand pardons. I am no judge 
 of dress ; but to return I am quite of your opinion, that we 
 ought to encourage our own manufactories, and not go abroad : 
 but one cannot stay long on the Continent, even if one is 
 decoyed there. One soon longs for home again." 
 
 " Very sensibly remarked," rejoined Lady Babbleton ; "that's 
 what I call true patriotism and morality. I wish all the young 
 men of the present day were like you. Oh, dear ! here's a 
 great favorite of mine coming this way Mr. Ritson ! do you 
 know him ; shall I introduce you?" 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! " exclaimed I, frightened out of my wits, 
 and my manners. "Come, Lady Harriet, let us rejoin Sir 
 Lionel"; and, "swift at the word," Lady Harriet retook my 
 arm, nodded her adieu to Lady Babbleton, and withdrew with 
 me to an obscurer part of the room. 
 
 Here we gave way to our laughter for some time : " Is it 
 possible," exclaimed I, starting up "can that be Tyrrell?" 
 
 " What's the matter with the man ?" cried Lady Harriet. 
 
 I quickly recovered my presence of mind, and reseated my- 
 self : " Pray forgive me, Lady Harriet," said I ; " but I think, 
 nay, I am sure, I see a person I once met under very particular 
 circumstances. Do you observe that dark man in deep mourn- 
 ing who has just entered the room, and is now speaking to Sir 
 Ralph Rumford?" 
 
 " I do, it is Sir John Tyrrell ! " replied Lady Harriet : " he
 
 154 PELHAM ; 
 
 only came to Cheltenham yesterday. His is a very singular 
 history." 
 
 " What is it ? " said I eagerly. 
 
 " Why ! he was the only son of a younger branch of the 
 Tyrrells ; a very old family, as the name denotes. He was a 
 great deal in a certain roue set, for some years, and was cele- 
 brated for his gallantries. His fortune was, however, perfectly 
 unable to satisfy his expenses ; he took to gambling, and lost 
 the remains of his property. He went abroad, and used to be 
 seen at the low gaming houses at Paris, earning a very degrad- 
 ed and precarious subsistence; till, about three months ago, 
 two persons, who stood between him and the title and es- 
 tates of the family, died, and most unexpectedly he succeeded to 
 both. They say that he was found in the most utter penury 
 and distress in a small cellar at Paris ; however that may be, 
 he is now Sir John Tyrrell, with a very large income, and, in 
 spite of a certain coarseness of manner, probably acquired by 
 the low company he latterly kept, he is very much liked, and 
 even admired, by the few good people in the society of Chel- 
 tenham." 
 
 At this instant Tyrrell passed us ; he caught my eye, stopped 
 short, and colored violently. 1 bowed ; he seemed undecided 
 for a moment as to the course he should adopt ; it was but 
 for a moment. He returned my salutation with great appear- 
 ance of cordiality ; shook me warmly by the hand ; expressed 
 himself delighted to meet me ; inquired where I was staying, and 
 said he should certainly call upon me. With this promise he 
 glided on, and was soon lost among the crowd. 
 
 " Where did you meet him ? " said Lady Harriet. 
 
 "At Paris." 
 
 "What ! Was he in decent society there ?" 
 
 "I don't know," said I. "Good-night, Lady Harriet"; 
 and, with an air of extreme lassitude, 1 took my hat, and 
 vanished from that motley mixture of \hzfashionably low and 
 the vulgarly genteel!
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 155 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 1 ' Full many a lady 
 
 I have eyed with best regard, and many a time 
 The harmony of their tongues hath unto bondage 
 Drawn my too diligent ears. 
 But you, oh ! you, 
 
 So perfect and so peerless, are create 
 Of every creature's best." SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 THOU will easily conceive, my dear reader, who hast been 
 in my confidence throughout the whole of this history, and 
 whom, though as yet thou hast cause to esteem me but lightly, 
 I already love as my familiar and my friend thou wilt easily 
 conceive my surprise at meeting so unexpectedly with my old 
 hero of the gambling-house. I felt indeed perfectly stunned 
 at the shock of so singular a change in his circumstances since 
 I had last met him. My thoughts reverted immediately to 
 that scene, and to the mysterious connection between Tyrrell 
 and Glanville. How would the latter receive the intelligence 
 of his enemy's good fortune ? was his vengeance yet satisfied, 
 or through what means could it now find vent ? 
 
 A thousand thoughts similar to these occupied and distracted 
 my attention till morning, when I summoned Bedos into the 
 room to read me to sleep. He opened a play of Monsieur 
 Delavigne's, and at the beginning of the second scene I was in 
 the land of dreams. 
 
 I woke about two o'clock ; dressed, sipped my chocolate, 
 and was on the point of arranging my hat to the best advan- 
 tage, when I received the following note: 
 
 " MY DEAR PELHAM : 
 
 " Me tibi commendo. I heard this morning, at your hotel, that 
 you were here ; my heart was a house of joy at the intelligence. 
 I called upon you two hours ago ; but, like Antony, 'you revel 
 long o' nights.' Ah, that I could add with Shakspeare, that 
 you were ' notwithstanding up.' I have just come from Paris, 
 that umbilicus terra, and my adventures since I saw you, for 
 your private satisfaction, ' because I love you I will let you 
 know '; but you must satisfy me with a meeting. Till you do, 
 'the mighty gods defend you ! ' VINCENT." 
 
 The hotel from which Vincent dated this epistle was in the 
 same street as my own caravanserai, and to this hotel I imme- 
 diately set off. I found my friend sitting before a huge folio, 
 which he in vain endeavored to persuade me that he seriously
 
 156 PELHAM ; 
 
 intended to read. We greeted each other with the greatest 
 cordiality. 
 
 "But how," said Vincent, after the first warmth of welcome 
 had subsided, " how shall I congratulate you upon your new 
 honors ? I was not prepared to find you grown from a rout 
 into a senator. 
 
 ' In gathering votes you were not slack, 
 Now stand as tightly by your tack, 
 Ne'er show your lug an' fidge your back, 
 
 An* hum an' haw ; 
 
 But raise your arm, an' tell your crack 
 Before them a'.' 
 
 So saith Burns ; advice which, being interpreted, meaneth, that 
 you must astonish the rats of St. Stephen's." 
 
 "Alas ! " said I, " all one's clap-traps in that house must be 
 baited." 
 
 " Nay, but a rat bites at any cheese, from Gloucester to 
 Parmesan, and you can easily scrape up a bit of some sort. 
 Talking of the House, do you see, by the paper, that the civic 
 senator, Alderman W , is at Cheltenham ? " 
 
 " I was not aware of it. I suppose he's cramming speeches 
 and turtle for the next season." 
 
 "How wonderfully," said Vincent, "your city dignities 
 unloose the tongue ; directly a man has been a mayor, he thinks 
 himself qualified for a Tully at least. Faith, the Lord Mayor 
 asked me one day, what was the Latin for spouting ? and I 
 told him, ' hippomanes, or a raging humor in mayors' " 
 
 After I had paid, through the medium of my risible muscles, 
 due homage to this witticism of Vincent's, he shut up his folio, 
 called for his hat, and we sauntered down into the street. 
 
 " When do you go up to town ? " asked Vincent. 
 
 " Not till my senatorial duties require me." 
 
 " Do you stay here till then ? " 
 
 " As it pleases the gods. But, good heavens ! Vincent, 
 what a beautiful girl ! " 
 
 Vincent turned, " O Dea certi" murmured he, and stopped. 
 
 The object of our exclamations was standing by a corner 
 shop, apparently waiting for some one within. Her face, at 
 the moment I first saw her, was turned full towards me. Never 
 had I seen any countenance half so lovely. She was appar- 
 ently about twenty ; her hair was of the richest chestnut, and 
 a golden light played through its darkness, as if a sunbeam had 
 been caught in those luxuriant tresses, and was striving in vain 
 to escape. Her eyes were of light hazel, large, deep, and 
 shaded into softness (to use a modern expression) by long and
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 157 
 
 very dark lashes. Her complexion alone would have rendered 
 her beautiful, it was so clear so pure ; the blood blushed be- 
 neath it, like roses under a clear stream ; if, in order to justify 
 my simile, roses would have the complacency to grow in such 
 a situation. Her nose was of that fine and accurate mould 
 that one so seldom sees, except in the Grecian statues, which 
 unites the clearest and most decided outline with the most 
 feminine delicacy and softness : and the short, curved arch, 
 which descended from thence to her mouth, was so fine so 
 tf/V/Tyand exquisitely formed, that it seemed as if Love himself 
 had modelled the bridge which led to his most beautiful and 
 fragrant island. On the right side of the mouth was one 
 dimple, which corresponded so exactly with every smile and 
 movement of those rosy lips, that you might have sworn the 
 shadow of each passed there ; it was like the rapid changes of 
 an April heaven reflected upon a valley. She was somewhat, 
 but not much, taller than the ordinary height ; and her figure, 
 which united all the first freshness and youth of the girl with 
 the more luxuriant graces of the woman, was rounded and 
 finished so justly, that the eye could glance over the whole 
 without discovering the least harshness or unevenness, or atom 
 to be added or subtracted. But over all these was a light, a 
 glow, a pervading spirit, of which it is impossible to convey 
 the faintest idea. You should have seen her by the side of a 
 shaded fountain on a summer's day. You should have watched 
 her amidst music and flowers, and she might have seemed to 
 you like the fairy that presided over both. So much for 
 poetical description it is not my forte ! 
 " What think you of her, Vincent ? " said I. 
 "I say, with Theocritus, in his epithalamium of Helen " 
 "Say no such thing," said I ; " I will not have her presence 
 profaned by any helps from your memory." 
 
 At that moment the girl turned round abruptly, and re- 
 entered the stationer's shop, at the door of which she had been 
 standing. 
 
 " Let us enter," said Vincent ; "I want some sealing-wax." 
 I desired no second invitation : we marched into the shop. 
 My Armida was leaning on the arm of an old lady. She 
 blushed deeply when she saw us enter ; and, as ill-luck would 
 have it, the old lady concluded her purchases the moment 
 after, and they withdrew. 
 
 " ' Who had thought this clime had held 
 A deity so unparallel'd ! ' " 
 
 justly observed my companion.
 
 158 PELHAM ; 
 
 I made no reply. All the remainder ot that day I was ao- 
 sent and reserved ; and Vincent, perceiving that I no longer 
 laughed at his jokes nor smiled at his quotations, told me I 
 was sadly changed for the worse, and pretended an engagement, 
 to rid himself of an auditor so obtuse. 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 " Tout notre mal vient de ne pouvoir etre seuls ; de 14 le jeu, le luxe, la 
 dissipation, le vin, les femmes, 1'ignorance, la medisance, 1'envie, 1'oubli de 
 soi-meme et de Dieu." LA BRUYERE. 
 
 THE next day I resolved to call upon Tyrrell, seeing that he 
 had not yet kept his promise of anticipating me, and being 
 very desirous not to lose any opportunity of improving my ac- 
 quaintance with him ; accordingly, I sent my valet to make 
 inquiries as to his abode. I found that he lodged in the same 
 hotel as myself ; and, having previously ascertained that he 
 was at home, I was ushered by the head waiter into the game- 
 ster's apartment. 
 
 He was sitting by the fire in a listless, yet thoughtful attitude. 
 His muscular and rather handsome person was indued in a 
 dressing-gown of rich brocade, thrown on with a slovenly non- 
 chalance. His stockings were about his heels, his hair was di- 
 sheveled, and the light, streaming through the half-drawn win- 
 dow curtains, rested upon the gray flakes with which its darker 
 luxuriance was interspersed ; and the cross light in which he 
 had the imprudence or misfortune to sit fully developed the 
 deep wrinkles which years and dissipation had planted round 
 his eyes and mouth. I was quite startled at the oldness and 
 haggardness of his appearance. 
 
 He rose gracefully enough when I was announced ; and no 
 sooner had the waiter retired than he came up to me, shook 
 me warmly by the hand, and said, " Let me thank you now 
 for the attention you formerly showed me, when I was less able 
 to express my acknowledgments. I shall be proud to cultivate 
 your intimacy." 
 
 I answered him in the same strain, and in the course of con- 
 versation made myself so entertaining, that he agreed to spend 
 the remainder of the day with me. We ordered our horses at 
 three, and our dinner at seven, and I left him till the former 
 were ready, in order to allow him time for his toilet. 
 
 During our ride we talked principally on general subjects, on
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 159 
 
 the various differences of France and England, on horses, 
 on wines, on women, on politics on all things except that 
 which had created our acquaintance. His remarks were 
 those of a strong, ill-regulated mind, which had made experi- 
 ence supply the place of the reasoning faculties ; there was a 
 looseness in his sentiments, and a licentiousness in his opinions, 
 which startled even me (used as I had been to rakes of all 
 schools); his philosophy was of that species which thinks that 
 the best maxim of wisdom is to despise. Of men he spoke 
 with the bitterness of hatred ; of women, with the levity of 
 contempt. France had taught him its debaucheries, but not 
 the elegance which refines them : if his sentiments were low, 
 the language in which they were clothed was meaner still : and 
 that which makes the morality of the upper classes, and which 
 no criminal is supposed to be hardy enough to reject ; that re- 
 ligion which has no scoffers, that code which has no impugn- 
 ers, that honor among gentlemen which constitutes the mov- 
 ing principle of the society in which they live, he seemed to 
 imagine, even in its most fundamental laws, was an authority 
 to which nothing but the inexperience of the young and the 
 credulity of the romantic could accede. 
 
 Upon the whole, he seemed to me a "bold, bad man," with 
 just enough of intellect to teach him to be a villain, without 
 that higher degree which shows him that it is the worst course 
 for his interest ; and just enough of daring to make him indif- 
 ferent to the dangers of guilt, though it was not sufficient to 
 make him conquer and control them. For the rest, he loved 
 trotting better than cantering ; piqued himself upon being 
 manly; wore doeskin gloves ; drank port wine, par preference^ 
 and considered beefsteaks and oyster-sauce as the most deli- 
 cate dish in the bill of fare. I think, now, reader, you have a 
 tolerably good view of his character. 
 
 After dinner, when we were discussing the second bottle, I 
 thought it would not be a bad opportunity to question him 
 upon his acquaintance with Glanville. His countenance fell 
 directly I mentioned that name. However, he rallied himself. 
 " Oh," said he, " you mean the soi-disant Warburton. I knew 
 him some years back he was a poor silly youth, half-mad, I 
 believe, and particularly hostile to me, owing to some foolish 
 disagreement when he was quite a boy." 
 
 " What was the cause ? " said I. 
 
 "Nothing nothing of any consequence," answered Tyrrell ; 
 and then added, with an air of coxcombry : " I believe I was 
 more fortunate than he in a certain intrigue. Poor Glanville
 
 PELHAM 
 
 is a little romantic, you know. But enough of this now : shall 
 we go to the rooms ? " 
 
 " With pleasure," said I, and to the rooms we went. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 " Veteres revocavit artes." HOR. 
 " Since I came hither I have heard strange news." King Lear. 
 
 Two days after my long conversation with Tyrrell I called 
 again upon that worthy. To my. great surprise he had left 
 Cheltenham. I then strolled to Vincent ; I found him lolling 
 on his sofa, surrounded, as usual, with books and papers. 
 
 " Come in, Pelham," said he, as I hesitated at the threshold ; 
 " come in. I have been delighting myself with Plato all the 
 morning ; I scarcely know what it is that enchants us so much 
 with the ancients. I rather believe, with Schlegel, that it is 
 that air of perfect repose the stillness of a deep soul which 
 rests over their writings. Whatever would appear cominon- 
 place amongst us has with them I know not what of sublimity 
 and pathos. Triteness seems the profundity of truth ; wild- 
 ness, the daring of a luxuriant imagination. The fact is, that, 
 in spite of every fault, you see, through all, the traces of origi- 
 nal thought ; there is a contemplative grandeur in their senti- 
 ments which seems to have nothing borrowed in its meaning 
 or its dress. Take, for instance, this fragment of Mimnermus, 
 on the shortness of life, what subject can seem more tame ? 
 What less striking than the feelings he expresses ? And yet, 
 throughout every line, there is a melancholy depth and tender- 
 ness which it is impossible to define. Of all English writers 
 who partake the most of this spirit of conveying interest-aiwL 
 strength to sentiments and subjects neither novel in themselves|j 
 nor adorned in their arrangement, I know none that equal 
 Byron: it is indeed the chief beauty of that extraordinary poet. 
 Examine " Childe Harold " accurately, and you will be sur- 
 prised to discover how very little of real depth or novelty there 
 often is in the reflections which seem most deep and new. 
 You are enchained by the vague but powerful beauty of the 
 style ; the strong impress of originality which breathes through- 
 out. Like the oracle of Dodona, he makes the forests his tab- 
 lets, and writes his inspirations upon the leaves of the trees ; 
 but the source of that inspiration you cannot tell ; it is neither
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. l6l 
 
 the truth nor the beauty of his sayings which you admire, 
 though you fancy that it is : it is the mystery which accompa- 
 nies them." 
 
 " Pray," said I, " do you not imagine that one great cause of 
 this spirit of which you speak, and which seems to be nothing 
 more than a thoughtful method of expressing all things, even 
 to trifles, was the great loneliness to which the ancient poets 
 and philosophers were attached? I think (though I have not 
 your talent for quoting) that Cicero calls ' the consideration of 
 nature the food of the mind,' and the mind which, in solitude, 
 is confined necessarily to a few objects, meditates more closely 
 upon those it embraces : the habit of this meditation enters 
 and pervades the system, and whatever afterwards emanates 
 from it is tinctured with the thoughtful and contemplative 
 colors it has received." 
 
 " Wonderful ! " cried Vincent : " How long have you learnt 
 to read Cicero, and talk about the mind?" 
 
 "Ah," said I, "I am perhaps less ignorant than I affect to 
 be ; it is 'itvw my object to be a dandy ; hereafter I may aspire 
 to ^^'an orator, a wit, a scholar, or a Vincent. You will see 
 then that there have been many odd quarters of an hour in my 
 life less unprofitably wasted than you imagine." 
 
 Vincent rose in a sort of nervous excitement, and then re- 
 seating himself, fixed his dark, bright eyes steadfastly upon me 
 for some moments ; his countenance all the while assuming a 
 higher and graver expression than I had ever before seen it 
 wear. 
 
 " Pelham," said he, at last, " it is for the sake of moments 
 like these, when your better nature flashes out, that I have 
 sought your society and your friendship. /, too, am not wholly 
 ( whaV' I appear: the world may yet see that Halifax was not 
 Hfte only statesman whom the pursuits of literature had only 
 formed the better for the labors of business. Meanwhile, let 
 rpe pass for the pedant, and the bookworm : like a sturdier 
 adventurer than myself, 'I bide my time.' Pelham this will 
 be a busy session ! Shall you prepare for it ? " 
 
 "Nay," answered I, relapsing into my usual tone of languid 
 affectation ; " I shall have too much to do in attending to 
 Stultz, and Nugee, and Tattersall, and Baxter, and a hundred 
 other occupiers of spare time. Remember, this is my first 
 season in London since my majority." 
 
 Vincent took up the newspaper with evident chagrin ; how- 
 ever he was too theoretically the man of the world long to 
 show his displeasure. "Parr Parr again," said he; "how
 
 l62 PELHAM J 
 
 they stuff the journals with that name. Heaven knows, I ven- 
 erate learning as much as any man ; but I respect it for its 
 uses, and not for itself. However, I will not quarrel with his 
 reputation it is but for a day. Literary men who leave noth- 
 ing but their name to posterity have but a short twilight of 
 posthumous renown. Apropos, do you know my pun upon 
 Parr and the Major?" 
 
 " Not I," said J, " Majora canamus ! " 
 
 " Why, Parr and I, and two or three more, were dining once 
 
 at poor T. M 's, the author of ' The Indian Antiquities.' 
 
 Major , a great traveller, entered into a dispute with Parr 
 
 about Babylon ; the Doctor got into a violent passion, and 
 poured out such a heap of quotations on his unfortunate antag- 
 onist that the latter, stunned by the clamor and terrified by the 
 Greek, was obliged to succumb. Parr turned triumphantly to 
 me : ' What is your opinion, my lord,' said he ; ' who is in 
 the right ? ' 
 
 " 'Adversis MAJOR PAR secundis? answered I." 
 
 " Vincent," I said, after I had expressed sufficient admira- 
 tion at his pun ; " Vincent, I begin to be weary of this life ; I 
 shall accordingly pack up my books and myself, and go to 
 Malvern Wells, to live quietly till I think it time for London. 
 After to-day you will, therefore, see me no more." 
 
 " I cannot," answered Vincent, " contravene so laudable a 
 purpose, however I may be the loser." And, after a short and 
 desultory conversation, I left him once more to the tranquil en- 
 joyment of his Plato. That evening I went to Malvern, and 
 there I remained in a monotonous state of existence, dividing 
 my time equally between my mind and my body, and forming 
 myself into that state of contemplative reflection which was the 
 object of Vincent's admiration in the writings of the ancients. 
 
 Just when I was on the point of leaving my retreat, I re- 
 ceived an intelligence which most materially affected my future 
 prospects. My uncle, who had arrived at the sober age of 
 fifty without any apparent designs of matrimony, fell suddenly 
 in love with a lady in his immediate neighborhood, and mar- 
 ried her after a courtship of three weeks. 
 
 " I should not," said my poor mother, very generously, in a 
 subsequent letter, " so much have minded his marriage, if the 
 lady had not thought proper to become in the family way ; a 
 thing which I do and always shall consider a most unwarrant- 
 able encroachment on your rights." 
 
 I will confess that, on first hearing this news, I experienced 
 a bitter pang : but I reasoned it away. I was already under
 
 OR, ADVENTUkES OF A GENTLEMAN. 163 
 
 great obligations to my uncle, and I felt it a very unjust and 
 ungracious assumption on my part to affect anger at conduct I 
 had no right to question, or mortification at the loss of pretensions 
 I had so equivocal a privilege to form. A man of fifty has,pfr- 
 haps, a right to consult his own happiness, almost as much as a 
 man of thirty ; and if he attracts by his choice the ridicule of 
 those whom he has never obliged, it is at least from those persons 
 he has obliged that he is to look for countenance and defence. 
 
 Fraught with these ideas, I wrote to my uncle a sincere and 
 warm letter of congratulation. His answer was, like himself, 
 kind, affectionate, and generous ; it informed me that he had 
 already made over to me the annual sum of one thousand 
 pounds ; and that in case of his having a lineal heir, he had, 
 moreover, settled upon me, after his death, two thousand a 
 year. He ended by assuring me that his only regret at marry- 
 ing a lady who, in all respects, was, above all women, calculat- 
 ed to make him happy, was his unfeigned reluctance to de- 
 prive me of a station which (he was pleased to say) I not only 
 deserved, but should adorn. 
 
 Upon receiving this letter I was sensibly affected with my 
 uncle's kindness ; and, so far from repining at his choice, I 
 most heartily wished him every blessing it could afford him, 
 even though an heir to the titles of Glenmorris were one of 
 them. 
 
 I protracted my stay at Malvern some weeks longer than I 
 had intended : the circumstance which had wrought so great a 
 change in my fortune, wrought no less powerfully on my char- 
 acter. I became more thoughtfully and solidly ambitious. 
 Instead of wasting my time in idle regrets at the station I had 
 lost, I rather resolved to carve out for myself one still lofty and 
 more universally acknowledged. I determined to exercise, to 
 their utmost, the litile ability and knowledge I possessed ; and 
 while the increase of income, derived from my uncle's gener- 
 osity, furnished me with what was necessary for my luxury, I 
 was resolved that it should not encourage me in the indulgence 
 of my indolence. 
 
 In this mood, and with these intentions, I repaired to the 
 metropolis.
 
 164 PELHAM 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 " Cumpulchris tunicis sumet nova consilia et spes." HoR. 
 
 " And look always that they be shape, 
 What garment that thou shalt make 
 Of him that can best do 
 With all that pertaineth thereto." Rom. of the Rose. 
 
 How well I can remember the feelings with which I entered 
 London, and took possession of the apartments prepared for 
 me at Mivart's ! A year had made a vast alteration in my 
 mind ; I had ceased to regard pleasure for its own sake : 
 I rather coveted its enjoyments, as the great sources of worldly 
 distinction. I was not the less a coxcomb than heretofore, 
 nor the less fastidious in my horses and my dress ; but 
 I viewed these matters in a light wholly different from that in 
 which I had hitherto regarded them. Beneath all the careless- 
 ness of my exterior, my mind was close, keen, and inquiring ; 
 and under all the affectations of foppery, and the levity of 
 manner, I veiled an ambition the most extensive in its objects, 
 and a resolution the most daring in the accomplishment of its 
 means. 
 
 I was still lounging over my breakfast, on the second morn- 
 ing of my arrival^ when Mr. , the tailor, was announced. 
 
 " Good-morning, Mr. Pelham : happy to see you returned. 
 Do I disturb you too early ? Shall I wait on you again ? " 
 
 " No, Mr. , I am ready to receive you. You may re- 
 new my measure." 
 
 " We are a very good figure, Mr. Pelham ; very good figure," 
 replied the Schneider, surveying me from head to foot, while 
 he was preparing his measure ; " we want a little assistance, 
 though ; we must be padded well here, we must have our chest 
 thrown out, and have an additional inch across the shoulders ; 
 we must live for effect in this world, Mr. Pelham ; a leetle 
 tighter round the waist, eh ? " ^ 
 
 " Mr. ," said I, " you will Take, first, my exact measure, 
 and, secondly, my exact instructions. Have you done the 
 first?" 
 
 " We are done now, Mr. Pelham," replied my man-maker, in 
 a slow, solemn tone. 
 
 " You will have the goodness, then, to put no stuffing of any 
 description in my coat ; you will not pinch me an iota tighter 
 across the waist than is natural to that part of my body ; and
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 165 
 
 you will please, in your infinite mercy, to leave me as much 
 after the fashion in which God made me as you possibly can." 
 
 " But, sir, we must be padded ; we are much too thin ; all 
 the gentlemen in the Life Guards are padded, sir." 
 
 " Mr. ," answered I, " you will please to speak of us 
 
 with a separate, and not a collective, pronoun ; and you will 
 let me for once have my clothes such as a gentleman, who, I 
 beg of you to understand, is not a Life Guardsman, can wear 
 without being mistaken for a Guy Fawkes on a fifth of No- 
 vember." 
 
 Mr. looked very discomfited: "We shall not be liked, 
 
 sir, when we are made we shant, I assure you. I will call 
 on Saturday at eleven o'clock. Good-morning, Mr. Pelham ; 
 we shall never be done justice to, if we do not live for effect ; 
 good-morning, Mr. Pelham." 
 
 And here, as I am weary of tailors, let me reflect a little 
 upon that divine art of which they are the professors. Alas, 
 for the instability of all human sciences! A few short months 
 ago, in the first edition of this memorable work, I laid down 
 rules for costume, the value of which Fashion begins already 
 to destroy. The thoughts which I shall now embody shall be 
 out of the reach of that great innovator, and applicable not to 
 one ag^but to all. To the sagacious reader, who has already 
 discovered what portions of this work are writ in irony what 
 in earnest I fearlessly commit these maxims ; beseeching 
 him to believe, with Sterne, that " everything is big with jest, 
 and has wit in it, and instruction, too if we can but find it out ! 
 
 MAXIMS. 
 
 I. 
 
 Do not require your dress so much to fit as to adorn you. 
 Nature is not to be copied, but to be exalted by art. Apelles 
 blamed Protogenes for being too natural 
 
 ii. 
 
 Never in your dress altogether desert that taste which is 
 general. The world considers eccentricity in great things 
 genius ; in small things folly. 
 
 in. 
 
 Always remember that you dress to fascinate others, not 
 yourself. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Keep your rpind free from all violent affections at the hour
 
 J66 PELHAM ; 
 
 of the toilet. A philosophical serenity is perfectly necessary 
 to success. Helvetius says, justly, that our errors arise from 
 our passions. 
 
 v. 
 
 Remember that none but those whose courage is unques- 
 tionable can venture to be effeminate. It was only in the 
 field that the Spartans were accustomed to use perfumes and 
 curl their hair. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Never let the finery of chains and rings seem your own 
 choice ; that which naturally belongs to women should appear 
 only worn for their sake. We dignify foppery when we in- 
 vest it with a sentiment. 
 
 VII. 
 
 To win the affection of your mistress, appear negligent in 
 your costume to preserve it, assiduous ; the first is a sign of 
 the passion of love ; the second, of its respect. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 A man must be a profound calculator to be a consummate 
 dresser. One must not dress the same, whether one goes to a 
 minister or a mistress ; an avaricious uncle, or an ostentatious 
 cousin : there is no diplomacy more subtle than that of dress. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Is the great man whom you would conciliate a coxcomb ? 
 go to him in a waistcoat like his own. " Imitation," says the 
 author of Lacon. "is the sincerest flattery." 
 
 x. 
 
 The handsome may be showy in dress, the plain should 
 study to be unexceptionable ; just as in great men we look for 
 something to admire in ordinary men we ask for nothing to 
 forgive. 
 
 XI. 
 
 There is a study of dress for the aged, as well as for the 
 young. Inattention is no less indecorous in one than in the 
 other ; we may distinguish the taste appropriate to each, by 
 the reflection that youth is made to be loved age to be re- 
 spected. 
 
 XII. 
 
 A fool may dress gaudily, but a fool cannot dress well for 
 to dress well requires judgment; and Rochefoucauld says with
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 167 
 
 truth, " On est quelquefois un sot avec de resprit, mat's on ne I'est 
 jamais avec dujugcment." 
 
 XIII. 
 
 There may be more pathos in the fall of a collar, or the 
 curl of a lock, than the shallow think for. Should we be so 
 apt as we are now to compassionate the misfortunes, and to 
 forgive the insincerity of Charles I., if his pictures had por- 
 trayed him in a bob-wig and a pigtail? Vandyke was a 
 greater sophist than Hume. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The most graceful principle of dress is neatness the most 
 vulgar is preciseness. 
 
 Dress contains the two codes of morality private and 
 public. Attention is the duty we owe to others cleanliness 
 that which we owe to ourselves. 
 oJ hn XVI 
 
 T-N iU i. 'I. U -J r "tin. a. 11 
 
 Dress so that it may never be said of you, What a well- 
 dressed man ! " but, "What a gentlemanlike man ! " 
 
 xvn. 
 
 Avoid many colors ; and seek, by some one prevalent and 
 quiet tint, to sober down the others. Apelles used only four 
 colors, and always subdued those which were more florid, by 
 a darkening varnish. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Nothing is superficial to a deep observer ! It is in trifles 
 that the mind betrays itself. " In what part of that letter," 
 said a king to the wisest of living diplomatists, "did you dis- 
 cover irresolution?" "In its ns andgsf" was the answer. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 A very benevolent man will never shock the feelings of 
 others, by an excess either of inattention or display ; you may 
 doubt, therefore, the philanthropy both of a sloven and a fop. 
 
 YV 
 
 . A A . 
 
 There is an indifference to please in a stocking down at 
 heel but there may be malevolence in a diamond ring. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Inventions in dressing should resemble Addison's definition 
 of fine writing, and consist of "refinements which are natural, 
 without being obvious."
 
 168 PELHAM ; 
 
 XXII. 
 
 He who esteems trifles for themselves, is a trifler ; he who 
 esteems them for the conclusions to be drawn from them, or 
 the advantage to which they can be put, is a philosopher. 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 " Tantof, Monseigneur le Marquis a cheval 
 Tantot, Monsieur du Mazin de bout ! " 
 
 L'Art'de se Promtner a Cheval. 
 
 MY cabriolet was at the door, and I was preparing to enter, 
 when I saw a groom managing, with difficulty, a remarkably 
 fine and spirited horse. As, at that time, I was chiefly occupied 
 Avith the desire of making as perfect a stud as my fortune would 
 allow, I sent my cab boy (vulgb Tiger) to inquire of the groom 
 whether the horse was to be sold, and to whom it belonged. 
 
 " It was not to be disposed of," was the answer, " and it be- 
 longed to Sir Reginald Glanville." 
 
 The name thrilled through me ; I drove after the groom, 
 and inquired Sir Reginald Glanville's address. His house, the 
 groom informed me, was at No. Pall Mall. I resolved to 
 call that day, but, as the groom said he was rarely at home till 
 late in the afternoon, I drove first to Lady Roseville's to talk 
 about Almack's and the beau monde, and be initiated into the 
 newest scandal and satire of the day. 
 
 Lady Roseville was at home ; I found the room half full of 
 women: the beautiful Countess was one of the few persons 
 extant who admit people of a morning. She received me with 
 
 marked kindness. Seeing that , who was esteemed, among 
 
 his friends, the handsomest man of the day, had risen from his 
 seat next to Lady Roseville, in order to make room for me, 
 I negligently and quietly dropped into it, and answered 
 his grave and angry stare at my presumption with my very 
 sweetest and most condescending smile. Heaven be praised, 
 the handsomest man of the day is never the chief object in the 
 room, when Henry Pelham and his guardian angel, termed by 
 his enemies his self-esteem, once enter it. 
 
 I rattled on through a variety of subjects, till Lady Roseville 
 at last said, laughingly: "I see, Mr. Pelham, that you have 
 learned, at least, the art of making the frais of the conversa- 
 tion since your visit to Paris." 
 
 " I understand you," answered I; "you mean that I talk
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 169 
 
 too much ; it is true I own the offence nothing is so un- 
 popular ! Even I. the civillest, best-natured, most unaffected 
 person in all Europe, am almost disliked, positively disliked, 
 for that sole and simple crime. Ah ! the most beloved man 
 in society is that deaf and dumb person, comment s'appelle -t-il ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Lady Roseville, "popularity is a goddess best 
 worshipped by negatives ; and the fewer claims one has to be 
 admired, the more pretensions one has to be beloved. >: 
 
 " Perfectly true, in general," said I ; "for instance, I make 
 the rule, and you the exception. I, a perfect paragon, am 
 hated because I am one ; you, a perfect paragon, are idolized in 
 spite of it. But, tell me, what literary news is there ? I am 
 tired of the trouble of idleness, and, in order to enjoy a little 
 dignified leisure, intend to set up as a savant" 
 
 "Oh, Lady C is going to write a 'Commentary on 
 
 Ude'; and Madame de Genlis a* Proof of the Apocrypha.' The 
 
 Duke of N e is publishing a Treatise on 'Toleration'; and 
 
 Lord L an Essay on ' Self-knowledge.' As for news more 
 
 remote, I near that the Dey of Algiers is finishing an ' Ode to 
 Liberty,' and the College of Caffraria preparing a volume of 
 voyages to the North Pole ! " 
 
 " Now," said I, " if I retail this information with a serious 
 air, I will lay a wager that I find plenty of believers ; for fic- 
 tion, uttered solemnly, is much more like probability than truth 
 uttered doubtingly : else how do the priests of Brahma and 
 Mahomet live ? " 
 
 " Ah, now you grow too profound, Mr. Pelham ! " 
 
 " Cest vrai but " 
 
 " Tell me," interrupted Lady Roseville, " how it happens 
 that you, who talk eruditely enough upon matters of erudition, 
 should talk so lightly upon matters of levity ? " 
 
 "Why," said I, rising to depart, "very great minds are apt 
 to think that all which they set any value upon, is of equal im- 
 portance. Thus Hesiod, who, you know, was a capital poet, 
 though rather an imitator of Shenstone, tells us that God be- 
 stowed valor on some men, and on others a genius for dancing. 
 It was reserved for me, Lady Roseville, to unite the two perfec- 
 tions. Adieu ! " 
 
 " Thus," said I, when I was once more alone " thus do we 
 'play the fools with the time," until Fate brings that which is 
 better than folly ; and, standing idly upon the seashore, till we 
 can catch the favoring wind which is to waft the vessel of our 
 destiny to enterprise and fortune, amuse ourselves with the 
 weeds and the pebbles which are within our reach ! "
 
 170 PELHAM 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 '' There was a youth who, as with toil and travel, 
 Had grown quite weak and gray before his time : 
 Nor any could the res'less grief unravel 
 Which burned within him. withering up his prime, 
 And goading him, like fiends, from land to land." 
 
 P. B. SHELLEY. 
 
 FROM Lady Roseville's I went to Glanville's house. He 
 was at home. I was ushered into a beautiful apartment, hung 
 with rich damask, and interspersed with a profusion of mirrors. 
 Beyond, to the right of this room, was a small closet, fitted up 
 with books. This room, evidently a favorite retreat, was 
 adorned at close intervals with girandoles of silver and mother 
 of pearl ; the handles of the doors were of the same material. 
 
 This closet opened upon a spacious and lofty saloon, the 
 walls of which were covered with the masterpieces of Flemish 
 and Italian art. Through this apartment I was led, by the 
 obsequious and bowing valet, into a fourth room, in which, 
 negligently robed in his dressing-gown, sate Reginald Glan- 
 ville : "Good Heavens," thought I, as I approached him, "can 
 this be the man who made his residence, by choice, in a miser- 
 able hovel, exposed to all the damps, winds, and vapors that 
 the prolific generosity of an English heaven ever begot ?" 
 
 Our meeting was cordial in the extreme. Glanville, though 
 still pale and thin, appeared in much better health than I had 
 yet seen him since our boyhood. He was, or affected to be, in 
 the most joyous spirits : and when his blue eye lighted up, in 
 answer to the merriment of his lips, and his noble and glorious 
 cast of countenance shone out, as if it had never been clouded 
 by grief or passion, I thought, as I looked at him, that I had 
 never seen so perfect a specimen of masculine beauty, at once 
 physical and intellectual. 
 
 " My dear Pelham," said Glanville, "let us see a great deal 
 of each other : I live very much alone: I have an excellent 
 cook sent me over from France by the celebrated gourmand 
 
 Marechalde . I dine every day exactly at eight, and never 
 
 accept an invitation to dine elsewhere. My table is always 
 laid for three, and you will, therefore, be sure of finding a 
 dinner here every day you have no better engagement. What 
 think you of my taste in pictures?" 
 
 " I have only to say," answered I, "that since I am so often 
 to dine with you, I hope your taste in wines will be one-half as 
 good."
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAtf. iyi 
 
 "We are all," said Glanville, with a faint smile ; "we are 
 all, in the words of the true old proverb, 'children of a larger 
 growth.' Our first toy is love ; our second, display, according 
 as our ambition prompts us to exert it. Some place it in horses, 
 some in honors, some in feasts, and some void un exemple in 
 furniture or pictures. So true it is, Pelham, that our earliest 
 longings are the purest : in love, we covet goods for the sake 
 of the one beloved : in display, for our own : thus, our first 
 stratum of mind produces fruit for others ; our second becomes 
 niggardly, and bears only sufficient for ourselves. But enough 
 of my morals ; will you drive me out, if I dress quicker than 
 you ever saw man dress before ? " 
 
 " No," said I ; " for I make it a rule never to drive out a badly 
 dressed friend ; take time, and I will let you accompany me." 
 
 " So be it, then. Do you ever read ? if so, my books are 
 made to be opened, and you may toss them over while I am at 
 my toilet. Look, here are two works, one of poetry one on 
 the Catholic Question, both dedicated to me. Seymour, my 
 waistcoat. See what it is to furnish a house differently from 
 other people ; one becomes a bel esprit, and a Maecenas, imme- 
 diately. Believe me, if you are rich enough to afford it, that 
 there is no passport to fame like eccentricity. Seymour, my 
 coat. I am at your service, Pelham. Believe hereafter that 
 one may dress well in a short time ! " 
 
 " One may do it, but not two allons ! " 
 
 I observed that Glanville was dressed in the deepest mourn- 
 ing, and imagined, from that circumstance and his accession to 
 the title I heard applied to him for the first time, that his 
 father was only just dead. In this opinion I was soon unde- 
 ceived. He had been dead for some years. Glanville spoke 
 to me of his family: "To my mother," said he, "I am par- 
 ticularly anxious to introduce you ; of my sister I say nothing; 
 I expect you to be surprised with her. I love her more than 
 anything on earth now," and as Glanville said this, a paler 
 shade passed over his face. 
 
 We were in the Park Lady Roseville passed us we both 
 bowed to her ; as she returned our greeting, I was struck with 
 the deep and sudden blush which overspread her countenance. 
 "That can't be for me?" thought I. I looked towards Glan- 
 ville ; his countenance had recovered its serenity, and was set- 
 tled into its usual proud, but not displeasing, calmness of ex- 
 pression. 
 
 " Do you know Lady Roseville well?" said I. 
 
 "Very," answered Glanville laconically, and changed the
 
 1?2 J-ELHAM * 
 
 conversation. As we were leaving the Park, through Cumber- 
 land Gate, we were stopped by a blockade of carriages ; a 
 voice, loud, harsh, and vulgarly accented, called out to Glan- 
 ville by his name. I turned, and saw Thornton. 
 
 "For Heaven's sake, Pelham, drive on," cried Glanville ; 
 "let me, for once, escape that atrocious plebeian." 
 
 Thornton was crossing the road towards us ; I waved my 
 hand to him civilly enough (for I never cut anybody), and 
 drove rapidly through the other gate, without appearing to 
 notice his design of speaking to us. 
 
 " Thank Heaven ! " said Glanville, and sank back in a reverie, 
 from which I could not awaken him till he was set down at his 
 own door. 
 
 When I returned to Mivart's, I found a card from Lord 
 Dawton, and a letter from my mother. 
 " MY DEAR HENRY (began the letter) : 
 
 " Lord Dawton having kindly promised to call upon you, 
 personally, with this note, I cannot resist the opportunity that 
 promise affords me of saying how desirous I am that you 
 should cultivate his acquaintance. He is, you know, among 
 the most prominent leaders of the Opposition : and should the 
 Whigs, by any possible chance, ever come into power, he would 
 have a great chance of becoming Prime Minister. I trust, 
 however, that you will not adopt that side of the question. 
 The Whigs are a horrid set of people (politically speaking), 
 vote for the Roman Catholics, and never get into place ; they 
 give very good dinners, however, and till you have decided 
 upon your politics, you may as well make the most of them. I 
 hope, by the by, that you will see a great deal of Lord Vin- 
 cent : every one speaks highly of his talents ; and only two 
 weeks ago he said publicly that he thought you the most 
 promising young man, and the most naturally clever person, he 
 had ever met. I hope that you will be attentive to your parlia- 
 mentary duties ; and, oh, Henry, be sure that you see Cart- 
 wright, the dentist, as soon as possible. 
 
 "I intend hastening to London three weeks earlier than I 
 had intended, in order to be useful to you. I have written 
 already to dear Lady Roseville, begging her to introduce you at 
 
 Lady C.'s, and Lady ; the only places worth going to at 
 
 present. They tell me there is a horrid, vulgar, ignorant book 
 
 come out about . As you ought to be well versed in modern 
 
 literature, I hope you will read it, and give me your opinion. 
 Adieu, my dear Henry ; ever your affectionate mother, 
 
 "FRANCES PELHAM."
 
 Oft, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 173 
 
 I was still at my solitary dinner when the following note was 
 brought me from Lady Roseville : 
 
 " DEAR MR. PELHAM : 
 
 " Lady Frances wishes Lady C to be made acquainted 
 
 with you ; this is her night, and I therefore enclose you a card. 
 
 As I dine at House, I shall have an opportunity of making 
 
 yoMie'loge before your arrival. Yours sincerely, 
 
 "C. ROSEVILLE." 
 
 I wonder, thought I, as I made my toilet, whether or not Lady 
 Roseville is enamoured of her new correspondent ? I went very 
 early, and before I retired my vanity was undeceived. Lady 
 Roseville was playing at /carte when I entered. She beckoned 
 to me to approach. I did. Her antagonist was Mr. Bedford, a 
 natural son of the Duke of Shrewsbury, and one of the best- 
 natured and best-looking dandies about town ; there was, of 
 course, a great crowd round the table. Lady Roseville played 
 incomparably ; bets were high in her favor. Suddenly her coun- 
 tenance changed her hand trembled her presence of mind 
 forsook her. She lost the game. I looked up and saw just 
 opposite to her, but apparently quite careless and unmoved, Re- 
 ginald Glanville. We had only time to exchange nods, for Lady 
 Roseville rose from the table, took my arm, and walked to the 
 other end of the room, in order to introduce me to my hostess. 
 
 I spoke to her a few words, but she was absent and inatten- 
 tive ; my penetration required no farther proof to convince me 
 that she was not wholly insensible to the attractions of Glan- 
 ville. Lady was as civil and silly as the generality of Lady 
 
 Blanks are : and feeling very much bored, I soon retired to an 
 obscurer corner of the room. Here Glanville joined me. 
 
 "It is but seldom," said he, "that I come to these places ; 
 to-night my sister persuaded me to venture forth. 
 
 "Is she here ? " said I. 
 
 "She is," answered he ; "she has just gone into the refresh- 
 ment room with my mother ; and when she returns, I will in- 
 troduce you." 
 
 While Glanville was yet speaking, three middle-aged ladies, 
 who had been talking together with great vehemence for the last 
 ten minutes, approached us. 
 
 "Which is he? Which is he?" said two of them, in no in- 
 audible accents. 
 
 " This," replied the third ; and coming up to Glanville, she 
 addressed him, to my great astonishment, in terms of the most 
 hyperbolical panegyric.
 
 1?4 PELHAM ; 
 
 " Your work is wonderful ! Wonderful ! " said she. 
 
 " Oh ! quite quite ! " echoed the other two. 
 
 "I can't say," recommenced the Coryphaa, " that I like the 
 moral at least not quite ; no, not quite." 
 
 " Not quite," repeated her coadjutrices. 
 
 Glanville drew himself up with his most stately air, and 
 after three profound bows, accompanied by a smile of the 
 most unequivocal contempt, he turned on his heel and walked 
 away. 
 
 " Did Your Grace ever see such a bear ? " said one of the 
 echoes. 
 
 " Never," said the duchess, with a mortified air ; " but I will 
 have him yet. How handsome he is for an author ! " 
 
 I was descending the stairs in the last state of ennui, when 
 Glanville laid his hand on my shoulder. 
 
 " Shall I take you home ?" said he : "my carriage has just 
 
 dr r n up -" 'iL , ffi 
 
 I was too glad to answer m the affirmative. 
 
 " How long have you been an author ? " said I, when we 
 were seated in Glanville's carriage. 
 
 " Not many days," he replied. " I have tried one resource 
 after another all all in vain. Oh, God ! that for me there 
 could exist such a blessing &s fiction! Must I be ever the mar- 
 tyr of one burning, lasting, indelible truth ! 
 
 Glanville uttered these words with a peculiar wildness and 
 energy of tone : he then paused abruptly for a minute, and 
 continued, with an altered voice : 
 
 " Never, my dear Pelham, be tempted by any inducement 
 into the pleasing errors of print ; from that moment you are 
 public property ; and the last monster at Exeter 'Change has 
 more liberty than you ; but here we are at Mivart's. Adieu 
 I will call on you to-morrow, if my wretched state of health 
 will allow me." 
 
 And with these words we parted. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII 
 
 " Ambition is a lottery, where, however uneven the'chances, there are some 
 prizes ; but in dissipation, every one draws a blank." Letters of STEPHEN 
 MONTAGUE. 
 
 THE season was not far advanced before I grew heartily tired 
 pf what are nicknamed its gayeties ; I shrank, by rapid degrees,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAfcf. l7fj 
 
 into a very small orbit, from which I rarely moved. I had al- 
 ready established a certain reputation for eccentricity, fashion, 
 and, to my great astonishment, also for talent ; and my pride 
 was satisfied with finding myself universally run after, whilst I 
 indulged my inclinations by rendering myself universally scarce. 
 I saw much of Vincent, whose varied acquirements and great 
 talents become more and more perceptible, both as my own ac- 
 quaintance with him increased, and as the political events with 
 which that year was pregnant called forth their exertion and 
 display. I went occasionally to Lady Roseville's, and was al- 
 ways treated rather as a long-known friend, than an ordinary 
 acquaintance ; nor did I undervalue this distinction, for it was 
 part of her pride to render her house not only as splendid, but 
 as agreeable, as her command over society enabled her to effect. 
 
 At the House of Commons my visits would have been duly 
 paid, but for one trifling occurrence, upon which, as it is a very 
 sore subject, I shall dwell as briefly as possible. I had scarcely 
 taken my seat before I was forced to relinquish it. My un- 
 successful opponent, Mr. Lufton, preferred a petition against 
 me, for what he called undue means. Heaven knows what he 
 meant ; I am sure the House did not, for they turned me out, 
 and declared Mr. Lufton duly elected. 
 
 Never was there such a commotion in the Glenmorris family 
 before. My uncle was seized with the gout in his stomach, 
 and my mother shut herself up with Tremaine and one china 
 monster for a whole week. As for me, though I writhed at 
 heart, I bore the calamity philosophically enough in external 
 appearance ; nor did I the less busy myself in political matters : 
 with what address and success, good or bad, I endeavored to 
 supply the loss of my parliamentary influence, the reader will 
 see, when it suits the plot of this history to touch upon such 
 topics. 
 
 Glanville I saw continually. When in tolerable spirits, he 
 was an entertaining, though never a frank nor a communicative 
 companion. His conversation then was lively, yet without 
 wit, and sarcastic, though without bitterness. It abounded 
 also in philosophical reflections and terse maxims, which always 
 brought improvement, or, at the worst, allowed discussion. He 
 was a man of even vast powers of deep thought, of luxuriant, 
 though dark imagination, and of great miscellaneous though, 
 perhaps, ill-arranged erudition. He was fond of paradoxes in 
 reasoning, and supported them with a subtlety and strength of 
 mind which Vincent, who admired him greatly, told me he had 
 never seen surpassed. He was subject, at times, to a gloom
 
 176 
 
 and despondency which seemed almost like aberration of 
 intellect. At those hours he would remain perfectly silent, 
 and apparently forgetful of my presence, and of every object 
 around him. 
 
 It was only then, when the play of his countenance was 
 vanished, and his features were still and set, that you saw in 
 their full extent the dark and deep traces of premature decay. 
 His cheek was hollow and hueless, his eye dim, and of that 
 visionary and glassy aspect which is never seen but in great 
 mental or bodily disease, and which, according to the supersti- 
 tions of some nations, implies a mysterious and unearthly 
 communion of the soul with the beings of another world. 
 From these trances he would sometimes start abruptly, and 
 renew any conversation broken off before, as if wholly uncon- 
 scious of the length of his revery. At others, he would rise 
 slowly from his seat, and retire into his own apartment, from 
 which he never emerged during the rest of the day. 
 
 But the reader must bear in mind that there was nothing 
 artificial or affected in his musings, of whatever complexion 
 they might be ; nothing like the dramatic brown studies, and 
 quick starts, which young gentlemen, in love with Lara and 
 Lord Byron, are apt to practice. There never, indeed, was a 
 character that possessed less cant of any description. His 
 work, which was a singular, wild tale of mingled passion and 
 reflection was, perhaps, of too original, certainly of too 
 abstract, a nature to suit the ordinary novel readers of the day. 
 It did not acquire popularity for itself, but it gained great 
 reputation for the author. It also inspired every one who read 
 it with a vague and indescribable interest to see and know the 
 person who had composed so singular a work. 
 
 This interest he was the first to laugh at, and to disappoint. 
 He shrank from all admiration and from all sympathy. At 
 the moment when a crowd assembled round him, and every ear 
 was bent to catch the words which came alike from so beauti- 
 ful a lip and so strange and imaginative a mind, it was his 
 pleasure to utter some sentiment totally different from his 
 written opinions, and utterly destructive of the sensation he 
 had excited. But it was very rarely that he exposed himself 
 to these "trials of an author." He went out little to any other 
 house but Lady Roseville's, and it was seldom more than once 
 a week that he was ever seen there. Lonely, and singular in 
 mind and habits, he lived in the world like a person occupied 
 by a separate object, and possessed of a separate existence 
 from that of his fellow-beings. He was luxurious and splen-
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 177 
 
 did, beyond all men, in his habits, rather than his tastes. His 
 table groaned beneath a weight of silver too costly for the daily 
 service even of a prince ; but he had no pleasure in surveying 
 it. His wines and viands were of the most exquisite descrip- 
 tion ; but he scarcely tasted them. Yet, what may seem 
 inconsistent, he was averse to all ostentation and show in the 
 eyes of others. He admitted very few into his society no one 
 so intimately as myself. I never once saw more than three 
 persons at his table. He seemed, in his taste for the arts, in 
 his love of literature, and his pursuit after fame, to be, as he 
 himself said, eternally endeavoring to forget and eternally 
 brought back to remembrance. 
 
 " I pity that man even more than I admire him," said Vin- 
 cent to me, one night when we were walking home from Glan- 
 ville's house. " His is, indeed, the disease nulld medicabilis 
 herbd. Whether it is the past or the present that afflicts him ; 
 whether it is the memory of past evil, or the satiety of present 
 good, he has taken to his heart the bitterest philosophy of life. 
 He does not reject its blessings ; he gathers them around him, 
 but as a stone gathers moss cold, hard, unsoftened by the 
 freshness and the greenness which surround it. As a circle 
 can only touch a circle in one place, everything that life pre- 
 sents to him, wherever it comes from, to whatever portion of 
 his soul it is applied, can find but one point of contact ; and 
 that is the soreness of affliction : whether it is the obliirio or 
 the otium that he requires, he finds equally that he is forever in 
 want of one treasure : ' neque gemmis neque purpurd venale nee 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 " Mons. Jourdain. Etes-vous fou de Taller quereller lui qui entend la 
 tierce et la quarte, et qui sail tuer un homme par raison demonstrative ? 
 
 I.e M&itre & Danser. Je me moque de sa raison demonstrative, et de sa 
 tierce et de sa quarte." 
 
 " HOLLO, my good friend ; how are you ? D d glad to see 
 you in England," vociferated a loud, clear, good-humored 
 voice, one cold morning, as I was shivering down Brook Street 
 into Bond Street. I turned, and beheld Lord Dartmore, of 
 Rocher de Cancale memory. I returned his greeting with the 
 same cordiality with which it was given ; and I was forthwith 
 saddled with Dartmore's arm, and dragged up Bond Street, into
 
 178 PELHAM J 
 
 that borough of all noisy, riotous, unrefined good fellows. 
 
 i tr t i 
 
 yclept s Hotel. 
 
 Here we were soon plunged into a small, low apartment, 
 which Dartmore informed me was his room, and which was 
 crowded with a score of the most stalwart youths that I ever 
 saw out of a marching regiment. 
 
 Dartmore was still gloriously redolent of Oxford : his com- 
 panions were all extracts from Christ Church ; and his favorite 
 occupations were boxing and hunting, scenes at the Fives' 
 Courts, nights in the Cider Cellar, and mornings at Bow Street. 
 Figure to yourself a fitter companion for the hero and writer of 
 these adventures ! The table was covered with boxing gloves, 
 single-sticks, two ponderous pair of dumb-bells, a large pewter 
 pot of porter, and four foils ; one snapped in the middle. 
 
 " Well," cried Dartmore, to two strapping youths, with their 
 coats off, " which was the conqueror ? " 
 
 " Oh, it is not yet decided," was the answer ; and forthwith 
 the bigger one hit the lesser a blow with his boxing glove, 
 heavy enough to have felled Ulysses, who, if I recollect aright, 
 was rather " a game blood" in such encounters. 
 
 This slight salute was forthwith the prelude to an encounter 
 which the whole train crowded round to witness ; I, among the 
 rest, pretending an equal ardor, and an equal interest, and hid- 
 ing, like many persons in a similar predicament, a most trem- 
 bling spirit beneath a most valorous exterior. 
 
 When the match (which terminated in favor of the lesser 
 champion) was over, "Come, Pelham," said Dartmore, "let me 
 take up the gloves with you ? " 
 
 " You are too good ! " said I, for the first time using my 
 drawing-room drawl. A wink and a grin went round the 
 room. 
 
 " Well, then, will you fence with Staunton, or play at single- 
 stick with me ? " said the short, thick, bullying, impudent, vul- 
 gar Earl of Calton. 
 
 " Why," answered I, " I am a poor hand at the foils, and a 
 still worse at the sticks ; but I have no objection to exchange 
 a cut or two at the latter with Lord Calton." 
 
 "No, no!" said the good-natured Dartmore ; "no! Calton 
 is the best stick-player I ever knew "; and then whispering 
 me, he added, " And the hardest hitter and he never spares, 
 either " 
 
 " Really," said I aloud, in my most affected tone, " it is a 
 great pity, for I am excessively delicate ; but as I said I would 
 engage him, I don't like to retract. Pray let me look at the
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 179 
 
 hilt : I hope the basket is strong : I would not have my 
 knuckles rapped for the world now for it. I'm in a deuced 
 fright, Dartmore"; and so saying, and inwardly chuckling at 
 the universal pleasure depicted in the countenances of Caltort 
 and the by-standers, who were all rejoiced at the idea of the 
 " dandy being drubbed," I took the stick, and pretended great 
 awkwardness and lack of grace in the position I chose. 
 
 Calton placed himself in the most scientific attitude, assum- 
 ing at the same time an air of hauteur and tionchalance, which 
 seemed to call for the admiration it met. 
 
 " Do we allow hard hitting ? " said I. 
 
 " Oh ! by all means," answered Calton eagerly. 
 
 " Well," said I, settling my own chapcau, " had not you bet- 
 ter put on your hat ?" 
 
 " Oh, no," answered Calton imperiously ; " I can take pretty 
 good care of my head"; and with these words we commenced. 
 
 I remained at first nearly upright, not availing myself in the 
 least of my superiority in height, and only acting on the defen- 
 sive. Calton played well enough for a gentleman ; but he was 
 no match for one who had, at the age of thirteen, beat the Life 
 Guardsmen at Angelo's. Suddenly, when I had excited a gen- 
 eral laugh at the clumsy success with which I warded off a 
 most rapid attack of Gallon's, I changed my position, and keep- 
 ing Calton at arm's length till I had driven him towards a cor- 
 ner, I took advantage of a haughty imprudence on his part, 
 and, by a common enough move in the game, drew back from 
 a stroke aimed at my limbs, and suffered the whole weight of 
 my weapon to fall so heavily upon his head that I felled him to 
 the ground in an instant. 
 
 I was sorry for the severity of the stroke the moment after it 
 was inflicted ; but never was punishment more deserved. We 
 picked up the discomfited hero, and placed him on a chair to 
 recover his senses ; meanwhile I received the congratulations 
 of the conclave with a frank alteration of mariner which de- 
 lighted them ; and I found it impossible to get away till I had 
 promised to dine with Dartmore, and spend the rest of the 
 evening in the society of his friends. 

 
 PELHAM ', 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 "... Heroes mischievously gay, 
 Lords of the street and terrors of the way, 
 Flush'd as they are with folly, youth, and wine." 
 
 JOHNSON'S London. 
 
 "Hoi. Novi hominem tanquam te his humor is lofty, his discourse per- 
 emptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and his 
 general behavior vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical." SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 I WENT a little after seven o'clock to keep my dinner en- 
 gagement at 's ; for very young men are seldom unpunctual 
 
 at dinner. We sat down, six in number, to a repast at once 
 incredibly bad and ridiculously extravagant : turtle without 
 fat, venison without flavor, champagne with the taste of a 
 gooseberry, and hock with the properties of a pomegranate.* 
 Such is the constant habit of young men : they think anything 
 expensive is necessarily good, and they purchase poison at a 
 dearer rate than the most medicine-loving hypochondriac in 
 England. 
 
 Of course all the knot declared the dinner was superb ; 
 called in the master to eulogize him in person, and made him, 
 to his infinite dismay, swallow a bumper of his own hock. 
 Poor man ! they mistook his reluctance for his diffidence, and 
 forced him to wash it away in another potation. With many a 
 wry face of grateful humility he left the room, and we then 
 proceeded to pass the bottle with the suicidal determination of 
 defeated Romans. You may imagine that we were not long in 
 arriving at the devoutly wished-for consummation of comfort- 
 able inebriety ; and with our eyes reeling, our cheeks burning, 
 and our brave spirits full ripe for a quarrel, we sallied out at 
 eleven o'clock, vowing death, dread, and destruction to all the 
 sober portion of His Majesty's subjects. 
 
 We came to a dead halt in Arlington Street, which, as it was 
 the quietest spot in the neighborhood, we deemed a fitting 
 place for the arrangement of our forces. Dartmore, Staunton 
 (a tall, thin, well-formed, silly youth), and myself marched 
 first, and the remaining three followed. We gave each other 
 the most judicious admonitions as to propriety of conduct, and 
 then, with a shout that alarmed the whole street, we renewed 
 our way. We passed on safely enough till we got to Charing- 
 Cross, having only been thrice upbraided by the watchmen, 
 and once threatened by two carmen of prodigious size, tq 
 
 * Wtyjqh is not an astringent fruit.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. l8l 
 
 whose wives or sweethearts we had, to our infinite peril, made 
 some gentle overtures. When, however, we had just passed 
 the Opera Colonnade, \ve were accosted by a bevy of buxom 
 Cyprians, as merry and as drunk as ourselves. We halted for 
 a few minutes in the midst of the kennel to confabulate with 
 our new friends, and a very amicable and intellectual conver- 
 sation ensued. Dartmore was an adept in the art of slang, 
 and he found himself fairly matched by more than one of the 
 fair and gentle creatures by whom we were surrounded. Just, 
 however, as we were all in high glee, Staunton made a trifling dis- 
 covery, which turned the merriment of the whole scene into 
 strife, war, and confusion. A bouncing lass, whose hands were 
 as feady as her charms, had quietly helped herself to a watch 
 which Staunton wore, a la mode, in his waistcoat pocket. 
 Drunken as the youth was at that time, and dull as he was at 
 all others, he was not without the instinctive penetration with 
 which all human bipeds watch over their individual goods and 
 chattels. He sprang aside from the endearments of the syren, 
 grasped her arm, and in a voice of querulous indignation, ac- 
 cused her of the theft. 
 
 " Then rose the cry of women shrill 
 As shriek of goshawk on the hill." 
 
 Never were my ears so stunned. The angry authors in the 
 adventures of Gil Bias were nothing to the disputants in the 
 kennel at Charing-Cross ; we rowed, swore, slanged, with a 
 Christian meekness and forbearance which would have rejoiced 
 Mr. Wilberforce to the heart, and we were already preparing 
 ourselves for a more striking engagement, when we were most 
 unwelcomely interrupted by the presence of three watchmen. 
 
 " Take away this this d d woman," hiccuped out Staun- 
 ton, "she has sto-len (hiccup) my watch" (hiccup). 
 
 " No such thing, watchman," hallooed out the accused, "the 
 b counter-skipper never had any watch ! He only filched 
 a twopenny-halfpenny gilt-chain out of his master, Levi, the 
 pawnbroker's window, and stuck it in his eel-sk'in to make a 
 show : ye did, ye pitiful, lanky-chopped son of a dog-fish, ye 
 did." 
 
 "Come, come," said the watchman, "move on, move on." 
 
 " You be d d, for a Charley ! " said one of our gang. 
 
 " Ho ! ho ! Master jackanapes, I shall give you a cooling in 
 the watch-house if you tips us any of your jaw. I dare say 
 the young 'oman here is quite right about ye, and ye never had 
 any watch at all, at all."
 
 182 PELHAM J 
 
 " You are a liar ! " cried Staunton ; "and you are all in with 
 each other, like a pack of rogues as you are." 
 
 " I'll tell you what, young gemman," said another watch- 
 man,* who was a more potent, grave, and reverend signor than 
 his comrades, " if you do not move on instantly, and let those 
 decent young 'omen alone, I'll take you all up before Sir 
 Richard." 
 
 "Charley, my boy," said Dartmore, "did you ever get 
 thrashed for impertinence?" 
 
 The last-mentioned watchman took upon himself the reply 
 to this interrogatory by a very summary proceeding : he 
 collared Dartmore, and his companions did the same kind 
 office to us. This action was not committed with impunity : 
 in an instant two of the moon's minions, staffs, lanterns, and 
 all, were measuring their length at the foot of their namesake 
 of royal memory; the remaining Dogberry was, however, a 
 tougher assailant ; he held Staunton so firmly in his gripe that 
 the poor youth could scarcely breathe out a faint and feeble 
 d n ye of defiance, and with his disengaged hand he made 
 such an admirable use of his rattle that we were surrounded 
 in a trice. 
 
 As when an ant-hill is invaded, from every quarter and 
 crevice of the mound arise and pour out an angry host, of 
 whose previous existence the unwary assailant had not dreamt ; 
 so from every lane, and alley, and street, and crossing, came 
 fast and far the champions of the night. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said Dartmore, "we must fly ; sauve qui peut." 
 We wanted no stronger admonition, and accordingly all of us 
 who were able set off with the utmost velocity with which God 
 had gifted us. I have some faint recollection that I myself 
 headed the flight. I remember well that I dashed up the 
 Strand, and dashed down a singular little shed, from which 
 emanated the steam of tea, and a sharp, querulous scream of 
 "All hot all hot; a penny a pint." I see, now, by the dim 
 light of retrospection, a vision of an old woman in the kennel, 
 and a pewter'pot of mysterious ingredients precipitated into 
 a greengrocer's shop, "te virides inter lauros" as Vincent 
 would have said. On we went, faster and faster, as the rattle 
 rang in our ears, and the tramp of the enemy echoed after us 
 in hot pursuit. 
 
 " The devil take the hindmost," said Dartmore breathlessly 
 (as he kept up with me). 
 
 * The reader will remember that this work was written before the Institution of the New 
 Polke.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 183 
 
 "The watchman has saved his majesty the trouble," answered 
 I, looking back and seeing one of our friends in the clutch of 
 the pursuers. 
 
 " On, on ! " was Dartmore's only reply. 
 
 At last, after innumerable perils, and various immersements 
 into back passages, and courts, and alleys, which, like the 
 chicaneries of law, preserved and befriended us, in spite of all 
 the efforts of justice, we fairly found ourselves in safety in the 
 midst of a great square. 
 
 Here we paused, and after ascertaining our individual safeties, 
 we looked around to ascertain the sum total of the general 
 loss. Alas ! we were wofully shorn of our beams we were 
 reduced one-half ; only three out of the six survived the con- 
 flict and the flight. 
 
 " Half," (said the companion of Dartmore and myself, whose 
 name was Tringle, and who was a dabbler in science, of which 
 he was not a little vain) " half is less worthy than the whole ; 
 but the half is more worthy than nonentity." 
 
 " An axiom," said I, " not to be disputed ; but now that we 
 are safe, and have time to think about it, are you not slightly 
 of the opinion that we behaved somewhat scurvily to our 
 better half, in leaving it so quietly in the hands of the Philis- 
 tines ? " 
 
 " By no means," answered Dartmore. " In a party whose 
 members make no pretensions to sobriety, it would be too hard 
 to expect that persons who are scarcely capable of taking care 
 of themselves, should take care of other people. No; we 
 have in all these exploits only the one maxim of self-preserva- 
 tion." 
 
 " Allow me," said Tringle, seizing me by the coat, " to ex- 
 plain it to you on scientific principles. You will find, in hy- 
 drostatics, that the attraction of cohesion is far less powerful 
 in fluids than in solids ; viz., that persons who have been con- 
 verting their ' solid flesh ' into wine skins, cannot stick so close 
 to one another as when they are sober." 
 
 " Bravo, Tringle ! " cried Dartmore ; " and now, Pelham, I 
 hope your delicate scruples are, after so luminous an ddair- 
 cisscment, set at rest forever." 
 
 "You have convinced me," said I ; " let us leave the unfor- 
 tunates to their fate and Sir Richard. What is now to be 
 done ? " 
 
 " Why, in the first place," answered Dartmore, " let us rec- 
 onnoitre. Does any one know this spot ?" 
 
 " Not I," said both of us. We inquired of an old fellow,
 
 who was tottering home under the same Bacchanalian auspices 
 as ourselves, and found we were in Lincoln's Inn Fields. 
 
 "Which shall we do?" asked I ; "stroll home ; or parade 
 the streets, visit the Cider-Cellar, and the Finish, and kiss the 
 first lass we meet in the morning bringing her charms and 
 carrots to Covent Garden Market ? " 
 
 "The latter," cried Dartmore and Tringle, "without doubt." 
 
 " Come, then," said I, let us investigate Holborn, and dip 
 into St. Giles's, and then find our way into some more known 
 corner of the globe." 
 
 "Amen !" said Dartmore, and accordingly we renewed our 
 march. We wound along a narrow lane, tolerably well known, 
 I imagine, to the gentlemen of the quill, and entered Holborn. 
 There was a beautiful still moon above us, which cast its light 
 over a drowsy stand of hackney coaches, and shed a " silver 
 sadness " over the thin visages and sombre vestments of two 
 guardians of the night, who regarded us, we thought, Avith a 
 very ominous aspect of suspicion. 
 
 We strolled along, leisurely enough, till we were interrupted 
 by a miserable-looking crowd, assembled round a dull, dingy, 
 melancholy shop, from which gleamed a solitary candle, whose 
 long, spinster-like wick was flirting away with an east wind at 
 a most unconscionable rate. Upon the haggard and worn 
 countenances of the bystanders was depicted one general and 
 sympathizing expression of eager, envious, wistful anxiety, 
 which predominated so far over the various characters of each, 
 as to communicate something of a likeness to all. It was an 
 impress of such a seal as you might imagine, not the arch- 
 fiend, but one of his subordinate shepherds, would have set 
 upon each of his flock. 
 
 Amid this crowd I recognized more than one face which I 
 had often seen in my equestrian lounges through town, peering 
 from the shoulders of some intrusive, ragamuffin, wages-less 
 lackey, and squealing out of its wretched, unpampered 
 mouth, the everlasting query of "Want your 'oss held, sir ?" 
 The rest were made up of unfortunate women of the vilest 
 and most ragged description, aged itinerants, with features 
 seared with famine, bleared eyes, dropping jaws, shivering 
 limbs, and all the mortal signs of hopeless and aidless, and, 
 worst of all, breadless infirmity. Here and there an Irish 
 accent broke out in the oaths of national impatience, and was 
 answered by the shrill, broken voice of some decrepit but in- 
 defatigable votaries of pleasure {Pleasure!} but the chief 
 character of the meeting was silence silence, eager, heavy, en-
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 185 
 
 grossing ; and above them all shone out the quiet moon, so 
 calm, so holy, so breathing of still happiness and unpolluted 
 glory, as if it never looked upon the traces of human passion, and 
 misery, and sin. We stood for some moments contemplating 
 the group before us, and then, following the steps of an old, 
 withered crone, who, with a cracked cup in her hand, was 
 pushing her way through the throng, we found ourselves in 
 that dreary pandemonium, at once the origin and the refuge 
 of humble vices a gin shop. 
 
 " Poor devils," said Dartmore, to two or three of the nearest 
 and eagerest among the crowd, "come in and I will treat you." 
 
 The invitation was received with a promptness which must 
 have been the most gratifying compliment to the inviter ; and 
 thus Want, which is the mother of Invention, does not object, 
 now and then, to a bantling by Politeness. 
 
 We stood by the counter while our protiges were served, in 
 silent observation. In low vice, to me, there is always some- 
 thing too gloomy, almost too fearful, for light mirth ; the con- 
 tortions of the madman are stronger than those of the fool, but 
 one does not laugh at them ; the smypathy is for the cause, 
 not the effect. 
 
 Leaning against the counter at one corner, and fixing his 
 eyes deliberately and unmovingly upon us, was a man about 
 the age of fifty, dressed in a costume of singular fashion, 
 apparently pretending to an antiquity of taste correspondent 
 with that of the material. This person wore a large cocked- 
 hat, set rather jauntily on one side, and a black coat, which 
 seemed an omnium gatherum of all abominations that had 
 come in its way for the last ten years, and which appeared to 
 advance equal claims (from the manner it was made and worn), 
 to the several dignities of the art military and civil, the anna 
 and the toga j from the neck of the wearer hung a blue ribbon 
 of amazing breadth, and of a very surprising assumption of 
 newness and splendor, by no means in harmony with the other 
 parts of the tout ensemble ; this was the guardian of an eye- 
 glass of block tin, and of dimensions correspondent with the 
 size of the ribbon. Stuck under the. right arm, and shaped 
 fearfully like a sword, peeped out the hilt of a very large and 
 sturdy looking stick, " in war a weapon, in peace a support." 
 
 The features of the man were in keeping with his garb: 
 they betokened an equal mixture of the traces of poverty and 
 the assumption of the dignities reminiscent of a better day. 
 Two small, light-blue eyes were shaded by bushy and rather 
 imperious brows, which lowered from under the hat, like Cer-
 
 i86 PELHAM ; 
 
 berus out of his den. These, at present, wore the dull, fixed 
 stare of habitual intoxication, though we were not long in 
 discovering that they had not yet forgotten to sparkle with all 
 the quickness, and more than the roguery of youth. His nose 
 was large, prominent, and aristocratic ; nor would it have 
 been ill formed, had not some unknown cause pushed it a 
 little nearer towards the left ear than would have been thought, 
 by an equitable judge of beauty, fair to the pretensions of the 
 right. The lines in the countenance were marked as if in 
 iron, and had the face been perfectly composed, must have 
 given to it a remarkably stern and sinister appearance ; but 
 at that moment there was an arch leer about the mouth, 
 which softened, or at least altered the expression the features 
 habitually wore. 
 
 " Sir," said he (after a few minutes of silence) "sir," said 
 he, approaching me, " will you do me the honor to take a 
 pinch of snuff ? " and so saying, he tapped a curious copper 
 box, with a picture of his late majesty upon it. 
 
 " With great pleasure," answered I, bowing low, " since the 
 act is a prelude to the pleasure of your acquaintance." 
 
 My gentleman of the gin-shop opened his box with an air, 
 as he replied : " It is but seldom that I meet, in places of 
 this description, gentlemen of the exterior of yourself and 
 your friends. I am not a person very easily deceived by 
 the outward man. Horace, sir, could not have included me, 
 when he said, specie decipimur. I perceive that you are sur- 
 prised at hearing me quote Latin. Alas ! sir, in my wander- 
 ing and various manner of life I may say, with Cicero and 
 Pliny, that the study of letters has proved my greatest con- 
 solation. ' Gaudium mihi,' says the latter author, ' et solatium 
 inliteris: nihiltam Icetum quod his non Itztius, nihil tarn triste 
 quod non per has sit minus triste.' G d d n ye, you scoun- 
 drel, give me my gin ! ar'n't you ashamed of keeping a gentle- 
 man of my fashion so long waiting?" 
 
 This was said to the sleepy dispenser of the spirituous pota- 
 tions, who looked up for a moment with a dull stare, and 
 then replied : " Your money first, Mr. Gordon you owe us 
 seven-pence halfpenny already ! " 
 
 " Blood and confusion ! speakest thou to me of halfpence ! 
 Know that thou art a mercenary varlet ; yes, knave, mark 
 that, a mercenary varlet." The sleepy Ganymede replied not, 
 and the wrath of Mr. Gordon subsided into a low, interrupted, 
 internal muttering of strange oaths, which rolled and grumbled, 
 and rattled in his throat, like distant thunder,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 187 
 
 At length he cheered up a little " Sir," said he, addressing 
 )artmore, " it is a sad thing to be dependent on these low 
 persons ; the wise among the ancients were never so wrong as 
 when they panegyrized poverty : it is the wicked man's tempter, 
 the good man's perdition, the proud man's curse, the mel- 
 ancholy man's halter." 
 
 " You are a strange old cock," said the unsophisticated 
 Dartmore, eyeing him from head to foot ; there's half a sove- 
 reign for you." 
 
 The blunt blue eyes of Mr. Gordon sharpened up in an in- 
 stant ; he seized the treasure with an avidity of which, the 
 minute after, he seemed somewhat ashamed ; for he said, play- 
 ing with the coin in an idle, indifferent manner : " Sir, you 
 show a consideration, and, let me add, sir, a delicacy of feel- 
 ing, unusual at your years. Sir, I shall repay you at my ear- 
 liest leisure, and in the mean while allow me to say, that I 
 shall be proud of the honor of your acquaintance." 
 
 " Thank-ye, old boy," said Dartmore, putting on his glove 
 before he accepted the offered hand of his new friend, which, 
 though it was tendered with great grace and dignity, was of a 
 marvellously dingy and soapless aspect. 
 
 " Harkye, you d d son of a gun ! " cried Mr. Gordon, ab- 
 ruptly turning from Dartmore, after a hearty shake of the 
 hand, to the man at the counter : "harkye ! give me change 
 for this half-sovereign, and be d d to you and then tip us 
 a double gill of your best ; you whey-faced, liver-drenched, 
 pence griping, belly-griping, pauper-cheating, sleepy-souled 
 Arismanes of bad spirits. Cv.me, gentlemen, if you have noth- 
 ing better to do, I'll take you to my club ; we are a rare knot 
 of us, there all choice spirits ; some of them are a little un- 
 couth, it is true, but we are not all born Chesterfields. Sir, 
 allow me to ask the favor of your name ? " 
 
 " Dartmore." 
 
 " Mr. Dartmore, you are a gentleman. Hollo ! you Liquor- 
 Pond-street of a scoundrel having nothing of liquor but the 
 name, you narrow, nasty, pitiful alley of a fellow, with a ken- 
 nel for a body, and a sink for a soul ; give me my change and 
 my gin, you scoundrel ! Humph, is that all right, you Pro- 
 crustes of the counter, chopping our lawful appetites down to 
 your rascally standard of seven-pence halfpenny ? Why don't 
 you take a motto, you Paynimdog? Here's one for you 'Meas- 
 ure for measure, and the devil to pay ! ' Humph, you pitiful 
 toadstool of a trader, you have no more spirit than an empty 
 water-bottle ; and when you go tq h-11, they'll use you to cool
 
 l88 PELHAM J 
 
 the bellows. I say, you rascal, why are you worse off than the 
 devil in a hip-bath of brimstone ? Because, you knave, the 
 devil then would only be half d d, and you're d d all over ! 
 Come, gentlemen, I am at your service." 
 
 CHAPTER L. 
 
 " The history of a philosophical vagabond, pursuing novelty, and losing 
 content." Vicar of Wakefield. 
 
 WE followed our strange friend through the crowd at the 
 door, which he elbowed on either side with the most aristo- 
 cratic disdain, perfectly regardless of their jokes at his dress 
 and manner; he no sooner got through the throng than he 
 stopped short (though in the midst of the kennel) and offered 
 us his arm. This was an honor of which we were by no means 
 desirous ; for, to say nothing of the shabbiness of Mr. Gordon's 
 exterior, there was a certain odor in his garments which was 
 possibly less displeasing to the wearer than to his acquaintance. 
 Accordingly, we pretended not to notice this invitation, and 
 merely said we would follow his guidance. 
 
 He turned up a narrow street, and after passing some of the 
 most ill-favored alleys I ever had the happiness of beholding, 
 he stopped at a low door ; here he knocked twice, and was at 
 last admitted by a slipshod, yawning wench, with red arms, 
 and a profusion of sandy hair. This Hebe Mr. Gordon greet- 
 ed with a loving kiss, which the kissee resented in a very un- 
 equivocal strain of disgustful reproach. 
 
 " Hush ! my Queen of Clubs ; my Sultana ! " said Mr. Gor- 
 don " hush ! or these gentlemen will think you in earnest. I 
 have brought three new customers to the club." 
 
 This speech somewhat softened the incensed Houri of Mr. 
 Gordon's Paradise, and she very civilly asked us to enter. 
 
 " Stop ! " said Mr. Gordon with an air of importance, " I 
 must just step in and ask the gentlemen to admit you ; merely 
 a form, for a word from me will be quite sufficent." And so 
 saying, he vanished for about five minutes. 
 
 On his return, he said, with a cheerful countenance, that we 
 were free of the house, but that we must pay a shilling each as 
 the customary fee. This sum was soon collected, and quietly 
 inserted in the waistcoat pocket of our chaperon, who then 
 conducted us up the passage into a small back room, where
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 189 
 
 were sitting about seven or eight men, enveloped in smoke, 
 and moistening the fever of the Virginian plant with various 
 preparations of malt. On entering, I observed Mr. Gordon 
 deposit, at a sort of bar, the sum of threepence, by which I 
 shrewdly surmised he had gained the sum of two and nine- 
 pence by our admission. With a very arrogant air he pro- 
 ceeded to the head of the table, sat himself down with a swag- 
 ger, and called out, like a lusty roisterer of the true kidney, for 
 a pint of purl and a pipe. Not to be out of fashion, we ordered 
 the same articles of luxury. 
 
 After we had all commenced a couple of puffs at our pipes, 
 I looked round at our fellow-guests ; they seemed in a very 
 poor state of body, as might naturally be supposed ; and, in 
 order to ascertain how far the condition of the mind was suited 
 to that of the frame, I turned round to Mr. Gordon, and asked 
 him in a whisper to give us a few hints as to the genus and 
 characteristics of the individual components of his club. Mr. 
 Gordon declared himself delighted with the proposal, and we 
 all adjourned to a separate table at the corner of the room, 
 where Mr. Gordon, after a deep draught at the purl, thus 
 began : 
 
 " You observe yon thin, meagre, cadaverous animal, with 
 rather an intelligent and melancholy expression of counte- 
 nance his name is Chitterling Crabtree : his father was an 
 eminent coal merchant, and left him ^10,000. Crabtree 
 turned politician. When Fate wishes to ruin a man of mod- 
 erate abilities and moderate fortune, she makes him an orator. 
 Mr. Chitterling Crabtree attended all the meetings of the 
 Crown and Anchor ; subscribed to the aid of the suffering 
 friends of freedom : harangued, argued, sweated, wrote ; was 
 fined and imprisoned ; regained his liberty and married his 
 wife loved a community of goods no less than her spouse, and 
 ran off with one citizen, while he was running on to the others. 
 Chitterling dried his tears ; and contented himself with the re- 
 flection, that 'in a proper state of things' such an event 
 could not have occurred. 
 
 " Mr. Crabtree's money and life were now half gone. One 
 does not subscribe to the friends of freedom and spout at their 
 dinners for nothing. But the worst drop was yet in the cup. 
 An undertaking, of the most spirited and promising nature, was 
 conceived by the chief of the friends, and the dearest familiar of 
 Mr. Chitterling Grabtree. Our worthy embarked his fortune 
 in a speculation so certain of success ; crash went the specula- 
 tion, and off went the friend ; Mr. Crabtree was ruined. He
 
 190 PELHAM ; 
 
 was not, however, a man to despair at trifles. What were 
 bread, meat, and beer to the champion of equality ! He went 
 to the meeting that very night ; he said he gloried in his losses 
 they were for the cause : the whole conclave rang with shouts of 
 applause, and Mr. Chitterling Crabtree went to bed happier 
 than erer. I need not pursue his history farther: you see him 
 here verbum sat. He spouts at the 'Ciceronian,' for half a 
 crown a night, and to this day subscribes sixpence a week to 
 the cause of ' liberty and enlightenment all over the world.' " 
 
 " By heaven ! " cried Dartmo^e, " he is a fine fellow, and my 
 father shall do something for him." 
 
 Gordon pricked up his ears and continued : " Now, for the 
 second person, gentlemen, whom I am about to describe to 
 you. You see that middle-sized stout man, with a slight 
 squint, and a restless, lowering, cunning expression ? " 
 
 " What ! him in the kerseymere breeches and green jacket ?" 
 said I. 
 
 " The same," answered Gordon ; " his real name, when he 
 does not travel with an alias, is Job Jonson. He is one of the 
 most remarkable rogues in Christendom ; he is so noted a cheat 
 that there is not a pickpocket in England who would keep 
 company with him if he had anything to lose. He was the 
 favorite of his father, who intended to leave him all his for- 
 tune, which was tolerably large. He robbed him one day on the 
 highroad ; his father discovered it, and disinherited him. He 
 was placed at a merchant's office, and rose, step by step, to be 
 head clerk, and intended son-in-law. Three nights before his 
 marriage he broke open the till, and was turned out of doors 
 the next morning. If you were going to do him the greatest 
 favor in the world, he could not keep his hands out of your 
 pocket till you had done it. In short, he has rogued him- 
 self out of a dozen fortunes, and a hundred friends, and man- 
 aged with incredible dexterity and success to cheat himself 
 into beggary and a not of beer." 
 
 " I beg your pardon," said I, "but I think a sketch of your 
 own life must be more amusing than that of any one else : am 
 I impertinent in asking for it ? " 
 
 "Not at all," replied Mr. Gordon ; "you shall have it in as 
 few words as possible. 
 
 "I was born a gentleman, and educated with some pains; 
 they told me I, was a genius, and it was not very hard to per- 
 suade me of the truth of the assertion. I wrote verses to a 
 wonder; robbed orchards according to military tactics; never 
 played at marbles, \vithout explaining to my competitors the
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 19! 
 
 theory of attraction ; and was the best informed, most mis- 
 chievous little rascal in the whole school. My family were in 
 great doubt what to do with so prodigious a wonder ; one said 
 the Law, another the Church, a third talked of Diplomacy, and 
 a fourth assured my mother, that if I could but be introduced 
 at court, I should be lord chamberlain in a twelvemonth. 
 While my friends were deliberating, I took the liberty of de- 
 ciding : I enlisted, in a fit of loyal valor, in a marching regi- 
 ment ; my friends made the best of a bad job, and bought me 
 an ensigncy. 
 
 " I recollect I read Plato the night before I went to battle ; 
 the next morning they told me*I ran away. I am sure it was 
 a malicious invention, for if I had, I should have recollected 
 it|; whereas, I was in such a confusion that I cannot remember 
 a single thing that happened in the whole course of that day. 
 About six months afterwards I found myself out of the army, 
 and in gaol ; and no sooner had my relations released me from 
 the latter predicament, than I set off on my travels. At Dub- 
 lin I lost my heart to a rich widow (as I thought); I married 
 her, and found her as poor as myself. Heaven knows what 
 would of become of me if I had not taken to drinking ; my 
 wife scorned to be outdone by me in anything ; she followed 
 my example, and at the end of a year I followed her to the 
 grave. Since then I have taken warning, and been scrupu- 
 lously sober. Betty, my love, another pint of purl. 
 
 " I was now once more a freeman in the prime of my life ; 
 handsome, as you see, gentlemen, and with the strength and 
 spirit of a young Hercules. Accordingly I dried my tears, 
 turned marker by night at a gambling house, and buck by day, 
 in Bond Street (for I had returned to London). I remember 
 well one morning, that his present Majesty was pleased, en pas- 
 sant, to admire my buckskins tempora mutantur. Well, gen- 
 tlemen, one night at a brawl in our salon, my nose met with a 
 rude hint to move to the right. I went, in a great panic, to the 
 surgeon, who mended the matter by moving it to the left. 
 There, thank God ! it has rested in quiet ever since. It is 
 needless to tell you the nature of the quarrel in which this acci- 
 dent occurred ; however, my friends thought it necessary to 
 remove me from the situation I then held. I went once more 
 to Ireland, and was introduced to 'a friend of freedom.' I 
 was poor ; that circumstance is quite enough to make a patriot. 
 They sent me to Paris on a secret mission, and when I returned 
 my friends were in prison. Being always of a free disposition, 
 I clid not envy them their situation ; accordingly, \ returned to
 
 192 
 
 PELHAM 
 
 England. Halting at Liverpool, with a most debilitated purse, 
 I went into a silversmith's shop to brace it, and about six 
 months afterwards I found myself on a marine excursion to 
 Botany Bay. On my return from that country, I resolved to 
 turn my literary talents to account. I went to Cambridge, 
 wrote declamations, and translated Virgil at so much a sheet. 
 My relations (thanks to my letters, neither few nor far between) 
 soon found me out ; they allowed me (they do so still) half a 
 guinea a week ; and upon this and my declamations I manage 
 to exist. Ever since, my chief residence has been at Cam- 
 bridge. I am an universal favorite with both graduates and 
 undergraduates. I have reformed my life and my manners, 
 and have become the quiet, orderly person you behold me. 
 Age tames the fiercest of us : 
 
 ' Non sum qualis eram.' 
 
 " Betty, bring me my purl, and be d d to you. 
 
 " It is now vacation time, and I have come to town with 
 the idea of holding lectures on the state of education. Mr. 
 Dartmore, your health. Gentlemen, yours. My story is done, 
 and I hope you will pay for the purl."* 
 
 CHAPTER LI. 
 " I hate a drunken rogue." Twelfth Night. 
 
 WE took an affectionate leave of Mr. Gordon, and found 
 ourselves once more in the open air ; the smoke and the purl 
 Had contributed greatly to the continuance of our inebriety, and 
 we were as much averse to bed as ever. We conveyed our- 
 selves, laughing and rioting all the way, to a stand of hackney- 
 coaches. We entered the head of the flock, and drove to 
 Piccadilly. It set us down at the corner of the Haymarket. 
 
 " Past two ! " cried the watchman, as we sauntered by him. 
 
 " You lie, you rascal," said I, " you have passed three now." 
 
 We were all merry enough to laugh at this sally ; and seeing 
 
 * Poor Jemmy Gordon thou art no more ! The stones of Cambridge no longer prate of 
 thy whereabouts ! Death hath removed thee may it not be to that bourne where alone 
 thy oaths can be outdone ! He was indeed a singular character, that Jemmy Gordon, as 
 many a generation of Cantabs can attest ! His long stick and his cocked hat and his 
 tattered Lucretius, and his mighty eyeglass, how familiarly do they intermingle with our 
 recollections of Trinity and of Trumpingtoiv streets ! If I have rightly heard, his death 
 was the consequence of a fractured limb. Laid by the leg in a lofty attic, his spirit was 
 not tamed ! the noises he made were astounding to the last. The gnm foe carried him off 
 in a whirlwind of slang ! I do not say "Peace to his manes, " for quiet would be the worst 
 hell that could await him ; and Heaven itself would be torture to Jemmy Gordon, if he 
 were not allowed te swear in it ! Noisest of reprobates, fare thce well ! H. P.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 193 
 
 a light gleam from the entrance of the Royal Saloon we knocked 
 at the door, and it was opened unto us. We sat down at the 
 only spare table in the place, and looked round at the smug 
 and varmint citizens with whom the room was filled. 
 
 ''Hollo, waiter," cried Tringle, "some red wine negus I 
 know not why it is, but the devil himself could never cure me 
 of thirst. Wine and I have a most chemical attraction for 
 each other. You know that we always estimate the force of 
 attraction between bodies by the force required to separate 
 them ! " 
 
 While we were all three as noisy and nonsensical as our best 
 friends could have wished us, a new stranger entered, ap- 
 proached, looked round the room for a seat, and seeing none, 
 walked leisurely up to our table, and accosted me with a 
 " Ha ! Mr. Pelham, how d'ye do ? Well met ; by your leave I 
 will sip my grog at your table. No offence I hope more the 
 merrier, eh ? Waiter, a glass of hot brandy and water not 
 too weak. D'ye hear?" 
 
 Need I say that this pithy and pretty address proceeded from 
 the mouth of Mr. Tom Thornton ? He was somewhat more 
 than half drunk, and his light prying eyes twinkled dizzily in 
 his head. Dartmore, who was, and is, the best-natured fellow 
 alive, hailed the signs of his intoxication as a sort of freema- 
 sonry, and made way for him beside himself. I could not help 
 remarking that Thornton seemed singularly less sleek than 
 heretofore : his coat was out at the elbows, his linen was torn 
 and soiled ; there was not a vestige of the vulgar spruceness 
 about him which was formerly one of his most prominent char- 
 acteristics. He had also lost a great deal of the florid health 
 formerly visible in his face ; his cheeks seemed sunk and hag- 
 gard, his eyes hollow, and his complexion sallow and squalid, 
 in spite of the flush which intemperance spread over it at the 
 moment. However, he was in high spirits, and soon made him- 
 self so entertaining that Dartmore and Tringle grew charmed 
 with him. 
 
 As for me, the antipathy I had to the man sobered and 
 silenced me for the rest of the night ; and finding that Dart- 
 more and his friend were eager for an introduction to some fe- 
 male friends of Thornton's, whom he mentioned in terms of 
 high praise, I tore myself from them, and made the best of my 
 way home.
 
 194 PELHAM 
 
 CHAPTER LII. 
 
 " Illi mors gravis incubat 
 Qui, notus nimus omnibus, 
 Ignotus moritur sibi." SENECA. 
 
 " Nous serons par nos lois les juges des ouvrages." Les Femmes Savantes. 
 
 "Whilst we do speak, our fire 
 Doth into ice expire ; 
 Flames turn to frost, 
 And, ere we can 
 Know how our crow turns swan, 
 Or how a silver snow 
 Springs there, wherejet did grow, 
 Our fading spring is in dull winter lost." JASPAR MAYNE. 
 
 VINCENT called on me the next day. " I have news for you," 
 said he, " though somewhat of a lugubrious nature. Lugete 
 Veneres Cupidinesque ! You remember the Duchesse de Perpi- 
 gnan? " 
 
 " I should think so," was my answer. 
 
 " Well, then," pursued Vincent, " she is no more. Her death 
 was worthy of her life. She was to give a brilliant entertain- 
 ment to all the foreigners at Paris : the day before it took place 
 a dreadful eruption broke out on her complexion. She sent 
 for the doctors in despair. ' Cure me against to-morrow,' she 
 said, 'and name your own reward.' 'Madame, it is impossible 
 to do so with safety to your health.' ' Au diable with your 
 health !' said the Duchesse ; 'what is health to an eruption ?' 
 The doctors took the hint ; an external application was used : 
 the Duchesse woke in the morning as beautiful as ever ; the en- 
 tertainment took place she was the Armida of the scene. 
 Supper was announced. She took the arm of the ambas- 
 sador, and moved through the crowd amidst the audible admi- 
 ration of all. She stopped for a moment at the door ; all eyes 
 were upon her. A fearful and ghastly convulsion passed over 
 her countenance, her lips trembled, she fell on the ground with 
 the most terrible contortions of face and frame. They carried 
 her to bed. She remained for some days insensible ; when she 
 recovered she asked for a looking-glass. Her whole face was 
 drawn on one side ; not a wreck of beauty was left that night 
 she poisoned herself ! " 
 
 I cannot tell how shocked I was at this information. Much 
 as I had cause to be disgusted with the conduct of that unhap- 
 py woman, I could find in my mind no feeling but commiser-
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 105 
 
 ation and horror at her death ; and it was with great difficulty 
 that Vincent persuaded me to accept an invitation to Lady 
 Roseville's for the evening, to meet Glanville and himself. 
 
 However, I cheered up as the night came on ; and though 
 my mind was still haunted with the tale of the morning, it was 
 neither in a musing nor a melancholy mood that I entered 
 the drawing-room at Lady Roseville's " So runs the world 
 away ! " 
 
 Glanville was there in his customary mourning. 
 
 " Pelham," he said, when he joined me, " do you remember 
 
 at Lady 's one night, I said I would introduce you to my 
 
 sister ? I had no opportunity then, for we left the house 
 before she returned from the refreshment-room. May I do so 
 now ? " 
 
 I need not say what was my answer. I followed Glanville 
 into the next room ; and, to my inexpressible astonishment 
 and delight, discovered in his sister the beautiful, the never- 
 forgotten stranger I had seen at Cheltenham. 
 
 For once in my life I was embarrassed my bow would have 
 shamed a major in the line, and my stuttered and irrelevant 
 address an alderman in the presence of His Majesty. How- 
 ever, a few moments sufficed to recover me, and I strained 
 every nerve to be as agreeable as possible. 
 
 After I had conversed with Lady Glanville for some time, 
 Lady Roseville joined us. Stately and Juno-like as was that 
 charming personage in general, she relaxed into a softness of 
 manner to Miss Glanville that quite won my heart. She drew 
 her to a part of the room where a very animated and chiefly 
 literary conversation was going on and I, resolving to make 
 the best of my time, followed them, and once more found my- 
 self seated beside Miss Glanville. Lady Roseville was on the 
 other side of my beautiful companion ; and I observed that, 
 whenever she took her eyes from Miss Glanville, they always 
 rested upon her brother, who, in the midst of the disputation 
 and the disputants, sat silent, gloomy, and absorbed. 
 
 The conversation turned upon Scott's novels ; thence on 
 novels in general ; and finally on the particular one of Anas- 
 tasius. 
 
 "It is a thousand pities," said Vincent, "that the scene of 
 that novel is so far removed from us. But it is a great mis- 
 fortune for Hope that 
 
 ' To learning he narrowed his mind, 
 And gave up to the East what was meant for mankind,'
 
 196 PELHAM; 
 
 One often loses, in admiration at the knowledge of peculiar 
 costume, the deference one would have paid to the masterly 
 grasp of universal character." 
 
 " It must require," said Lady Roseville, " an extraordinary 
 combination of mental powers to produce a perfect novel." 
 
 "One so extraordinary," answered Vincent, "that, though we 
 have one perfect epic poem, and several which pretend to per- 
 fection, we have not one perfect novel in the world. * Gil Bias 
 approaches more to perfection than any other ; but it must be 
 confessed that there is a want of dignity, of moral rectitude, 
 and of what I may term moral beauty, throughout the whole 
 book. If an author could combine the various excellences 
 of Scott and Le Sage, with a greater and more metaphysical 
 knowledge of morals than either, we might expect from him 
 the perfection we have not yet discovered since the days of 
 Apuleius." 
 
 "Speaking of morals," said Lady Roseville, "do you not 
 think every novel should have its distinct object, and inculcate, 
 throughout, some one peculiar moral, such as many of Mar- 
 montel's and Miss Edgeworth's ? " 
 
 " No ! " answered Vincent ; " every good novel has one great 
 end the same in all viz., the increasing our knowledge of 
 the heart. It is thus that a novel writer must be a philoso- 
 pher. Whoever succeeds in showing us more accurately the 
 nature of ourselves and species has done science, and, conse- 
 quently, virtue, the most important benefit ; for every truth is a 
 moral. This great and universal end, I am led to imagine, is 
 rather crippled than extended by the rigorous attention to the 
 one isolated moral you mention. 
 
 "Thus Dryden, in his Essay on the Progress of Satire, very 
 rightly prefers Horace to Juvenal, so far as instruction is con- 
 cerned ; because the miscellaneous satires of the former are 
 directed against every vice the more confined ones of the 
 latter (for the most part) only against one. All mankind is the 
 field the novelist should cultivate all truth, the moral he should 
 strive to bring home. It is in occasional dialogue, in desultory 
 maxims, in deductions from events, in analysis of character, 
 that he should benefit and instruct. It is not enough and I 
 wish a certain novelist who has lately arisen would remember 
 this it is not enough for a writer to have a good heart, amiable 
 sympathies, and what are termed high feelings, in order to 
 shape out a moral, either true in itself, or beneficial in its incul- 
 
 * For Don Quixote is not what Lord Vincent terms a novel, viz., the actual representation 
 cf real lift.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 197 
 
 cation. Before he touches his tale, he should be thoroughly 
 acquainted with the intricate science of morals, and the meta- 
 physical, as well as the more open, operations of the mind. If 
 his knowledge is not deep and clear, his love of the good may 
 only lead him into error ; and he may pass off the prejudices 
 of a susceptible heart for the precepts of virtue. Would to 
 Heaven that people would think it necessary to be instructed 
 before they attempt to instruct ! ' Dire simplement que la vertu 
 esf vertu parce quelle est bonne en son fonds, et le vice tout au con- 
 traire, ce nest pas les faire connoitre? For me, if I were to 
 write a novel, I would first make myself an acute, active, and 
 vigilant observer of men and manners. Secondly, I would, 
 after having thus noted effects by action in the world, trace the 
 causes by books, and meditation in my closet. It is then, and 
 not till then, that I would study the lighter graces of style and 
 decoration ; nor would I give the rein to invention, till I was 
 convinced that it would create neither monsters, of men, nor 
 falsities, of truth. For my vehicles of instruction or amuse- 
 ment I would have people as they are neither worse nor bet- 
 ter and the moral they should convey should be rather through 
 jest or irony, than gravity and seriousness. There never was 
 an imperfection corrected by portraying perfection ; and if 
 levity and ridicule be said so easily to allure to sin, I do not 
 see why they should not be used in defence of virtue. Of this 
 we may be sure, that as laughter is a distinct indication of the 
 human race, so there never was a brute mind or a savage heart 
 that loved to indulge in it."* 
 
 Vincent ceased. 
 
 "Thank you, my lord," said Lady Roseville, as she took 
 Miss Glanville's arm and moved from the table. "For once 
 you have condescended to give us your own sense, and not 
 other people's ; you have scarce made a single quotation." 
 
 " Accept," answered Vincent, rising, 
 
 " ' Accept a miracle instead of wit.' " 
 
 * The Sage of Malmesbury expresses a very different opinion of the philosophy of 
 laughter, and, for my part, I think his doctrine in 'great measure, though not altogether 
 true. See " Hobbcs on Human Nature," and the answer to him in ' Campbells Rhet~ 
 trie" AUTHOR.
 
 198 PELHAM ; 
 
 CHAPTER LIII. 
 
 " Oh ! I love ! Methinks 
 This word of love is fit for all the world, 
 And that, for gentle hearts, another name 
 Shonld speak of gentler thoughts than the world owns." 
 
 P. B. SHELLEY. 
 
 " For me, I ask no more than honor gives, 
 To think me yours, and rank me with your friends." 
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 CALLOUS and worldly as I may seem, from the tone of these 
 memoirs, I can say, safely, that one of the most delicious 
 evenings I ever spent was the first of my introduction to Miss 
 Glanville. I went home intoxicated with a subtle spirit of en- 
 joyment that gave a new zest and freshness to life. Two little 
 hours seemed to have changed the whole course of my thoughts 
 and feelings. 
 
 There was nothing about Miss Glanville like a heroine I 
 hate your heroines. She had none of that "modest ease," and 
 "quiet dignity," of which certain writers speak with such ap- 
 plause. Thank heaven, she was alive ! She had great sense, 
 but the playfulness of a child ; extreme rectitude of mind, but 
 with the tenderness of a gazelle ; if she laughed, all her coun- 
 tenance, lips, eyes, forehead, cheeks, laughed too : " Paradise 
 seemed opened in her face" : if she looked grave, it was such 
 a lofty and upward, yet sweet and gentle gravity, that you 
 might (had you been gifted with the least imagination) have 
 supposed, from the model of her countenance, a new order of 
 angels between the cherubim and the seraphim, the angels of 
 Love and Wisdom. She was not, perhaps, quite so silent in 
 society as my individual taste would desire ; but when she 
 spoke, it was with a propriety of thought and diction which 
 made me lament when her voice had ceased. It was as if 
 something beautiful in creation had stopped suddenly. 
 
 Enough of this now. I was lazily turning (the morning 
 after Lady Roseville's) over some old books, when Vincent 
 entered. I observed that his face was flushed, and his eyes 
 sparkled with more than their usual brilliancy. He looked 
 carefully round the room, and then, approaching his chair 
 towards mine, said, in a low tone : 
 
 " Pelham, I have something of importance on my mind 
 which I wish to discuss with you ; but let me entreat you to 
 lay aside your usual levity, and pardon me if I say affectation ;
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 199 
 
 meet me with the candor and plainness which are the real dis- 
 tinctions of your character." 
 
 "My Lord Vincent," I replied, "there are, in your words, a 
 
 depth and solemnity which pierce me, through one of N 's 
 
 best stuffed coats, even to the very heart. I will hear you 
 as you desire, from the alpha to the omega of your discourse." 
 
 " My dear friend," said Vincent, " I have often seen that, 
 in spite of all your love of pleasure, you have your mind con- 
 tinually turned towards higher and graver objects ; and I 
 have thought the better of your talents, and of your future 
 success, for the little parade you make of the one, and the 
 little care you appear to pay to the other ; for 
 
 ' 'tis a common proof. 
 That lowliness is young Ambition's ladder.' 
 
 I have also observed that you have, of late, been much to 
 Lord Dawton's ; I have even heard that you have been twice 
 closeted with him. It is well known that that person enter- 
 tains hopes of leading the opposition to the grata arva of the 
 Treasury benches ; and notwithstanding the years in which the 
 Whigs have been out of office, there are some persons who pre- 
 tend to foresee the chance of a coalition between them and Mr. 
 Gaskell, to whose principles it is also added that they have 
 been gradually assimilating." 
 
 Here Vincent paused a moment, and looked full at me. I 
 met his eye with a glance as searching as his own. His look 
 changed, and he continued : 
 
 " Now listen to me, Pelham ; such a coalition never can 
 take place. You smile ; I repeat it. It is my object to form 
 a third party ; perhaps, while the two great sects ' anticipate 
 the cabinet designs of fate,' there may suddenly come by a 
 third, ' to whom the whole shall be referred.' Say that you 
 think it not impossible that you may join us, and I will tell 
 you more." 
 
 I paused for three minutes before 1 I answered Vincent. I 
 then said : " I thank you very sincerely for your proposal ; 
 tell me the names of two of your designed party, and I will 
 answer you." 
 
 " Lord Lincoln and Lord Lesborough." 
 
 "What," said I ; "the Whig who says in the Upper House 
 that whatever may be the distresses of the people, they shall 
 not be gratified at the cost of one of the despotic privileges of 
 the aristocracy. Go to ! I will have none of him. As to 
 Lesborough, he is a fool and a boaster who is always puffing
 
 200 PELHAM J 
 
 his own vanity with the windiest pair of oratorical bellows 
 that ever were made by air and brass, for the purpose of sound 
 and smoke, ' signifying nothing.' Go to ! I will have none 
 of him either." 
 
 "You are right in your judgment of my confreres" answered 
 Vincent ; " but we must make use of bad tools for good pur- 
 poses." 
 
 " N O no ! " said I ; " the commonest carpenter will tell 
 you the reverse." 
 
 Vincent eyed me suspiciously. " Look you ! " said he : " I 
 know well that no man loves, better than you, place, power, 
 and reputation. Do you grant this ? " 
 
 "I do," was my reply. 
 
 " Join with us ; I will place you in the House of Commons 
 immediately ; if we succeed you shall have the first and the 
 best post I can give you. Now ' under which king, Bezo- 
 nian, speak or die ! ' ' 
 
 " I answer you in the words of the same worthy you quote," 
 said I ; <r ' A foutra for thine office.' Do you know, Vincent, 
 that I have, strange as it may seem to you, such a thing as a 
 conscience ? It is true I forget it now and then ; but in a 
 public capacity, the recollection of others would put me very 
 soon in mind of it. I know your party well. I cannot im- 
 agine forgive me one more injurious to the country, nor 
 one more revolting to myself ; and I do positively affirm that 
 I would sooner feed my poodle on paunch and liver, instead 
 of cream and fricassee, than be an instrument in the hands of 
 men like Lincoln and Lesborough ; who talk much, who per- 
 form nothing ; who join ignorance of every principle of legis- 
 lation to indifference for every benefit to the people ; who are 
 full of ' wise saws,' but empty of ' modern instances ' ; who 
 level upwards, and trample downwards, and would only value 
 the ability you are pleased to impute to me, in the exact pro- 
 portion that a sportsman values the ferret, that burrows for 
 his pleasure, and destroys for his interest. Your/tar/y can't 
 stand!" 
 
 Vincent turned pale : " And how long," said he, "have you 
 learnt ' the principles of legislation,' and this mighty affection 
 for the ' benefit of the people ? ' " 
 
 " Ever since," said I. coldly, " I learnt any thing ! The first 
 piece of real knowledge I ever gained was, that my interest 
 was incorporated with that of the beings with whom I had the 
 chance of being cast: if I injure them, I injure myself ; if I 
 dp them any good, I receive the benefit in goromon with
 
 Oft, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 2OI 
 
 the rest. Now, as I have a great love for that personage who 
 has now the honor of addressing you, I resolved to be honest 
 for his sake. So much for my affection for the benefit of the 
 people. As to the little knowledge of the principles of legisla- 
 tion, on which you are kind enough to compliment me, look 
 over the books on this table, or the writings in this desk, and 
 know, that ever since I had the misfortune of parting from you 
 at Cheltenham, there has not been a day in which I have spent 
 less than six hours reading and writing on that sole subject. 
 But enough of this will you ride to-day?" 
 Vincent rose slowly : 
 
 " ' Gli arditi (said he) tuoi voti 
 Gi& noti mi sono ; 
 Ma invano a quel trono, 
 Tu aspiri con me : 
 Trema per te ! ' " 
 
 "' lo trema' (I replied out of the same opera) ; '/<? trema 
 dite!'" 
 
 "Well," answered Vincent, and his fine high nature overcame 
 his momentary resentment and chagrin at my rejection of his 
 offer ; " Well, I honor you for your sentiments, though they 
 are opposed to my own. I may depend on your secrecy ? " 
 
 " You may," said I. 
 
 "I forgive you, Pelham," rejoined Vincent: "we part 
 friends." 
 
 "Wait one moment," said I, "and pardon me, if I venture 
 to speak in the language of caution to one in every way so 
 superior to myself. No one (I say this with a safe conscience, 
 for I never flattered my friend in my life, though I have often 
 adulated my enemy) no one has a greater admiration for 
 your talents than myself ; I desire eagerly to see you in the 
 station most fit for their display ; pause one moment before 
 you link yourself, not only to a party, but to principles, that 
 cannot stand. You have only to exert yourself, and you may 
 either lead the opposition, or be among the foremost in the 
 administration. Take something certain, rather than what is 
 doubtful : or at least stand alone : such is my belief in your 
 powers, if fairly tried, that if you were not united to those men, 
 I would promise you faithfully to stand or fall by you alone, 
 even if we had not through all England another soldier to our 
 standard ; but " 
 
 "I thank you, Pelham," said Vincent, interrupting me : "till 
 we meet in public as enemies, we are friends in private--! 
 desire no' more. Farewell."
 
 *02 tELHAM J 
 
 CHAPTER LIV. 
 
 " II vaut mieux employer notre esprit & supporter les infortunes qui nous 
 arrivent, qu'i prevoir celles qui nous peuvent arriver. " ROCHEFOUCAULD. 
 
 No sooner had Vincent departed than I buttoned my coat 
 and sallied out through a cold easterly wind to Lord Dawton's. 
 It was truly said by the political quoter, that I had been often 
 to that nobleman's, although I have not thought it advisable to 
 speak of my political adventures hitherto. I have before said 
 that I was ambitious ; and the sagacious have probably al- 
 ready discovered that I was somewhat less ignorant than it 
 was my usual pride and pleasure to appear. I had established, 
 among my uncle's friends, a reputation for talent ; and no 
 sooner had I been personally introduced to Lord Dawton, than 
 I found myself courted by that personage in a manner equally 
 gratifying and uncommon. When I lost my seat in Parlia- 
 ment, Dawton assured me that, before the session was over, I 
 should be returned for one of his boroughs ; and though my 
 mind revolted at the idea of becoming dependent on any party, I 
 made little scruple of promising conditionally to ally myself to 
 his. So far had affairs gone, when I was honored with Vin- 
 cent's proposal. I found Lord Dawton in his library, with 
 the Marquis of Clandonald (Lord Dartmore's father, and, from 
 his rank and property, classed among the highest, as, from his 
 vanity and restlessness, he was among the most active mem- 
 bers of the Opposition). Clandonald left the room when I 
 entered. Few men in office are wise enough to trust the young ; 
 as if the greater zeal and sincerity of youth did not more 
 than compensate for its appetite for the gay, or its thoughtless- 
 ness of the serious. 
 
 When we were alone, Dawton's aid to me : " We are in great 
 
 despair at the motion upon the , to be made in the Lower 
 
 House. We have not a single person whom we can depend 
 upon, for the sweeping and convincing answer we ought to 
 make; and though we should at least muster our full force in 
 
 voting, our whipper-in, poor , is so ill, that I fear we shall 
 
 make but a very pitiful figure." 
 
 " Give me," said I, " full permission to go forth into the 
 highways and byways, and I will engage to bring a whole 
 legion of dandies to the House door. I can go no farther ; 
 your other agents must do the rest." 
 
 "Thank you, my dear young friend," said Lord Dawton
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 203 
 
 eagerly ; " thank you a thousand times : we must really get you 
 in the House as soon as possible ; you will serve us more than 
 I can express." 
 
 I bowed with a sneer I could not repress. Dawton pretend- 
 ed not to observe it. " Come," said I, " my lord, we have no 
 time to lose. I shall meet you, perhaps, at Brookes's, to-mor- 
 row evening, and report to you respecting my success." 
 
 Lord Dawton pressed my hand warmly, and followed me to 
 the door. 
 
 "He is the best premier we could have," thought I; "but 
 he deceives himself, if he thinks Henry Pelham will play the 
 jackal to his lion. He will soon see that I shall keep for my- 
 self what he thinks I hunt for him." I passed through Pall 
 Mall, and thought of Glanville. I knocked at his door : he 
 was at home. 1 found him leaning his cheek upon his hand, 
 in a thoughtful position ; an open letter was before him. 
 
 "Read that," he said, pointing to it. 
 
 I did so. It was from the agent to the Duke of , and 
 
 contained his nomination to an opposition borough. 
 
 "A new toy, Pelham," said he, faintly smiling ; "but a little 
 longer, and they will all be broken the rattle will be the last." 
 
 "My dear, dear Glanville," said I, much affected, "do not 
 talk 'thus; you have everything before you." 
 
 "Yes," interrupted Glanville, "you are right, for everything 
 left for me is in the grave. Do you imagine that I can taste 
 one of the possessions which fortune has heaped upon me ; 
 that I have one healthful faculty, one sense of enjoyment, 
 among the hundred which other men are 'heirs to'? When 
 did you ever see me for a moment happy ? I live, as it were, 
 on a rock, barren, and herbless, and sapless, and cut off from 
 all human fellowship and intercourse. I had only a single 
 object left to live for, when you saw me at Paris ; I have 
 gratified that, and the end and purpose of my existence is ful- 
 filled. Heaven is merciful ; but a little while, and this fever- 
 ish and unquiet spirit shall be at rest." 
 
 I took his hand and pressed it. 
 
 "Feel, "said he, "this dry, burning skin; count my putee 
 through the variations of a single minute, and you will cease either 
 to pity me or to speak to me of life. For months I have had, 
 night and day, a wasting wasting fever, of brain, and heart, 
 and frame ; the fire works well, and the fuel is nearly con- 
 sumed." 
 
 He paused, and we were both silent. In fact, I was shocked 
 at the fever of his pulse, no less than affected at the de-
 
 204 PELHAM ; 
 
 spondency of his words. At last I spoke to him of medical 
 advice. 
 
 " ' Canst thou,' " he said, with a deep solemnity of voice and 
 manner, " ' administer to a mind diseased pluck from the 
 memory ' Ah ! away with the quotation and the reflec- 
 tion." And he sprang from the sofa, and, going to the window, 
 opened it, and leaned out for a few moments in silence. When 
 he turned again towards me, his manner had regained its usual 
 quiet. He spoke about the important motion approaching on 
 
 the , and promised to attend ; and then, by degrees, I led 
 
 him to talk of his sister. 
 
 He mentioned her with enthusiasm. " Beautiful as Ellen 
 is," he said, " her face is the very faintest reflection of her 
 mind. Her habits of thought are so pure that every impulse 
 is a virtue. Never was there a person to whom goodness was so 
 easy. Vice seems something so opposite to her nature that I 
 cannot imagine it possible for her to sin." 
 
 " Will you not call with me at your mother's ? " said I. " I 
 am going there to-day." 
 
 Glanville replied in the affirmative, and we went at once to 
 Lady Glanville's in Berkeley Square. We were admitted into 
 his mother's boudoir. She was alone with Miss Glanville. Our 
 conversation soon turned from commonplace topics to those bf a 
 graver nature ; the deep melancholy of Glanville's mind imbued 
 all his thoughts, when he once suffered himself to express them. 
 
 "Why," said Lady Glanville, who seemed painfully fond of 
 her son " Why do you not go more into the world ? You 
 suffer your mind to prey upon itself, till it destroys you. My 
 dear, dear son, how very ill you seem ! " 
 
 Ellen, whose eyes swam in tears, as they gazed upon her 
 brother, laid her beautiful hand upon his, and said, "For my 
 mother's sake, Reginald, do take more care of yourself : you 
 want air, and exercise, and amusement." 
 
 " No," answered Glanville, " I want nothing but occupation ; 
 
 and, thanks to the Duke of , I have now got it. I am 
 
 chosen member for ." 
 
 "I am too happy," said the proud mother; "you will now be all 
 I have ever predicted for you " ; and, in her joy at the moment, 
 she forgot the hectic of his cheek and the hollowness of his eye. 
 
 " Do you remember," said Reginald, turning to his sister, 
 " those beautiful lines in my favorite Ford : 
 
 1 Glories 
 
 Of human greatness are but pleasing dreams, 
 And shadows soon decaying. On the stage
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. iO$ 
 
 Of my mortality, my youth has acted 
 Some scenes of vanity, drawn out at length 
 By varied pleasures sweetened in the mixture, 
 But tragical in issue. Beauty, pomp, 
 With every sensuality our giddiness 
 Doth frame an idol are inconstant friends 
 When any troubled passion makes- us halt 
 On the unguarded castle of the mind.'" 
 
 "Your verses," said I, "are beautiful, even to me, who have 
 no soul for poetry, and never wrote a line in my life. But I 
 love not their philosophy. In all sentiments that are impreg- 
 nated with melancholy, and instil sadness as a moral, I question 
 the wisdom, and dispute the truth. There is no situation in 
 life which we cannot sweeten, or embitter, at will. If the past 
 is gloomy, I do not see the necessity of dwelling upon it. If 
 the mind can make one vigorous exertion, it can another: the 
 same energy you put forth in acquiring knowledge would also 
 enable you to baffle misfortune. Determine not to think upon 
 what is painful ; resolutely turn away from everything that 
 recalls it ; bend all your attention to some new and engrossing 
 object ; do this, and you defeat the past. You smile as if this 
 were impossible ; yet it is not an iota more so than to tear 
 oneself from a favorite pursuit, and addict oneself to an object 
 unwelcome to one at first. This the mind does continually 
 through life ; so can it also do the other, if you will but make 
 an equal exertion. Nor does it seem to me natural to the 
 human heart to look much to the past ; all its plans, its projects, 
 its aspirations, are for the future ; it is for the future, and /'// 
 the future, that we live. Our very passions, when most agitated, 
 are most anticipative. Revenge, avarice, ambition, love, the 
 desire of good -and evil, are all fixed and pointed to some 
 distant goal ; to look backwards, is like walking backwards 
 against our proper formation : the mind does not readily adopt 
 the habit, and when once adopted, it will readily return to it-s 
 natural bias. Oblivion is, therefore, a more easily obtained 
 boon than we imagine. Forgetfulness of the past is purchased 
 by increasing our anxiety for the future." 
 
 I paused for a moment, but Glanville did not answer me ; 
 and, encouraged by a look from Ellen, I continued : " You 
 remember that, according to an old creed, if we were given 
 memory as a curse, we were also given hope as a blessing. 
 Counteract the one by the other. In my own life, I have com- 
 mitted many weak, perhaps many wicked, actions; I have 
 chased away their remembrance, though I have transplanted 
 their warning to the future. As the body involuntarily avoids
 
 206 FELHAM | 
 
 what is hurtful to it, without tracing the association to its first 
 experience, so the mind insensibly shuns what has formerly 
 afflicted it, even without palpably recalling the remembrance 
 of the affliction. 
 
 " The Roman philosopher placed the secret of human happi- 
 ness in the one maxim 'not to admire.' I never could 
 exactly comprehend the sense of the moral ; my maxim for the 
 same object would be 'never to regret.' " 
 
 "Alas! my dear friend," said Glanville, "we are great 
 philosophers to each other, but not to ourselves ; the moment 
 we begin to feel sorrow, we cease to reflect on its wisdom. 
 Time is the only comforter ; your maxims are very true, but 
 they confirm me in my opinion that it is in vain for us to lay 
 down fixed precepts for the regulation of the mind, so long as 
 it is dependent upon the body. Happiness and its reverse are 
 constitutional in many persons, and it is then only that they 
 are independent of circumstances. Make the health, the 
 frames of all men, alike ; make their nerves of the same 
 susceptibility ; their memories of the same bluntness, or acute- 
 ness, and I will then allow that you can give rules adapted to 
 all men ; till then, your maxim, 'never to regret,' is as idle as 
 Horace's 'never to admire.' It may be wise to you, it is im- 
 possible to me ! " 
 
 With these last words Glanville's voice faltered, and I felt 
 averse to push the argument further. Ellen's eye caught mine, 
 and gave me a look so kind, and almost grateful, that I forgot 
 everything else in the world. A few moments afterwards a 
 friend of Lady Glanville's was announced, and I left the room. 
 
 CHAPTER LV. 
 
 " Intus, et in jecore segro, 
 Nascunlur domini." PERSIUS. 
 
 THE next two or three days I spent in visiting all my male 
 friends in the Lower House, and engaging them to dine with 
 
 me, preparatorily to the great act of voting on 's motion. I 
 
 led them myself to the House of Commons, and not feeling 
 sufficiently interested in the debate to remain, as a stranger, 
 where I ought, in my own opinion, to have acted as a performer, 
 I went to Brookes's to wait the result. Lord Gravelton, a 
 stout, bluff, six-foot nobleman, with a voice like a Stentor, was
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 2Of 
 
 " blowing up " the waiters in the coffee-room. Mr. , the 
 
 author of , was conning the Courier in a corner ; and Lord 
 
 Armadilleros, the haughtiest and most honorable peer in the 
 calendar, was monopolizing the drawing-room, with his right 
 foot on'one hob and his left on the other. I sat myself down 
 in silence, and looked over the " crack article " in the Edin- 
 burgh. By and by the room got fuller ; every one spoke of the 
 motion before the House, and anticipated the merits of the 
 speeches, and the numbers of the voters. 
 
 At last a principal member entered a crowd gathered round 
 him. " I have heard," he said, " the most extraordinary speech, 
 for the combination of knowledge and imagination, that I ever 
 recollect to have listened too." 
 
 " From Gaskell, I suppose ? " was the universal cry. 
 
 "No," said Mr. , " Gaskell has not yet spoken. It was 
 
 from a young man who has only just taken his seat. It was 
 received with the most unanimous cheers, and was, indeed, a 
 remarkable display." 
 
 " What is his name?" I asked, already half foreboding the 
 answer. 
 
 " I only just learnt it as I left the House," replied Mr. ; 
 
 " the speaker was Sir Reginald Glanville." 
 
 Then, every one of those whom I had often before heard 
 censure Glanville for his rudeness, or laugh at him for his ec- 
 centricity, opened their mouths in congratulations to their own 
 wisdom, for having long admired his talents and predicted his 
 success. 
 
 I left the " turbo, Remi sequens fortunam "/ I felt agitated 
 and feverish ; those who have unexpectedly heard of the 
 success of a man for whom great affection is blended with 
 greater interest, can understand the restlessness of mind with 
 which I wandered into the streets. The air was cold and nip- 
 ping. I was buttoning my coat round my chest, when I heard 
 a voice say : " You have dropped your glove, Mr. Pelham." 
 
 The speaker was Thornton. I thanked him coldly for his 
 civility, and was going on, when he said : " If your way is up 
 Pall Mall, I have no objection to join you for a few minutes." 
 
 I bowed with some hauteur / but as I seldom refuse any 
 opportunity of knowing more perfectly individual character, I 
 said I should be happy of his company so long as our way lay 
 together. 
 
 " It is a cold night, Mr. Pelham," said Thornton, after a 
 pause. "I have been dining at Hatchett's with an old Paris 
 acquaintance : I am sorry we did not meet more often in
 
 France, but I was so taken up with my friend Mr. Warburton." 
 As Thornton uttered that name, he looked hard at me, and 
 then added : " By the by, I saw you with Sir Reginald Glan- 
 ville the other day ; you know him well, I presume?" 
 
 " Tolerably well," said I, with indifference. 
 
 " What a strange character he is," rejoined Thornton ; " / 
 also have known him for some years," and again Thornton 
 looked pryingly into my countenance. Poor fool ! it was not for 
 a penetration like his to read the cor inscrutable of a man born, 
 and bred like me in the consummate dissimulation oi.bon ton. 
 
 " He is very rich, is he not ? " said Thornton, after a brief 
 silence. 
 
 " I believe so," said I. 
 
 " Humph ! " answered Thornton. " Things have grown 
 better with him, in proportion as they grew worse with me, 
 who have had 'as good luck as the cow that stuck herself with 
 her own horn.' I suppose he is not too anxious to recollect 
 me 'poverty parts fellowship.' Well, hang pride, say I ; 
 give me an honest heart all the year round, in summer or 
 winter, drought or plenty. Would to Heaven some kind friend 
 would lend me twenty pounds ! " 
 
 To this wish I made no reply. Thornton sighed. 
 
 " Mr. Pelhain," renewed he, " it is true I have known you 
 but a short time excuse the liberty I take but if you could 
 lend me a trifle, it would really assist rne very much." 
 
 " Mr. Thornton," said I, " if I knew you better, and could 
 serve you more, you might apply to me for a more real 
 assistance than any bagatelle I could afford you would be. If 
 twenty pounds would really be of service to you, I will lend 
 them to you, upon this condition, that you never ask me for 
 another farthing." 
 
 Thornton's face brightened. " A thousand, thousand " he 
 began. 
 
 " No," interrupted I, " no thanks, only your promise." 
 
 " Upon my honor," said Thornton, " I will never ask you for 
 another farthing." 
 
 " There is honor among thieves," thought I, and so I took 
 out the sum mentioned, and gave it to him. In good earnest, 
 though I disliked the man, his threadbare garments and altered 
 appearance moved me to compassion. While he was pocket- 
 ing the money, which he did with the most unequivocal 
 delight, a tall figure passed us rapidly. We both turned at the 
 same instant, and recognized Glanville. He had not gone 
 .seven yards beyond us, before we observed his steps, which
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 209 
 
 were very irregular, pause suddenly ; a moment afterwards he 
 fell against the iron rails of an area ; we hastened towards 
 him ; he was apparently fainting. His countenance was per- 
 fectly livid, and marked with the traces of extreme exhaustion. 
 Isent Thornton to the nearest public house for some water ; 
 before he returned, Glanville had recovered. 
 
 " All all in vain," he said, slowly and unconsciously, 
 " death is the only Lethe." 
 
 He started when he saw me. I made him lean on my arm, 
 and we walked on. slowly. 
 
 " I have already heard of your speech," said I. Glanville 
 smiled with the usual faint and sicklied expression, which 
 made his smile painful even in its exceeding sweetness. 
 
 " You have also already seen its effects ; the excitement was 
 too much for me." 
 
 " It must have been a proud moment when you sat down," 
 said I. 
 
 " It was one of the bitterest I ever felt it was fraught with 
 the memory of the dead. What are all honors to me now ? O 
 God ! O God ! have mercy upon me ! " 
 
 And Glanville stopped suddenly, and put his hands to his 
 temples. 
 
 By this time Thornton had joined us. When Glanville's 
 eyes rested upon him, a deep hectic rose slowly and gradually 
 over his cheeks. Thornton's lip curled with a malicious expres- 
 sion. Glanville marked it, and his brow grew on the moment 
 as black as night. 
 
 " Begone ! " he said, in a loud voice, and with a flashing 
 eye, " begone instantly ; I loathe the very sight of so base a 
 thing." 
 
 Thornton's quick, restless eye grew like a living coal, and 
 he bit his lip so violently that the blood gushed out. He 
 made, however, no other answer than 
 
 " You seem agitated to-night, Sir Reginald ; I wish your 
 speedy restoration to better health. Mr. Pelham, your servant. " 
 
 Glanville walked on in silence till we came to his door ; we 
 parted there ; and for want of anything better to do, I saun- 
 tered towards the M Hell. There were only about ten or 
 
 twelve persons in the room, and all were gathered round the 
 hazard table. I looked on silently, seeing the knaves devour 
 the fools, and younger brothers make up in wit for the defi- 
 ciencies of fortune. 
 
 The Honorable Mr. Blagrave came up to me : " Do you 
 never play ? " said he.
 
 210 PELHAM ; 
 
 "Sorretimes," was my brief reply. 
 
 " Lend me a hundred pounds ! " rejoined my kind acquaint- 
 ance. 
 
 " I was just going to make you the same request," said I. 
 
 Blagrave laughed heartily. " Well," said he, " be my secur- 
 ity to a Jew, and I'll be yours. My fellow lends me money at: 
 only forty per cent. My governor is a d d stingy old fellow, 
 for I am the most moderate son in the universe. I neither 
 hunt nor race, nor have I any one favorite expense, except 
 gambling, and he won't satisfy me in that now I call such 
 conduct shameful ! " 
 
 " Unheard-of barbarity," said I ; "and you do well to ruin 
 your property by Jews, before you have it ; you could not 
 avenge yourself better on ' the governor.' " 
 
 "No, hang it," said Blagrave, "leave me alone for that ! 
 Well, I have got five pounds left, I shall go and slap it down." 
 
 No sooner had he left me than I was accosted by Mr. , 
 
 a handsome adventurer, who lived the devil knew how, for the 
 devil seemed to take excellent care of him. 
 
 " Poor Blagrave ! " said he, eyeing the countenance of that 
 ingenious youth. " He is a strange fellow ; he asked me the 
 other day if I ever read the History of England, and told me 
 there was a great deal in it about his ancestor, a Roman 
 General, in the time of William the Conqueror, called Carac- 
 tacus. He told me at the last Newmarket that he had made 
 up a capital book, and it turned out that he had hedged with 
 such dexterity that he must lose one thousand pounds, and he 
 
 might lose two. Well, well," continued , with a sanctified 
 
 expression ; " I would sooner see those real fools here, than 
 the confounded scoundrels, who pillage one under a false ap- 
 pearance. Never, Mr. Pelham, trust to a man at a gaming-house ; 
 the honestest look hides the worst sharper! Shall you try your 
 luck to-night ? " 
 
 " No," said I, " I shall only look on." 
 
 sauntered to the table, and sat down next to a rich 
 
 young man, of the best temper and the worst luck in the world. 
 
 After a few throws, said to him : " Lord , do put your 
 
 money aside you have so much on the table, that it interferes 
 with mine and that is really so unpleasant. Suppose you put 
 some of it in your pocket." 
 
 Lord took a handful of notes, and stuffed them care- 
 lessly in his coat-pocket. Five minutes afterwards I saw 
 
 insert his hand, empty, in his neighbor's pocket, and bring it 
 out full and half an hour afterwards he handed over a fifty
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 2lt 
 
 pound note to the marker, saying, " There, sir, is my debt to 
 
 you. God bless me, Lord , how you have won ; I wish 
 
 you would not leave all your money about do put it in your 
 pocket with the rest." 
 
 Lord (who had perceived the trick, though he was too 
 
 indolent to resist it) laughed. "No, no, ," said he, "you 
 
 must let me keep some!" 
 
 colored, and soon after rose. " D n my luck ! " said 
 
 he, as he passed me. "I wonder I continue to play but there 
 are such sharpers in the room. Avoid a gaming-house, Mr. 
 Pelham, if you wish to live." 
 
 " And let live," thought I. 
 
 I was just going away when I heard a loud laugh on the 
 stairs, and immediately afterwards Thornton entered, joking 
 with one of the markers. He did not see me ; but approach- 
 ing the table, drew out the identical twenty pound note I had 
 given him, and asked for change with the air of a millionaire. 
 I did not wait to witness his fortune, good or ill ; I cared too 
 little about it. I descended the stairs, and the servant, on 
 opening the door forme, admitted Sir John Tyrrell. " What," 
 I thought, "is the habit still so strong?" We stopped each 
 other, and after a few words of greeting, I went, once more, up- 
 stairs with him. 
 
 Thornton was playing as eagerly with his small quota as 
 
 Lord C with his ten thousands. He nodded with an 
 
 affected air of familiarity to Tyrrell, who returned his saluta- 
 tion with the most supercilious hauteur ; and very soon after- 
 wards the Baronet was utterly engrossed by the chances of the 
 game. I had, however, satisfied my curiosity, in ascertaining 
 that there was no longer any intimacy between him and Thorn- 
 ton, and accordingly once more I took my departure. 
 
 CHAPTER LVI. 
 
 " The times have been 
 
 That when the brains were out, the man would die, 
 And there an end but now they rise again." Macbeth. 
 
 IT was a strange thing to see a man like Glanville, with 
 costly tastes, luxurious habits, great talents peculiarly calcu- 
 lated for display, courted by the highest members of the State, 
 admired for his beauty and genius by half the women in Lon- 
 don, yet living in the most ascetic seclusion from his kind, and 
 indulging in the darkest and most morbid despondency. No
 
 2I2 PELHAM ; 
 
 female was ever seen to win even his momentary glance of 
 admiration. All the senses appeared to have lost, for him, 
 their customary allurements. He lived among his books, and 
 seemed to make his favorite companions amidst the past. At 
 nearly all hours of the night he was awake and occupied, and 
 at daybreak his horse was always brought to his door. He 
 rode alone for several hours, and then, on his return, he was 
 employed, till the hour he went to the House, in the affairs and 
 politics of the day. Ever since his dttut, he had entered with 
 much constancy into the more leading debates, and his speeches 
 were invariably of the same commanding order which had 
 characterized his first. 
 
 It was singular that, in his parliamentary display, as in his 
 ordinary conversation, there were none of the wild and specu- 
 lative opinions, or the burning enthusiasm of romance, in which 
 the natural inclination of his mind seemed so essentially to 
 delight. His arguments were always remarkable for the sound- 
 ness of the principles on which they were based, and the logical 
 clearness with which they were expressed. The feverish fervor 
 of his temperament was, it is true, occasionally shown in a 
 remarkable energy of delivery, or a sudden and unexpected 
 burst of the more impetuous powers of oratory ; but these were 
 so evidently natural and spontaneous, and so happily adapted 
 to be impressive of the subject, rather than irrelevant from its 
 bearings, that they never displeased even the oldest and coldest 
 cynics and calculators of the House. 
 
 It is no uncommon contradiction in human nature (and in 
 Glanville it seemed peculiarly prominent) to find men of imagi- 
 nation and genius gifted with the strongest common sense, for 
 the admonition or benefit of others, even while constantly neg- 
 lecting to exert it for themselves. He was soon marked out as 
 the most promising and important of all the junior members 
 of the House ; and the coldness with which he kept aloof from 
 social intercourse with the party he adopted only served to 
 increase their respect, though it prevented their affection. 
 
 Lady Roseville's attachment to him was scarcely a secret ; 
 the celebrity of her name in the world of ton made her least 
 look or action the constant subject of present remark and after 
 conversation ; and there were too many moments, even in the 
 watchful publicity of society, when that charming but impru- 
 dent person forgot everything but the romance of her attach- 
 ment. Glanville seemed not only perfectly untouched by it, 
 but even wholly unconscious of its existence, and preserved 
 invariably, whenever he was forced into the crowd, the same
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 2 13 
 
 stern, cold, unsympathizing reserve, which made him at once 
 an object of universal conversation and dislike. 
 
 Three weeks after Glanville's first speech in the House I 
 called upon him, with a proposal from Lord Dawton. After 
 we had discussed it, we spoke on more familiar topics, and at 
 last he mentioned Thornton. It will be observed that we had 
 never conversed respecting that person ; nor had Glanville 
 once alluded to our former meetings, or to his disguised ap- 
 pearance and false appellation at Paris. Whatever might be 
 the mystery, it was evidently of a painful nature, and it was 
 not, therefore, for me to allude to it. This day he spoke of 
 Thornton with a tone of indifference. 
 
 " The man," he said, " I have known for some time ; he was 
 useful to me abroad, and, notwithstanding his character, I re- 
 warded him well for his services. He has since applied to me 
 several times for money, which is spent at the gambling-house 
 as soon as it is obtained. I believe him to be leagued with a 
 gang of sharpers of the lowest description ; and I am really 
 unwilling any farther to supply the vicious necessities of him- 
 self and his comrades. He is a mean, mercenary rascal, who 
 would scruple at no enormity, provided he was paid for it ! " 
 
 Glanville paused for a few^ moments, and then added, while 
 his cheek blushed, and his voice seemed somewhat hesitating 
 and embarrassed : 
 
 " You remember Mr. Tyrrell, at Paris ? " 
 
 "Yes," said I ; "he is at present in London, and " Glan- 
 ville started as if he had been shot. 
 
 " No, no," he exclaimed wildly; "he died at Paris, from 
 want, from starvation." . 
 
 " You are mistaken," said I ; " he is now Sir John Tyrrell, 
 and possessed of considerable property. I saw him myself 
 three weeks ago." 
 
 Glanville, laying his hand upon my arm, looked in my face 
 with a long, stern, prying gaze, and his cheek grew more 
 ghastly and livid with every moment. At last he turned, and 
 muttered something between his teeth ; and at that moment 
 the door opened, and Thornton was announced. Glanville 
 sprang towards him, and seized him by the throat ! 
 
 " Dog ! " he cried, " you have deceived me Tyrrell lives ! " 
 
 " Hands off ! " cried the gamester, with a savage grin of de- 
 fiance ; " hands off ! or, by the Lord that made me, you shall 
 have gripe for gripe ! " 
 
 " Ho, wretch ! " said Glanville, shaking him violently, while 
 his worn and slender, yet still powerful, frame trembled with
 
 414 fELHAM J 
 
 the excess of his passion ; "dost thou dare to threaten me ! " 
 and with these words he flung Thornton against the opposite 
 wall with such force that the blood gushed out of his mouth 
 and nostrils. The gambler rose slowly, and wiping the blood 
 from his face, fixed his malignant and fiery eye upon his ag- 
 gressor, with an expression of collected hate and vengeance 
 that made my very blood creep. 
 
 " It is not my day now" he said, with a calm, quiet, cold 
 voice, and then, suddenly changing his manner, he approached 
 me with a sort of bow, and made some remark on the weather. 
 
 Meanwhile, Glanvihehad sunk on the sofa exhausted, less by 
 his late effort than the convulsive passion which had produced 
 it. He rose in a few moments, and said to Thornton : li Pardon 
 my violence ; let this pay your bruises" ; and he placed a long 
 and apparently well-filled purse in Thornton's hand. That 
 veritable philosophe took it with the same air as a dog receives 
 the first caress from the hand which has just chastised him ; 
 and feeling the purse between his short, hard fingers, as if to as- 
 certain the soundness of its condition, quietly slid it into his 
 breeches pocket, which he then buttoned with care, and pull- 
 ing his waistcoat down, as if for further protection to the de- 
 posit, he turned towards Glanville, and said, in his usual quaint 
 style of vulgarity : 
 
 " Least said, Sir Reginald, the soonest mended. Gold is a 
 good plaister for bad bruises. Now, then, your will : ask and I 
 will answer, unless you think Mr. Pelham detrop" 
 
 I was already at the door, with the intention of leaving the 
 room, when Glanville cried, " Stay, Pelham, I have but one 
 question to ask Mr. Thornton. Is John Tyrrell still living? " 
 
 " He is ! " answered Thornton, with a sardonic smile. 
 
 " And beyond all want ? " resumed Glanville. 
 
 " He is ! " was the tautological reply. 
 
 " Mr. Thornton," said Glanville with a calm voice, " I have 
 now done with you you may leave the room ! " 
 
 Thornton bowed with an air of ironical respect, and obeyed 
 the command. 
 
 I turned to look at Glanville. His countenance, always 
 better adapted to a stern than a soft expression, was perfectly 
 fearful : every line in it seemed dug into a furrow ; the brows 
 were bent over his large and flashing eyes with a painful intens- 
 ity of anger and resolve, his teeth were clenched firmly as if by 
 a vise, and the thin upper lip, which was drawn from them with 
 a bitter curl of scorn, was as white as death. His right hand 
 had closed upon the back of the chair, over which his tall nerv-
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 21$ 
 
 ous frame leant, and was grasping it with an iron force, which 
 it could not support : it snapped beneath his hand like a hazel 
 stick. This accident, slight as it was, recalled him to himself. 
 He apologized with apparent self-possession for his disorder ; 
 and, after a few words of fervent and affectionate farewell on 
 my part, I left him to the solitude which I knew he desired. 
 
 CHAPTER LVII. 
 
 " While I seemed only intent upan pleasure, I locked in my heart the con- 
 sciousness and vanity of power ; in the levity of the lip I disguised the 
 knowledge and the workings of the brain ; and I looked, as with a gifted 
 eye, upon the mysteries of the hidden depths, while I seemed to float an idler 
 with the herd only upon the surface of the stream." FALKLAND. 
 
 As I walked home, revolving the scene I had witnessed, the 
 words of Tyrrell came into my recollection viz., that the cause 
 of Glanville's dislike to him had arisen in Tyrrell's greater 
 success in some youthful liaison. In this account I could not 
 see much probability. In the first place, the cause was not 
 sufficient to produce such an effect ; and, in the second, there 
 was little likelihood that the young and rich Glanville, possessed 
 of the most various accomplishments, and the most remarkable 
 personal beauty, should be supplanted by a needy spendthrift 
 (as Tyrrell at that time was), of coarse manners, and unpolished 
 mind ; with a person not, indeed, unprepossessing, but somewhat 
 touched by time, and never more comparable to Glanville's 
 than that of the Satyr to Hyperion. 
 
 While I was meditating over a mystery which excited my 
 curiosity more powerfully than anything, not relating to him- 
 self, ought ever to occupy the attention of a wise man, I was 
 accosted by Vincent : the difference in our politics had of late 
 much dissevered us, and when he took my arm, and drew me 
 up Bond Street, I was somewhat surprised at his condescension. 
 
 "Listen to me, Pelham," he said ; "once more I offer you a 
 settlement in our colony. There will be great changes soon : 
 trust me, so radical a party as that you have adopted can never 
 come in : ours, on the contrary, is no less moderate than liberal. 
 This is the last time of asking ; for I know you will soon have 
 exposed your opinions in public more openly than you have 
 yet done, and then it will be too late. At present I hold, with 
 Hudibras, and the ancients, that it is 
 
 ' More honorable far, servare 
 Civern than slay an adversary.' "
 
 2l6 PELHAM J 
 
 "Alas, Vincent," said I, " I am marked out for slaughter, for 
 you cannot convince me by words, and so, I suppose, you must 
 conquer me by blows. Adieu, this my way to Lord Dawton's : 
 where are you going?" 
 
 " To mount my horse, and join the parca juventus," said 
 Vincent, with a laugh at his own witticism, as we shook hands 
 and parted. 
 
 I grieve much, my beloved reader, that I cannot unfold to 
 thee all the particulars of my political intrigue. I am, by the 
 very share which fell to my lot, bound over to the strictest 
 secrecy as to its nature, and the characters of the chief agents 
 in its execution. Suffice it to say, that the greater part of my 
 time was, though furtively, employed in a sort of home diplom- 
 acy, gratifying alike to the activity of my tastes, and the vanity 
 of my mind. I had filled Dawton, and his coadjutors, with an 
 exaggerated opinion of my abilities ; but I knew well how to 
 sustain it. I rose by candle-light, and consumed, in the intensest 
 application, the hours which every other individual of our party 
 wasted in enervating slumbers, from the hesternal dissipation 
 or debauch. Was there a question in political economy debated, 
 mine was the readiest and the clearest reply. Did a period in 
 our constitution become investigated, it was I to whom the duty 
 of expositor was referred. From Madame d'Anville, with 
 whom (though lost as a lover) I constantly corresponded as a 
 friend, I obtained the earliest and most accurate detail of the 
 prospects and manoeuvres of the court in which her life was spent, 
 and in whose more secret offices her husband was employed. I 
 spared no means of extending my knowledge of even the minutest 
 point which could add to the reputation I enjoyed. I made my- 
 self acquainted with the individual interests and exact circum- 
 stances of all whom it was our object to intimidate or to gain. 
 It was I who brought to the House the younger and idler mem- 
 bers, whom no more nominally powerful agent could allure from 
 the ball-room or the gaming-house. 
 
 In short, while, by the dignity of my birth, and the inde- 
 pendent hauteur of my bearing, I preserved the rank of an 
 equal amongst the highest of the set, I did not scruple to take 
 upon myself the labor and activity of the most subordinate. 
 Dawton declared me his right hand, and, though I knew 
 myself rather his head than his hand, I pretended to feel 
 proud of the appellation. 
 
 Meanwhile, it was my pleasure t6 wear in society the eccen- 
 tric costume of character I had first adopted, and to cultivate 
 the arts which won from women the smile that cheered and
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 217 
 
 encouraged me in my graver contest with men. It was only 
 to Ellen Glanville that I laid aside an affectation which, I 
 knew, was little likely to attract a taste so refined and unadul- 
 terated as hers. I discovered in her a mind which, while it 
 charmed me by its tenderness and freshness, elevated me by 
 its loftiness of thought. She was, at heart, perhaps, as ambi- 
 tious as myself; but while my aspirations were concealed by 
 affectation, hers were softened by her timidity, and purified by 
 her religion. There were moments when I opened myself to 
 her, and caught a new spirit from her look of sympathy and 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 "Yes," thought I, "I do long for honors, but it is that I 
 may ask her to share and ennoble them." In fine, I loved as 
 other men loved and I fancied a perfection in her, and vowed 
 an emulation in myself, which it was reserved for Time to 
 ratify or deride. 
 
 Where did I leave myself? as the Irishman said on my 
 road to Lord Dawton's. I was lucky enough to find that per- 
 sonage at home ; he was writing at a table covered with pam- 
 phlets and books of reference. 
 
 " Hush ! Pelham," said his lordship, who is a quiet, grave, 
 meditative little man, always ruminating on a very small cud ; 
 "hush! or do oblige me by looking over this history, to find 
 out the date of the Council of Pisa." 
 
 "That will do, my young friend," said his lordship, after I 
 had furnished him with the information he required. " I wish 
 to Heaven I could finish this pamphlet by to-morrow : it is 
 
 intended as an answer to . But I am so perplexed with 
 
 business, that " 
 
 "Perhaps," said I, "if you will pardon my interrupting you, 
 I can throw your observations together make your Sibylline 
 leaves into a book. Your lordship will find the matter, and I 
 will not spare the trouble." 
 
 Lord Dawton was profuse in his thanks ; he explained the 
 subject, and left the arrangement wholly to me. He could not 
 presume to dictate. I promised him, if he lent me the neces- 
 sary books, to finish the pamphlet against the following evening. 
 
 " And now," said Lord Dawton, " that we have settled this 
 
 affair what news from France ? " 
 
 ******* 
 
 " I wish," sighed Lord Dawton, as we were calculating our 
 forces, "that we could gain over Lord Guloseton." 
 " What, the facetious epicure ? " said I. 
 " The same," answered Dawton ; " we want him as a din-
 
 2l8 PELHAM J 
 
 ner-giver ; and, besides, he has four votes in the Lower 
 House." 
 
 " Well," said I, "he is indolent and independent it is not 
 impossible." 
 
 " Do you know him ? " answered Dawton. 
 
 " No," said I. 
 
 Dawton sighed. "And young A ?" said the statesman, 
 
 after a pause. 
 
 " Has an expensive mistress and races. Your lordship 
 might be sure of him, were you in power, and sure not to have 
 him while you are out of it." 
 
 " And B. ?" rejoined Dawton. 
 
 ******* 
 
 CHAPTER LVIII. 
 
 " Mangez-vous bien, Monsieur? 
 Oui, et bois encore mieux. " 
 
 Mons, de Porceaugnac. 
 
 MY pamphlet took prodigiously. The authorship was at- 
 tributed to one of the ablest members of the Opposition ; and 
 though there were many errors in style, and (I now think 
 then I did not, or I should not have written them), many 
 sophisms in the reasoning, yet it carried the end proposed by 
 all ambition of whatever species and imposed upon the taste 
 of the public. 
 
 Some time afterwards I was going down the stairs at Al- 
 mack's when I heard an altercation, high and grave, at the 
 door of reception. To my surprise I found Lord Guloseton 
 and a very young man in great wrath ; the latter had never 
 been to Almack's before, and had forgotten his ticket. Gulose- 
 ton, who belonged to a very different set from that of the Al- 
 mackians, insisted that his word was enough to bear his juve- 
 nile companion through. The ticket-inspector was irate and 
 obdurate, and, having seldom or never seen Lord Guloseton 
 himself, paid very little respect to his authority. 
 
 As I was wrapping myself in my cloak, Guloseton turned to 
 me, for passion makes men open their hearts ; too eager for 
 an opportunity of acquiring the epicure's acquaintance, I 
 offered to get his friend admittance in an instant ; the offer 
 was delightedly accepted, and I soon procured a small piece 
 
 of pencilled paper from Lady which effectually silenced 
 
 the Charon, and opened the Stygian via to the Elysium beyond,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 219 
 
 Guloseton overwhelmed me with his thanks. I remounted 
 the stairs with him, took every opportunity of ingratiating 
 myself, received an invitation to dinner on the following day, 
 and left Willis's transported at the goodness of my fortune. 
 
 At the hour of eight on the ensuing evening, I had just made 
 my entrance in Lord Guloseton's drawing-room. It was a 
 small apartment, furnished with great luxury and some taste. 
 A Venus of Titian's was placed over the chimney-piece, in all 
 the gorgeous voluptuousness of her unveiled beauty : the pout- 
 ing lip, not silent though shut ; the eloquent lid drooping over 
 the eye, whose glances you could so easily imagine ; the arms ; 
 the limbs ; the attitude, so composed, yet so full of life all 
 seemed to indicate that sleep was not forgetfulness, and that 
 the dreams of the goddess were not wholly inharmonious with 
 the waking realities in which it was her gentle prerogative to 
 indulge. On either side was a picture of the delicate and 
 golden hues of Claude ; these were the only landscapes in the 
 room ; the remaining pictures were more suitable to the Venus 
 of the luxurious Italian. Here was one of the beauties of Sir 
 Peter Lely ; there was an admirable copy of the Hero and Le- 
 ander. On the table lay the Basia of Johannes Secundus, and 
 a few French works on Gastronomy. 
 
 As for the genius loci you must imagine a middle-sized, 
 middle-aged man, with an air rather of delicate than florid 
 health. But little of the effects of his good cheer was apparent 
 in the external man. His cheeks were neither swollen nor in- 
 flated ; his person, though not thin, was of no unwieldy obes- 
 ity ; the tip of his nasal organ was, it is true, of a more ruby 
 tinge than the rest, and one carbuncle, of tender age, and gen- 
 tle dyes, diffused its mellow and moonlight influence over the 
 physiognomical scenery ; his forehead was high and bald, and 
 the few locks which still rose above it were carefully and 
 gracefully curled d F antique. Beneath a pair of gray shaggy 
 brows (which their noble owner had a strange habit of raising 
 and depressing, according to the nature of his remarks), rolled 
 two very small, piercing, arch, restless orbs, of a tender green; 
 und the mouth, which was wide and thick-lipped, was express- 
 ive of great sensuality, and curved upwards in a perpetual smile. 
 
 Such was Lord Guloseton. To my surprise no other guest 
 but myself appeared. 
 
 "A new friend," said he, as we descended into the dining- 
 room, " is like a new dish one must have him all to oneself, 
 thoroughly to enjoy and rightly to understand hjra." 
 
 " A noble precept," said J with enthusiasm. 4< 0f all vices,
 
 220 PELHAM J 
 
 indiscriminate hospitality is the most pernicious. It allows 
 neither conversation nor dinner, and, realizing the mythologi- 
 cal fable of Tantalus, gives us starvation in the midst of plenty." 
 
 " You are right," said Guloseton solemnly ; " I never ask 
 above six persons to dinner, and I never dine out ; for a bad 
 dinner, Mr. Pelham, a bad dinner is a most serious I may add, 
 the most serious calamity." 
 
 " Yes," I replied, " for it carries with it no consolation : a 
 buried friend may be replaced a lost mistress renewed a 
 slandered character be recovered even a broken constitution 
 restored ; but a dinner, once lost, is irremediable ; that day is 
 forever departed ; an appetite once thrown away can never, 
 till the cruel prolixity of the gastric agents is over, be regained. 
 ' Ily a tant de mattresses ' (says the admirable Corneille), '/'/ n'y 
 'a quun diner.' " 
 
 " You speak like an oracle like the Cook's Oracle, Mr. Pel- 
 ham : may i send you some soup, it is a la Carmelite? But 
 what are you about to do with that case ? " 
 
 "It contains," said I, " my spoon, my knife, and my fork. 
 Nature afflicted me with a propensity, which, through these 
 machines, I have endeavored to remedy by art. I eat with 
 too great a rapidity. It is a most unhappy failing, for one often 
 hurries over in one minute what ought to have afforded the 
 fullest delight for the period of five. It is, indeed, a vice which 
 deadens enjoyment, as well as abbreviates it ; it is a shameful 
 waste of the gifts, and a melancholy perversion of the bounty, 
 of Providence. My conscience tormented me ; but the habit, 
 fatally indulged in early childhood, was not easy to overcome. 
 At last I resolved to construct a spoon of peculiarly shallow 
 dimensions, a fork so small that it could only raise a certain 
 portion to my mouth, and a knife rendered blunt and jagged, 
 so that it required a proper and just time to carve the goods 
 ' the gods provide me.' My lord, 'the lovely Thais sits beside 
 me ' in the form of a bottle of Madeira. Suffer me to take 
 wine with you ? " 
 
 " With pleasure, my good friend ; let us drink to the mem- 
 ory of the Carmelites, to whom we are indebted for this inim- 
 itable soup." 
 
 Yes ! " I cried, " Let us for once shake off the prejudices 
 of sectarian faith, and do justice to one order of those incom- 
 parable men, who, retiring from the cares of an idle and sinful 
 world, gave themselves with undivided zeal and attention to the 
 theory and practice of the profound science of gastronomy. 
 It is reserved for us to pay a grateful tribute of memory to those
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 221 
 
 exalted recluses, who, through a long period of barbarism and 
 darkness, preserved, in the solitude of their cloisters, whatever 
 of Roman luxuries and classic dainties have come down to this 
 later age. We will drink to the Carmelites as a sect, but we 
 will drink also to the monks as a body. Had we lived in those 
 days, we had been monks ourselves ! " 
 
 " It is singular," answered Lord Guloseton " (by the by, 
 what think you of this turbot ?) to trace the history of the 
 kitchen ; it affords the greatest scope to the philosopher and 
 the moralist. The ancients seemed to have been more mental, 
 more imaginative, than we are, in their dishes ; they fed their 
 bodies as well as their minds upon delusion ; for instance, they 
 esteemed beyond all price the tongues of nightingales, because 
 they tasted the very music of the birds in the organs of their 
 utterance. That is what I call the poetry of gastronomy ! " 
 
 " Yes," said I with a sigh, " they certainly had, in some re- 
 spects, the advantage over us. Who can pore over the suppers 
 of Apicius without the fondest regret ? The venerable Ude * 
 implies, that the study has not progressed. "Cookery (he 
 says, in the first part of his work) possesses but few inno- 
 vators." 
 
 '' It is with the greatest diffidence," said Guloseton (his 
 mouth full of truth and turbot), " that we may dare to differ 
 from so great an authority. Indeed, so high is my veneration 
 for that wise man, that if all the evidence of my sense and rea- 
 son were on one side, and the dictum of the great Ude upon 
 the other, I should be inclined I think, I should be deter- 
 mined to relinquish the former, and adopt the latter." \ 
 
 " Bravo, Lord Guloseton," cried I warmly. " ' Qu'un Cui- 
 sinier est un mortel divin ! ' Why should we not be proud of our 
 knowledge in cookery ? It is the soul of festivity at all times, 
 and to all ages. How many marriages have been the conse- 
 quence of meeting at dinner. How much good fortune has 
 been the result of a good supper? At what moment of our 
 existence are we happier than at table ? There hatred and 
 animosity are lulled to sleep, and pleasure alone reigns. Here 
 the cook, by his skill and attention, anticipates our wishes 
 in the happiest selection of the best dishes and decorations. 
 Here our wants are satisfied, our minds and bodies invigor- 
 ated, and ourselves qualified for the high delights of love, 
 music, poetry, dancing, and other pleasures ; and is he, whose 
 
 * Qu. The venerable Bede ? Printer's Devil. 
 
 * See the speech of Mr, Brougham in honor of Mr. Fox,
 
 222 PELHAM J 
 
 talents have produced these happy effects, to rank no higher in 
 the scale of man than a common servant ?* 
 
 "'Yes/ cries the venerable professor himself, in a virtuous 
 and prophetic paroxysm of indignant merit; 'Yes, my disciples, 
 if you adopt, and attend to the rules I have laid down, the self- 
 love of mankind will consent at last that cookery shall rank in 
 the class of the sciences, and its professors deserve the name 
 of artists ! ' " f 
 
 " My dear, dear sir," exclaimed Guloseton, with a kindred 
 glow, "I discover in you a spirit similar to my own. Let us 
 drink long life to the venerable Ude ! " 
 
 " I pledge you, with all my soul," said I, filling my glass to 
 the brim. 
 
 "What a pity," rejoined Guloseton, "that Ude, \vhosefraf- 
 //Va/science was so perfect, should ever have written, or suffered 
 others to write, the work published under his name ; true it is 
 that the opening part, which you have so feelingly recited, is 
 composed with a grace, a charm beyond the reach of art; but the 
 instructions are vapid and frequently so erroneous, as to make us 
 suspect their authenticity; but, after all, cooking is not capable of 
 becoming a written science it is the philosophy of practice ! " 
 
 " Ah ! by Lucullus," exclaimed I, interrupting my host, 
 " what a visionary btchamelle ! Oh, the inimitable sauce ; these 
 chickens are indeed worthy of the honor of being dressed. 
 Never, my lord, as long as you live, eat a chicken in the coun- 
 try ; excuse a pun, you will have/iw/ fare. 
 
 ' J'ai toujours redoute la volaille perfide, 
 Qui brave les efforts d'une dent intrepide. 
 Souvent, par un ami dans ses champs entraine, 
 J'ai reconnu le soir le coq inforlune 
 Qui m'avait le matin a 1'aurore naissante 
 Reveille brusquement de sa voix glapissante ; 
 Je 1'avais admire dans le sein de la cour ; 
 Avec des yeux jaloux, j'avais vu son amour. 
 Helas ! le malheureux, abjurant sa tendresse, 
 Exer^ait au souper sa fureur vengeresse.' \ 
 
 Pardon the prolixity of my quotation for the sake of its value." 
 
 *Ude, verbatim. t Ibid. 
 
 t Ever I dread (when dup'd a day to spend 
 At his snug villa, by some fatal friend) 
 Grim Chanticleer, whose breast, devoid of ruth. 
 Braves the stout effort of the desperate tooth. 
 Oft have I recognized at eve, the bird 
 Whose morning notes my ear prophetic heard, 
 Whose tender courtship won my pain'd regard, 
 Amidst the plum'd seraglio of the yard. 
 Tender no more behold him in your plate 
 And know, while eating, you avenge his fat*.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 223 
 
 " I do, I do," answered Guloseton, laughing at the humor of 
 the lines : till, suddenly checking himself, he said, " We must 
 be grave, Mr. Pelham, it will never do to laugh. What would 
 become of our digestions?" 
 
 "True," said I, relapsing into seriousness; "and if you will 
 allow me one more quotation, you will see what my author adds 
 with regard to any abrupt interruption. 
 
 'Defendez que personne, au milieu d'un banquet 
 Ne vous vienne donner un avis indiscret ; 
 Ecartez ce facheux qui vers vous s'achemine ; 
 Rien ne doit deranger 1'honnete homme qui dine.' " * 
 
 "Admirable advice," said Guloseton, toying with a filet mig- 
 non de poulet. " Do you remember an example in the Bailly of 
 Suffren, who, being in India, was waited upon by a deputation 
 of natives while he was at dinner? ' Tell them," said he, ' that 
 the Christian religion peremptorily forbids every Christian, while 
 at table, to occupy himself with any earthly subject, except the 
 function of eating.' The'deputation retired in the profoundest 
 respect at the exceeding devotion of the French general." 
 
 "Well," said I, after we had chuckled gravely and quietly, 
 with the care of our digestion before us, for a few minutes ; 
 "Well, however good the invention was, the idea is not entirely 
 new, for the Greeks esteemed eating and drinking plentifully a 
 sort of offering to the gods ; and Aristotle explains the very 
 word, Qoivat, or feasts, by an etymological exposition, ' that it was 
 thought a duty to the gods to be drunk'; no bad idea of our 
 classical patterns of antiquity. Polypheme, too, in the Cyclops 
 of Euripides, no doubt a very sound theologian, says, his 
 stomach is his only deity ; and Xenophon tells us, that as the 
 Athenians exceeded all other people in the number of their 
 gods, so they exceeded them also in the number of their feasts. 
 May I send your lordship a quail ?" 
 
 "Pelham, my boy," said Guloseton, whose eyes began to 
 roll and twinkle with_a brilliancy suited to the various liquids 
 which ministered to their rejoicing orbs ; " I love you for your 
 classics. Polypheme was a wise fellow, a very wise fellow, and 
 it was a terrible shame in Ulysses to put out his eye ! No 
 wonder that the ingenious savage made a deity of his stomach ; 
 to what known visible source, on this earth, was he indebted 
 for a keener enjoyment a more rapturous and a more con- 
 stant delight ? No wonder he honored it with his gratitude, 
 
 * At meals no access to the indiscreet ; 
 All are intruders on the wise who eat. 
 In that blest hour, your bore's the veriest sinner! 
 Nought must disturb a man of worth at dinner.
 
 224 PELHAM ; 
 
 and supplied it with his peace-offerings ; let us imitate so 
 great an example ; let us make our digestive receptacles a 
 temple, to which we will consecrate the choicest goods we 
 possess ; let us conceive no pecuniary sacrifice too great, 
 which procures for our altar an acceptable gift ; let us deem it 
 an impiety to hesitate, if a sauce seems extravagant, or an 
 ortolan too dear ; and let our last act in this sublunary 
 existence be a solemn festival in honor of our unceasing 
 benefactor ! " 
 
 "Amen to your creed!" said I: "edibilatory Epicurism 
 holds the key to all morality : for do we not see now how sin- 
 ful it is to yield to an obscene and exaggerated intemperance? 
 Would it not be to the last degree ungrateful to the great 
 source of our enjoyment to overload it with a weight which 
 would oppress it with languor, or harass it with pain ; and 
 finally to drench away the effects of our impiety with some 
 nauseous potation which revolts it, tortures it, convulses, irri- 
 tates, enfeebles it, through every particle of its system ? How 
 wrong in us to give way to anger, jealousy, revenge, or any 
 evil passion ; for does not all that affects the mind operate also 
 upon the stomach ; and how can we be so vicious, so obdurate, 
 as to forget, for a momentary indulgence, our debt to what you 
 have so justly designated our perpetual benefactor?" 
 
 "Right," said Lord Guloseton, "a bumper to the Morality 
 of the Stomach." 
 
 The dessert was now on the table. "I have dined well," 
 said Guloseton, stretching his legs with an air of supreme 
 satisfaction ; " but " and here my philosopher sighed deeply 
 "we cannot dine again till to-morrow ! Happy, happy, happy, 
 common people, who can eat supper ! Would to Heaven, that 
 I might have one boon perpetual appetite a digestive Houri, 
 which renewed its virginity every time it was touched. Alas ! 
 for the instability of human enjoyment ! But now that we 
 have no immediate hope to anticipate, let us cultivate the 
 pleasures of memory. What thought you of the vcau a la 
 Dauphine ? " 
 
 " Pardon me if I hesitate at giving my opinion, till I have 
 corrected my judgment by yours." 
 
 " Why, then, I own I was somewhat displeased disappointed 
 as it were with that dish ; the fact is, veal ought to be killed 
 in its very first infancy ; they suffer it to grow to too great an 
 age. It becomes a sort of hobbydehoy, and possesses nothing 
 of veal but its insipidity, or of beef but its toughness." 
 
 " Yes," said I, " it is only in their veal, that the French sur-
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 225 
 
 pass us ; their other meats want the ruby juices and elastic 
 
 freshness of ours. Monsieur L allowed this truth, with a 
 
 candor worthy of his vast mind. Mon Dieu! what claret! 
 What a body ! and, let me add, what a soul, beneath it ! Who 
 would drink wine like this? it is only made to taste. It is the 
 first love too pure for the eagerness of enjoyment ; the rapture 
 it inspires is in a touch, a kiss. It is a pity, my lord, that we 
 do not serve perfumes at dessert ; it is their appropriate place. 
 In confectionery (delicate invention of the Sylphs), we imitate 
 the forms of the rose and the jasmine ; why not their odors 
 too ? What is nature without its scents ? And as long as they 
 are absent from our desserts, it is in vain that the bard ex- 
 claims : 
 
 ' L'observateur de la belle Nature 
 S'extasie en voyant des fleurs en confiture.' " 
 
 " It is an exquisite idea of yours," said Guloseton ; " and 
 the next time you dine here we will have perfumes. Dinner 
 ought to be a reunion of all the senses : 
 
 ' Gladness to the ear, nerve, heart, and sense.'" 
 
 There was a momentary pause. " My lord," said I, " what 
 a lusty lusciousness in this pear ! It is like the style of the 
 old English poets. What think you of the seeming good un- 
 derstanding between Mr. Gaskell and the Whigs ?" 
 
 " I trouble myself little about it," replied Guloseton, help- 
 ing himself to some preserves ; " politics disturb the digestion." 
 
 " Well," thought I, " I must ascertain some point in this 
 man's character easier to handle than his epicurism : all men 
 are vain : let us find out the peculiar vanity of mine host." 
 
 " The ultra-Tories," said I, " seem to think themselves ex- 
 tremely secure ; they attach no importance to the neutral 
 
 members ; it was but the other day Lord told me that he 
 
 did not care a straw for Mr. , notwithstanding he possessed 
 
 four votes. Heard you ever such arrogance ? " 
 
 " No, indeed," said Guloseton, with a lazy air of indiffer- 
 ence ; " are you a favorer of the olive ? " 
 
 " No," said I, " I love it not ; it hath an under taste of sour- 
 ness, and an upper of oil, which do not make harmony to my 
 palate. But, as I was saying, the Whigs, on the contrary, pay 
 the utmost deference to their partisans ; and a man of fortune, 
 rank, and parliamentary influence, might have all the power, 
 without the trouble of a leader." 
 
 "Very likely," said Guloseton drowsily.
 
 226 PELHAM J 
 
 " I must change my battery," thought I ; but while I was 
 meditating a new attack, the following note was brought to me : 
 
 " For Heaven's sake, Pelham, come out to me : I am wait- 
 ing in the street to see you ; come directly, or it will be too 
 late to render me the service I would ask of you. 
 
 " R. GLANVILLE." 
 
 I rose instantly. " You must excuse me, Lord Guloseton, I 
 am called suddenly away." 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! " laughed the gourmand ; " some tempting 
 viand post prandia Callirhoe ! " 
 
 " My good lord," said I, not heeding his insinuation, "I 
 leave you with the greatest regret." 
 
 " And I part from you with the same ; it is a real pleasure 
 to see such a person at dinner." 
 
 " Adieu ! my host 'Je vat's vivre et manger en sage' " 
 
 CHAPTER LIX. 
 
 " I do defy him, and I spit at him, 
 Call him a slanderous coward and a villain 
 Which to maintain I will allow him odds." 
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 I FOUND Glanville walking before the door with a rapid and 
 uneven step. 
 
 " Thank Heaven ! " he said, when he saw me ; " I have 
 been twice to Mivart's to find you. The second time I saw 
 your servant, who told me where you were gone. I knew you 
 well enough to be sure of your kindness." 
 
 Glanville broke off abruptly ; and after a short pause, said, 
 with a quick, low, hurried tone : "The office I wish you to 
 take upon yourself is this. Go immediately to Sir John Tyr- 
 rell, with a challenge from me. Ever since I last saw you, I 
 have been hunting out that man, and in vain. He had then 
 left town. He returned this evening, and quits to-morrow ; 
 you have no time to lose." 
 
 " My dear Glanville," said I, " I have no wish to learn any 
 secret you would conceal from me ; but forgive me if I ask 
 some further instructions than those you have afforded me. 
 Upon what plea am I to call out Sir John Tyrrell ? And what 
 answer am I to give to any excuses he may make ?" 
 
 "I have anticipated your reply," said Glanville, with ill- 
 subdued impatience; "you have only to give this paper ; it 
 will prevent all discussion. Read it ; I have left it unsealed 
 for that purpose."
 
 . OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 227 
 
 I cast my eyes over the lines Glanville thrust into my hand ; 
 they ran thus : 
 
 " The time has at length come for me to demand the atone- 
 ment so long delayed. The bearer of this, who is, probably, 
 known to you, will arrange, with any person you may appoint, 
 the hour and place of our meeting. He is acquainted with the 
 grounds of my complaint against you, but he is satisfied of my 
 honor ; your second will, I presume, be the same with respect 
 to yours. It is for me only to question the latter, and to de- 
 clare you solemnly to be void alike of principle and courage, 
 a villain, and a poltroon. REGINALD GLANVILLE." 
 
 " You are my earliest friend," said I, when I had read this 
 soothing epistle ; " and I will not flinch from the place you 
 assign me ; but I tell you fairly and frankly that I would 
 sooner cut off my right hand than suffer it to give this note 
 to Sir John Tyrrell." 
 
 Glanville made no answer; we walked on, till, suddenly 
 stopping, he said : " My carriage is at the corner of the street ; 
 you must go instantly ; Tyrrell lodges at the Clarendon ; you 
 will find me at home on your return." 
 
 I pressed his hand, and hurried on my mission. It was, I 
 own, one peculiarly unwelcome and displeasing. In the first 
 place, I did not love to be made a party in a business of the 
 nature of which I was so profoundly ignorant. Secondly, if 
 the affair terminated fatally, the world would not lightly con- 
 demn me for conveying to a gentleman of birth and fortune a 
 letter so insulting, and for causes of which I was so ignorant. 
 Again, too, Glanville was more dear to me than any one, judg- 
 ing only of my external character, would suppose ; and, con- 
 stitutionally indifferent as I am to danger for myself, I trem- 
 bled like a woman at the peril I was instrumental in bringing 
 upon him. But what weighed upon me far more than any of 
 these reflections was the recollection of Ellen. Should her 
 brother fall in an engagement in which I was his supposed 
 adviser, with what success could I hope for those feelings from 
 her, which, at present, constituted the tenderest and the 
 brightest of my hopes ? In the midst of these disagreeable 
 ideas the carriage stopped at the door of Tyrrell's Hotel. 
 
 The waiter said Sir John was in the coffee-room ; thither I 
 immediately marched. Seated in the box nearest the fire sat 
 Tyrrell, and two men of that old-fashioned roue set, whose 
 members indulged in debauchery as if it were an attribute of 
 manliness, and esteemed it, as long as it were hearty and
 
 228 PELHAM J 
 
 English, rather a virtue to boast of, than a vice to disown. 
 Tyrrell nodded to me familiarly as I approached him ; and I 
 saw, by the half-emptied bottles before him, and the flush of 
 his sallow countenance, that he had not been sparing of his 
 libations. I whispered that I wished to speak to him on a 
 subject of great importance ; he rose with much reluctance, 
 and, after swallowing a large tumblerful of port wine to 
 fortify him for the task, he led the way to a small room, where 
 he seated himself, and asked me, with his usual mixture of 
 bluntness and good-breeding, the nature of my business. I 
 made him no reply : I contented myself with placing Glan- 
 ville's billet doux in his hand. The room was dimly lighted 
 with a single candle, and the small and capricious fire, near 
 which the gambler was seated, threw its ar/ze/a/v/ light, by starts 
 and intervals, over the strong features and deep lines of his coun- 
 tenance. It would have been a study worthy of Rembrandt. 
 
 I drew my chair near him, and half shading my eyes with 
 my hand, sat down in silence to mark the effect the letter 
 would produce. Tyrrell (I imagine) was a man originally of 
 hardy nerves, and had been thrown much into the various 
 situations of life where the disguise of all outward emotion is 
 easily and insensibly taught ; but whether his frame had been 
 shattered by his excesses, or that the insulting language of the 
 note touched him to the quick, he seemed perfectly unable to 
 govern his feelings : the lines were written hastily, and the 
 light, as I said before, was faint and imperfect, and he was 
 forced to pause over each word as he proceeded, so that " the 
 iron " had full time to " enter into his soul." 
 
 Passion, however, developed itself differently in him than in 
 Glanville : in the latter, it was a rapid transition of powerful 
 feelings, one angry wave dashing over another ; it was the pas- 
 sion of a strong and keenly susceptible mind, to which every 
 sting was a dagger, and which used the force of a giant to dash 
 away the insect which attacked it. In Tyrrell, it was passion 
 acting on a callous mind but a broken frame his hand trem- 
 bled violently his voice faltered he could scarcely command 
 the muscles which enabled him to speak ; but there was no 
 fiery start no indignant burst no flashing forth of the soul : 
 in him, it was the body overcoming and paralyzing the mind ; 
 in Glanville it was the mind governing and convulsing the body. 
 
 " Mr. Pelham," he said at last, after a few preliminary efforts 
 to clear his voice, "this note requires some consideration. I 
 know not at present whom to appoint as my second will you 
 call upon me early to-morrow?"
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 229 
 
 4< I am sorry," said I, " that my sole instructions were to get 
 an immediate answer from you. Surely either of the gentle- 
 men I saw with you would officiate as your second ?" 
 
 Tyrrell made no reply for some moments. He was endeavor- 
 ing to compose himself, and in some measure he succeeded. 
 He raised his head with a haughty air of defiance, and tearing 
 the paper deliberately, though still with uncertain and trem- 
 bling fingers, he stamped his foot upon the atoms. 
 
 "Tell your principal," said he, " that I retort upon him the 
 foul and false words he has uttered against me ; that I trample 
 upon his assertions with the same scorn I feel towards himself ; 
 and that before this hour to-morrow I will confront him to 
 death as through life. For the rest, Mr. Pelham, I cannot 
 name my second till the morning ; leave me your address, and 
 you shall hear from me before you are stirring. Have you 
 anything farther with me ?" 
 
 " Nothing," said I, laying my card on the table. " I have 
 fulfilled the most ungrateful charge ever intrusted to me. I 
 wish you good-night." 
 
 I re-entered the carriage, and drove to Glanville's. I broke 
 into the room rather abruptly ; Glanville was leaning on the 
 table, and gazing intently on a small miniature. A pistol-case 
 lay beside him : one of the pistols in order for use, and the 
 other still unarranged ; the room was, as usual, covered with 
 books and papers, and on the costly cushions of the ottoman 
 lay the large, black dog, which I remembered well as his com- 
 panion of yore, and which he kept with him constantly as the 
 only thing in the world whose society he could at all times 
 bear : the animal lay curled up, with its quick, black eye fixed 
 watchfully upon its master, and directly I entered, it uttered, 
 though without moving, a low, warning growl. 
 
 Glanville looked up, and in some confusion thrust the picture 
 into a drawer of the table, and asked me my news. I told him 
 word for word what had passed. Glanville set his teeth, and 
 clenched his hand firmly ; and then, as if his anger was at once 
 appeased, he suddenly changed the subject and tone of our 
 conversation. He spoke with great cheerfulness and humor 
 on the various topics of the day ; touched upon politics{; 
 laughed at Lord Guloseton, and seemed as indifferent and un- 
 conscious of the event of the morrow as my peculiar con- 
 stitution would have rendered myself. 
 
 When I rose to depart, for I had too great an interest in him 
 to feel much for the subjects he conversed on, he said : " I 
 shall write one line to my mother, and another to my poor
 
 PELHAM 
 
 sister ; you will deliver them if I fall, for I have sworn that 
 one of us shall not quit the ground alive. I shall be all im- 
 patience to know the hour you will arrange with Tyrrell's 
 second. God bless you, and farewell for the present." 
 
 CHAPTER LX. 
 
 " Charge, Chester, charge ! " Marmion. 
 
 " Though this was one of the first mercantile transactions of my life, I 
 had no doubt about acquitting myself with reputation." Vicar of Wake- 
 field. 
 
 THE next morning I was at breakfast when a packet was 
 brought me from Tyrrell ; it contained a sealed letter to Glan- 
 ville, and a brief note to myself. The latter I transcribe : 
 
 "Mv DEAR SIR: 
 
 " The enclosed letter to Sir Reginald Glanville will explain 
 my reasons for not keeping my pledge : suffice it to state to 
 you, that they are such as wholly to exonerate me, and fairly to 
 satisfy Sir Reginald. It will be useless to call upon me ; I 
 leave town before you will receive this. Respect for myself 
 obliges me to add that, although there are circumstances to 
 forbid my meeting Sir Reginald Glanville, there are none to 
 prevent my demanding satisfaction of any one, whoever he may 
 be, who shall deem himself authorized to call my motives into 
 question. I have the honor, etc., 
 
 "JOHN TYRRELL." 
 
 It was not till I had thrice read this letter that I could credit 
 its contents. From all I had seen of Tyrrell's character I had 
 no reason to suspect him to be less courageous than the gener- 
 ality of worldly men. And yet, when I considered the violent 
 language of Glanville's letter, and Tyrrell's apparent resolution 
 the night before, I scarcely knew to what more honorable mo- 
 tive than the want of courage to attribute his conduct. How- 
 ever, I lost no time in despatching the whole packet to Glan- 
 ville, with a few lines from myself saying I should call in an 
 hour. 
 
 When I fulfilled this promise Glanville's servant told me hij 
 master had gone out immediately on reading the letters I had 
 sent, and had merely left word that he should not return home 
 the whole day. That night he was to have brought an impor- 
 tant motion before the House. A message from him, pleading 
 sudden and alarming illness, devolved this duty upon another
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 231 
 
 member of his party. Lord Dawton was in despair ; the mo- 
 tion was lost by a great majority ; the papers, the whole of that 
 week, were filled with the most triumphant abuse and ridicule 
 of the Whigs. Never was that unhappy and persecuted party 
 reduced to so low an ebb : never did there seem a fainter 
 probability of their coming into power. They appeared almost 
 annihilated a mere nominis umbra. 
 
 On the eighth day from Glanville's disappearance a sudden 
 event in the cabinet threw the whole country into confusion ; 
 the Tories trembled to the very soles of their easy slippers of 
 sinecure and office ; the eyes of the public were turned to the 
 Whigs ; and chance seemed to effect in an instant that change 
 in their favor which all their toil, trouble, eloquence, and art 
 had been unable for so many years to render even a remote 
 probability. 
 
 But there was a strong though secret party in the state that, 
 concealed under a general name, worked only for a private end, 
 and made a progress in number and respectability, not the less 
 sure for being but little suspected. Foremost among the lead- 
 ers of this party was Lord Vincent. Dawton, who regarded 
 them with fear and jealousy, considered the struggle rather be- 
 tween them and himself, than any longer between himself and 
 the Tories ; and strove, while it was yet time, to reinforce him- 
 self by a body of allies, which, should the contest really take 
 place, might be certain of giving him the superiority. The 
 Marquis of Chester was among the most powerful of the neutral 
 noblemen ; it was of the greatest importance to gain him to 
 the cause. He was a sturdy, sporting, independent man, who 
 lived chiefly in the country, and turned his ambition rather 
 towards promoting the excellence of quadrupeds, than the bad 
 passions of men. To this personage Lord Dawton implored 
 me to be the bearer of a letter, and to aid, with all the dexterity 
 in my power, the purpose it was intended to effect. It was the 
 most consequential mission yet intrusted to me, and I felt 
 eager to turn my diplomatic energies to so good an account. 
 Accordingly, one bright morning I wrapped myself carefully 
 in my cloak, placed my invaluable person safely in my carriage, 
 and set off to Chester Park, in the county of Suffolk. 
 
 CHAPTER LXI. 
 " Hinc canibus blandis rabies venit." VIRGIL, Georg. 
 
 I SHOULD have mentioned that the day after I sent to Glan- 
 ville Tyrrell's communication, I received a short and hurried
 
 232 PELHAM ; 
 
 note from the former, saying, that he had left London in pur- 
 suit of Tyrrell, and that he would not rest till he had brought 
 him to account. In the hurry of the public events in which I 
 had been of late so actively engaged, my mind had not had leis- 
 ure to dwell much upon Glanville ; but when I was alone in my 
 carriage, that singular being, and the mystery which attended 
 him, forced themselves upon my reflection in spite of all the 
 importance of my mission. 
 
 I was leaning back in my carriage, at (I think) Ware, while 
 they were changing horses, when a voice, strongly associated 
 with my meditations, struck upon my ear. I looked out, and 
 saw Thornton standing in the yard, attired with all his original 
 smartness of boot and breeches : he was employed in smoking 
 a cigar, sipping brandy and water, and exercising his conver- 
 sational talents in a mixture of slang and jockeyism. addressed 
 to two or three men of his own rank of life, and seemingly his 
 companions. His brisk eye soon discovered me, and he swag- 
 gered to the carriage door with that ineffable assurance of 
 manner which was so peculiarly his own. 
 
 "Ah, ah, Mr. Pelham," said he, " going to Newmarket, I 
 suppose ? Bound there myself like to be found among my 
 betters. Ha, ha excuse a pun: what odds on the favorite? 
 What, you won't bet, Mr. Pelham ? Close and sly at present ; 
 well, the silent sow sups up all the broth eh ! " 
 
 " I'm not going to Newmarket," I replied ; "I never attend 
 races." 
 
 " Indeed ! " answered Thornton. " Well, if I was as rich as 
 you, I would soon make or spend a fortune on the course. 
 Seen Sir John Tyrrell ? No ! He is to be there. Nothing 
 can cure him of gambling what's bred in the bone, etc. 
 Good-day, Mr. Pelham ; won't keep you any longer sharp 
 shower coming on. ' The devil will soon be basting his wife 
 with a leg of mutton,' as the proverb says : servant, Mr. Pel- 
 ham." 
 
 And at these words my post-boy started, and released me 
 from my b&te noire. I spare my reader an account of my mis- 
 cellaneous reflections on Thornton, Dawton, Vincent, politics, 
 Glanville, and Ellen, and will land him, without further delay, 
 at Chester Park. 
 
 I was ushered through a large oak hall of the reign of James 
 the First, into a room strongly resembling the principal apart- 
 ment of a club ; two or three round tables were covered with 
 newspapers, journals, racing calendars, etc. An enormous fire- 
 place was crowded with men of all ages ; I had almost said, of
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 233 
 
 all ranks ; but, however various they might appear in their 
 mien and attire, they were wholly of the patrician order. One 
 thing, however, in this room, belied its likeness to the apart- 
 ment of a club, viz., a number of dogs that lay in scattered 
 groups upon the floor. Before the windows were several 
 horses, in bodycloths, led to exercise upon a plain in the park, 
 levelled as smooth as a bowling-green at Putney ; and, sta- 
 tioned at an oriel window, in earnest attention to the scene 
 without, were two men ; the tallest of these was Lord Chester. 
 There was a stiffness and inelegance in his address which pre- 
 possessed me strongly against him. " Les manieres que I'on 
 neglige comme de petites choses, sont souvent ce qui fait que les 
 hommes de'cident de vous en bien ou en ma/." * 
 
 I had long since, when I was at the University, been intro- 
 duced to Lord Chester ; but I had quite forgotten his person, 
 and he the very circumstance. I said, in a low tone, that I was 
 the bearer of a letter of some importance, from our mutual 
 friend, Lord Dawton, and that I should request the honor of a 
 private interview at Lord Chester's first convenience. 
 
 His lordship bowed, with an odd mixture of the civility of a 
 jockey and the hauteur of a head groom of the stud, and led 
 the way to a small apartment, which I afterwards discovered he 
 called his own. (I never could make out, by the way, why, in 
 England, the very worst room in the house is always appropri- 
 ated to the master of it, and dignified by the appellation of 
 " the gentleman's own.") I gave the Newmarket grandee the 
 letter intended for him, and quietly seating myself, awaited the 
 result. 
 
 He read it through slowly and silently, and then, taking out 
 a huge pocket-book, full of racing bets, horse's ages, jockey 
 opinions, and such like memoranda, he placed it with much 
 solemnity among this dignified company, and said, with a cold, 
 but would-be courteous air, " My friend, Lord Dawton, says 
 you are entirely in his confidence, Mr. Pelham. I hope you 
 will honor me with your company at Chester Park for two or 
 three days, during which time I shall have leisure to reply to 
 Lord Dawton's letter. Will you take some refreshment ?" 
 
 I answered the first sentence in the affirmative, and the lat- 
 ter in the negative ; and Lord Chester, thinking it perfectly 
 unnecessary to trouble himself with any further questions or 
 remarks, which the whole jockey club might not hear, took me 
 back into the room we had quitted, and left me to find, or 
 
 _ * The manners which one neglects as trifles, are often precisely that by which men dei 
 pide on you favorably or the reverse.
 
 234 PELHAM ; 
 
 make, whatever acquaintance I could. Pampered and spoiled 
 as I was in the most difficult circles of London, I was beyond 
 measure indignant at the cavalier demeanor of this rustic 
 thane, who, despite his marquisate and his acres, was not less 
 below me in the aristocracy of ancient birth, than in that of 
 cultivated intellect. . I looked round the room, and did not 
 recognize a being of my acquaintance. I seemed literally 
 thrown into a new world : the very language in which the con- 
 versation was held sounded strange to my ear. I had always 
 transgressed my general rule of knowing all men in all grades, 
 in the single respect of sporting characters : they were a spe- 
 cies of bipeds that I would never recognize as belonging to the 
 human race. Alas ! I now found the bitter effects of not follow- 
 ing my usual maxims. It is a dangerous thing to encourage 
 too great a disdain of Bone's inferiors: pride must have a 
 fall. 
 
 After I had been a whole quarter of an hour in this strange 
 place, my better genius came to my aid. Since I found no so- 
 ciety among the two-legged brutes, I turned to the quadru- 
 peds. At one corner of the room lay a black terrier of the true 
 English breed ; at another was a short, sturdy, wiry one, of the 
 Scotch. I soon formed a friendship with each of these canine 
 Pelei (little bodies with great souls), and then by degrees al- 
 luring them from their retreat to the centre of the room, I 
 fairly endeavored to set them by the ears. Thanks to the 
 national antipathy, I succeeded to my heart's content. The 
 contest soon aroused the other individuals of the genus up 
 they started from their repose, like Roderic Dhu's merry men, 
 and incontinently flocked to the scene of battle. The ex- 
 ample became contagious. In a very few moments, the whole 
 room was a scene of uproarious confusion ; the beasts yelled, 
 and bit, and struggled with the most delectable ferocity. To 
 add to the effect, the various owners of the dogs crowded 
 round some to stimulate, others to appease, the fury of the 
 combatants. At length, the conflict was assuaged. By dint 
 of blows, and kicks, and remonstrances from their dignified 
 proprietors, the dogs slowly withdrew, one with the loss of 
 half an ear, another with a mouth increased by one-half of its 
 natural dimensions, and, in short, every one of the combatants 
 with some token of the severity of the conflict. I did not wait 
 for the thunder-storm I foresaw in the inquiry as to the origin 
 of the war : I rose with a nonchalant yawn of enm/i, marched 
 out of the apartment, called a servant, demanded my own 
 room, repaired to it, and immersed the internal faculties of my
 
 Oft, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 23$ 
 
 head in Mignet's "History of the Revolution," while Bedos 
 busied himself in its outward embellishment. 
 
 CHAPTER LXII. 
 
 ' ' Noster ludos, spectaverat una, 
 Luserat in campo, Fortunse nlius, omnes." HOR. 
 
 I DID not leave my room till the first dinner-bell had ceased 
 a sufficient time to allow me the pleasing hope that I should 
 have but a few moments to wait in the drawing-room pre- 
 viously to the grand epoch and ceremony of an European day. 
 The manner most natural to me is one rather open and easy ; 
 but I pique myself peculiarly upon a certain (though occa- 
 sional) air which keeps impertinence aloof. This day 1 assumed 
 a double quantum of dignity in entering a room which I well 
 "knew would not be filled with my admirers ; there were a few 
 women round Lady Chester, and, as I always feel reassured 
 by a sight of the dear sex, I walked towards them. 
 
 Judge of my delight when I discovered, amongst the group, 
 Lady Harriet Garrett. It is true that I had no particular pre- 
 dilection for that lady ; but the sight of a negress I had seen 
 before I should have hailed with rapture in so desolate and in- 
 hospitable a place. If my pleasure at seeing Lady Harriet was 
 great, hers seemed equally so at receiving my salutation. She 
 asked me if I knew Lady Chester ; and on my negative reply, 
 immediately introduced me to that personage. I now found 
 myself quite at home ; my spirits rose, and I exerted every 
 nerve to be as charming as possible. In youth, to endeavor is 
 to succeed. 
 
 I gave a most animated account of the canine battle, inter- 
 spersed with various sarcasms on the owners of the combat- 
 ants, which were by no means ill-received either by the mar- 
 chioness or her companions ; and, in fact, when the dinner was 
 announced, they all rose in a mirth sufficiently unrestrained 
 to be anything but patrician ; for my part, I offered my arm 
 to Lady Harriet, and paid her as many compliments on cross- 
 ing the suite that led to the dining-room as would have turned 
 a much wiser head than her ladyship's. 
 
 The dinner went off agreeably enough, as long as the 
 women stayed, but the moment they quitted the room I ex- 
 perienced exactly the same feeling known unto a mother's 
 darling, left for the first time at that strange, cold, comfortless 
 place, ycleped a school. 
 
 I was not, however, in a mood to suffer my flowers of oratory
 
 2;$6 PELHAM } 
 
 to blush unseen. Besides, it was absolutely necessary that I 
 should make a better impression upon my host. I leant, 
 therefore, across the table, and listened eagerly to the various 
 conversations afloat : at last I perceived on the opposite side 
 Sir Lionel Garrett, a personage whom I had not before even 
 inquired after, or thought of. He was busily and noisily em- 
 ployed in discussing the game-laws. Thank Heaven, thought 
 I, I shall be on firm ground there. The general interest 
 of the subject, and the loudness with which it was debated, 
 soon drew all the scattered conversation into one focus. 
 
 "What! "said Sir Lionel, in a high voice, to a modest, 
 shrinking youth, probably from Cambridge, who had supported 
 the liberal side of the question : " What ! Are our interests 
 never consulted ? Are we to have our only amusement taken 
 away from us? What do you imagine brings country gentle- 
 man to their seats ? Do you not know, sir, the vast importance 
 our residence at our country houses is to the nation ? Destroy 
 the game-laws, and you destroy our very existence as a people ! " 
 
 " Now," thought I, " it is my time." "Sir Lionel," said I, 
 speaking almost from one end of the table to the other, "I 
 perfectly agree with your sentiments ; I am entirely of opinion, 
 first, that it is absolutely necessary for the safety of the nation 
 that game should be preserved ; secondly, that if you take 
 away game you take away country gentlemen : no two propo- 
 sitions can be clearer than these ; but I do differ from you with 
 respect to the intended alterations. Let us put wholly out of 
 the question the interests of the poor people, or of society at 
 large : those are minor matters, not worthy of a moment's con- 
 sideration ; let us only see how far our interests as sportsmen 
 will be affected. I think by a very few words I can clearly 
 prove to you that the proposed alterations will make us much 
 better off than we are at present." 
 
 I then entered shortly, yet fully enough, into the nature of the 
 laws as they now stood, and as they were intended to be 
 changed. I first spoke of the two great disadvantages of the 
 present system to country gentlemen, viz., in the number of 
 poachers, and the expense of preserving. Observing that I 
 was generally and attentively listened to, I dwelt upon these 
 two points with much pathetic energy ; and having paused till 
 I had got Sir Lionel and one or two of his supporters to con- 
 fess that it would be highly desirable that these defects should, 
 if possible, be remedied, I proceeded to show how, and in what 
 manner, it was possible. I argued that to effect this possi- 
 bility was the exact object of the alterations suggested ; I an-
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 237 
 
 ticipated the objections ; I answered them in the form of prop- 
 ositions as clearly and concisely stated as possible ; and as I 
 spoke with great civility and conciliation, and put aside every 
 appearance of care for any human being in the world who was 
 not possessed of a qualification, I perceived at the conclusion 
 of my harangue that I had made a very favorable impression. 
 That evening completed my triumph ; for Lady Chester and 
 Lady Harriet made so good a story of my adventure with the 
 dogs, that the matter passed off as a famous joke, and I was 
 soon considered by the whole knot as a devilish amusing, good- 
 natured, sensible fellow. So true is it that there is no situation 
 which a little tact can not turn to our own account ; manage 
 yourself well, and you may manage all the world. 
 
 As for Lord Chester, I soon won his heart by a few feats of 
 horsemanship, and a few extempore inventions respecting the 
 sagacity of dogs. Three days after my arrival we became in- 
 separable ; and I made such good use of my time that in two 
 more he spoke to me of his friendship for Dawton, and his 
 wish for a dukedom. These motives it was easy enough 
 to unite, and at last he promised me that his answer to my 
 principal should be as acquiescent as I could desire ; the morn- 
 ing after this promise commenced the great day at Newmarket. 
 
 Our whole party were of course bound to the race-ground, 
 and with great reluctance I was pressed into the service. We 
 were not many miles distant from the course, and Lord Ches- 
 ter mounted me on one of his horses. Our shortest way lay 
 through rather an intricate series of cross-roads : and as I was 
 very little interested in the conversation of my companions, I 
 paid more attention to the scenery we passed than is my cus- 
 tomary wont : for I study nature rather in men than fields, and 
 find no landscape afford such variety to the eye, and such sub- 
 ject to the contemplation, as the inequalities of the human heart. 
 
 But there were to be fearful circumstances hereafter to stamp 
 forcibly upon my remembrance some traces of the scenery 
 which now courted and arrested my view. The chief charac- 
 teristics of the country were broad, dreary plains, diversified 
 at times by dark plantations of fir and larch ; the road was 
 rough and stony, and here and there a melancholy rivulet, 
 swelled by the first rains of spring, crossed our path, and lost 
 itself in the rank weeds of some inhospitable marsh. 
 
 About six miles from Chester Park, to the left of the road, 
 stood an old house with a new face ; the brown, time-honored 
 bricks which composed the fabric were strongly contrasted by 
 large Venetian windows newly inserted in frames of the most
 
 238 
 
 ostentatious white. A smart, green veranda, scarcely finished, 
 ran along the low portico, and formed the termination to two 
 thin rows of meagre and dwarfish sycamores, which did duty 
 for an avenue, and were bounded on the roadside by a spruce 
 white gate, and a sprucer lodge, so moderate in its dimensions 
 that it would scarcely .have boiled a turnip ! If a rat had got 
 into it, he might have run away with it ! The ground was dug 
 in various places, as if for the purpose of further improvements, 
 and here and there a sickly little tree was carefully hurdled 
 round, and seemed pining its puny heart out at the confinement. 
 
 In spite of all these well-judged and well-thriving graces of 
 art, there was such a comfortless and desolate appearance about 
 the place, that it quite froze one to look at it ; to be sure, a 
 damp rr/arsh on one side, and the skeleton rafters and beams 
 of an old stable on the other, backed by a few dull and sulky- 
 looking fir-trees, might in some measure create, or at least con- 
 siderably add to, the indescribable cheerlessness of the tout en- 
 semble. While I was curiously surveying the various parts of 
 this northern " De'lices" and marvelling at the choice of two 
 crows who were slowly walking over the unwholesome ground, 
 instead of making all possible use of the black wings with 
 which Providence had gifted them, I perceived two men on 
 horseback wind round from the back part of the building, and 
 proceed in a brisk trot down the avenue. We had not advanced 
 many paces before they overtook us ; the foremost of them 
 turned round as he passed me, and pulling up his horse abrupt- 
 ly, discovered to my dismayed view the features of Mr. Thorn- 
 ton. Nothing abashed by the slightness of my bow, or the 
 grave stares of my lordly companions, who never forgot the dig- 
 nity of their birth, in spite of the vulgarity of their tastes, 
 Thornton instantly and familiarly accosted me. 
 
 " Told you so, Mr. Pelham silent sow, etc. Sure I should 
 have the pleasure of seeing you, though you kept so snug. 
 Well, will you bet noiv? No ! Ah, you're a sly one. Staying 
 here at that nice-looking house belongs to Dawson, an old 
 friend of mine shall be happy to introduce you ! " 
 
 " Sir," said I abruptly, " you are too good. Permit me to re- 
 quest that you will rejoin your friend Mr. Dawson." 
 
 " Oh," said the imperturbable Thornton, " it does not signi- 
 fy ; he won't be affronted at my lagging a little. However," 
 (and, here he caught my eye, which was assuming a sternness 
 that perhaps little pleased him), "however, as it gets late, and 
 my mare is none of the best, I'll wish you good-morning." 
 With these words Thornton put spurs to his horse and trotted off.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 23$ 
 
 "Who the devil have you got there, Pelham?" said Lord 
 Chester. 
 
 " A person," said I, " who picked me up at Paris, and insists 
 on the right of 'treasure trove ' to claim me in England. But 
 will you let me ask, in my turn, whom that cheerful mansion 
 we have just left belongs to ?" 
 
 " To a Mr. Dawson, whose father was a gentleman farmer 
 who bred horses, a very respectable person, for I made one 
 or two excellent bargains with him. The son was always on 
 the turf and contracted the worst of its habits. He bears but 
 a very indifferent character, and will probably become a com- 
 plete blackleg. He married, a short time since, a woman of 
 some fortune, and I suppose it is her taste which has so altered 
 and modernized his house. Come, gentlemen, we are on even 
 ground, shall we trot ? " 
 
 We proceeded but a few yards before we were again stopped 
 by a precipitous ascent, and as Lord Chester was then earnestly 
 engaged in praising his horse to one of the cavalcade, I had 
 time to remark the spot. At the foot of the hill we were about 
 slowly to ascend was a broad, unenclosed patch of waste land ; a 
 heron, flapping its enormous wings as it rose, directed my atten- 
 tion to a pool overgrown with rushes, and half-sheltered on one 
 side by a decayed tree, which, if one might judge from the breadth 
 and hollowness of its trunk, had been a refuge to the wild bird, 
 and a shelter to the wild cattle, at a time when such were 
 the only intruders upon its hospitality ; and when the country, 
 for miles and leagues round, was honored by as little of man's 
 care and cultivation as was at present the rank waste which 
 still nourished the gnarled and venerable roots of that single 
 tree. There was something remarkably singular and grotesque 
 in the shape and sinuosity of its naked and spectral branches ; 
 two of exceeding length stretched themselves forth, in the very 
 semblance of arms held out in the attitude of supplication ; 
 and the bend of the trunk over the desolate pond, the form of 
 the hoary and blasted summit, and the hollow trunk half riven 
 asunder in the shape of limbs, seemed to favor the gigantic de- 
 ception. You might have imagined it an antediluvian transfor- 
 mation, or a daughter of the Titan race, preserving, in her meta- 
 morphosis, her attitude of entreaty to the merciless Olympian. 
 
 This was the only tree visible ; for a turn of the road, and 
 the unevenness of the ground, completely veiled the house we 
 had passed, and the few low firs and sycamores which made its 
 only plantations. The sullen pool its ghost-like guardian 
 the dreary heath around, the rude features of the country be-
 
 340 PELHAM ; 
 
 yond, and the apparent absence of all human habitation, con- 
 spired to make a scene of the most dispiriting and striking des- 
 olation. I know not how to account for it, but, as I gazed 
 around in silence, the whole place appeared to grow over my 
 mind, as one which I had seen, though dimly and drearily, as 
 in a dream, before ; and a nameless and unaccountable pre- 
 sentiment of fear and evil sank like ice into my heart. We as- 
 cended the hill, and, the rest of the road being of a kind 
 better adapted to expedition, we mended our pace and soon 
 arrived at the goal of our journey. 
 
 The race-ground had its customary complement of knaves 
 and fools the dupers and the duped. Poor Lady Chester, 
 who had proceeded to the ground by the highroad (for the way 
 we had chosen was inaccessible to those who ride in chariots, 
 and whose charioteers are set up in high places), was driving 
 to and fro, the very picture of cold and discomfort ; and the 
 few solitary carriages which honored the course looked as mis- 
 erable as if they were witnessing the funeral of their owners' 
 persons, rather than the peril of their characters and purses. 
 
 As we rode along to the betting-post Sir John Tyrrell passed 
 us : Lord Chester accosted him familiarly, and the baronet joined 
 us. He had been an old votary of the turf in his younger days, 
 and he still preserved all his ancient predilection in its favor. 
 
 It seemed that Chester had not met him for many years, and 
 after a short and characteristic conversation of " God bless me, 
 how long since I saw you ! good horse you're on ; you look 
 thin ; admirable condition ; what have you been doing ? 
 grand action; aint we behindhand? famous forehand; > 
 recollect old Queensbury ? hot in the mouth ; gone to the 
 devil; what are the odds?" Lord Chester asked Tyrrell to 
 go home with us. The invitation was readily excepted. 
 
 " With impotence of will 
 We wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose 
 Round us, and round each other." * 
 
 Now then arose the noise, the clatter, the swearing, the lying, 
 the perjury, the cheating, the crowd, the bustle, the hurry, the 
 rush, the heat, the ardor, the impatience, the hope, the terror, 
 the rapture, the agony of the RACE. The instant the first heat 
 was over, one asked me one thing, one bellowed another ; I 
 fled to Lord Chester ; he did not heed me. I took refuge with 
 the marchioness ; she was as sullen as an east wind could 
 make her. Lady Harriet would talk of nothing but the horses ; 
 Sir Lionel would not talk at all. I was in the lowest pit of 
 
 * Shelley.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 241 
 
 despondency, and the devils that kept me there were as blue 
 as Lady Chester's nose. Silent, sad, sorrowful, and sulky, I 
 rode away from the crowd, and moralized on its vicious pro- 
 pensities. One grows marvellously honest when the species of 
 cheating before us is not suited to oneself. Fortunately, my 
 better angel reminded me that about the distance of three 
 miles from the course lived an old college friend, blessed, since 
 vre had met, with a parsonage and a wife. I knew his tastes too 
 well to imagine that any allurement of an equestrian nature could 
 have seduced him from the ease of his library and the dignity of 
 bis books ; and hoping, therefore, that I should find him at 
 home, I turned my horse's head in an opposite direction, and, 
 rejoiced at the idea of my escape, bade adieu to the course. 
 
 As I cantered across the far end of the heath my horse 
 started from an object upon the ground ; it was a man wrapped 
 from head to foot in a long horseman's cloak, and so well 
 guarded as to the face from the raw inclemency of the day, 
 that I could not catch even a glimpse of the features, through 
 the hat and neck-shawl which concealed them. The head was 
 turned, with apparent anxiety, towards the distant throng ; and 
 imagining the man belonging to the lower orders, with whom 
 I am always familiar, I addressed to him, en passant, some 
 trifling remark on the event of the race. He made no answer. 
 There was something about him which induced me to look 
 back several moments after I had left him behind. He had 
 not moved an inch. There is such a certain uncomfortable- 
 ness always occcasioned to the mind by stillness and mystery 
 united, that even the disguising garb, and motionless silence of 
 the man, innocent as I thought they must have been, impressed 
 themselves disagreeably on my meditations as I rode briskly on. 
 
 It is my maxim never to be unpleasantly employed, even 
 in thought, if I can help it ; accordingly I changed the course 
 of my reflection, and amused myself with wondering how mat- 
 rimony and clerical dignity sat on the indolent shoulders of 
 my old acquaintance. 
 
 CHAPTER LXIII. 
 
 " And as for me, tho' that I can but lite 
 On bookes for me to read, I me delight, 
 And to hem give I faith and full credence, 
 And in mine heart have hem in reverence, 
 So heartily that there is game none, 
 That fro' my bookes maketh me to gone." CHAUCER. 
 
 CHRISTOPHER CLUTTERBUCK was a common individual of 
 a common order, but little known in this busy and toiling
 
 242 PELHAM ; 
 
 world. I cannot flatter myself that I am about to present to 
 your notice that rara avis, a new character ; yet there is some- 
 thing interesting, and even unhackneyed, in the retired and 
 simple class to which he belongs; and before I proceed to a 
 darker period in my memoirs, I feel a calm and tranquillizing 
 pleasure in the rest which a brief and imperfect delineation of 
 my college companion affords me. - My friend came up to the 
 University with the learning which one about to quit the 
 world might, with credit, have boasted of possessing, and the 
 simplicity which one about to enter it would have been 
 ashamed to confess. Quiet and shy in his habits and his man- 
 ners, he was never seen out of the precincts of his apartment, 
 except in obedience to the stated calls of dinner, lectures, and 
 chapel. Then his small and stooping form might be marked 
 crossing the quadrangle with a hurried step, and cautiously 
 avoiding the smallest blade of the barren grass-plots, which 
 are forbidden ground to the feet of all the lower orders of the 
 collegiate oligarchy. Many were the smiles and the jeers, 
 from the worse-natured and better-appointed students, who 
 loitered idly along the court, at the rude garb and saturnine 
 appearance of the humble undergraduate ; and the calm 
 countenance of the grave but amiable man, who then bore 
 the honor and onus of mathematical lecturer at our college, 
 would soften into a glance of mingled approbation and pity, 
 as he noticed the eagerness which spoke from the wan cheek 
 and emaciated frame of the ablest of his pupils, hurrying after 
 each legitimate interruption to the enjoyment of the crabbed 
 characters and worm-worn volumes which contained for him 
 all the seductions of pleasure, and all the temptations of 
 youth. 
 
 It is a melancholy thing, which none but those educated at 
 a college can understand, to see the debilitated frames of the 
 aspirants for academical honors ; to mark the prime the 
 verdure the glory the life of life wasted irrevocably away 
 in a labor inepliarum, which brings no harvest either to others 
 or themselves. For the poet, the philosopher, the man of 
 science, we can appreciate the recompense if we commiserate 
 the sacrifice ; from the darkness of their retreat there goes a 
 light from the silence of their studies there issues a voice 
 to illumine or convince. We can imagine them looking from 
 their privations to the far visions of the future, and hugging 
 to their hearts, in the strength of no unnatural vanity, the 
 reward which their labors are certain hereafter to obtain. To 
 those who can anticipate the vast dominions of immortality
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 243 
 
 among men, what boots the sterility of the cabined and petty 
 present? But the mere man of languages and learning the 
 machine of a memory heavily but unprofitably employed the 
 Columbus wasting at the galley oar the energies which should 
 have discovered a world for him there is no day-dream of 
 the future, no grasp at the immortality of fame. Beyond the 
 walls of his narrow room he knows no object ; beyond the 
 elucidation of a dead tongue he indulges no ambition ; his 
 life is one long school-day of lexicons and grammars a Fabric 
 of Ice, cautiously excluded from a single sunbeam elaborately 
 useless, ingeniously unprofitable ; and leaving, at the moment 
 it melts away, not a single trace of the space it occupied, or 
 the labor it cost. 
 
 At the time I went to the University my poor collegian had 
 attained all the honors his employment could ever procure 
 him. He had been a Pitt scholar ; he was a senior wrangler, 
 and a Fellow of his college. It often happened that I found 
 myself next to him at dinner, and I was struck by his absti- 
 nence, and pleased with his modesty, despite the gauchcrie of 
 his manner, and the fashion of his garb. By degrees I insinu- 
 ated myself into his acquaintance ; and as I had always some 
 love of scholastic lore, I took frequent opportunities of convers- 
 ing with him upon Horace, and consulting him upon Lucian. 
 
 Many a dim twilight have we sat together, reviving each 
 other's recollection, and occasionally relaxing into the grave 
 amusement of capping verses. Then, if by any chance my 
 ingenuity or memory enabled me to puzzle my companion, his 
 good temper would lose itself in a quaint pettishness, or he 
 would hurl against me some line of Aristophanes, and ask me, 
 with a raised voice, and arch brow, to give him a fitting answer 
 to that. But if, as was much more frequently the case, he 
 fairly ran me down into a pause and confession of inability, 
 he would rub his hands with a strange chuckle, and offer me, 
 in the bounteousness of his heart, to read aloud a Greek Ode 
 of his own, while he treated me "to a dish of tea." There 
 was much in the good man's innocence, and guilelessness of 
 soul, which made me love him, and I did not rest till I had 
 procured him, before I left the University, the living which 
 he now held. Since then he had married the daughter of a 
 neighboring clergyman an event of which he had duly in- 
 formed me ; but, though this great step in the life of "a read- 
 ing man " had not taken place many months since, I had 
 completely, after a hearty wish for his domestic happiness, 
 consigned it to a dormant place in my recollection.
 
 244 PELHAM ; 
 
 The house which I now began to approach was small, but 
 comfortable ; perhaps there was something melancholy in the 
 old-fashioned hedges, cut and trimmed with mathematical 
 precision, which surrounded the glebe, as well as in the heavy 
 architecture and dingy bricks of the reverend recluse's habita- 
 tion. To make amends for this, there was also something 
 peculiarly still and placid about the appearance of the house, 
 which must have suited well the tastes and habits of the owner. 
 A small, formal lawn was adorned with a square fish-pond, 
 bricked round, and covered with the green weepings of four 
 willows, which drooped over it from their station at each 
 corner. At the opposite side of this Pierian reservoir was a 
 hermitage, or arbor of laurels, shaped in the stiff rusticity of 
 the Dutch school, in the prevalence of which it was probably 
 planted ; behind this arbor the ground, after a slight railing, 
 terminated in an orchard. 
 
 The sound I elicited from the gate-bell seemed to ring 
 through that retired place with singular shrillness ; and I ob- 
 served at the opposite window all that bustle of drawing curtains, 
 peeping faces, and hasty retreats, which denote female anxiety 
 and perplexity at the unexpected approach of a stranger. 
 
 After some time the parson's single servant, a middle-aged, 
 slovenly man, in a loose frock, and gray kerseymere nonde- 
 scripts, opened the gate, and informed me that his master was 
 at home. With a few earnest admonitions to my admitter 
 who was, like the domestics of many richer men, both groom 
 and valet respecting the safety of my borrowed horse, I en- 
 tered the house : the servant did not think it necessary to 
 inquire my name, but threw open the door of the study, with 
 the brief introduction of, " A gentleman, sir." 
 
 Clutterbuck was standing, with his back towards me, upon a 
 pair of library steps, turning over some dusky volumes ; and 
 below stood a pale, cadaverous youth, with a set and serious 
 countenance, that bore no small likeness to Clutterbuck himself. 
 
 " Mon Dieu" thought I, " he cannot have made such good 
 use of his matrimonial state as to have raised this lanky im- 
 pression of himself in the space of seven months ! " The good 
 man turned round, and almost fell off the steps with the 
 nervous shock of beholding me so near him ; he descended 
 frith precipitation, and shook me so warmly and tightly by the 
 hand, that he brought tears into my eyes, as well as his own. 
 
 "Gently, my good friend," said I ; "parce, precor, or you will 
 force me to say, ' ibimus una ambo, flentcs valido connexi fge- 
 Ckre."'
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 24$ 
 
 Clutterbuck's eyes watered still more when he heard the 
 grateful sounds of what to him was the mother tongue. He 
 surveyed me from head to foot with an air of benign and 
 fatherly complacency, and dragging forth from its sullen rest 
 a large arm-chair, on whose cushions of rusty horsehair sat an 
 eternal cloud of classic dust, too sacred to be disturbed, he 
 plumped me down upon it, before I was aware of the cruel 
 hospitality. 
 
 "Oh! my nether garments," thought I. " Quant us sudor 
 inent Be !oso> to restore you to your pristine purity ! " 
 
 "But whence come you?" said my host, who cherished 
 rather a formal and antiquated method of speech. 
 
 "From the Pythian games," said I; "the campus hight 
 Newmarket. Do I see right, or is not yon insignis juvetiis mar- 
 vellously like you ? Of a surety he rivals the Titans, if he is 
 only a seven months' child !" 
 
 " Now, truly, my worthy friend," answered Clutterbuck, 
 " you indulge in jesting ! The boy is my nephew a goodly 
 child, and a painstaking. I hope he will thrive at our gentle 
 mother. He goes to Trinity next October. Benjamin Jere- 
 miah, my lad, this is my worthy friend and benefactor, of 
 whom I have often spoken ; go, and order him of our best 
 he will partake of our repast ! " 
 
 " No, really," I began ; but Clutterbuck gently placed the 
 hand, whose strength of affection I had already so forcibly ex- 
 perienced, upon my mouth. " Pardon me, my friend," said he. 
 "No stranger should depart till he had broken bread with us ; 
 how much more then a friend ! Go, Benjamin Jeremiah, and 
 tell your aunt that Mr. Pelham will dine with us ; and order, 
 furthermore, that the barrel of oysters sent unto us as a present 
 by my worthy friend Dr. Swallovv'em, be dressed in the fashion 
 that seemeth best ; they are a classic dainty, and we shall think 
 of our great masters the ancients whilst we devour them. 
 And stop, Benjamin Jeremiah, see that we have the wine with 
 the black seal ; and now go, Benjamin Jeremiah ! " 
 
 " Well, my old friend," said I, when the door closed upon 
 the sallow and smileless nephew, "how do you love the connu- 
 bial yoke ? Do you give the same advice as Socrates ? I hope, 
 at least, it is not from the same experience." 
 
 " Hem !" answered the grave Christopher, in a tone that 
 struck me as somewhat nervous and uneasy, " you are become 
 quite a humorist since we parted. I suppose you have been 
 warming your wit by the lambent fires of Horace and Aris- 
 tophanes."
 
 646 PELHAM J 
 
 " No," said I, " the living allow those whose toilsome lot it 
 is to mix constantly with them but little time to study the 
 monuments of the dead. But, in sober earnest, are you as 
 happy as I wish you ? " 
 
 Clutterbuck looked down for a moment, and then, turning 
 towards the table, laid one hand upon a manuscript, and point- 
 ed with the other to his books. " With this society," said he, 
 " how can I be otherwise ?" 
 
 I gave him no reply, but put my hand upon his manuscript. 
 He made a modest and coy effort to detain it, but I knew that 
 writers were like women, and, making use of no displeasing 
 force, I possessed myself of the paper. 
 
 It was a treatise on the Greek participle. My heart sickened 
 within me ; but, as I caught the eager glance of the poor au- 
 thor, I brightened up my countenance into an expression of 
 pleasure, and appeared to read and comment upon the difficiles 
 nuga with an interest commensurate to his own. Meanwhile 
 the youth returned. He had much of that delicacy of senti- 
 ment which always accompanies mental cultivation, of what- 
 ever sort it may be. He went, with a scarlet blush over his 
 thin face, to his uncle, and whispered something in his ear, 
 which, from the angry embarrassment it appeared to occasion, 
 1 was at no loss to divine. 
 
 " Come," said I, "we are too long acquainted for ceremony. 
 Your placens uxor, like all ladies in the same predicament, 
 thinks your invitation a little unadvised ; and in real earnest, 
 I have so long a ride to perform, that I would rather eat your 
 oysters another day." 
 
 " No, no," said Clutterbuck, with greater eagerness than his 
 even temperament was often hurried into betraying; "no, I 
 will go and reason with her myself. ' Wives, obey your hus- 
 bands,' saith the preacher ! " And the quondam senior wran- 
 gler almost upset his chair in the perturbation with which he 
 arose from it. 
 
 I laid my hand upon him. " Let me go myself," said I, 
 " since you will have me dine with you. 'The sex is ever to a 
 stranger kind,' and I shall probably be more persuasive than 
 you, in despite of your legitimate authority." 
 
 So saying, I left the room, with a curiosity more painful than 
 pleasing, to see the collegian's wife. I arrested the man ser- 
 vant, and ordered him to usher and announce me. 
 
 I was led instanter into the apartment where I had discovered 
 all the signs of female inquisitiveness, which I have before de- 
 tailed. There I discovered a small woman, in a robe equally
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 247 
 
 slatternly and fine, with a sharp pointed nose, small, cold, gray 
 eyes, and a complexion high towards the cheek-bones, but 
 waxing of a light green before it reached the wide and queru- 
 lous mouth, which, well I ween, seldom opened to smile upon 
 the unfortunate possessor of her charms. She, like the Rev. 
 Christopher, was not without her companions ; a tall meagre 
 woman, of advanced age, and a girl, some years younger 
 than herself, were introduced to me as her mother and 
 sister. 
 
 My entree occasioned no little confusion, but I knew well how 
 to remedy that. I held out my hand so cordially to the wife 
 that I enticed, though with evident reluctance, two bony 
 fingers into my own, which I did not dismiss without a most 
 mollifying and affectionate squeeze ; and drawing my chair 
 close towards her, began conversing as familiarly as if I had 
 known the whole triad for years. I declared my joy at seeing 
 my old friend so happily settled ; commented on the improve- 
 ment of his looks ; ventured a sly joke at the good effects of 
 matrimony ; praised a cat couchant, worked in worsted by the 
 venerable hand of the eldest matron ; offered to procure her a 
 real cat of the true Persian breed, black ears four inches long, 
 with a tail like a squirrel's ; and then slid, all at once, into the 
 unauthorized invitation of the good man of the house. 
 
 " Clutterbuck," said I, " has asked me very warmly to stay 
 dinner ; but, before I accepted his offer, I insisted upon 
 coming to see how far it was confirmed by you. Gentlemen, 
 you are aware, my dear madam, know nothing of these 
 matters, and I never accept a married man's invitation till it has 
 the sanction of his lady ; I have an example of that at home. 
 My mother (Lady Frances) is the best-tempered woman in the 
 world : but my father could no more take the liberty (for I 
 may truly call it such) to ask even his oldest friend to dinner, 
 without consulting the mistress of the house, than he could 
 think of flying. No one (says my mother, and she says what 
 is very true) can tell about the household affairs but those 
 who have the management of them ; and in pursuance of this 
 aphorism, I dare not accept any invitation in this house except 
 from its mistress." 
 
 "Really," said Mrs. Clutterbuck, coloring with mingled 
 embarrassment and gratification, "you are very considerate 
 and polite, Mr. Pelham ; I only wish Mr. Clutterbuck paid 
 half your attention to these things ; nobody can tell the trouble 
 and inconvenience he puts me to. If I had known, a little 
 time before, that you were coming but now I fear we have
 
 248 PELHAM ; 
 
 nothing in the house ; but if you can partake of our fare, such 
 as it is, Mr. Pel ham " 
 
 "Your kindness enchants me," I exclaimed, "and I no 
 longer scruple to confess the pleasure I have in accepting my 
 old friend's offer." 
 
 This affair being settled, I continued to converse for some 
 minutes with as much vivacity as I could summon to my aid, 
 and when I went once more to the library it was with the com- 
 fortable impression of having left those as friends whom I had 
 visited as foes. 
 
 The dinner hour was four, and, till it came, Clutterbuck and 
 I amused ourselves "in commune wise and sage." There was 
 something high in the sentiments and generous in the feelings 
 of this man, which made me the more regret the bias of mind 
 which rendered them so unavailing. At college he had never 
 (tllis dissiinilis in nostro tempo re natis /) cringed to the possessors 
 of clerical power. In the duties of his station as dean of the 
 college he was equally strict to the black cap and the lordly 
 hat. Nay, when one of his private pupils, whose father was 
 possessed of more Church preferment than any nobleman in 
 the peerage, disobeyed his repeated summons, and constantly 
 neglected to attend his instructions, he sent for him, resigned 
 his tuition, and refused any longer to accept a salary which 
 the negligence of his pupil would not allow him to requite. 
 In his clerical tenets he was high : in his judgment of others 
 he was mild. His knowledge of the liberty of Greece was not 
 drawn from the ignorant historian of her Republics ;* nor did 
 he find in the contemplative mildness and gentle philosophy of 
 the ancients, nothing but a sanction for modern bigotry and 
 existing abuses. 
 
 It was a remarkable trait in his conversation that though he 
 indulged in many references to the old authors, and allusions 
 to classic customs, he never deviated into the innumerable quo- 
 tations with which his memory was stored. No words, in spite 
 of all the quaintness and antiquity of his dialect, purely Latin 
 or Greek, ever escaped his lips, except in our engagements at 
 capping verses, or when he was allured into accepting a chal- 
 lenge of learning from some of its pretenders ; then, indeed, 
 he could pour forth such a torrent of authorities as effectually 
 silenced his opponent ; but these contests were rarely entered 
 into, and these triumphs moderately indulged. Yet he loved 
 
 * It is really a disgrace to our University, that any of its colleges should accept as a 
 reference, or even tolerate as an author, the presumptuous bigot who has bequeathed to us, 
 in his History of Greece, the masterpiece of a declaimer without energy, and of a pedant 
 without learning.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 249 
 
 the use of quotations in others, and I knew the greatest pleas* 
 ure I could give him was in the frequent use of them. Per- 
 haps he thought it would seem like an empty parade of learn- 
 ing in one who so confessedly possessed it, to deal in the 
 strange words of another tongue, and consequently rejected 
 them, while, with an innocent inconsistency, characteristic of the 
 man, it never occurred to him that there was anything, either in 
 the quaintness of his dialect or the occupations of his leisure, 
 which might subject him to the same imputation of pedantry. 
 
 And yet, at times, when he warmed in his subject, there was 
 a tone in his language as well as sentiment, which might not 
 be improperly termed eloquent ; and the real modesty and 
 quiet enthusiasm of his nature took away from the impression 
 he made the feeling of pomposity and affectation with which 
 otherwise he might have inspired you. 
 
 "You have a calm and quiet habitation here," said I ; "the 
 very rooks seem to have something lulling in that venerable 
 caw which it always does me such good to hear." 
 
 "Yes," answered Clutterbuck, " I own that there is much 
 that is grateful to the temper of my mind in this retired spot. 
 I fancy that I can the better give myself up to the contempla- 
 tion which makes, as it were, my intellectual element and food. 
 And yet I dare say that in this (as in all other things) I do 
 strangely err ; for I remember that during my only sojourn in 
 London, I was wont to feel the sound of wheels and of the 
 throng of steps shake the windows of my lodging in the Strand, 
 as if it were but a warning to recall my mind more closely to 
 its studies : of a verity that noisy evidence of man's labor re- 
 minded me how little the great interests of this rolling world 
 were to me, and the feeling of solitude amongst the crowds 
 without made me cling more fondly to the company I found 
 within. For it seems that the mind is ever addicted to con- 
 traries, and that when it be transplanted into a soil where all 
 its neighbors do produce a certain fruit, it doth, from a strange 
 perversity, bring forth one of a different sort. You would 
 little believe, my honored friend, that in this lonely seclusion I 
 cannot at all times prohibit my thoughts from wandering to 
 that gay world of London, which, during my tarry therein, 
 occupied them in so partial a degree. You smile, my friend, 
 nevertheless it is true ; and when you reflect that I dwelt in 
 the western part of the metropolis, near unto the noble man- 
 sion of Somerset House, and consequently in the very centre 
 of what the idle call Fashion, you will not be so surprised at 
 the occasional migration of my thoughts."
 
 250 PELHAM J 
 
 Here the worthy Clutterbuck paused and sighed slightly. 
 "Do you farm, or cultivate your garden ?" said I ; " they are 
 no ignoble nor unclassical employments." 
 
 "Unhappily," answered Clutterbuck, "I am inclined to 
 neither ; my chest pains me with a sharp and piercing pang 
 when I attempt to stoop, and my respiration is short and asth- 
 matic ; and, in truth, I seldom love to stir from my books and 
 papers. I go with Pliny to his garden, and with Virgil to his 
 farm ; those mental excursions are the sole ones I indulge in ; 
 and when I think of my appetite for application, and my love 
 of idleness, I am tempted to wax proud of the propensities 
 which reverse the censure of Tacitus on our German ances- 
 tors, and incline so fondly to quiet, while they turn so rest- 
 lessly from sloth." 
 
 Here the speaker was interrupted by a long, low, dry cough, 
 which penetrated me to the heart. " Alas ! " thought I, as I 
 heard it, and looked upon my poor friend's hectic and hollow 
 cheek, " it is not only his mind that will be the victim to the 
 fatality of his studies." 
 
 It was some moments before.I renewed the conversation, and 
 I had scarcely done so before I was interrupted by the en- 
 trance of Benjamin Jeremiah with a message from his aunt 
 that dinner would be ready in a few minutes. Another long 
 whisper to Christopher succeeded. The ci-devant fellow of 
 Trinity looked down at his garments with a perplexed air. I 
 saw at once that he had received a hint on the propriety of a 
 change of raiment. To give him due leisure for this, I asked 
 the youth to show me a room in which I might perform the 
 usual ablutions previous to dinner, and followed him upstairs 
 to a comfortless sort of dressing-room, without a fire-place, 
 where I found a yellow-ware jug and basin, and a towel of so 
 coarse a huckaback that I did not dare adventure its rough 
 texture next my complexion my skin is not made for such 
 rude fellowship. While I was tenderly and daintily anoint- 
 ing my hands with some hard water, of no Blandusian spring, 
 and that vile composition entitled Windsor soap, I heard the 
 difficult breathing of poor Clutterbuck on the stairs, and soon 
 after he entered the adjacent room. Two minutes more and 
 his servant joined him, for I heard the rough voice of the do- 
 mestic say, " There is no more of the wine with the black seal 
 left, sir ! " 
 
 "No more, good Dixon ? You mistake grievously. I had 
 two dozen not a week since ! " 
 
 " Don't know, I'm sure, sir ! " answered Dixon, with a care-
 
 R, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 2$! 
 
 less and half-impertinent accent ; "but there are great things, 
 like alligators, in the cellar, which break all the bottles ! " 
 
 " Alligators in my cellar ! "said the astonished Clutterbuck. 
 
 " Yes, sir at least a venomous sort of reptile like them, which 
 the people about here call efts!" 
 
 " What ! " said Clutterbuck innocently, and evidently not 
 seeing the irony of his own question ; "What ! Have the efts 
 broken two dozen bottles in a week ? Of an exceeding surety 
 it is strange that a little creature of the lizard species should 
 be so destructive perchance they have an antipathy to the 
 vinous smell ; I will confer with my learned friend, Dr. Dis- 
 sectall, touching their strength and habits. Bring up some of 
 the port, then, good Dixon." 
 
 " Yes, sir. All the corn is out ; I had none for the gentle- 
 man's horse." 
 
 " Why, Dixon, my memory fails me strangely, or I paid you 
 the sum of four pounds odd shillings for corn on Friday last." 
 
 "Yes, sir ; but your cow and the chickens eat so much; 
 and then blind Dobbin has four feeds a day, and Farmer 
 Johnson always puts his horse in our stable, and Mrs. Clutter- 
 buck and the ladies fed the jackass the other day in the hired 
 donkey-chaise ; besides, the rats and mice are always at it." 
 
 " It is a marvel unto me," answered Clutterbuck," how detri- 
 mental the vermin race are ; they seem to have noted my poor 
 possessions as their especial prey ; remind me that I write to 
 Dr. Dissectall to-morrow, good Dixon." 
 
 "Yes, sir; and now I think of it " But here Mr. Dixon 
 was cut short in his items by the entrance of a third person, 
 who proved to be Mrs. Clutterbuck. 
 
 " VVhat, not dressed yet, Mr. Clutterbuck ; what a dawdler 
 you are ! And do look was ever woman so used ? You 
 have wiped your razor upon my nightcap you dirty, slov- 
 enly " 
 
 " I crave you many pardons ; I own my error ! " said Clut- 
 terbuck, in a nervous tone of interruption. 
 
 "Error, indeed !" cried Mrs. Clutterbuck, in a sharp, over- 
 stretched, querulous falsetto, suited to the occasion : "but this 
 is always the case ; I am sure, my poor temper is tried to the 
 utmost and Lord help thee, idiot ! you have thrust those 
 spindle legs of yours into your coat-sleeves instead of your 
 breeches ! " 
 
 "Of a truth, good wife, your eyes are more discerning than 
 mine ; and my legs, which are, as you say, somewhat thin, have 
 indued themselves in what appertaineth not unto them ; but
 
 252 PELHAM J 
 
 for all that, Dorothea, I am not deserving of the epithet of idiot, 
 with which you have been pleased to favor me; although my hum- 
 ble faculties are, indeed, of no eminent or surpassing order " 
 
 " Pooh ! pooh ! Mr. Clutterbuck, I am sure I don't know 
 what else you are, muddling your head with all those good- 
 for-nothing books. And now do tell me, how you could think 
 of asking Mr. Pelham to dinner, when you knew we had noth- 
 ing in the world but hashed mutton and an apple pudding ? 
 Is that the way, sir, you disgrace your wife, after her conde- 
 scension in marrying you ? " 
 
 " Really," answered the patient Clutterbuck, " I was forget- 
 ful of those matters ; but my friend cares as little as myself 
 about the grosser tastes of the table ; and the feast of intellect- 
 ual converse is all that he desires in his brief sojourn beneath 
 our roof." 
 
 " Feast of fiddlesticks, Mr. Clusterbuck ! Did ever man 
 talk such nonsense?" 
 
 " Besides," rejoined the master- of the house, unheeding this 
 interruption, " we have a luxury even of the palate, than which 
 there are none more delicate, and unto which he, as well as 
 myself, is, I know, somewhat unphilosophically given : I speak 
 of the oysters sent here by our good friend, Dr. Swallow'em." 
 
 "What do you mean, Mr. Clutterbuck ? My poor mother 
 and I had those oysters last night for our supper. I am sure 
 she, and my sister, are almost starved ; but you are always 
 wanting to be pampered up above us all." 
 
 "Nay, nay," answered Clutterbuck, "you know you accuse 
 me wrongfully, Dorothea ; but now I think of it, would it not 
 be better to modulate the tone of our conversation, seeing that 
 our guest (a circumstance which until now quite escaped my 
 recollection) was shown into the next room for the purpose of 
 washing his hands, the which, from their notable cleanliness, 
 seemed to me wholly unnecessary. I would not have him over' 
 hear you, Dorothea, lest his kind heart should imagine me less 
 happy than than it wishes me ! " 
 
 " Good God, Mr. Clutterbuck ! " were the only words I 
 heard farther : and with tears in my eyes, and a suffocating 
 feeling in my throat, for the matrimonial situation of my unfor- 
 tunate friend, I descended into the drawing-room. The only 
 one yet there was the pale nephew : he was bending painfully 
 over a book ; I took it from him ; it was " Bentley upon 
 Phalaris." I could scarcely refrain from throwing it into the 
 fire : " Another victim J " thought I. Oh, the curse of an Eng- 
 lish education '
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 253 
 
 By and by down came the mother and the sister, then Clutter- 
 buck, and lastly, bedizened out with gewgaws and trumpery, 
 the wife. Born and nurtured as I was in the art of the vollo 
 sciolto,pensieri stretti, * I had seldom found a more arduous task 
 of dissimulation than that which I experienced now. How- 
 ever, the hope to benefit my friend's situation assisted me : 
 the best way, I thought, of obtaining him more respect from 
 his wife, will be by showing her the respect he meets with 
 from others ; accordingly, I sat down by her, and having first 
 conciliated her attention by some of that coin termed compli- 
 ments, in which there is no counterfeit that does not have the 
 universal effect of real, I spoke with the most profound venera- 
 tion of the 'talents and learning of Clutterbuck ; I dilated upon 
 the high reputation he enjoyed ; upon the general esteem in 
 which he was held ; upon the kindness of his heart, the sin- 
 cerity of his modesty, the integrity of his honor in short, 
 whatever I thought likely to affect her ; most of all, I insisted 
 upon the high panegyrics bestowed upon him by Lord This, 
 and the Earl That, and wound up with adding that I was 
 certain he would die a bishop. My eloquence had its effect ; 
 all dinner time Mrs. Clutterbuck treated her husband with even 
 striking consideration : my words seemed to have gifted her 
 with a new light, and to have wrought a thorough transforma- 
 tion in her view of her lord and master's character. Who 
 knows not the truth, that we have dim and short-sighted eyes 
 to estimate the nature of our own kin, and that we borrow the 
 spectacles which alone enable us to discern their merits or 
 their failings from the opinion of strangers ! It may be readily 
 supposed that the dinner did not pass without its share of 
 the ludicrous ; that the waiter and the dishes, the family and 
 the host, would have afforded ample materials no less for the 
 student of nature in Hogarth, than of caricature in Bunbury ; 
 but I was too seriously occupied in pursuing my object, and 
 marking its success, to have time even for a smile. Ah, if 
 ever you would allure your son to diplomacy, show him how 
 subservient he may make it to benevolence ! 
 
 When the women had retired we drew our chairs near to 
 each other, and, laying down my watch on the table, as I looked 
 out upon the declining day, I said, " Let us make the best of 
 our time ; I can only linger here one half-hour longer." 
 
 " And how, my friend," said Clutterbuck, " shall we learn 
 the method of making the best use of time? There, whether it 
 be in the larger segments, or the petty subdivisions of our life, 
 
 * The open countenance and closed thoughts.
 
 254 PELHAM J 
 
 rests the great enigma of our being. Who is there that has 
 never exclaimed (pardon my pedantry, I am for once driven 
 into Greek) Eureka! to this most difficult of the sciences?" 
 
 "Come," said I, "it is not for you, the favored scholar the 
 honored academician whose hours are never idly employed, 
 to ask this question ! " 
 
 "Your friendship makes too flattering the acumen of your 
 judgment," answered the modest Clutterbuck. " It has indeed 
 been my lot to cultivate the fields of truth, as transmitted unto 
 our hands by the wise men of old ; and I have much to be 
 thankful for, that I have, in the employ, been neither curtailed 
 in my leisure, nor abased in my independence the two great 
 goods of a calm and meditative mind ; yet are there moments 
 in which I am led to doubt of the wisdom of my pursuits ; and 
 when, with a feverish and shaking hand, I put aside the books 
 which have detained me from my rest till the morning hour, 
 and repair to a couch often baffled of slumber by the pains 
 and discomforts of this worn and feeble frame, I almost wish 
 I could purchase the rude health of the peasant by the ex- 
 change of an idle and imperfect learning for the ignorance, 
 content with the narrow world it possesses, because uncon- 
 scious of the limitless creation beyond. Yet, my dear and 
 esteemed friend, there is a dignified and tranquillizing philo- 
 sophy in the writings of the ancients which ought to teach me 
 a better condition of mind ; and when I have risen from the 
 lofty, albeit somewhat melancholy strain, which swells through 
 the essays of the graceful and tender Cicero, I have indeed 
 felt a momentary satisfaction at my studies, and an elation 
 even at the petty success with which I have cherished them. 
 But these are brief and fleeting moments, and deserve chas- 
 tisement for their pride. There is one thing, my Pelham, 
 which has grieved me bitterly of late, and that is, that in the 
 earnest attention which it is the perhaps fastidious custom 
 of our University to pay to the minutiae of classic lore, I do 
 now oftentimes lose the spirit and beauty of the general bear- 
 ing ; nay, I derive a far greater pleasure from the ingenious 
 amendment of a perverted text, than from all the turn and 
 thought of the sense itself : while I am straightening a crooked 
 nail in the wine-cask, I suffer the wine to evaporate ; but to 
 this I am somewhat reconciled, when I reflect that it was also 
 the misfortune of the great Person, and the elaborate Parr, 
 men with whom I blush to find myself included in the same 
 sentence." 
 
 " My friend," said I, " I wish neither to wound your modesty
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 255 
 
 nor to impugn your pursuits ; but think you not that it would 
 be better, both for men and for yourself, if, while you are yet 
 in the vigor of your age and reason, you occupy your ingenuity 
 and application in some more useful and lofty work, than that 
 which you suffered me to glance at in your library ; and, 
 moreover, as the great object of him who would perfect his 
 mind is first to strengthen the faculties of his body, would it 
 not be prudent in you to lessen for a time your devotion to 
 books ; to exercise yourself in the fresh air to relax the bow, 
 by loosing the string ; to mix more with the living and impart 
 to men in conversation, as well as in writing, whatever the 
 incessant labor of many years may have hoarded ? Come, if 
 not to town, at least to its vicinity ; the profits of your living, 
 if even tolerably managed, will enable you to do so without in- 
 convenience. Leave your books to their shelves, and your 
 flock to their curate, and you shake your head do I dis- 
 please you ? " 
 
 " No, no, my kind and generous adviser ; but as the twig 
 was set, the tree must grow. I have not been without that am- 
 bition, which, however vain and -sinful, is the first passion to 
 enter the wayward and tossing vessel of our soul, and the last 
 to leave its stranded and shattered wreck ; but mine found 
 and attained its object at an age when in others it is, as yet, a 
 vague and unsettled feeling ; and it feeds now rather upon the 
 recollections of what has been, than ventures forward on a sea 
 of untried and strange expectation. As for my studies ! how 
 can you, who have, and in no moderate draught, drunk of the old 
 stream of Castaly, how can you ask me now to change them ? 
 Are not the ancients my food, my aliment, my solace in sor- 
 row ; my sympathizers, my very benefactors, in joy ? Take 
 them away from me, and you take away the very winds which 
 purify and give motion to the obscure and silent current of my 
 life. Besides, my Pelham, it cannot have escaped your obser- 
 vation that there is little in my present state which promises a 
 long increase of days : the few that remain to me must glide 
 away like their predecessors ; and whatever be the infirmities 
 of my body, and the little harassments which, I am led to sus- 
 pect, do occasionally molest the most fortunate, who link them- 
 selves unto the unstable and fluctuating part of creation which 
 we term women, more especially in an hymeneal capacity 
 whatever these may be, I have my refuge and my comforter in 
 the golden-souled and dreaming Plato, and the sententious 
 wisdom of the less imaginative Seneca. Now, when I am re- 
 minded of my approaching dissolution by the symptoms which
 
 2$6 PELHAM ; 
 
 do mostly at the midnight hour press themselves upon me, is 
 there a small and inglorious pleasure in the hope that I may 
 meet, hereafter, in those Islands of the Blest which they dimly 
 dreamt of, but which are opened unto my vision, without a 
 cloud, or mist, or shadow of uncertainty and doubt, with those 
 bright spirits which we do now converse with so imperfectly ; 
 that I may catch from the very lips of Homer the unclouded 
 gorgeousness of fiction, and from the accents of Archimedes 
 the unadulterated calculations of truth ! " 
 
 Clutterbuck ceased ; and the glow of his enthusiasm diffused 
 itself over his sunken eye and consumptive cheek. The boy, 
 who had sat apart and silent during our discourse, laid his head 
 upon the table and sobbed audibly ; and I rose, deeply affect- 
 ed, to offer to one for whom they were, indeed, unavailing, the 
 wishes and blessing of an eager, but not hardened, disciple of 
 the world. We parted : on this earth we can never meet again. 
 The light has wasted itself away beneath the bushel. It will be 
 six weeks to-morrow since the meek and noble-minded academ- 
 ician breathed his last. 
 
 CHAPTER LXIV. 
 
 " 'Tis but a single murder." LILLO'S Fatal Curiosity. 
 
 IT was in a melancholy and thoughtful mood that I rode 
 away from the parsonage. Numerous and hearty were the 
 maledictions I bestowed upon a system of education which, 
 while it was so ineffective with the many, was so pernicious to 
 the few. Miserable delusion (thought I), that encourages the 
 ruin of health and the perversion of intellect by studies that 
 are as unprofitable to the world as they are destructive to the 
 possessor that incapacitate him for public, and unfit him for 
 private, life ; and, that, while they expose him to the ridicule of 
 strangers, render him the victim of his wife, and the prey of his 
 domestic ! 
 
 Busied in such reflections I rode quickly on, till I found my- 
 self, once more, on the heath. I looked anxiously round for 
 the conspicuous equipage of Lady Chester, but in vain : the 
 ground was thin nearly all the higher orders had retired : the 
 common people, grouped together, and clamoring noisily, were 
 withdrawing : and the shrill voices of the itinerant hawkers of 
 cards and bills had, at length, subsided into silence. I rode 
 over the ground, in the hope of finding some solitary straggler 
 of our party. Alas ! there was not one ; and with much reluc-
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GPNTLEMAtf. 2$7 
 
 tance at, and distaste to, my lonely retreat, I turned in a home- 
 ward direction from the course. 
 
 The evening had already set in, but there was a moon in the 
 cold gray sky that I could almost have thanked, in a sonnet, 
 for a light which I felt was never more welcomely dispensed, 
 when I thought of the cross-roads and dreary country I had to 
 pass before I reached the longed-for haven of Chester Park. 
 After I had left the direct road the wind, which had before 
 been piercingly keen, fell, and I perceived a dark cloud be- 
 hind, which began slowly to overtake my steps. I care little, 
 in general, for the discomfort of a shower ; yet, as when we are 
 in one misfortune we always exaggerate the consequence of a 
 new one, I looked upon my dark pursuer with a very impatient 
 and petulant frown, and set my horse on a trot, much more 
 suitable to my inclination than his own. Indeed, he seemed 
 fully alive to the cornless state of the parson's stable, and 
 evinced his sense of the circumstance by a very languid mode 
 of progression, and a constant attempt, whenever his pace abated, 
 and I suffered the rein to slumber upon his neck, to crop the rank 
 grass that sprang up on either side of our road. I had pro- 
 ceeded about three miles on my way, when I heard the clatter 
 of hoofs behind me. My even pace soon suffered me to be 
 overtaken ; and, as the stranger checked his horse when he 
 was nearly by my side, I turned towards him, and beheld Sir 
 John Tyrrell. 
 
 " Well," said he, " this is really fortunate ; for I began to fear 
 I should have my ride this cold evening entirely to myself.'" 
 
 "I imagined that you had long reached Chester Park by this 
 time," said I. " Did not you leave the course with our party ? " 
 
 "No," answered Tyrrell; "I had business at Newmarket 
 with a rascally fellow of the name of Dawson. He lost to me 
 rather a considerable wager, and asked me to come to town 
 with him after the race in order to pay me. As he said he 
 lived on the direct road to Chester Park, and would direct, 
 and even accompany me through all the difficult part of the 
 ride, I the less regretted not joining Chester and his party ; 
 and you know, Pelham, that when pleasure pulls one way, and 
 money another, it is all over with the first. Well, to return to 
 my rascal would you believe, that when we got to New- 
 market, he left me at the inn, in order, he said, to fetch the 
 money ; and after having kept me in a cold room, with a 
 smoky chimney, for more than an hour, without making his 
 appearance, I sallied out into the town, and found Mr. Da\vson 
 quietly seated in a hell with that scoundrel Thornton, whom I
 
 258 PELHAM; 
 
 did not conceive, till then, he was acquainted with. It seems 
 that he was to win, at hazard, sufficient to pay his wager ! 
 You may fancy my anger, and the consequent increase to it, 
 when he rose from the table, approached me, expressed his 
 sorrow, d d his ill luck, and informed me that he could not 
 pay me for three months. You know that I could not ride 
 home with such a fellow he might have robbed me by the 
 way so I returned to my inn, dined, ordered my horse, set 
 off, inquired my way of every passenger I passed, and after 
 innumerable misdirections here I am ! " 
 
 "I cannot sympathize with you," said I, "since I am bene- 
 fited by your misfortunes. But do you think it very necessary 
 to trot so fast ? I fear my horse can scarcely keep up with 
 yours." 
 
 Tyrrell cast an impatient glance at my panting steed. "It 
 is cursed unlucky you should be so badly mounted, and we 
 shall have a pelting shower presently." 
 
 In complaisance to Tyrrell, I endeavored to accelerate my 
 steed. The roads were rough and stony ; and I had scarcely 
 got the tired animal into a sharp trot, before whether or no 
 by some wrench among the deep ruts and flinty causeway he 
 fell suddenly lame. The impetuosity of Tyrrell broke out in 
 oaths, and we both dismounted to examine the cause of my 
 horse's hurt, in the hope that it might only be the intrusion of 
 some pebble between the shoe and the hoof. While we were 
 yet investigating the cause of our misfortune, two men on 
 horseback overtook us. Tyrrell looked up. "By Heaven," 
 said he, in a low tone, "it's that dog Dawson, and his worthy 
 coadjutor, Tom Thornton." 
 
 "What's the matter, gentlemen ?" cried the bluff voice of 
 the latter. "Can I be of any assistance?" and without wait- 
 ing our reply, he dismounted, and came up to us. He had no 
 sooner felt the horse's leg than he assured us it was a most 
 severe strain, and that the utmost I could effect would be to 
 walk the brute gently home. 
 
 As Tyrrell broke out into impatient violence at this speech, 
 the sharper looked up at him with an expression of counte- 
 nance I by no means liked, but in a very civil, and even 
 respectful, tone, said, "If you wish, Sir John, to reach Chester 
 Park sooner than Mr. Pelham can possibly do, suppose you 
 ride on with us ; I will put you in the direct road before I quit 
 you." (Good breeding, thought I, to propose leaving me to 
 find my own way through this labyrinth of ruts and stones !) 
 However, Tyrrell, who was in a vile humor, refused the offer,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 259 
 
 in no very courteous manner ; and added, that he should con- 
 tinue with me as long as he could, and did not doubt that when 
 he left me he should be able to find his own way. Thornton 
 pressed the invitation still closer, and even offered, sotto vocc, 
 to send Dawson on before, should the Baronet object to his 
 company. 
 
 "Pray, sir," said Tyrrell, "leave me alone, and busy yourself 
 about your own affairs." After so tart a reply, Thornton 
 thought it useless to say more ; he remounted, and with a silent 
 and swaggering nod of familiarity, soon rode away with his 
 companion. 
 
 " I am sorry," said I, as we were slowly proceeding, " that 
 you rejected Thornton's offer." 
 
 " Why, to say truth," answered Tyrrell, " I have so very bad 
 an opinion of him, that I was almost afraid to trust myself in 
 his company on so dreary a road. I have nearly (and he knows 
 it) to the amount of two thousand pounds about me ; for I was 
 very fortunate in my betting-book to-day." 
 
 " I know nothing about racing regulations," said I ; " but I 
 thought one never paid sums of that amount upon the ground ?" 
 
 "Ah !" answered Tyrrell, "but I won this sum, which is 
 eighteen hundred pounds, of a country squire from Norfolk, 
 who said he did not know when he should see me again, and 
 insisted on paying me on the spot : 'faith I was not nice in the 
 matter. Thornton was standing by at the time, and I did not 
 half like the turn of his eye when lie saw me put it up. Do 
 you know, too," continued Tyrrell, after a pause, " that I had 
 a d d fellow dodging me all day, and yesterday too ; where- 
 ever I go, I am sure to see him. He seems constantly, though 
 distantly, to follow me ; and what is worse, he wraps himself 
 up so well, and keeps at so cautious a distance, that I can never 
 catch a glimpse of his face." 
 
 I know not why, but at that moment the recollection of the 
 muffled figure I had seen upon the course flashed upon me. 
 
 " Does he wear a long horseman's cloak ? " said I. 
 
 "He does," answered Tyrrell, in surprise; "have you ob- 
 served him ?" 
 
 " I saw such a person on the race-ground," replied I ; "but 
 only for an instant ! " 
 
 Farther conversation was suspended by a few heavy drops 
 which fell upon us ; the cloud had passed over the moon, and 
 was hastening rapidly and loweringly over our heads. Tyrrell 
 was neither of an age, a frame, nor a temper, to be so indiffer- 
 ent to a hearty wetting as myself.
 
 260 PELHAM J 
 
 " Come, come," he cried, " you must put on that beast of 
 yours I can't get wet for all the horses in the world." 
 
 I was not much pleased with the dictatorial tone of this re- 
 mark. " It is impossible," said I, " especially as the horse is 
 not my own, and seems considerably lamer than at first ; but 
 let me not detain you." 
 
 "Well ! " cried Tyrrell, in a raised and angry voice, which 
 pleased me still less than his former remark ; "but how am I 
 to find my way, if I leave you ?" 
 
 " Keep straight on," said I, " for a mile farther, then a sign- 
 post will direct you to the left ; after a short time, you will have 
 a steep hill to descend, at the bottom of which is a large pool, 
 and a singularly shaped tree ; then again, keep straight on, till 
 you pass a house belonging to Mr. Dawson " 
 
 " Hang it, Pelham, make haste ! " exclaimed Tyrrell, im- 
 patiently, as the rain began now to descend fast and heavy. 
 
 " When you have passed that house," I resumed coolly, rather 
 enjoying his petulance, "you must bear to the right for six 
 miles, and you will be at Chester Park in less than an* hour." 
 
 Tyrrell made no reply, but put spurs to his horse. The pat- 
 tering rain and the angry heavens soon drowned the last echoes 
 of the receding hoof-clang. 
 
 For myself, I looked in vain for a tree ; not even a shrub 
 was to be found ; the fields lay bare on either side, with no 
 other partition but a dead hedge, and a deep dyke. " Melius 
 fit patentid" etc., thought I, as Horace said, and Vincent 
 would say ; and in order to divert my thoughts from my sit- 
 uation, I turned them towards my diplomatic success with 
 Lord Chester. Presently, for I think scarcely five minutes 
 had elapsed since Tyrrell's departure, a horseman passed me 
 at a sharp pace ; the moon was hid by the dense cloud ; and 
 the night, though not wholly dark, was dim and obscured, so 
 that I could only catch the outline of the flitting figure. A 
 thrill of fear crept over me when I saw that it was enveloped 
 in a horseman's cloak. I soon rallied : " There are more 
 cloaks in the world than one," said I to myself ; " besides, 
 even if it be Tyrrell's dodger, as he calls him, the Baronet is 
 better mounted than any highwayman since the days of Du 
 Val ; and is, moreover, strong enough and cunning enough to 
 take admirable care of himself." With this reflection I dis- 
 missed the occurrence from my thoughts, and once more re- 
 turned to self-congratulations upon my own incomparable 
 genius. " I shall now," I thought, " have well earned my seat 
 in. Parliament : Dawton will indisputably be, if not the prime,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 261 
 
 the principal minister in rank and influence. He cannot fail 
 to promote me for his own sake, as well as mine ; and when I 
 have once fairly got my legs in St. Stephen's, I shall soon have 
 my hands in office : ' Power,' says some one, 'is a snake that, 
 when it once finds a hole into which it can introduce its head, 
 soon manages to wriggle in the rest of its body.' " 
 
 With such meditations I endeavored to beguile the time, and 
 cheat myself into forgetfulness of the lameness of my horse, 
 and the dripping wetness of his rider. At last the storm 
 began sullenly to subside : one impetuous torrent, tenfold 
 more violent than those that had preceded it, was followed by 
 a momentary stillness, which was again broken by a short re- 
 lapse of a less formidable severity, and, the moment it ceased, 
 the beautiful moon broke out, the cloud rolled heavily away, 
 
 and the sky shone forth, as fair and smiling as Lady at 
 
 a ball, after she had been beating her husband at home. 
 
 But at that instant, or perhaps a second before the storm 
 ceased, I thought I heard the sound of a human cry. I 
 paused, and my heart stood still I could have heard a gnat 
 hum : the sound was not repeated ; my ear caught nothing 
 but the plashing of the rain-drops from the dead hedges, and 
 the murmur of the swollen dykes, as the waters pent within 
 them rolled hurriedly on. By and by an owl came suddenly 
 from behind me, and screamed as it flapped across my path ; 
 that, too, went rapidly away : and with a smile at what I 
 deemed my own fancy I renewed my journey. I soon came 
 to the precipitous descent I have before mentioned ; I dis- 
 mounted, for safety, from my drooping and jaded horse, and 
 led him down the hill. At a distance beyond I saw something 
 dark moving on the grass which bordered the road ; as I 
 advanced it started forth from the shadow, and fled rapidly 
 before me, in the moonshine it was a riderless horse. A 
 chilling foreboding seized me : I looked round for some 
 weapon, such as the hedge might afford ; and finding a strong 
 stick of tolerable weight and thickness, I proceeded more 
 cautiously, but more fearlessly than before. As I wound 
 down the hill, the moonlight fell full upon the remarkable and 
 lonely tree I had observed in the morning. Bare, wan, and 
 giantlike, as it rosfe amidst the surrounding waste, it borrowed 
 even a more startling and ghostly appearance from the cold and 
 lifeless moonbeams which fell around and upon it like a 
 shroud. The retreating steed I had driven before me paused 
 by this tree. I hastened my steps, as if by an involuntary im- 
 pulse, as well as the enfeebled animal I was leading would
 
 263 PELHAM ; 
 
 allow me, and discovered a horseman galloping across the 
 waste at full speed. The ground over which he passed was 
 steeped in the moonshine, and I saw the long and disguising 
 cloak in which he was enveloped as clearly as by the light of day. 
 I paused : and as I was following him with my looks, my eye 
 fell upon some obscure object by the left side of the pool. I 
 threw my horse's rein over the hedge, and, firmly grasp- 
 ing my stick, hastened to the spot. As I approached the 
 object, I perceived that it was a human figure ; it was lying 
 still and motionless : the limbs were half immersed in the 
 water the face was turned upwards the side and throat 
 were wet with a deep red stain it was of blood : the thin, 
 dark hairs of the head were clotted together over a frightful 
 and disfiguring contusion. I bent over the face in a shudder 
 ing and freezing silence. It was the countenance of Sir John 
 Tyrrell ! 
 
 CHAPTER LXV. 
 
 " Marry, he was dead 
 
 And the right valiant Banquo walked too late : 
 Whom you may say, if it please you, Fleance killed, 
 For Fleance fled ! "Macbeth. 
 
 IT is a fearful thing, even to the hardiest nerves, to find our- 
 selves suddenly alone with the dead. How much more so, if 
 we have, but a breathing interval before, moved and conversed 
 with the warm and living likeness of the motionless clay be- 
 fore us ! 
 
 And this was the man from whom I had parted in coldness 
 almost in anger at a word a breath ! I took up the heavy 
 hand it fell from my grasp ; and as it did so, I thought a 
 change passed over the livid countenance. I was deceived ; 
 it was but a light cloud flitting over the moon ; it rolled away, 
 and the placid and guiltless light shone over that scene of 
 dread and blood, making more wild and chilling the eternal 
 contrast of earth and heaven man and his Maker passion 
 and immutability death and eternal life. 
 
 But that was not a moment for reflection ; a thousand 
 thoughts hurried upon me, and departed as swift and con- 
 fusedly as they came. My mind seemed a jarring and be- 
 nighted chaos of the faculties which were its elements ; and I 
 had stood several minutes over the corpse before, by a vigorous 
 effort, I shook off the stupor that possessed me, and began to 
 think of the course that it now behooved me to pursue.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 263 
 
 The house I had noted in the morning was, I knew, within 
 a few minutes' walk of the spot ; but it belonged to Dawson, 
 upon whom the first weight of my suspicions rested. I called 
 to mind the disreputable character of that man, and the still 
 more daring and hardened one of his companion, Thornton. I 
 remembered the reluctance of the deceased to accompany 
 them, and the well-grounded reason he assigned ; and, my sus- 
 picions amounting to certainty, I resolved rather to proceed to 
 Chester Park, and there give the alarm, than to run the unnec- 
 essary risk of interrupting the murderers in the very lair of 
 their retreat. And yet, thought I, as I turned slowly away, 
 how, if they were the villains, is the appearance of flight of the 
 disguised horseman to be accounted for? 
 
 Then flashed upon my recollection all that Tyrrell had said 
 of the dogged pursuit of that mysterious person and the cir- 
 cumstance of his having passed me upon the road so immedi- 
 ately after Tyrrell had quitted me. These .reflections (asso- 
 ciated with a name that I did not dare breathe even to myself, 
 although I could not suppress a suspicion which accounted at 
 once for the pursuit, and even for the deed) made me waver in, 
 and almost renounce, my former condemnation of Thornton 
 and his friend ; and by the time I reached the white gate and 
 dwarfish avenue which led to Dawson's house, I resolved, at all 
 events, to halt at the solitary mansion, and mark the effect my 
 information would cause. 
 
 A momentary fear for my own safety came across me, but 
 was as instantly dismissed ; for even supposing the friends were 
 guilty, still it would be no object to them to extend their re- 
 morseless villany to me ; and I knew that I could sufficiently 
 command my own thoughts to prevent any suspicion I might 
 form from mounting to my countenance, or discovering itself 
 in my manner. 
 
 There was a light in the upper story ; it burned still and 
 motionless. How holy seemed the tranquillity of life, con- 
 trasted with the forced and fearful silence of the death scene I 
 had just witnessed ! I rang twice at the door no one came 
 to answer my summons, but the light in the upper window 
 moved hurriedly to and fro. 
 
 "They are coming," said I to myself. No such thing the 
 casement above was opened I looked up, and discovered, to 
 my infinite comfort and delight, a blunderbuss protruded 
 eight inches out of the window in a direct line with my 
 head ; I receded close to the wall with no common precipi- 
 tation,
 
 264 PELHAM ; 
 
 " Get away, you rascal," said a gruff, but trembling, voice, 
 " or I'll blow your brains out." 
 
 " My good sir," I replied, still keeping my situation, " I come 
 on urgent business, either to Mr Thornton or Mr. Dawson ; 
 and you had better, therefore, if the delay is not very incon- 
 venient, defer the honor you offer me till I have delivered my 
 message." 
 
 "Master and 'Squire Thornton are not returned from New- 
 market, and we cannot let any one in till they come home," 
 replied the voice, in a tone somewhat mollified by my rational 
 remonstrance ; and while I was deliberating what rejoinder to 
 make, a rough, red head, like Liston's in a farce, poked itself 
 cautiously out under cover of the blunderbuss, and seemed to 
 reconnoitre my horse and myself. Presently another head, 
 but attired in the more civilized gear of a cap and flowers, 
 peeped over the first person's left shoulder ; the view appeared 
 to reassure them both. 
 
 "Sir," said the female, "my husband and Mr. Thornton are not 
 returned; and we have been so much alarmed of late by an attack 
 on the house that I cannot admit any one till their return." 
 
 " Madam," I replied, reverently doffing my hat, " I do not 
 like to alarm you by mentioning the information I should have 
 given to Mr. Dawson ; only oblige me by telling them, on their 
 return, to look beside the pool on the common ; they will then 
 do as best pleases them." 
 
 Upon this speech, which certainly was of no agreeable ten- 
 dency, the blunderbuss palpitated so violently that I thought 
 it highly imprudent to tarry any longer in so perilous a vicin- 
 ity ; accordingly, I made the best of my way out of the 
 avenue, and once more resumed my road to Chester Park. 
 
 I arrived there at length ; the gentlemen were still in the 
 dining-room. I sent out for Lord Chester, and communicated 
 the scene I had witnessed and the cause of my delay. 
 
 " What ! Brown Bob lamed ?"said he, " and Tyrrell poor 
 poor fellow, how shocking ! We must send instantly. Here, 
 John ! Tom ! Wilson ! " and his lordship shouted and rang the 
 bell in an indescribable agitation. 
 
 The under butler appeared, and Lord Chester began: " My 
 head groom Sir John Tyrrell is murdered violent sprain in 
 off leg send lights with Mr. Pelham poor gentleman an 
 express instantly to Dr. Physicon Mr. Pelham will tell you 
 all Brown Bob his throat cut from ear to ear what shall be 
 done? " and with this coherent and explanatory harangue, the 
 marquis sank down in his chair in a sort of hysteric,
 
 6R, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 265 
 
 The under butler looked at him in suspicious bewilderment. 
 " Come," said I, "I will explain what his lordship means"; 
 and, taking the man out of the room, I gave him, in brief, the 
 necessary particulars. I ordered a fresh horse for myself, and 
 four horsemen to accompany me. While these were preparing, 
 the news was rapidly spreading, and I was soon surrounded by 
 the whole house. Many of the gentlemen wished to accom- 
 pany me ; and Lord Chester, who had at last recovered from 
 his stupor, insisted upon heading the search. We set off, to 
 the number of fourteen, and soon arrived at Dawson's house : 
 the light in the upper room was still burning. We rang, and 
 after a brief pause, Thornton himself opened the door to us. 
 He looked pale and agitated. 
 
 "How shocking!" he said directly; "we are only just 
 returned from the spot." 
 
 "Accompany us, Mr. Thornton," said I sternly, and fixing 
 my eye upon him. 
 
 " Certainly," was his immediate answer, without testifying 
 any confusion ; " I will fetch my hat." He went into the 
 house for a moment. 
 
 " Do you suspect these people ? " whispered Lord Chester. 
 
 " Not suspect," said I, " but doubt." 
 
 We proceeded down the avenue : " \Vhere is Mr. Dawson ? " 
 said I to Thornton. 
 
 " Oh, within ! " answered Thornton. " Shall I fetch him ? " 
 
 " Do," was my brief reply. 
 
 Thornton was absent some minutes ; when he reappeared, 
 Dawson was following him. " Poor fellow," said he to me in 
 a low tone, " he was so shocked by the sight, that he is still all 
 in a panic ; besides, as you will see, he is half drunk still." 
 
 I made no answer, but looked narrowly at Dawson ; he was 
 evidently, as Thornton said, greatly intoxicated ; his eyes swam, 
 and his feet staggered as he approached us ; yet, through all 
 the natural effects of drunkenness, he seemed nervous and 
 frightened. This, however, might be the natural (and con- 
 sequently innocent) effect of the mere sight of an object so full 
 of horror ; and, accordingly, I laid little stress upon it. 
 
 We reached the fatal spot : the body seemed perfectly 
 unmoved. " Why," said I, apart to Thornton, while all the 
 rest were crowding fearfully round the corpse ; " Why did you 
 not take the body within ? " 
 
 " I was going to return here with our servant for that pur- 
 pose," answered the gambler ; " for poor Dawson was both too 
 drunk and too nervous to give me any assistance."
 
 266 1>ELHAM J 
 
 " And how came it," I rejoined, eyeing him searchingly, 
 " that you and your friend had not returned home when I 
 called there, although you had both long since passed me on 
 the road, and I had never overtaken you ? " 
 
 Thornton, without any hesitation, replied: " Because, during 
 the violence of the shower, we cut across the fields to an old 
 shed, which we recollected, and we remained there till the 
 rain had ceased." 
 
 "They are probably innocent," thought I; and I turned to 
 look once more at the body, which our companions had now 
 raised. There was upon the head a strong contusion, as if 
 inflicted by some blunt and heavy instrument. The fingers of 
 the right hand were deeply gashed, and one of them almost 
 dissevered : the unfortunate man had, in all probability, grasped 
 the sharp weapon from which his other wounds proceeded ; 
 there were one wide cut along the throat, and another in the 
 side ; either of them would have occasioned his death. 
 
 In loosening the clothes another wound was discovered, imt 
 apparently of a less fatal nature ; and in lifting the body the 
 broken blade of a long sharp instrument, like a case-knife, was 
 discovered. It was the opinion of the surgeon, who afterwards 
 examined the body, that the blade had been broken by coming 
 in contact with one of the rib bones ; and it was by this that 
 he accounted for the slightness of the last-mentioned wound. 
 I looked carefully among the fern and long grass, to see if I 
 could discover any other token of the murderer : Thornton 
 assisted me. At the distance of some feet from the body, I 
 thought I perceived something glitter. I hastened to the place, 
 and picked up a miniature. I was just going to cry out, when 
 Thornton whispered : " Hush ! I know the picture ; it is as I 
 suspected ! " 
 
 An icy thrill ran through my very heart. With a desperate 
 but trembling hand, I cleansed from the picture the blood, 
 in which, notwithstanding its distance from the corpse, the 
 greater part of it was bathed. I looked upon the features ; 
 they were those of a young and singularly beautiful female. I 
 recognized them not : I turned to the other side of the minia- 
 ture ; upon it were braided two locks of hair one was the 
 long, dark ringlet of a woman, the other was of a light auburn. 
 Beneath were four letters. I looked eagerly at them. " My 
 eyes are dim," said I in a low tone to Thornton, " I cannot 
 trace the initials." 
 
 "But /can," replied he, in the same whispered key, but with 
 a savage exultation, which made my heart stand still : " they
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 267 
 
 are G. D., R. G.; they are the initials of Gertrude Douglas and 
 Reginald Glanville." 
 
 I looked up at the speaker our eyes met I grasped his 
 hand vehemently. He understood me. " Put it up," said he ; 
 " we will keep the secret." All this, so long in the recital, 
 passed in the rapidity of a moment. 
 
 "Have you found anything there, Pelham?" shouted one of 
 our companions. 
 
 " No ! " cried I, thrusting the miniature in my bosom, and 
 turning unconcernedly away. 
 
 We carried the corpse to Dawson's house. The poor wife 
 was in fits. We heard her scream as we laid the body upon a 
 table in the parlor. 
 
 "What more can be done ?" said Lord Chester. 
 
 " Nothing," was the general answer. No excitement makes 
 people insensible to the chance of catching cold ! 
 
 " Let us go home, then, and send to the nearest magistrate," 
 exclaimed our host : and this proposal required no repetition. 
 
 On our way, Chester said to me, " That fellow Dawson looked 
 devilish uneasy don't you still suspect him and his friend ? " 
 
 " I do not " answered I emphatically. 
 
 CHAPTER LXVI. 
 
 " And now I'm in the world alone, 
 # * * * * 
 
 But why for others should I groan, 
 
 When none will sigh for me ? " BYRON. 
 
 THE whole country was in confusion at the news of the 
 murder. All the myrmidons of justice were employed in the 
 most active research for the murderers. Some few persons 
 were taken up on suspicion, but were as instantly discharged. 
 Thornton and Dawson underwent a long and rigorous exam- 
 ination ; but no single tittle of evidence against them appeared ; 
 they were consequently dismissed. The only suspicious cir- 
 cumstance against them was their delay on the road ; but the 
 cause given, the same as Thornton had at first assigned to me, 
 was probable and natural. The shed was indicated, and, as 
 if to confirm Thornton's account, a glove belonging to that 
 person was found there. To crown all, my own evidence, in 
 which I was constrained to mention the circumstance of the 
 muffled horseman having passed me on the road, and being 
 found by me on the spot itself, threw the whole weight of sus* 
 picion upon that man, whoever he might be.
 
 268 PELHAM J 
 
 All attempts, however, to discover him were in vain. It 
 was ascertained that a man, muffled in a cloak, was seen at 
 Newmarket, but not remarkably observed ; it was also dis- 
 covered that a person so habited had put up a gray horse to 
 bait in one of the inns at Newmarket ; but in the throng of 
 strangers neither the horse nor its owner had drawn down any 
 particular remark. 
 
 On further inquiry, testimony differed ; four or five men, in 
 cloaks, had left their horses at the stables ; one ostler changed 
 the color of the steed to brown, a second to black, a third 
 deposed that the gentleman was remarkably tall, and the 
 waiter swore solemnly he had given a glass of brandy and 
 water to an miked looking gentleman in a cloak, who was re- 
 markably short. In fine, no material point could be proved, 
 and though the officers were still employed in active search, 
 they could trace nothing that promised a speedy discovery. 
 
 As for myself, as soon as I decently could, I left Chester 
 Park, with a most satisfactory despatch in my pocket from its 
 possessor to Lord Dawton, and found myself once more on 
 the road to London. 
 
 Alas ! how different were my thoughts, how changed the 
 temper of my mind, since I had last travelled that road ! 
 Then I was full of hope, energy, ambition of interest for 
 Reginald Glanville of adoration for his sister ; and now, I 
 leaned back listless and dispirited, without a single feeling to 
 gladden the restless and feverish despair which, ever since 
 that night, had possessed me ! What was ambition henceforth 
 to me ? The most selfish amongst us must have some human 
 being to whom to refer, with whom to connect, to associate, to 
 treasure, the triumphs and gratifications of self. Where now 
 for my heart was such a being? My earliest friend, for whom 
 my esteem was the greater for his sorrows, my interest the 
 keener for his mystery, Reginald Glanville, was a murderer ! 
 A dastardly, a barbarous felon, whom the chance of an instant 
 might convict ! And she she, the only woman in the world 
 I had ever really loved who had ever pierced the thousand 
 folds of my ambitious and scheming heart she was the sister 
 of the assassin ! 
 
 Then came over my mind the savage and exulting eye of 
 Thornton, when it read the damning record of Glanville's 
 guilt ; and in spite of my horror at the crime of my former 
 friend, I trembled for his safety, nor was I satisfied with myself 
 at my prevarication as a witness. It is true that I had told the 
 truth, but I had concealed all the truth ; and my heart swelled
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 269 
 
 proudly and bitterly against the miniature which I still con- 
 cealed in my bosom. 
 
 To save a criminal, in whose safety I was selfishly concerned, 
 I felt that I had tampered with my honor, paltered with the 
 truth, and broken what justice, not over-harshly, deemed a per- 
 emptory and inviolable duty. 
 
 It was with a heightened pulse and a burning cheek that I 
 entered London ; before midnight I was in a high fever ; they 
 sent for the vultures of physic I was bled copiously I was 
 kept quiet in bed for six days ; at the end of that time my con- 
 stitution and youth restored me. I took up one of the news- 
 papers listlessly ; Glanville's name struck me ; I read the par- 
 agraph which contained it it was a high-flown and fustian 
 panegyric on his genius and promise. I turned to another col- 
 umn : it contained a long speech he had the night before made 
 in the House of Commons. 
 
 "Can such things be ?" thought I ; yea, and thereby hangs 
 a secret and an anomaly in the human heart. A man may 
 commit the greatest of crimes, and (if no other succeed to it) 
 it changes not the current of his being ; to all the world to 
 all intents for all objects he may be the same. He may 
 equally serve his country ; equally benefit his friends ; be gen- 
 erous ; brave ; benevolent, all that he was before. One crime, 
 however heinous, does not necessarily cause a revolution in the 
 system it is only the perpetual course of sins, vices, follies, 
 however insignificant they may seem, which alters the nature 
 and hardens the heart. 
 
 My mother was out of town when I returned there. They 
 had written to her during my illness, and while I was yet mus- 
 ing over the day's journal, a letter from her was put into my 
 hand. I transcribe it : 
 
 " My DEAREST HENRY : 
 
 "How dreadfully uneasy I am about you! Write to me directly. 
 I would come to town myself, but am staying with dear Lady 
 Dawton, who will not hear of my going ; and I cannot offend 
 her, for your sake. By the by, why have you not called upon 
 Lord Dawton ? but, I forgot, you have been ill. My dear, 
 dear child, I am wretched about you, and how pale your illness 
 will make you look ! just, too, as the best part of the season is 
 coming on. How unlucky ! Pray don't wear a black cravat 
 when you next call on Lady Roseville ; but choose a very fine 
 baptistc one it will make you look rather delicate than ill. 
 What physician do you have ? I hope, in God, that it is Sir
 
 270 PELHAKt J 
 
 Henry Halford. I shall be too miserable if it is not. I am 
 sure no one can conceive the anguish I suffer. Your father, 
 poor man, has been laid up with the gout for the last three 
 days. Keep up your spirits, my dearest child, and get some 
 light books to entertain you : but, pray, as soon as you are 
 well, do go to Lord Dawton's he is dying to see you ; but be 
 sure not to catch cold. How did you like Lady Chester? 
 Pray take the greatest care of yourself, and write to 
 
 " Your wretched and most affectionate mother, 
 
 "F. P. 
 
 " P. S. How dreadfully shocking about that poor Sir John 
 Tyrrell ! " 
 
 I tossed the letter from me. Heaven pardon me if the mis- 
 anthropy of my mood made me less grateful for the maternal 
 solicitude than I should otherwise have been. 
 
 I took up one of the numerous books with which my table 
 was covered ; it was a worldly work of one of the French rea- 
 soners ; it gave a new turn to my thoughts my mind reverted 
 to its former projects of ambition. Who does not know what 
 active citizens private misfortune make us ? The public is like 
 the pools of Bethesda we all hasten there, to plunge in and 
 rid ourselves of our afflictions. 
 
 I drew my portfolio to me, and wrote to Lord Dawton. 
 Three hours after I had sent the note he called upon me. I 
 gave him Lord Chester's letter, but he had already received 
 from that nobleman a notification of my success. He was 
 profuse in his compliments and thanks. 
 
 "And do you know," added the statesman, "that you have 
 quite made a conquest of Lord Guloseton ? He speaks of you 
 publicly in the highest terms : I wish we could get him and his 
 votes. We must be strengthened, my dear Pelham ; everything 
 depends on the crisis." 
 
 " Are you certain of the cabinet ? " I asked. 
 
 " Yes ; it is not yet publicly announced, but it is fully known 
 amongst us, who comes in and who stays out. I am to have 
 the place of ." 
 
 " I congratulate your lordship from my heart. What post 
 do you design for me ? " 
 
 Lord Dawton changed countenance. "Why really Pel- 
 ham, we have not yet filled up the lesser appointments ; but 
 you shall be well remembered well, my dear Pelham be sure 
 of it." 
 
 I looked at the noble speaker with a glance, which, I flatter
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 2ji 
 
 myself, is peculiar to me. Is, thought I, the embryo minister 
 playing upon me as upon one of his dependent tools ? Let him 
 beware ! The anger of the moment passed away. 
 
 " Lord Dawton," said I, "one word, and I have done discuss- 
 ing my claims for the present. Do you mean to place me in 
 Parliament as soon as you are in the cabinet ? What else you 
 intend for me, I question not." 
 
 " Yes, assuredly, Pelham. How can you doubt it ? " 
 
 " Enough ! And now read this letter from France." 
 ******* 
 
 Two days after my interview with Lord Dawton, as I was riding 
 leisurely through the Green Park, in no very bright and social 
 mood, one of the favored carriages, whose owners are permitted 
 to say, " Hie tier est nobis" overtook me. A sweet voice or- 
 dered the coachman to stop, and then addressed itself to me : 
 
 " What, the hero of Chester Park returned, without having 
 once narrated his adventures to me ? " 
 
 " Beautiful Lady Roseville," said I, " I plead guilty of neg- 
 ligence not treason. I forgot, it is true, to appear before you, 
 but I forget not the devotion of my duty now that I behold 
 you. Command, and I obey." 
 
 " See, Ellen," said Lady Roseville, turning to a bending and 
 blushing countenance beside her, which I then first perceived ; 
 "see what it is to be a knight-errant; even his language is 
 worthy of Amadis of Gaul but (again addressing me) your 
 adventures are really too shocking a subject to treat lightly. 
 We lay our serious orders on you to come to our castle this 
 night ; we shall be alone." 
 
 " Willingly shall I repair to your bower, fayre ladie ; but tell 
 me, I beseech you, how many persons are signified in the 
 word ' alone ' ?" 
 
 "Why," answered Lady Roseville, ""ive may have a few 
 people with us ; but I think, Ellen, we may promise our cheva- 
 lier that the number shall not exceed twelve." 
 
 I bowed and rode on. What worlds would I not have given 
 to have touched the hand of the Countess's companion, though 
 only for an instant. But and that fearful but chilled me, like 
 an icebolt. I put spurs to my horse, and dashed fiercely on- 
 wards. There was rather a high wind stirring, and I bent my 
 face from it, so as scarcely to see the course of my spirited and 
 impatient horse. 
 
 " What ho, sir ! what ho ! " cried a shrill voice ; " for 
 Heaven's sake, don't ride over me before dinner, whatever you 
 do after it ! "
 
 272 PELHAM ; 
 
 I pulled up. "Ah, Lord Guloseton ! how happy I am to 
 see you ; pray forgive my blindness, and my horse's stupidity." 
 
 " 'Tis an ill wind," answered the noble gourmand, " which 
 blows nobody good ; an excellent proverb, the veracity of 
 which is daily attested ; for, however unpleasant a keen wind 
 may be, there is no doubt of its being a marvellous whetter of 
 that greatest of Heaven's blessings an appetite. Little, how- 
 ever, did I expect, that besides blowing me a relish for my 
 saute de foie gras, it would also blow me one who might, prob- 
 ably, be a partaker of my enjoyment. Honor me with your 
 company at dinner to-day." 
 
 " What saloon will you dine in, my Lord Lucullus?" said I, 
 in allusion to the custom of the epicure, by whose name I 
 addressed him. 
 
 " The saloon of Diana," replied Guloseton ; " for she must 
 certainly have shot the fine buck of which Lord H. sent me 
 the haunch that we shall have to-day. It is the true old Mey- 
 nell breed. I ask you not to meet Mr. So-and-so, and Lord 
 What-d'ye-call-him : I ask you to meet a saute" de foie gras,z\\& 
 a haunch of venison." 
 
 " I will most certainly pay them my respects. Never did I 
 know before how far things were better company than persons. 
 Your lordship has taught me that great truth." 
 
 " God bless me ! " cried Guloseton, with an air of vexation, 
 "here comes the Duke of Stilton a horrid person, who told 
 me the other day, at my petit diner, when I apologized to him for 
 some strange error of my artiste's, by which common vinegar 
 had been substituted for Chili who told me what think you 
 he told me? You cannot guess, he told me, forsooth, that 
 he did not care what he ate ; and, for his part, he could make 
 a very good dinner off a beefsteak ! Why the deuce, then, did 
 he come and dine with me? Could he have said anything 
 more cutting? Imagine n?y indignation, when I looked round 
 my table and saw so many good things thrown away upon such 
 an idiot." 
 
 Scarcely was the last word out of the gourmand's mouth be- 
 fore the noble personage so designated joined us. It amused 
 me to see Guloseton's contempt (which he scarcely took the 
 pains to suppress) of a person whom all Europe honored, and 
 his evident weariness of a companion whose society every one 
 else would have coveted as the summum bonum of worldly dis- 
 tinction. As for me, feeling anything but social, I soon left 
 the ill-matched pair, and rode into the other park. 
 
 Just as I entered it I perceived, on a dull, yet cross-looking
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 273 
 
 pony, Mr. Wormwood, of bitter memory, Although we had 
 not met since our mutual sojourn at Sir Lionel Garrett's, and 
 were then upon very cool terms of acquaintance, he seemed 
 resolved to recognize and claim me. 
 
 " My dear sir," said he, with a ghastly smile, "I am rejoiced 
 once more to see you ; bless me, how pale you look ! I heard 
 you had been very ill. Pray, have you been yet to that man 
 who professes to cure consumption in the worst stages?" 
 
 "Yes," said I ; "he read me two or three letters of reference 
 from the patients he had cured. His last, he said, was a gen- 
 tleman very far gone a Mr. Wormwood." 
 
 " Oh, you are pleased to be facetious," said the cynic coldly ; 
 *' but pray do tell me about that horrid affair at Chester Park. 
 How disagreeable it must have been to you to be taken up on 
 suspicion of the murder! " 
 
 " Sir," said I haughtily, " what do you mean ? " 
 
 " Oh, you were not weren't you ? Well, I always thought it 
 unlikely ; but every one says so " 
 
 " My dear sir," I rejoined, " how long is it since you have 
 minded what everybody says ? If I were so foolish, I should 
 not be riding with you now ; but / have always said, in con- 
 tradiction to everybody, and even in spite of being universally 
 laughed at for my singular opinion, that you, my dear Mr. 
 Wormwood, were by no means silly, nor ignorant, nor insolent, 
 nor intrusive ; that you were, on the contrary, a very decent 
 author, and a very good sort of man ; and that you were so 
 benevolent, that you daily granted, to some one or other, the 
 greatest happiness in your power : it is a happiness I am now 
 about to enjoy, and it consists in wishing you l good-bye '/ " And 
 without waiting for Mr. Wormwood's answer, I gave the rein 
 to my horse, and was soon lost among the crowd, which had 
 now begun to assemble. 
 
 Hyde Park is a stupid place. The English of the fashiona- 
 ble world make business an enjoyment, and enjoyment a busi- 
 ness : they are born without a smile ; they rove about public 
 places like so many easterly winds cold, sharp, and cutting ; 
 or like a group of fogs on a frosty day, sent out of his hall by 
 Boreas, for the express purpose of looking black at one another. 
 When they ask you, " How you do," you would think they 
 were measuring the length of your coffin. They are ever, it 
 is true, laboring to be agreeable ; but they are like Sisyphus, 
 the stone they roll up the hill with so much toil runs down 
 again and hits you a thump on the legs. They are sometimes 
 polite t \r\\\. un'/ariably uncivil ; their warmth is always artificial
 
 274 PELHAM J 
 
 their cold never ; they are stiff without dignity, and cringing 
 without manners. They offer you an affront, and call it 
 "plain truth"; they wound your feelings, and tell you it is 
 manly " to speak their minds"; at the same time, while they 
 have neglected all the graces and charities of artifice, they 
 have adopted all its falsehood and deceit. While they profess 
 to abhor servility, they adulate the peerage ; while they tell 
 you they care not a rush for the minister, they move heaven 
 and earth for an invitation from the minister's wife. Then 
 their amusements ! the heat the dust the sameness the 
 slowness, of that odious park in the morning ; and the same 
 exquisite scene repeated in the evening, on the condensed 
 stage of a rout-room, where one has more heat, with less air, 
 and a narrower dungeon, with diminished possibility of escape ! 
 We wander about like the damned in the story of Vathek, and 
 we pass our lives, like the royal philosopher of Prussia, in 
 conjugating the verb, Je m* ennuis. 
 
 CHAPTER LXVII. 
 " In solo vivendi causa palato est." JUVENAL. 
 
 " They would talk of nothing but high life, and the high-lived com- 
 pany ; with other fashionable topics, such as pictures, taste, Shakspeare, 
 and the musical glasses." Vicar of Wakefield. 
 
 THE reflections which closed the last chapter will serve to 
 show that I was in no very amiable or convivial temper when I 
 drove to Lord Guloseton's dinner. However, in the world, it 
 matters little what may be our real mood, the mask hides the 
 bent brow and the writhing lip. 
 
 Guloseton was stretched on his sofa, gazing with upward eye 
 at the beautiful Venus which hung above his hearth. ''You are 
 welcome, Pelham ; I am worshipping my household divinity ! " 
 
 I prostrated myself on the opposite sofa, and made some 
 answer to the classical epicure, which made us both laugh 
 heartily. We then talked of pictures, painters, poets, the 
 ancients, and Dr. Henderson on Wines ; we gave ourselves up, 
 without restraint, to the enchanting fascination of the last- 
 named subject ; and, our mutual enthusiasm confirming our 
 cordiality, we went downstairs to our dinner as charmed with 
 each other as boon companions always should be. 
 
 " This is as it should be," said I, looking round at the well- 
 filled table, and the sparkling spirits immersed in the ice-pails ; 
 " a genuine friendly dinner. It is very rarely that I dare 
 entrust myself to such extempore hospitality miserutn est
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 275 
 
 aliend vivere quadrd ; a friendly dinner, a family meal, are 
 things from which I fly with undisguised aversion. It is very 
 hard that in England one cannot have a friend, on pain of 
 being shot or poisoned ; if you refuse his familiar invitations, 
 he thinks you mean to affront him, and says something rude, 
 for which you are forced to challenge him ; if you accept them 
 you perish beneath the weight of boiled mutton and turnips, 
 or " 
 
 " My dear friend," interrupted Guloseton, with his mouth 
 full, " it is very true ; but this is no time for talking ; let us eat." 
 
 I acknowledged the justice of the rebuke, and we did not 
 interchange another word beyond the exclamations of surprise, 
 pleasure, admiration, or dissatisfaction, called up by the objects 
 which engrossed our attention, till we found ourselves alone 
 with our dessert. 
 
 When I thought my host had imbibed a sufficient quantity 
 of wine, I once more renewed my attack. I had tried him 
 before upon that point of vanity which is centred in power, 
 and political consideration, but in vain ; I now bethought me 
 of another." 
 
 "How few persons there are," said I, "capable of giving 
 even a tolerable dinner how many capable of admiring one 
 worthy of estimation ! I could imagine no greater triumph for 
 the ambitious epicure than to see at his board the first and 
 most honored persons of the State, all lost in wonder at the 
 depth, the variety, the purity, the munificence of his taste ; all 
 forgetting, in the extorted respect which a gratified palate 
 never fails to produce, the more visionary schemes and projects 
 which usually occupy their thoughts : to find those whom all 
 England are soliciting for posts and power, become, in their 
 turn, eager and craving aspirants for places at his table ; to 
 know that all the grand movements of the ministerial body are 
 planned and agitated over the inspirations of his viands and the 
 excitement of his wine. From a haunch of venison, like the 
 one of which we have partaken to-day, what \ioble and sub- 
 stantial measures might arise ! From a saute" de foie, what 
 delicate subtleties of finesse might have their origin ! From a 
 ragout & la financierc, what godlike improvements in taxation ! 
 Oh, could such a lot be mine, I would envy neither Napoleon 
 
 for the goodness of his fortune, nor S for the grandeur of 
 
 his genius." 
 
 Guloseton laughed. " The ardor of your enthusiasm blinds 
 your philosophy, my dear Pelham ; like Montesquieu, the live- 
 liness of your fancy often makes you advance paradoxes which
 
 276 PELHAM J 
 
 the consideration of your judgment would afterwards condemn. 
 For instance, you must allow, that if one had all those fine 
 persons at one's table, one would be forced to talk more, and 
 consequently to eat less : moreover, you would either be ex- 
 cited by your triumph, oryou would not, that is indisputable ; 
 if you are not excited, you have the bore for nothing ; if you 
 are excited, you spoil your digestion : nothing is so detri- 
 mental to the stomach as the feverish inquietude of the pas- 
 sions. All philosophies recommend calm as the to kalon of 
 their code ; and you must perceive, that if, in the course you 
 advise, one has occasional opportunities of pride, one also has 
 those of mortification. Mortification ! terrible word ; how 
 many apoplexies have arisen from its source ! No, Pelham, 
 away with ambition ; fill your glass, and learn, at last, the se- 
 cret of real philosophy." 
 
 " Confound the man ! " was my mental anathema. " Long 
 life to the Solomon of saute"s" was my audible exclamation. 
 
 "There is something," resumed Guloseton, " in your coun- 
 tenance and manner, at once so frank, lively, and ingenuous, 
 that one is not only prepossessed in your favor, but desirous 
 of your friendship. I tell you, therefore, in confidence, that 
 nothing more amuses me than to see the courtship I receive 
 from each party. I laugh at all the unwise and passionate 
 contests in which others are engaged, and I would as soon 
 think of entering into the chivalry of Don Quixote, or attack- 
 ing the visionary enemies of the Bedlamite, as of taking part in 
 the fury of politicians. At present, looking afar off at their 
 delirium, I can ridicule it ; were I to engage in it, I should be 
 hurt by it. I have no wish to become the weeping, instead of 
 the laughing, philosopher. I sleep well now I have no desire 
 to sleep ill. I eat well why should I lose my appetite ? I 
 am undisturbed and unattacked in the enjoyments best suited 
 to my taste for what purpose should I be hurried into the 
 abuse of the journalists and the witticisms of the pamphleteers ? 
 I can ask those Avhom I like to my house why should I be 
 forced into asking those whom I do not like ? In fine, my 
 good Pelham, why should I sour my temper and shorten my 
 life, put my green old age into flannel and physic, and become, 
 from the happiest of sages, the most miserable of fools ? Am- 
 bition reminds me of what Bacon says of anger : ' It is like 
 rain, it breaks itself upon that which it falls on.' Pelham, my 
 boy, taste the Chateau Margdt." 
 
 However hurt my vanity might be in having so ill succeeded 
 in my object, I could not help smiling with satisfaction at my
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 277 
 
 entertainer's principles of wisdom. My diplomatic honor, 
 however, was concerned, and I resolved yet to gain him. If, 
 hereafter, I succeeded, it was by a very different method than I 
 had yet taken ; meanwhile I departed from the house of this 
 modern Apicius with a new insight into the great book of man- 
 kind, and a new conclusion from its pages : viz., that no virtue 
 can make so perfect a philosopher as the senses. There is no 
 content like that of the epicure ; no active code of morals so 
 difficult to conquer as the inertness of his indolence ; he is the 
 only being in the world for whom the present has a supremer 
 gratification than the future. 
 
 My cabriolet soon whirled me to Lady Roseville's door ; the 
 first person I saw in the drawing-room was Ellen. She lifted up 
 her eyes with that familiar sweetness with which they had long 
 since learnt to welcome me. " She is the sister of a murderer ! " 
 was the thought that curdled my blood, and I bowed distantly 
 and passed on. 
 
 I met Vincent. He seemed dispirited and dejected. He 
 already saw how ill his party had succeeded ; above all, he 
 was enraged at the idea of the person assigned by rumor to fill 
 the place he had intended for himself. This person was a sort 
 of rival to his lordship, a man of quaintness and quotation, 
 with as much learning as Vincent, equal wit, and but that 
 personage is still in office, and I will say no more, lest he 
 should think I flatter. 
 
 To our subject. It has probably been observed that Lord 
 Vincent had indulged less of late in that peculiar strain of 
 learned humor formerly his wont. The fact is, that he had 
 been playing another part : he wished to remove from his char- 
 acter that appearance of literary coxcombry with which he was 
 accused. He knew well how necessary, in the game of politics, 
 it is to appear no less a man of the world than of books ; 
 and though he was not averse to display his clerkship 
 and scholastic information, yet he endeavored to make 
 them seem rather valuable for their weight than curious 
 for their fashion. How few there are in the world who 
 retain, after a certain age, the character originally natural 
 to them ! We all get, as it were, a second skin ; the little 
 foibles, propensities, eccentricities, we first indulged through 
 affectation, conglomerate and encrust till the artificiality 
 grows into nature. 
 
 " Pelham," said Vincent, with a cold smile, "the day will 
 be yours ; the battle is not to the strong the Whigs will 
 triumph. l Fugerepudor,verumquc,fidesqite; in quorum subiere
 
 278 PELHAM J 
 
 locum fraudesque doliqtie insidiceque, et vis, et amor sceleratus 
 habendi.'" * 
 
 " A pretty modest quotation," said I. " You must allow, at 
 least, that the amor sceleratus habendi was also, in some moder- 
 ate degree, shared by \htpudor and fides which characterize your 
 party ; otherwise I am at a loss how to account for the tough 
 struggle against us we have lately had the honor of resisting." 
 
 " Never mind," replied Vincent, "I will not refute you. It 
 is not for us, the defeated, to argue with you, the victors. But 
 pray (continued Vincent, with a sneer which pleased me not) 
 pray, among this windfall of the Hesperian fruit, what nice 
 little apple will fail to your share?" 
 
 " My good Vincent, don't let us anticipate ; if any such 
 apple should come into my lap let it not be that of discord be- 
 tween us." 
 
 " Who talks of discord ?" asked Lady Roseville, joining us. 
 
 " Lord Vincent," said I, " fancies himself the celebrated 
 fruit, on which was written, detur pulchriori^ to be given to the 
 fairest. Suffer me, therefore, to make him a present to your 
 ladyship." 
 
 Vincent muttered something which, as I really liked and 
 esteemed him, I was resolved not to hear ; accordingly I turned 
 to another part of the room : there I found Lady Dawton. 
 She was a tall, handsome woman, as proud as a liberal's wife 
 ought to be. She received me with unusual graciousness, and 
 I sat myself beside her. Three dowagers, and an old beau of 
 the old school, were already sharing the conversation with the 
 haughty Countess. I found that the topic was society. 
 
 " No," said the old beau, who was entitled Mr. Clarendon, 
 " society is very different from what it was in my younger 
 days. You remember, Lady Paulet, those delightful parties at 
 D House ? Where shall we ever find anything like them ? 
 Such ease, such company even the mixture was so piquant ; 
 if one chanced to sit next a bourgeois he was sure to be dis- 
 tinguished for his wit or talent. People were not tolerated, as 
 now, merely for their riches." 
 
 " True," cried Lady Dawton, " it is the introduction of low 
 persons, without any single pretension, which spoils the society 
 of the present day ! " And the three dowagers sighed amen 
 to this remark. 
 
 "And yet,"* said I, " since I may safely say so here without 
 being suspected of a personality in the shape of a compliment, 
 
 * Shame, Truth, and Faith have flown ; in their stead creep in frauds, craft, snares, 
 force, and the rascally love of gain.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 279 
 
 don't you think, that without any such mixture we should be 
 very indifferent company ? Do we not find those dinners and 
 soirees the pleasantest where we see a minister next to a punster, 
 a poet to a prince, and a coxcomb like me next to a beauty 
 like Lady Dawton ? The more variety there is in the conver- 
 sation, the more agreeable it becomes ! " 
 
 " Very just," answered Mr. Clarendon ; " but it is precisely 
 because I wish for that variety that I dislike a miscellaneous 
 society. If one does not know the person beside whom one 
 has the happiness of sitting, what possible subject can one 
 broach with any prudence ? I put politics aside, because, 
 thanks to party spirit, we rarely meet those we are strongly 
 opposed to ; but if we sneer at the Methodists, our neighbor 
 may be a saint ; if we abuse a new book, he may have written 
 it ; if we observe that the tone of the piano-forte is bad, his 
 father may have made it ; if we complain of the uncertainty of 
 the commercial interest, his uncle may have been gazetted last 
 week. I name no exaggerated instances ; on the contrary, I 
 refer these general remarks to particular individuals, whom all 
 of us have probably met. Thus, you see, that a variety of 
 topics is proscribed in a mixed company, because some one or 
 other of them will be certain to offend." 
 
 Perceiving that we listened to him with attention, Mr. Claren- 
 don continued : " Nor is this more than a minor objection to 
 the great mixture prevalent amongst us : a more important 
 one may be found in the universal imitation it produces. The 
 influx of common persons being once permitted, certain sets 
 recede, as if were, from the contamination, and contract into 
 very diminished coteries. Living familiarly solely amongst 
 themselves, however they may be forced into visiting promis- 
 cuously, they imbibe certain manners, certain peculiarities in 
 mode and words, even in an accent or a pronunciation, which 
 are confined to themselves : and whatever differs from these 
 little eccentricities they are apt to condemn as vulgar and 
 suburban. Now, the fastidiousness of these sets making them 
 difficult of intimate access, even to many of their superiors in 
 actual rank, those very superiors, by a natural feeling in human 
 nature, of prizing what is rare, even if it is worthless, are the 
 first to solicit their acquaintance : and, as a sign that they enjoy 
 it, to imitate those peculiarities which are the especial hiero- 
 glyphics of this sacred few. The lower grades catch the con- 
 tagion, and imitate those they imagine most likely to know the 
 essentials of the mode ; and thus manners unnatural to all are 
 transmitted second-hand, third-hand, fourth-hand, till they are
 
 280 PELHAM ; 
 
 ultimately filtered into something worse than no manners at 
 all. Hence, you perceive all people timid, stiff, unnatural, and 
 ill at ease ; they are dressed up in a garb which does not fit 
 them, to which they have never been accustomed, and are as 
 little at home as the wild Indian in the boots and garments of 
 the more civilized European." 
 
 "And hence," said I, "springs that universal vulgarity of 
 idea, as well as manner, which pervades all society, for nothing 
 is so plebeian as imitation." 
 
 "A very evident truism ! " said Clarendon. "What I lament 
 most, is the injudicious method certain persons took to change 
 this order of things, and diminish the de'sagremens of the mix- 
 ture we speak of. I remember well, when Almack's was first 
 set up, the intention was to keep away the rich rdturiers from a 
 place the tone of which was also intended to be contrary to their 
 own. For this purpose the patronesses were instituted, the price 
 of admission made extremely low, and all ostentatious refresh- 
 ments discarded ; it was an admirable institution for the inter- 
 ests of the little oligarchy who ruled it, but it has only increased 
 the general imitation and vulgarity. Perhaps the records of 
 that institution contain things more disgraceful to the aristoc- 
 racy of England than the whole history of Europe can furnish. 
 And ho\v could the Messieurs et Mesdames Jourdains help fol- 
 lowing the servile and debasing example of Monseigneur le 
 Due et Pair ? " 
 
 " How strange it is," said one of the dowagers, " that of all 
 the novels on society with which we are annually inundated, 
 there is scarcely one which gives even a tolerable description 
 of it ! " 
 
 "'Not strange," said Clarendon, with a formal smile, "if your 
 ladyship will condescend to reflect. Most of the writers upon 
 our little great world have seen nothing of it ; at most, they 
 have been occasionally admitted into the routs of the B's and 
 C's of the second, or rather the third set. A very few are, it is 
 true, gentlemen ; but gentlemen, who are not writers, are as 
 bad as writers who are not gentlemen. In one work which, 
 since it is popular, I will not name, there is a stiffness and 
 stiltedness in the dialogue and descriptions perfectly ridicu- 
 lous. The author makes his countesses always talking of their 
 family, and his earls always quoting the peerage. There is as 
 much fuss about state, and dignity, and pride, as if the greatest 
 amongst us were not far too busy with the petty affairs of the 
 world to have time for such lofty vanities. There is only one 
 rule necessary for a clever writer who wishes to delineate the
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 281 
 
 beau monde. It is this : let him consider that ' dukes, and 
 lords, and noble princes,' eat. drink, talk, move, exactly the 
 same as any other class of civilized people ; nay, the very sub- 
 jects in conversation are, for the most part, the same in all sets, 
 only, perhaps, they are somewhat more familiarly and easily 
 treated with us than among the lower orders, who fancy rank 
 is distinguished by pomposity, and that state affairs are dis- 
 cussed with the solemnity of a tragedy ; that we are always my 
 lording and my ladying each other ; that we ridicule common- 
 ers, and curl our hair with Debrett's Peerage." 
 
 We all laughed at this speech, the truth of which we readily 
 acknowledged. 
 
 " Nothing," said Lady Dawton, " amuses me more than to 
 see the great distinction which novel-writers make between the 
 titled and the untitled ; they seem to be perfectly unaware that 
 a commoner of ancient family and large fortune is very often 
 of far more real rank and estimation, and even weight, in what 
 they are pleased to term fas/iivn, than many of the members of 
 the Upper House. And what amuses me as much, is the no 
 distinction they make between all people who have titles. 
 
 Lord A , the little baron, is exactly the same as Lord 
 
 Z , the great marquess, equally haughty and equally im- 
 portant." 
 
 " Mais, mon Dieu" said a little French count, who had just 
 joined us ; " how is it that you can expect to find a description 
 of society entertaining, when the society itself is so dull? The 
 closer the copy, the more tiresome it must be. Your manner, 
 pour vous amuser, consists in standing on a crowded staircase, 
 and complaining that you are terribly bored. L'on s'accoutume 
 difficilement a une vie qui se passe sur Vescalier" 
 
 " It is very true," said Clarendon ; " we cannot defend our- 
 selves. We are a very sensible, thinking, brave, sagacious, 
 generous, industrious, noble-minded people ; but it must be 
 confessed that we are terrible bores to ourselves and all the rest 
 of the world. Lady Paulet, if you are going so soon, honor me 
 by accepting my arm." 
 
 " You should say your hand" said the Frenchman. 
 
 " Pardon me," answered the gallant old beau ; " I say with 
 your brave countryman when he lost his legs in battle, and was 
 asked by a lady, like the one who now leans on me, whether 
 he would not sooner have lost his arms ? ' No, madam,' said 
 he (and this, Monsieur le Comte, is the answer I give to your 
 rebuke), ' I want my hands to guard my heart.'" 
 
 Finding our little knot was now broken up, I went into another
 
 282 PELHAM ; 
 
 part of the room, and joined Vincent, Lady Roseville, Ellen, and 
 one or two other persons who were assembled round a table 
 covered with books and prints. Ellen was sitting on one side 
 of Lady Roseville ; there was a vacant chair next her, but I 
 avoided it, and seated myself on the other side of Lady Rose- 
 ville. 
 
 " Pray, Miss Glanville," said Lord Vincent, taking up a thin 
 volume, "do you greatly admire the poems of this lady?" 
 
 "What, Mrs. Hemans ?" answered Ellen. "I am more en- 
 chanted with her poetry than I can express : if that is ' The 
 Forest Sanctuary ' which you have taken up, I am sure you 
 will bear me out in my admiration." 
 
 Vincent turned over the leaves with the quiet cynicism of 
 manner habitual to him ; but his countenance grew animated 
 after he had read two pages. " This is, indeed, beautiful," 
 said he, " really and genuinely beautiful. How singular that 
 such a work should not be more known ! I never met with 
 it before. But whose pencil marks are these ? " 
 
 " Mine, I believe," said Ellen modestly. 
 
 And Lady. RoseviDe turned the conversation upon Lord 
 Byron. 
 
 " I must confess, for my part," said Lord Edward Neville 
 (an author of some celebrity and more merit), " that I am ex- 
 ceedingly weary of those doleful ditties with which we have 
 been favored for so many years. No sooner had Lord Byron 
 declared himself unhappy, than every young gentleman with a 
 pale face and dark hair thought himself justified in frowning 
 in the glass and writing Odes to Despair. All persons who 
 could scribble two lines were sure to make them into rhymes 
 of ' blight ' and ' night.' Never was there so grand a penchant 
 for the triste." 
 
 "It would be interesting enough," observed Vincent, " to 
 trace the origin of this melancholy mania. People are wrong 
 to attribute it to poor Lord Byron it certainly came from 
 Germany ; perhaps Werter was the first hero of that school." 
 
 " There seems," said I, " an unaccountable prepossession 
 among all persons to imagine that whatever seems gloomy 
 must be profound, and whatever is cheerful must be shal- 
 low. They have put poor Philosophy into deep mourning, and 
 given her a coffin for a writing-desk, and a skull for an ink- 
 stand." 
 
 " Oh," cried Vincent, " I remember some lines so applicable 
 to your remark, that I must forthwith interrupt you, in order 
 to introduce them. Madame do Stael said, in one of her
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 283 
 
 works, that melancholy was a source of perfection. Listen 
 now to my author : 
 
 ' Une ffmrae nous dit, et nousprouve en effet, 
 Qu'avant quelques mille ans I'homme sera parfait, 
 Qu'il devra cet etat a la mttancolie. 
 On sail que la tristesse annonce le g^nie; 
 Nous avons deja fait des progres etonnans ; 
 Que de tristes ecrits que de tristes romans ! 
 Des plus noires horreurs nous sommes idolatres, 
 Et la melancolie a gagne nos theatres.' " * 
 
 " What ! " cried I, " are you so well acquainted with my 
 favorite book ? " 
 
 " Yours ! " exclaimed Vincent. " Gods, what a sympathy ; f 
 it is long been my most familiar acquaintance ; but 
 
 ' Tell us what hath chanced to-day, 
 That Caesar looks so sad ? ' " 
 
 My eye followed Vincent's to acertain the meaning of this 
 question, and rested upon Glanville, who had that moment 
 entered the room. I might have known that he was expected, 
 by Lady Roseville's abstraction, the restlessness with which 
 she started at times from her seat, and as instantly resumed 
 it ; and the fond expecting looks towards the door, every time 
 it shut or opened, which denote so strongly the absent and 
 dreaming heart of the woman who loves. 
 
 Glanville seemed paler than usual, and perhaps even sadder ; 
 but he was less distrait and abstracted ; no sooner did he see, 
 than he approached me, and extended his hand with great 
 cordiality. His hand ! thought I, and I could not bring my- 
 self to accept it ; I merely addressed him in the commonplace 
 salutation. He looked hard and inquisitively at me, and then 
 turned abruptly away. Lady Roseville had risen from her 
 chair her eyes followed him. He had thrown himself on a 
 settee near the window. She went up to him, and sat herself 
 by his side. I turned my face burned ; my heart beat I 
 was now next to Ellen Glanville ; she was looking down, 
 apparently employed with some engravings, but I thought her 
 hand trembled. 
 
 There was a pause. Vincent was talking with the other 
 
 * A women tells us, and in fact she proves, 
 That Man, though slowly, to perfection moves; 
 But to be perfect, fiist we must be sad ; 
 Genius, we know, is melancholy mad. 
 Already Time our startling progress hails ; 
 What cheerless essays ! What disastrous tales ! 
 Horror has grown the amusement of the age. 
 And Mirth despairing yawns, and (lies the stage, 
 t La Gastronomic, Poenie, par J. Berchoux.
 
 284 PELHAM ; 
 
 occupiers of the table : a woman, at such times, is always the 
 first to speak. " We have not seen you, Mr. Pelham," said 
 Ellen, " since your return to town." 
 
 " I have been very ill," I answered, and I felt my voice 
 falter. Ellen looked up anxiously at my face ; I could not 
 brook those large, deep, tender eyes, and it now became my 
 turn to occupy myself with the prints. 
 
 " You do look pale," she said, in a low voice. I did not 
 trust myself with a further remark dissimulator as I was to 
 others, I was like a guilty child before the woman I loved. 
 There was another pause ; at last Ellen said : " How do you 
 think my brother looks ? " 
 
 I started ; yes, he was her brother, and I was once more 
 myself at that thought. I answered so coldly, and almost 
 haughtily, that Ellen colored, and said with some dignity that 
 she should join Lady Roseville. I bowed slightly, and she 
 withdrew to the Countess. I seized my hat and departed, but 
 not utterly alone ; I had managed to secrete the book which 
 Ellen' s hand had marked : through many a bitter day and 
 sleepless night that book has been my only companion : I 
 have it before me now ; and it is open at a page which is yet 
 blistered with the traces of former tears ! 
 
 CHAPTER LXVIII. 
 
 "Our mistress is a little given to philosophy; what disputations shall 
 we have here by and by ? " GIL BLAS. 
 
 IT was now but seldom that I met Ellen, for I went little 
 into general society, and grew every day more engrossed in 
 political affairs. Sometimes, however, when, wearied of myself 
 and my graver occupations, I yielded to my mother's solicita- 
 tions, and went to one of the nightly haunts of the goddess 
 we term Pleasure, and the Greeks Moria, the game of dissipa- 
 tion (to use a Spanish proverb) shuffled us together. It was 
 then that I had the most difficult task of my life to learn and 
 to perform ; to check the lip, the eye, the soul ; to heap curb 
 on curb, upon the gushings of the heart, which daily and 
 hourly yearned to overflow ; and to feel, that while the mighty 
 and restless tides of passion were thus fettered and restrained, 
 all within was a parched and arid wilderness, that wasted itself, 
 for want of very moisture, away. Yet there was something 
 grateful in the sadness with which I watched her form in the 
 dance, or listened to her voice in the song ; and I felt soothed,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 285 
 
 and even happy, when my fancy flattered itself that her step 
 never now seemed so light as it was wont to be when in har- 
 mony with mine, nor the songs that pleased her most so gay as 
 those that were formerly her choice. 
 
 Distant and unobserved, I loved to feed my eyes upon her 
 pale and downcast cheek ; to note the abstraction that came 
 over her at moments, even when her glance seemed brightest, 
 and her lip most fluent ; and to know, that while a fearful 
 mystery might forever forbid the union of our hands, there was 
 an invisible, but electric, chain, which connected the sympa- 
 thies of our hearts. 
 
 Ah ! why is it, that the noblest of our passions should be 
 also the most selfish ? That while we would make all earthly 
 sacrifice for the one we love, we are perpetually demanding a 
 sacrifice in return ; that if we cannot have the rapture of 
 blessing, we find a consolation in the power to afflict ; and that 
 we acknowledge, while we reprobate, the maxim of the sage : 
 " L'on veiit faire tout le bonheur, ou, si cela ne se peut ainsi, tout le 
 malhtur de ce qu'on aime." * 
 
 The beauty of Ellen was not of that nature which rests 
 solely upon the freshness of youth, nor even the magic of 
 expression ; it was as faultless as it was dazzling ; no one 
 could deny its excess or its perfection ; her praises came con- 
 stantly to my ear into whatever society I went. Say what we 
 will of the power of love, it borrows greatly from opinion : 
 pride, above all things, sanctions and strengthens affection. 
 When all voices were united to panegyrize her beauty ; when 
 I knew, that the powers of her wit, the charms of her conver- 
 sation, the accurate judgment, united to the sparkling imagina- 
 tion, were even more remarkable characteristics of her mind, 
 than loveliness of her person, I could not but feel my ambition, 
 as well as my tenderness, excited : I dwelt with a double inten- 
 sity on my choice, and with a tenfold bitterness on the obstacle 
 which forbade me to indulge it. 
 
 Yet there was one circumstance, to which, in spite of all the 
 evidence against Reginald, my mind still fondly and eagerly 
 clung. In searching the pockets of the unfortunate Tyrrell 
 the money he had mentioned to me as being in his possession 
 could not be discovered. Had Glanville been the murderer, 
 at all events he could not have been the robber. It was true 
 that in the death scuffle, which in all probability took place, the 
 money might have fallen from the person of the deceased, either 
 
 * One wishf-s fo make all the happiness, or, if that is forbidden, all the unhappiness 
 of the being we love.
 
 286 PELHAM , 
 
 among the long grass which grew rankly and luxuriantly around, 
 or in the sullen and slimy pool, close to which the murder was 
 perpetrated ; it was also possible that Thornton, knowing that 
 the deceased had so large a sum about him, and not being 
 aware that the circumstance had been communicated to me or 
 any one else, might not have been able (when he and Dawson 
 first went to the spot) to resist so great a temptation. How- 
 ever, there was a slight crevice in this fact for a sunbeam of 
 hope to enter, and I was too sanguine, by habitual tempera- 
 ment and present passion, not to turn towards it from the gen- 
 eral darkness of my thoughts. 
 
 With Glanville I was often brought into immediate contact. 
 Both united in the same party, and engaged in concerting the 
 same measures, we frequently met in public, and sometimes 
 even alone. However, I was invariably cold and distant, and 
 Glanville confirmed rather than diminished my suspicions, by 
 making no commentary on my behavior, and imitating it in the 
 indifference of his own. Yet it was with a painful and aching 
 heart that I marked in his emaciated form and sunken cheek 
 the gradual but certain progress of disease and death ; and 
 while all England rang with the renown of the young, but almost 
 unrivalled, orator, and both parties united in anticipating the 
 certainty and brilliancy of his success, I felt how improbable 
 it was that, even if his crime escaped the unceasing vigilance 
 of justice, this living world would long possess any traces of 
 his genius but the remembrance of his name. There was some- 
 thing in his love of letters, his habits of luxury and expense, 
 the energy of his mind, the solitude, the darkness, the hauteur, 
 the reserve of his manners and life, which reminded me of the 
 German Wallenstein ; nor was he altogether without the super- 
 stition of that evil, but extraordinary, man. It is true that he 
 was not addicted to the romantic fables of astrology, but he 
 was an earnest, though secret, advocate of the world of spirits. 
 He did not utterly disbelieve the various stories of their return 
 to earth and their visits to the living ; and it would have been 
 astonishing to me, had I been a less diligent observer of human 
 inconsistencies, to mark a mind, otherwise so reasoning and 
 strong, in this respect so credulous and weak ; and to witness 
 its reception of a belief, not only so adverse to ordinary reflec- 
 tion, but so absolutely contradictory to the philosophy it pas- 
 sionately cultivated, and the principles it obstinately espoused. 
 
 One evening I, Vincent, and Clarendon, were alone at Lady 
 Roseville's, when Reginald and his sister entered. I rose to 
 depart ; the beautiful Countess would not suffer it ; and when
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 287 
 
 I looked at Ellen, and saw her blush at my glance, the weak- 
 ness of my heart conquered, and I remained. 
 
 Our conversation turned partly upon books, and principally 
 on the science du coeur et du monde y for Lady Roseville was un 
 peu philosophe, as well as more than un peu HMraire ; and her 
 house, like those of the Du Deffands and D'Epinays of the old 
 French regime, was one where serious subjects were cultivated, 
 as well as the lighter ones ; where it was the mode to treat no 
 less upon things than to scandalize persons j and where maxims 
 on men and reflections on manners were as much in their places, 
 as strictures on the opera and invitations to balls. 
 
 All who were now assembled were more or less suited to one 
 another ; all were people of the world, and yet occasional 
 students of the closet ; but all had a different method of ex- 
 pressing their learning or their observations. Clarendon was 
 dry, formal, shrewd, and possessed of the suspicious philoso- 
 phy common to men hackneyed in the world. Vincent 
 relieved his learning by the quotation or metaphor, or origin- 
 ality of some sort, with which it was expressed. Lady Rose- 
 ville seldom spoke much, but when she did, it was rather 
 with grace than solidity. She was naturally melancholy and 
 pensive, and her observations partook of the colorings of her 
 mind ; but she was also a dame de la cour, accustomed to con- 
 ceal, and her language was gay and trifling, while the senti- 
 ments it clothed were pensive and sad. 
 
 Ellen Glanville was an attentive listener, but a diffident 
 speaker. Though her knowledge was even masculine for its 
 variety and extent, she was averse from displaying it ; the 
 childish, the lively, the tender, were the outward traits of her 
 character ; the flowers were above, but the mine was beneath ; 
 one noted the beauty of the first, one seldom dreamt of the 
 value of the last. 
 
 Glanville's favorite method of expressing himself was terse 
 and sententious. He did not love the labor of detail ; he con- 
 veyed the knowledge of years in an axiom. Sometimes he 
 was fanciful, sometimes false ; but generally dark, melancholy, 
 and bitter. 
 
 As for me, I entered more into conversation at Lady Rose- 
 ville's than I usually do elsewhere ; being, according to my 
 favorite philosophy, gay on the serious, and serious on the 
 gay ; and, perhaps, this is a juster method of treating the 
 two than would be readily imagined ; for things which are 
 usually treated with importance are, for the most part, deserv- 
 ing of ridicule ; and those which we receive as trifes swell
 
 288 PELHAM ; 
 
 themselves into a consequence we little dreamt of before they 
 depart. 
 
 Vincent took up a volume ; it was Shelley's Posthumous 
 Poems. " How fine," said he, " some of these are ; but they 
 are fine fragments of an architecture in bad taste ; they are 
 imperfect in themselves, and faulty in the school they belonged 
 to ; yet, such as they are, the master-hand is evident upon 
 them. They are like the pictures of Paul Veronese, often 
 offending the eye, often irritating the judgment, but breathing 
 of something vast and lofty ; their very faults are majestic ; 
 this age, perhaps no other, will ever do them justice but the 
 disciples of future schools will make glorious pillage of their 
 remains. The writings of Shelley would furnish matter for a 
 hundred volumes : they are an admirable museum of ill- 
 arranged curiosities ; they are diamonds awkwardly set ; but 
 one of them, in the hands of a skilful jeweller, would be in- 
 estimable ; and the poet of the future will serve him as Mer- 
 cury did the tortoise in his own translation from Homer 
 make him 'sing sweetly when he's dead ! ' Their lyres will 
 be made out of his shell." 
 
 "If I judge rightly," said Clarendon, " his literary faults 
 were these : he was too learned in his poetry, and too poetical 
 in his learning. Learning is the bane of a poet. Imagine how 
 beautiful Petrarch would be without his platonic conceits ; 
 fancy the luxuriant imagination of Cowley, left to run wild 
 among the lofty objects of nature, not the minute peculiarities 
 of art. Even Milton, who made a more graceful and gorgeous 
 use of learning than, perhaps, any other poet, would have 
 been far more popular if he had been more familiar. 
 Poetry is for the multitude, erudition for the few. In 
 proportion as you mix them, erudition will gain in readers, 
 and poetry lose." 
 
 "True," said Glanville ; "and thus the poetical, among 
 philosophers, are the most popular of their time ; and the phil- 
 osophical among poets, the least popular of theirs." 
 
 " Take care," said Vincent, smiling, "that we are not misled 
 by the point of your deduction ; the remark is true, but with a 
 certain reservation, viz., that the philosophy which renders a 
 poet less popular must be the philosophy of learning, not of 
 wisdom. Wherever it consists in the knowledge of the plainer 
 springs of the heart, and not in abstruse inquiry into its meta- 
 physical and hidden subtleties, it necessarily increases the pop- 
 ularity of the poem ; because, instead of being limited to the 
 few, it comes home to every one. Thus, it is the philosophy
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 289 
 
 of Shakspeare which puts him into every one's hands and 
 hearts, while that of Lucretius, wonderful poet as he is, makes 
 us often throw down the book because it fatigues us with the 
 scholar. Philosophy, therefore, only sins in poetry, when, in 
 the severe garb of learning, it becomes 'harsh and crabbed,' 
 and not ' musical as is Apollo's lute.' " 
 
 "Alas ! " said I, "how much more difficult than of yore edu- 
 cation is become : formerly it had only one object to acquire 
 learning ; and now, we have not only to acquire it, but to 
 know what to do with it when we have ; nay, there are not a 
 few cases where the very perfection of learning will be to appear 
 ignorant." 
 
 " Perhaps," said Glanville, " the very perfection of wisdom 
 may consist in retaining actual ignorance. Where was there 
 ever the individual who, after consuming years, life, health, in the 
 pursuit of science, rested satisfied with its success, or rewarded 
 by its triumph ? Common-sense tells us that the best method 
 of employing life is to enjoy it. Common-sense tells us, also, 
 the ordinary means of this enjoyment : health, competence, 
 and the indulgence, but the moderate indulgence, of our pas- 
 sions. What have these to do with science?" 
 
 "I might tell you," replied Vincent, "that I myself have 
 been no idle nor inactive seeker after the hidden treasures of 
 mind ; and that, from my own experience, I could speak of 
 pleasure, pride, complacency, in the pursuit, that were no in- 
 considerable augmenters of my stock of enjoyment ; but I have 
 the candor to confess, also, that 1 have known disappointment, 
 mortification, despondency of mind, and infirmity of body, 
 that did more than balance the account. The fact is, in my 
 opinion, that the individual is a sufferer for his toils, but then 
 the mass is benefited by his success. It is we who reap, in 
 idle gratification, what the husbandman has sown in the bitter- 
 ness of labor. Genius did not save Milton from poverty and 
 blindness, nor Tasso from the madhouse, nor Galileo from the 
 Inquisition ; they were the sufferers, but posterity the gainers. 
 The literary empire reverses the political ; it is not the many 
 made for one, it is the one made for many. Wisdom and 
 Genius must have their martyrs as \vell as Religion, and with 
 the same results, viz., semen ecclesia est sanguis martyrorum. 
 And this reflection must console us for their misfortunes, for, 
 perhaps, it was sufficient to console them. In the midst of 
 the most affecting passage in the most wonderful work, per- 
 haps, ever produced, for the mixture of universal thought 
 with individual interest I mean the last two cantos of Childe
 
 2QO PELHAM ; 
 
 Harold the poet warms from himself at his hopes Of being 
 remembered 
 
 ' In his line 
 With his land's language.' 
 
 And who can read the noble and heart-speaking apology of 
 Algernon Sydney, without entering into his consolation no less 
 than his misfortunes? Speaking of the law being turned into a 
 snare instead of a protection, and instancing its uncertainty and 
 danger in the times of Richard the Second, he says : ' God only 
 knows what will be the issue of the like practices in these our 
 days ; perhaps he will in his mercy speedily visit his afflicted 
 people ; / die in the faith that he will do it, though I know not 
 the time or ways. 1 " 
 
 " I . love," said Clarendon, " the enthusiasm which places 
 comfort in so noble a source ; but is vanity, think you, a less 
 powerful agent than philanthropy? Is it not the desire of 
 shining before men that prompts us to whatever may effect it ? 
 And if it can create, can it not also support? I mean, that if 
 you allow that to shine, to dazzle, to enjoy praise, is no ordi- 
 nary incentive to the commencement of great works, the con- 
 viction of future success for this desire becomes no inconsider- 
 able reward. Grant, for instance, that this desire produced 
 the ' Paradise Lost,' and you will not deny that it might also 
 support the poet through his misfortunes Do you think that 
 he thought rather of the pleasure his work should afford to 
 posterity, than of the praises posterity should extend to his 
 work? Had not Cicero left us such frank confessions of him- 
 self, how patriotic, how philanthropise we should have esteemed 
 him ! Now we know both his motive and meed was vanity, 
 may we not extend the knowledge of human nature which we 
 have gained in this instance by applying it to others? For my 
 part, I should be loth to inquire how large a quantum of vanity 
 mingled with the haughty patriotism of Sydney, or the uncon- 
 quered soul of Cato." 
 
 Glanville bowed his head in approval. 
 
 "But," observed I ironically, " why be so uncharitable to 
 this poor and persecuted principle, since none of you deny the 
 good and great actions it effects ; why stigmatize vanity as a 
 vice, when it creates, or, at least, participates in, so many vir- 
 tues? I wonder the ancients did not erect the choicest of 
 their temples to its worship? As for me, I shall henceforth 
 only speak of it as the primum mobile of whatever we venerate 
 and admire, and shall think it the highest compliment I can 
 pay to a man, to tell him he is eminently vain ! "
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 29! 
 
 "I incline to your opinion," cried Vincent, laughing. " The 
 reason we dislike vanity in others is because it is perpetually 
 hurting our own. Of all passions (if for the moment I may call 
 it such) it is the most indiscreet ; it is forever blabbing out its 
 own secrets. If it would but keep its counsel, it would be as 
 graciously received in society as any other well-dressed and well- 
 bred intruder of quality. Its garrulity makes it despised. But 
 in truth it must be clear that vanity in itself is neither a vice 
 nor a virtue, any more than this knife, in itself, is dangerous or 
 useful ; the person who employs gives it its qualities : thus, 
 for instance, a great mind desires to shine, or is vain, in great 
 actions ; a frivolous one, in frivolities ; and so on through the 
 varieties of the human intellect. But I cannot agree with Mr. 
 Clarendon that my admiration of Algernon Sydney (Cato I 
 never did admire) would be at all lessened by the discovery 
 that his resistance to tyranny in a great measure originated in 
 vanity, or that the same vanity consoled him when he fell a 
 victim to that resistance ; for what does it prove but this, that, 
 among the various feelings of his soul, indignation at op- 
 pression (so common to all men), enthusiasm for liberty (so 
 predominant in him), the love of benefiting others, the noble 
 pride of being, in death, consistent with himself ; among all 
 these feelings, among a crowd of others equally honorable and 
 pure, there was also one, and perhaps no inconsiderable feel- 
 ing, of desire that his life and death should be hereafter ap- 
 preciated justly ? Contempt of fame is the contempt of virtue. 
 Never consider that vanity an offence which limits itself to 
 wishing for the praise of good men for good actions : ' Next 
 to our own esteem,' says the best of the Roman philosophers, 
 'it is a virtue to desire the esteem of others.' " 
 
 " By your emphasis on the word esteem" said Lady Rose- 
 ville, " I suppose you attach some particular importance to the 
 word ? " 
 
 " I do," answered Vincent. " I use it in contradistinction 
 to admiration. We may covet general admiration for a bad 
 action (for many bad actions have the clinquant which passes 
 for real gold), but one can expect general esteem only for a good 
 one." 
 
 " From this distinction," said Ellen modestly, " may we not 
 draw an inference, which will greatly help us in our considera- 
 tion of vanity ; may we not deem that vanity which desires 
 only the esteem of others to be invariably a virtue, and that 
 which only longs for admiration to be frequently a vice ? " 
 
 " We may admit your inference," said Vincent ; " and before
 
 2Q2 PELHAM ; 
 
 I leave this question, I cannot help remarking upon the folly 
 of the superficial, who imagine, by studying human motives, 
 that philosophers wish to depreciate human actions. To di- 
 rect our admiration to a proper point is surely not to destroy 
 it ; yet how angry inconsiderate enthusiasts are, when we assign 
 real, in the place of exaggerated, feelings. Thus the advocates 
 for the doctrine of utility the most benevolent, because the 
 most indulgent, of all philosophies are branded with the epi- 
 thets of selfish and interested ; decriers of moral excellence, 
 and disbelievers in generous actions. Vice has no friend like 
 the prejudices which call themselves virtue. Le pretexte ordi- 
 naire de cenx qui font le malheur des autres est qu'ils veulent leur 
 bien." * 
 
 My eyes were accidentally fixed on Glanville as Vincent 
 ceased ; he looked up, and colored faintly as he met my look ; 
 but he did not withdraw his own ; keenly and steadily we 
 gazed upon each other, till Ellen, turning round suddenly, re- 
 marked the unwonted meaning of our looks, and placed her 
 hand in her brother's, with a sort of fear. 
 
 It was late ; he rose to withdraw, and passing me, said in a 
 low tone, " A little while, and you shall know all." I made no 
 answer; he left the room with Ellen. 
 
 " Lady Roseville has had but a dull evening, I fear, with our 
 stupid saws and ancient instances," said Vincent. The eyes of 
 the person he addressed were fixed upon the door ; I was 
 standing close by her, and as the words struck her ear, she 
 turned abruptly ; a tear fell upon my hand she perceived it, 
 and though I would not look upon her /low, I saw that her very 
 neck blushed ; but she, like me, if she gave way to feeling, had 
 learned too deep a lesson from the world, not readily to resume 
 her self-command ; she answered Vincent railingly, upon his 
 bad compliment to us, and received our adieus with all her 
 customary grace, and more than her customary gayety. 
 
 CHAPTER LXIX. 
 
 " Ah ! Sir, had I but bestowed half the pains in learning a trade that I 
 have in learning to be a scoundrel, I might have been a rich man at this 
 day ; but, rogue as I am. still I may be your friend, and that, perhaps, 
 when you least expect it. " Vicar of Wake field. 
 
 WHAT with the anxiety and uncertainty of my political pros- 
 pects, the continued whirlpool in which I lived, and, above 
 
 * The ordinary pretext of those who malce the misery of others is, that they wish their 
 good.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 293 
 
 all, the unpropitious state of my belle passion, my health gave 
 way ; my appetite forsook me, my sleep failed me I lost my 
 good looks, and my mother declared that I should have no 
 chance with an heiress ; all these circumstances together were 
 not without their weight. So I set out one morning to Hamp- 
 ton Court, for the benefit of the country air. 
 
 It is by no means an unpleasant thing to turn one's back 
 upon the great city in the height of its festivities. Misanthropy 
 is a charming feeling for a short time, and one inhales the 
 country, and animadverts on the town, with the most melan- 
 choly satisfaction in the world. I sat myself down at a pretty 
 little cottage, a mile out of the town. From the window of 
 my drawing-room I revelled in the luxurious contemplation of 
 three pigs, one cow, and a straw yard ; and I could get to the 
 Thames in a walk of five minutes, by a short cut through a 
 lime-kiln. Such pleasing opportunities of enjoying the beauties 
 of nature are not often to be met with : you may be sure, there- 
 fore, that I made the most of them. I rose early, walked 
 before breakfast, for my health, and came back with a most 
 satisfactory headache for my pains. I read for just three hours, 
 walked for two more, thought over Abernethy, dyspepsia, and 
 blue pills, till dinner ; and absolutely forgot Lord Dawton, 
 ambition, Guloseton, epicurism ay, all but of course, reader, 
 you know whom I am about to except the ladye of my love. 
 
 One bright, laughing day I threw down my book an hour 
 sooner than usual, and sallied out with a lightness of foot and 
 exhilaration of spirit to which I had long been a stranger. I 
 had just sprung over a stile that led into one of those green 
 shady lanes which make us feel that the old poets who loved, 
 and lived for nature, were right in calling our island "the merry 
 England," when I was startled by a short, quick bark, on one 
 side of the hedge. I turned sharply round ; and, seated upon 
 the sward, was a man, apparently of the pedlar profession ; a 
 large deal box was lying open before him ; a few articles of 
 linen and female dress were scattered round, and the man him- 
 self appeared earnestly occupied in examining the deeper 
 recesses of his itinerant warehouse. A small black terrier flew 
 towards me with no friendly growl. " Down," said I: "all 
 strangers are not foes though the English generally think so." 
 
 The man hastily looked up ; perhaps he was struck with the 
 quaintness of my remonstrance to his canine companion ; for, 
 touching his hat civilly, he said : "The dog, sir, is very quiet; 
 he only means to give me the alarm by giving it to you ; for 
 dogs seem to have no despicable insight into human
 
 294 PELHAM ; 
 
 nature, and know well that the best of us may be taken by 
 surprise." 
 
 '' You are a moralist," said I, not a little astonished in my 
 turn by such an address from such a person. " I could not 
 have expected to stumble upon a philosopher so easily. Have 
 you any wares in your box likely to suit me ? If so, I should 
 like to purchase of so moralizing a vendor ! " 
 
 " No, sir," said the seeming pedlar, smiling, and yet at the 
 same time hurrying his goods into his box, and carefully turning 
 the key ; " No, sir, I am only a bearer of other men's goods ; 
 my morals are all that I can call my own, and those I will sell 
 you at your own price." 
 
 "You are candid, my friend." said I, "and your frankness, 
 alone, would be inestimable in this age of deceit, and country 
 of hypocrisy." 
 
 "Ah, sir!" said my new acquaintance, "I see already that 
 you are one of those persons who look to the dark side of 
 things ; for my part, I think the present age the best that ever 
 existed, and our own country the most virtuous in Europe." 
 
 " I congratulate you, Mr. Optimist, on your opinions," quoth 
 I ; " but your observation leads me to suppose that you are 
 both an historian and a traveller: am I right ?" 
 
 " Why," answered the box-bearer, "/ have dabbled a little 
 in books, and wandered not a little among men. I am just re- 
 turned from Germany, and am now going to my friends in 
 London. I am charged with this box of goods : Heaven send 
 me the luck to deliver it safe ! " 
 
 " Amen," said I; "and with that prayer and this trifle, I 
 wish you a good-morning." 
 
 " Thank you a thousand times, sir, for both," replied the 
 man ; " but do add to your favors by informing me of the right 
 road to the town of ." 
 
 " I am going in that direction myself ; if you choose to ac- 
 company me part of the way, I can assure your not missing the 
 rest." 
 
 "Your honor is too good !" returned he of the box, rising, 
 and slinging his fardel across him ; it is but seldom that a gentle- 
 man of your rank will condescend to walk three paces with one 
 of mine. You smile, sir ; perhaps you think I should not class 
 myself among gentlemen ; and yet I have as good a right to the 
 name as most of the set. I belong to no trade, I follow no 
 calling : I rove where I list, and rest where I please : in short, 
 I know no occupation but my indolence, and no law but my 
 will. Now, sir, may I not call myself a gentleman ?"
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 295 
 
 " Of a surety ! " quoth I. "You seem to me to hold a mid- 
 dle rank between a half-pay captain and the king of the 
 gypsies." 
 
 "You have hit it, sir," rejoined my companion, with a slight 
 laugh. He was now by my side, and as we walked on I had 
 leisure more minutely to examine him. He was a middle-sized, 
 and rather athletic man, apparently about the age of thirty- 
 eight. He was attired in a dark-blue frock coat, which was 
 neither shabby nor new, but ill-made, and much too large and 
 long for its present possessor ; beneath this was a faded velvet 
 waistcoat, that had formerly, like the Persian" ambassador's 
 tunic, "blushed with crimson and blazed with gold"; but 
 which might now have been advantageously exchanged in 
 Monmouth Street for the lawful sum of two shillings and nine- 
 pence ; under this was an inner vest of the cashmere shawl 
 pattern, which seemed much too new for the rest of the dress. 
 Though his shirt was of a very unwashed hue, I remarked with 
 some suspicion that it was of a very respectable fineness ; and 
 a pin, which might be paste, or could be diamond, peeped below 
 a tattered and dingy black kid stock, like a gypsy's eye beneath 
 her hair. 
 
 His trousers were of a light gray, and the justice of Provi- 
 dence, or of the tailor, avenged itself upon them, for the prodi- 
 gal length bestowed upon their ill-assorted companion, the coat; 
 for they were much too tight for the muscular limbs they con- 
 cealed, and, rising far above the ankle, exhibited the whole of 
 a thick Wellington boot, which was the very picture of Italy 
 upon the map. 
 
 The face of the man was commonplace and ordinary ; one 
 sees a hundred such every day in Fleet Street or on the 'Change ; 
 the features were small, irregular, and somewhat flat ; yet when 
 you looked twice upon the countenance, there was something 
 marked and singular in the expression, which fully atoned for 
 the commonness of the features. The right eye turned away 
 from the left, in that watchful squint which seems constructed 
 on the same considerate plan as those Irish guns, made for 
 shooting round a corner ; his eyebrows were large and shaggy, 
 and greatly resembled bramble bushes, in which his fox-like eyes 
 had taken refuge. Round these vulpine retreats was a labyrinth- 
 ean maze of those wrinkles, vulgarly called crow's-feet ; deep, in- 
 tricate, and intersected, they seemed for all the world like the 
 web of a Chancery suit. Singular enough, the rest of the coun- 
 tenance was perfectly smooth and unindented ; even the lines 
 from the nostril to the corners of the mouth, usually so deeply
 
 290 PELHAM; 
 
 traced in men of his age, were scarcely more apparent than in 
 a boy of eighteen. 
 
 His smile was frank, his voice clear and hearty, his address 
 open, and much superior to his apparent rank of life, claiming 
 somewhat of equality, yet conceding a great deal of respect ; 
 but, notwithstanding all these certainly favorable points, there 
 was a sly and cunning expression in his perverse and vigilant 
 eye, and all the wrinkled demesnes in its vicinity, that made 
 me distrust, even while I liked my companion ; perhaps, in- 
 deed, he was too frank, too familiar, too de'gage, to be quite 
 natural. Your honest men may soon buy reserve by experi- 
 ence. Rogues are communicative and open, because confidence 
 and openness cost them nothing. To finish the description of 
 my new acquaintance, I should observe that there was some- 
 thing in his countenance which struck me as not wholly unfa- 
 miliar ; it was one of those which we have not, in all human 
 probability, seen before, and yet, which (perhaps from their 
 very commonness) we imagine we have encountered a hundred 
 times. 
 
 We walked on briskly, notwithstanding the warmth of the 
 day ; in fact, the air was so pure, the grass so green, the laugh- 
 ing noonday so full of the hum, the motion, and the life of crea- 
 tion, that the feeling produced was rather that of freshness and 
 invigoration, than of languor and heat. 
 
 "We have a beautiful country, sir," said my hero of the box. 
 "It is like walking through a garden after the more sterile and 
 sullen features of the Continent. A pure mind, sir, loves the 
 country ; for my part, I am always disposed to burst out in 
 thanksgiving to Providence when I behold its works, and, like 
 the valleys in the psalm, I am ready to laugh and sing." 
 
 " An enthusiast," said I, " as well as a philosopher ! perhaps 
 (and I believed it likely), I have the honor of addressing a poet 
 also." 
 
 " Why, sir," replied the man, " I have made verses in my 
 life ; in short, there is little I have not done, for I was always 
 a lover of variety ; but, perhaps, your honor will let me return 
 the suspicion. Are you not a lover of the muse ?" 
 
 " I cannot say that I am," said I. " I value myself only on my 
 common-sense the very antipodes to genius, you know, ac- 
 cording to the orthodox belief." 
 
 "Common-sense ! " repeated my companion, with a singular 
 and meaning smile, and at winkle with his left eye. " Common- 
 sense ! Ah, that is not my forte, sir. You, I dare say, are one 
 of those gentlemen whom it is very difficult to take in, either
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 29? 
 
 passively or actively, by appearance, or in act ? For my part, 
 I have been a dupe all my life a child might cheat me ! I 
 am the most unsuspicious person in the world." 
 
 " Too candid by half," thought I. " The man is certainly 
 a rascal ; but what is that to me ? I shall never see him again " : 
 and, true to my love of never losing sight of an opportunity of 
 ascertaining individual character, I observed that I thought 
 such an acquaintance very valuable, especially if he were in 
 trade ; it was a pity, therefore, for my sake, that my companion 
 had informed me that he followed no calling. 
 
 " Why, sir," said he, "I am occasionally in employment ; my 
 nominal profession is that of a broker. I buy shawls and hand- 
 kerchiefs of poor countesses, and retail them to rich plebeians. 
 I fit up new-married couples with linen at a more moderate 
 rate than the shops, and procure the bridegroom his present of 
 jewels at forty per cent, less than the jewellers : nay, 1 am as 
 friendly to an intrigue as a marriage ; and when I cannot sell 
 my jewels, I will my good offices. A gentleman so handsome 
 as your honor may have an affair upon your hands : if so you 
 may rely upon my secrecy and zeal. In short, I am an inno- 
 cent, good-natured fellow, who does harm to no one for noth- 
 ing, and good to every one for something." 
 
 "I admire your code," quoth I, " and whenever I want a 
 mediator between Venus and myself, will employ you. Have 
 you always followed your present idle profession, or were you 
 brought up to any other ? " 
 
 " I was intended for a silversmith," answered my friend, 
 " but Providence willed it otherwise ; they taught me from 
 childhood to repeat the Lord's Prayer ; Heaven heard me, and 
 delivered me from temptation there is, indeed, something ter- 
 ribly seducing in the face of a silver spoon ! " 
 
 " Well," said I, "you are the honestest knave I ever met, and 
 one would trust you with one's purse for the ingenuousness 
 with which you own you would steal it. Pray, think you it is 
 probable that I have ever had the happiness to meet you be- 
 fore ? I cannot help fancying so ; yet as I have never been in 
 the watchhouse, or the Old Bailey, my reason tells me that I 
 must be mistaken." 
 
 " Not at all, sir," returned my worthy ; " I remember you well, 
 for I never saw a face like yours that I did not remember. I 
 I had the honor of sipping some British liquors in the same 
 room with yourself one evening ; you were then in company 
 with my friend, Mr. Gordon." 
 
 " Ha ! " said I, " I thank you for the hint. I now remember
 
 298 PELHAM ; 
 
 well, by the same token, he told me that you were the most in- 
 genious gentleman in England ; and that you had a happy pro- 
 pensity of mistaking other people's possessions for your own. 
 I congratulate myself upon so desirable an acquaintance." 
 
 My friend, who was indeed no other than Mr. Job Jonson, 
 smiled with his usual blandness, and made me a low bow of 
 acknowledgment before he resumed : 
 
 " No doubt, sir, Mr. Gordon informed you right. I flatter 
 myself few gentlemen understand better than myself the art of 
 appropriation ; though I say it who should not say it, I deserve 
 the reputation I have acquired. Sir, I have always had ill-fortune 
 to struggle against, and have always remedied it by two vir- 
 tues perseverance and ingenuity. To give you an idea of my 
 ill-fortune, know that I have been taken up twenty-three times 
 on suspicion ; of my perseverance, know that twenty-three 
 times I have been taken up justly ; and of my ingenuity, know 
 that I have been twenty-three times let off, because there was 
 not a tittle of legal evidence against me ! " 
 
 "I venerate your talents, Mr. Jonson," replied I, "if by the 
 name of Jonson it pleaseth you to be called, although, like the 
 heathen deities, I presume that you have many titles, whereof 
 some are more grateful to your ears than others." 
 
 "Nay," answered the man of two virtues, "I am never 
 ashamed of my name ; indeed, I have never done anything to 
 disgrace me. I have never indulged in low company, nor 
 profligate debauchery ; whatever I have executed by way ot 
 profession, has been done in a superior and artist-like manner ; 
 not in the rude, bungling fashion of other adventurers. More- 
 over, I have always had a taste for polite literature, and went 
 once as an apprentice to a publishing bookseller, for the sole 
 purpose of reading the new works before they came out. In 
 fine, I have never neglected any opportunity of improving my 
 mind ; and the worst that can be said against me is, that I have 
 remembered my catechism, and taken all possible pains 'to 
 learn and labor truly, to get my living, and do my duty in that 
 state of life to which it has pleased Providence to call me.' " 
 
 " I have often heard," answered I, " that there is honor among 
 thieves ; I am happy to learn from you that there is also re- 
 ligion : your baptismal sponsors must be proud of so diligent 
 a godson." 
 
 " They ought to be, sir," replied Mr. Jonson, " for I gave 
 them the first specimens of my address: the story is long, but 
 if you ever give me an opportunity, 1 will relate it." 
 
 "Thank you," said I ; "meanwhile I must wish you a good-
 
 Oft, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAtf. $$<) 
 
 morning; your road now lies to the right. I return you my 
 best thanks for your condescension in accompanying so undis- 
 tinguished an individual as myself." 
 
 "Oh, never mention it, your honor," rejoined Mr. Jonson. 
 "I am always too happy to walk with a gentleman of your 
 'common-sense.' Farewell, sir; may we meet again." 
 
 So saying, Mr. Jonson struck into his new road, and we 
 parted.* 
 
 I went home musing on my adventure, and delighted with 
 my adventurer. When I was about three paces from the door 
 of my home I was accosted, in a most pitiful tone, by a poor 
 old beggar, apparently in the last extreme of misery and dis- 
 ease. Notwithstanding my political economy, I was moved 
 into almsgiving by a spectacle so wretched. I put my hand 
 into my pocket, my purse was gone ; and, on searching the 
 other, lo my handkerchief, my pocket-book, and a gold 
 locket, which had belonged to Madame d'Anville, had van- 
 ished too. 
 
 One does not keep company with men of two virtues, and 
 receive compliments upon one's common-sense, for nothing ! 
 
 The beggar still continued to importune me. 
 
 " Give him some food and half a crown," said I to my land- 
 lady. Two hours afterwards, she came up to me: "Oh, sir, 
 my silver tea-pot that villain the beggar !" 
 
 A light flashed upon me : "Ah, Mr. Job Jonson ! Mr. Job 
 Jonson !" cried I, in an indescribable rage ; "out of my sight, 
 woman ! out of my sight ! " I stopped short ; my speech 
 failed me. Never tell me that shame is the companion of 
 guilt the sinful knave is never so ashamed of himself as is 
 the innocent fool who suffers by him. 
 
 CHAPTER LXX. 
 
 " Then must I plunge again into the crowd, 
 And follow all that peace disdains to seek." BYRON. 
 
 IN the quiet of my retreat I remained for eight days, during 
 which time I never looked once at a newspaper imagine how 
 great was my philosophy ! On the ninth I began to think it 
 high time for me to hear from Dawton ; and finding that I had 
 eaten two rolls for breakfast, and that certain untimely wrinkles 
 began to assume a more mitigated appearance, I bethought me 
 once more of the "Beauties of Babylon." 
 
 * If any one should think this sketch from nature exaggerated, I refer him to the " Me- 
 moirs of James Hardy Vaux."
 
 360 PELHAM j 
 
 While I was in this kindly mood towards the great city and 
 its inhabitants, my landlady put two letters in my hand one 
 was from my mother, the other from Guloseton. I opened the 
 latter first ; it ran thus : 
 
 " DEAR PELHAM : 
 
 "I was very sorry to hear you had left town and so unex- 
 pectedly too. I obtained your address at Mivart's, and hasten 
 to avail myself of it. Pray come to town immediately. I have 
 received some chevreuil as a present, and long for your opinion ; 
 it is too nice to keep: for all things nice were made but to 
 grow bad when nicest : as Moore, I believe, says of flowers, 
 substituting sweet and fleetest, for bad and nicest ; so, you see, 
 you must come without loss of time. 
 
 " But you, my friend how can you possibly have been 
 spending your time ? I was kept awake all last night by think- 
 ing what you could have for dinner. Fish is out of the 
 question in the country ; chickens die of the pip everywhere 
 but in London ; game is out of season ; it is impossible to send 
 to Giblett's for meat ; it is equally impossible to get it any- 
 where else ; and as for the only two natural productions of the 
 country, vegetables and eggs, I need no extraordinary penetra- 
 tion to be certain that your cook cannot transmute the latter 
 into an omelette aux hmtres, nor the former into legumes a la 
 crime. 
 
 "Thus you see, by a series of undeniable demonstrations, 
 you must absolutely be in a state of starvation. At this 
 thought the tears rush into my eyes : for Heaven's sake, for 
 my sake, for your own sake, but, above all, for the sake of the 
 chevreuil, hasten to London. I figure you to myself in the last 
 stage of atrophy airy as a trifle, thin as the ghost of a gray- 
 hound. 
 
 "I need say no more on the subject. I may rely on your 
 own discretion to procure me the immediate pleasure of your 
 company. Indeed, were I to dwell longer on your melancholy 
 situation, my feelings would overcome me. Mais revenons a 
 nos moutons (a most pertinent phrase, by the by oh ! the 
 French excel us in everything, from the paramount science of 
 cookery to the little art of conversation). 
 
 "You must tell me your candid, your unbiassed, your de- 
 liberate opinion of chevreuil. For my part, I should not wonder 
 at the mythology of the northern heathen nations, which places 
 hunting among the chief enjoyments of their heaven, were 
 (hevreuil the object of their chase; but nihil est omni parte
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 36! 
 
 beatum ; it wants fat, my dear Pelham, it wants fat : nor do I 
 see how to remedy this defect ; for were we by art to supply 
 the fat, we should deprive ourselves of t\\Q flavor bestowed by 
 nature ; and this, my dear Pelham, was always my great argu- 
 ment for liberty. Cooped, chained, and confined in cities, and 
 slavery, all things lose the fresh and generous tastes which it is 
 the peculiar blessing of freedom and the country to afford. 
 
 " Tell me, my friend, what has been the late subject of your 
 reflections? Afy thoughts have dwelt much and seriously on 
 the 'terra incognita,' the undiscovered tracts in the pays 
 culinaire, which the profoundest investigators have left un- 
 touched and unexplored in veal. But more of this hereafter ; 
 the lightness of a letter is ill suited to the depths of philosophi- 
 cal research. 
 
 " Lord Dawton sounded me upon my votes yesterday. ' A 
 thousand pities, too,' said he, ' that you never speak in the 
 House of Lords.' ' Orator fit,' said I ; ' orators are siibject to 
 apoplexy.' " 
 
 " Adieu, my dear friend, for friend you are, if the philospher 
 was right in defining true friendship to consist in liking and 
 disliking the same things. You hate parsnips au naturel so 
 do I ; you love pales de foie gras, et moi aussi nous voila done 
 tes meilleurs amis du monde ! "GULOSETON." 
 
 So much for my friend, thought I ; and now for my 
 mother opening the maternal'epistle, which I herewith trans- 
 cribe : 
 
 " MY DEAR HENRY : 
 
 " Lose no time in coming to town. Every day the ministers 
 are filling up the minor places, and it requires a great stretch 
 of recollection in a politician to remember the absent. Mr. 
 
 V said yesterday, at a dinner party where I was present, 
 
 that Lord Dawton had promised him the Borough of . 
 
 Now you know, my dear Henry, that was the very borough he 
 promised to you ; you must see further into this. Lord Daw- 
 ton is a good sort of man enough, but refused once to fight a 
 duel ; therefore, if he has disregarded his honor in one 
 instance, he may do so in another ; at all events, you have no 
 time to lose. 
 
 " The young Duke of gives a ball to-morrow evening ; 
 
 Mrs. pays all the expenses, and I know for a certainty 
 
 that she will marry him in a week ; this as yet is a secret. 
 There will be a great mixture, but the ball will be worth going 
 to. I have a card for you.
 
 $0% f> ELttAM } 
 
 " Lady Huffemall and I think that we shall not patronize the 
 future duchess ; but have not yet made up our minds. Lady 
 Roseville, however, speaks of the intended match with great 
 respect, and says that since we a&rmt convenance as the chief rule 
 in matrimony, she never remembers an instance in which it has 
 been more consulted. 
 
 " There are to be several promotions in the peerage. Lord 
 
 's friends wish to give out that he will have a dukedom ; 
 mat's fen doute. However, he has well deserved it ; for he not 
 only gives the best dinners in town, but the best account of 
 them in the Morning Post afterwards ; which I think is very 
 properly upholding the dignity of our order. 
 
 " I hope most earnestly that you do not (in your country re- 
 treat) neglect your health ; nor, I may add, your mind ; and 
 that you take an opportunity every other day of practising 
 waltzing, which you can very well do with the help of an arm- 
 chair. I would send you down (did I not expect you here so 
 
 soon) Lord Mount E 's ' Musical Reminiscences '; not only 
 
 because it is a very entertaining book, but because I wish you 
 to pay much greater attention to music than you seem inclined 
 
 to do. , who is never very refined in his bons mots, says 
 
 that Lord M. seems to have considered the world a concert, in 
 which the best performer plays first fiddle. It is, indeed, quite 
 delightful to see the veneration our musical friend has for the 
 orchestra and its occupants. . I wish to Heaven, my dear 
 Henry, he could instil into you a little of his ardor. I am 
 quite mortified at times by your ignorance of tunes and operas : 
 nothing tells better in conversation than a knowledge of music, 
 as you will one day or other discover. 
 
 "God bless you, my dearest Henry. Fully expecting you, 
 I have sent to engage your former rooms at Mivart's ; do not 
 let me be disappointed. Yours, etc., F. P." 
 
 I read the above letter twice over, and felt my cheek glow 
 and my heart swell as I passed the passage relative to Lord 
 Dawton and the borough. The new minister had certainly, for 
 some weeks since, been playing a double part with me ; it 
 would long ago have been easy to procure me a subordinate 
 situation still easier to place me in Parliament ; yet he had 
 contented himself with doubtful promises and idle civilities. 
 What, however, seemed to me most unaccountable was, his 
 motive in breaking or paltering with his engagement ; he knew 
 that I had served him and his party better than half his corps ; 
 he professed, not only to me, but to society, the highest opinion
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 303 
 
 
 
 of my abilities, knowledge, and application : he saw, conse- 
 quently, how serviceable I could be as a friend ; and, from the 
 same qualities, joined to the rank of my birth and connections, 
 and the high and resentful temper of my mind, he might readily 
 augur that I could be equally influential as a foe. 
 
 With this reflection I stilled the beating of my heart, and the 
 fever of my pulse. I crushed the obnoxious letter in my hand, 
 walked thrice up and down the room, paused at the bell, rang 
 it violently, ordered post horses instantly, and in less than an 
 hour was on the road to London. 
 
 How different is the human mind, according to the difference 
 of place ! In our passions, as in our creeds, we are the mere 
 dependents of geographical situation. Nay, the trifling varia- 
 tion of a single mile will revolutionize the whole tides and tor- 
 rents of our hearts. The man who is meek, generous, benev- 
 olent, and kind, in the country, enters the scene of contest, 
 and becomes forthwith fiery or mean, selfish or stern, just as if 
 the virtues were only for solitude, and the vices for the city. 
 I have ill expressed the above reflection ; riimporte so much 
 the better shall I explain my feelings at the time I speak of, 
 for I was then too eager and engrossed to attend to the nice- 
 ties of words. On my arrival at Mivart's I scarcely allowed 
 myself time to change my dress before I set out to Lord Daw- 
 ton. He shall afford me an explanation, I thought, or a rec- 
 ompense, or a revenge. I knocked at the door the minister 
 was out. " Give him this card," said I to the porter, " and say 
 I shall call to-morrow at three." 
 
 I walked to Brookes's ; there I met Mr. V . My ac- 
 quaintance with him was small ; but he was a man of talent, 
 and, what was more to my purpose, of open manners. I went 
 up to him, and we entered into conversation. " Is it true," 
 said I, " that I am to congratulate you upon the certainty of 
 your return for Lord Dawton's borough of ? " 
 
 " I believe so," replied V . " Lord Dawton engaged it 
 
 to me last week, and Mr. H , the present member, has ac- 
 cepted the Chiltern Hundreds. You know all our family sup- 
 port Lord Dawton warmly in the present crisis, and my return 
 for this borough was materially insisted upon. Such things are, 
 you see, Mr. Pelham, even in these virtuous days of parlia- 
 mentary purity." 
 
 " True," said I, dissembling my chagrin, " yourself and Daw- 
 ton have made an admirable exchange. Think you the minis- 
 try can be said to be fairly seated ? " 
 
 " By no means ; everything depends upon the motion of ,
 
 3C-4 
 
 brought on next week. Dawton looks to that as to the decisire 
 battle for this session." 
 
 Lord Garvelton now joined us, and I sauntered away with the 
 utmost (seeming) indifference. At the top of St. James's Street 
 Lady Roseville's well-known carriage passed me ; she stopped 
 for a moment. "We shall meet at the Duke of 's to- 
 night," said she, "shall we not?" 
 
 " If you go certainly," I replied. 
 
 I went home to my solitary apartment ; and if I suffered 
 somewhat of the torments of baffled hope and foiled ambition, 
 the pang is not for the spectator. My lighter moments are for 
 the world my deeper for myself, and, like the Spartan boy, I 
 would keep, even in the pangs of death, a mantle over the teeth 
 and fangs which were fastening upon my breast. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXI. 
 " Nocet empta dolore voluptas." OVID. 
 
 THE first person I saw at the Duke of 's was Mr. 
 
 Mivart he officiated as gentleman usher: the second was my 
 mother she was, as usual, surrounded by men, " the shades 
 of heroes that have been," remnants of a former day, when the 
 feet of the young and fair Lady Frances were as light as her 
 head, and she might have rivalled, in the science de la danse, 
 
 even the graceful Duchess of B -d. Over the dandies of 
 
 her own time she still preserved her ancient empire ; and it 
 was amusing enough to hear the address of the ci-devant jeunes 
 hommes, who continued, through habit, the compliments begun 
 thirty years since through admiration. 
 
 My mother was, indeed, what the world calls a very charm- 
 ing, agreeable woman. Few persons were more popular in 
 society : her manners were perfection, her smile enchantment : 
 she lived, moved, breathed, only for the world, and the world 
 was not ungrateful for the constancy of her devotion. Yet, if 
 her letters have given my readers any idea of her character, 
 they will perceive that the very desire of supremacy in ton gave 
 (Heaven forgive my filial impiety !) a sort of demi-vulgarism 
 to her ideas ; for they who live wholly for the opinion of others 
 always want that self-dignity which alone confers a high cast 
 upon the sentiments ; and the most really unexceptionable in 
 mode are frequently the least genuinely patrician in mind. 
 
 I joined the maternal party, and Lady Frances soon took an 
 opportunity of whispering : " You are looking very well, and 
 very handsome ; I declare you are not unlike me, especially
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 305 
 
 about the eyes. I have just heard that Miss Glanville will be 
 a great heiress, for poor Sir Reginald cannot live much longer. 
 She is here to-night ; pray do not lose the opportunity." 
 
 My cheek burned like fire at this speech, and my mother, 
 quietly observing that I had a beautiful color, and ought there- 
 fore immediately to find out Miss Glanville, lest it should van- 
 ish by tiie least delay, turned from me to speak of a public 
 breakfast about shortly to be given. I passed into the danc- 
 ing-room ; there I found Vincent ; he was in unusually good 
 spirits. 
 
 " Well," said he, with a sneer, "you have not taken your seat 
 yet. I suppose Lord Dawton's representative, whose place 
 you are to supply, is like Theseus ; sedet in izternumque sedebit. 
 A thousand pities you can't come in before next week; we 
 shall then have fiery motions in the Lower House, as the astrol- 
 ogers say." 
 
 I smiled. " Ah, mon cher!" said I, " Sparta hath many a 
 worthier son than me ! Meanwhile, how get on the noble Lords 
 Lesborough and Lincoln? 'Sure such a pair were never seen, 
 so justly formed to meet by nature ! ' ' 
 
 " Pooh ! " said Vincent coarsely, " they shall get on well 
 enough, before you get in. Look to yourself, and remember 
 that 'Caesar plays the ingrate.' " 
 
 Vincent turned away ; my eyes were riveted on the ground ; 
 
 the beautiful Lady passed by me : " What, you in a 
 
 revery ? " said she, laughing ; "our very host will turn thought- 
 ful next ! " 
 
 " Nay," said I, " in your absence would you have me glad ? 
 However, if Moore's mythology be true, Beauty loves Folly the 
 better for borrowing something from Reason ; but, come, this is a 
 place not for the grave, but the giddy. Let us join the waltzers." 
 
 " I am engaged." 
 
 " I know it ! Do you think I would dance with any woman 
 who was not engaged ? There would be no triumph to one's 
 vanity in that case. Allons, you must prefer me to an engage- 
 ment"; and so saying, I led off my prize. 
 
 Her intended partner was Mr. V ; just as we had joined 
 
 the dancer* he spied us out, and approached with his long, se- 
 rious, respectful face ; the music struck up, and the next mo- 
 ment poor V was very nearly down. Fraught with the most 
 
 political spite, I whirled up against him ; apologized with my 
 blandest smile, and left him him wiping his mouth, and rub- 
 bing his shoulder, the most forlorn picture of Hope in adver- 
 sity that can possibly be conceived,
 
 306 PELHAM ; 
 
 I soon grew weary of my partner, and leaving her to fate, 
 rambled into another room. There, seated alone, was Lady 
 Roseville. I placed myself beside her ; there was a sort of 
 freemasonry between her and myself ; each knew something 
 more of the other than the world did, and read his or her heart 
 by other signs than words. I soon saw that she was in no 
 mirthful mood ; so much the better she was the fitter com- 
 panion for a baffled aspirant like me. 
 
 The room we were in was almost deserted, and finding our- 
 selves uninterrupted, the stream of our conversation flowed 
 into sentiment. 
 
 "How little," said Lady Roseville, "can the crowd know of 
 the individuals who compose it ! As the most opposite colors 
 may be blended into one, and so lose their individual hues, and 
 be classed under a single name, so every one here will go home, 
 and speak of the ''gay scene ' without thinking for a moment 
 how many breaking hearts may have composed it." 
 
 " I have often thought," said I, " how harsh we are in our 
 judgments of others how often we accuse those persons of 
 being worldly, who merely seem so to the world. Who, for 
 instance, that saw you in your brightest moments would ever 
 suppose that you could make the confession you have just 
 made ? " 
 
 " I would not make such a confession to many beside your- 
 self," answered Lady Roseville. " Nay, you need not thank 
 me. I am some years older than you ; I have lived longer in 
 the world ; I have seen much of its various characters ; and my 
 experience has taught me to penetrate and prize a character like 
 yours. While you seem frivolous to the superficial, I know 
 you to have a mind not only capable of the most solid and 
 important affairs, but habituated by reflection to consider them. 
 You appear effeminate, I know that none are more daring ; in- 
 dolent, none are more actively ambitious ; utterly selfish, and 
 I know that no earthly interest could bribe you into meanness 
 or injustice no, nor even into a venial dereliction of principle. 
 It is from this estimate of your character that 1 am frank and 
 open to you. Besides, I recognize something in the careful 
 pride with which you conceal your higher and deeper feelings, 
 resembling the strongest actuating principle in my own mind. 
 All this interests me warmly in your fate ; may it be as bright 
 as my presentiments forebode ! " 
 
 I looked into the beautiful face of the speaker as she con- 
 cluded ; perhaps, at that solitary moment, my heart was un- 
 faithful to Ellen, but the infidelity passed away like the breath
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 307 
 
 from the mirror. Coxcomb as I was, I knew well how passion- 
 less was the interest expressed for me. Rover as I had been, 
 I knew, also, how pure may be the friendship of a woman, 
 provided she loves another ! 
 
 I thanked Lady Roseville warmly for her opinion. " Per- 
 haps," I added, " dared I solicit your advice, you would not 
 find me wholly undeserving of your esteem." 
 
 " My advice," answered Lady Roseville, " would be, indeed, 
 worse than useless, were it not regulated by a certain knowledge 
 which, perhaps, you do not possess. You seem surprised. Eh 
 bien ; listen to me are you not in no small degree ///with Lord 
 Dawton ? Do you not expect something from him worthy of 
 your rank and merit ? " 
 
 " You do, indeed, surprise me," said I. " However close 
 my connection with Lord Dawton may be, I thought it much 
 more secret than it appears to be. However, I own that I have 
 a right to expect from Lord Dawton, not, perhaps, a recom- 
 pense of service, but, at least, a fulfillment of promises. In 
 this expectation I begin to believe I shall be deceived." 
 
 " You will ! " answered Lady Roseville. " Bend your head 
 lower the walls have ears. You have a friend, an unwearied 
 and earnest friend, with those now in power ; directly he heard 
 
 that Mr. V was promised the borough which he knew had 
 
 been long engaged to you, he went straight to Lord Dawton. 
 He found him with Lord Clandonald ; however, he opened the 
 matter immediately. He spoke with great warmth of your 
 claims he did more he incorporated them with his own, 
 which are of no mean order, and asked no other recompense 
 for himself than the fulfillment of a long-made promise to yo*. 
 Dawton was greatly confused, and Lord Clandonald replied, for 
 him, that certainly there was no denying your talents ; that 
 they were very great ; that you had, unquestionably, been of 
 much service to their party, and that, consequently, it must be 
 politic to attach you to their interests ; but that there was a 
 certain fierte", and assumption, and he might say (mark the 
 climax) independence about you, which could not but be highly 
 displeasing in one so young ; moreover, that it was impossible 
 to trust to you ; that you pledged yourself to no party ; that 
 you spoke only of conditions and terms ; that you treated the 
 proposal of placing you in Parliament rather as a matter of 
 favor on your part than on Lord Dawton's ; and, in a word, 
 that there was no relying upon you. Lord Dawton then took 
 
 courage, and chimed in with a long panegyric on V , and a 
 
 long account of what was due to him, and to the zeal of his
 
 308 PELHAM ; 
 
 family : adding that, in a crisis like this, it was absolutely nec- 
 essary to engage a certain rather than a doubtful and unde- 
 cided support ; that, for his part, if he placed you in Parlia- 
 ment, he thought you quite as likely to prove a foe as a friend ; 
 that, owing to the marriage of your uncle, your expectations 
 were by no means commensurate with your presumption, and 
 that the same talents which made your claims to favor as an 
 ally, created also no small danger in placing you in any situa- 
 tion where you could become hurtful as an enemy. All this, 
 and much more to the same purpose, was strenuously insisted 
 upon by the worthy pair ; and your friend was obliged to take 
 his leave, perfectly convinced that, unless you assumed a more 
 complaisant bearing, or gave a more decided pledge, to the 
 new minister, it was hopeless for you to expect anything from 
 him, at least, for the present. The fact is, he stands too much 
 in awe of you, and would rather keep you out of the House 
 than contribute an iota towards obtaining you a seat. Upon 
 all this you may rely as certain." 
 
 "I thank you from my heart," said I warmly, seizing and 
 pressing Lady Roseville's hand. "You tell me what I have 
 long suspected ; I am now upon my guard, and they shall find 
 that I can of (end as well as i&fend. But it is no time for me 
 to boast ; oblige me by informing me of the name of my un- 
 known friend ; I never thought there was a being in the world 
 who would stir three steps for Henry Pelham." 
 
 "That friend," replied Lady Roseville, with a faltering voice 
 and a glowing cheek, "was Sir Reginald Glanville." 
 
 "What ! " cried I, " repeat the name to me again, or " I 
 paused and recovered myself. " Sir Reginald Glanville," I 
 resumed haughtily, " is too gracious to enter into my affairs. 
 I must be strangely altered if I need the officious zeal of any 
 intermeddler to redress my wrongs." 
 
 " Nay, Mr. Pelham," said the Countess hastily, " you do 
 Glanville you do yourself injustice. For him, there never 
 passes a day in which he does not mention you with the high- 
 est encomiums and the most affectionate regard. He says, of 
 late, that you have altered towards him, but that he is not sur- 
 prised at the change he never mentions the cause ; if I am 
 not intruding, suffer me to inquire into it ; perhaps (oh ! how 
 happy it would make me) I may be able to reconcile you ; if 
 you knew if you could but guess half of the noble and lofty 
 character of Reginald Glanville, you would suffer no petty dif- 
 ference to divide you." 
 
 " It is no petty difference," said I, rising, "nor am I permitted
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 369 
 
 to mention the cause. Meanwhile, may God bless you, dearest 
 Lady Roseville, and preserve that kind and generous heart 
 from worse pangs than those of disappointed ambition, or be- 
 trayed trust." 
 
 Lady Roseville looked down her bosom heaved violently ; 
 she felt the meaning of my words. I left her and returned 
 home. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXII. 
 
 " Good Mr. Knave, give me my due, 
 I like a tart as well as you ; 
 But I would starve on good roast beef, 
 Ere I would look so like a thief." 
 
 The Queen of Hearts. 
 
 " Nunc vino pellite curas : 
 
 Cras ingens iterabimus aequor." HOR. 
 
 THE next morning I received a note from Guloseton, asking 
 me to dine with him at eight, to meet his chevreuil. I sent back 
 an answer in the affirmative, and then gave myself wholly up to 
 considering what was the best line of conduct to pursue with 
 regard to Lord Dawton. " It would be pleasant enough," said 
 Anger, " to go to him to ask him boldly for the borough so 
 often pledged to you, and, in case of his refusal, to confront, to 
 taunt, and to break with him." "True," replied that more 
 homely and less stage-effect arguer, which we term Knowledge 
 of the World ; " but this would be neither useful nor dignified 
 common-sense never quarrels with any one. Call upon Lord 
 Dawton, if you will ; ask him for his promise, with your second- 
 best smile, and receive his excuses with your very best. Then 
 do as you please break with him or not you can do either 
 with grace and quiet ; never make a scene about anything 
 reproach and anger always do make a scene." " Very true," 
 said I, in answer to the latter suggestion ; and having made up 
 my mind, I repaired a quarter before three to Lord Dawton's 
 house. 
 
 "Ah, Pelham," said the little minister, "delighted to see you 
 look so much the better from the country air ; you will stay in 
 town now, I hope, till the end of the season ? " 
 
 " Certainly, Lord Dawton, or, at all events, till the proroga- 
 tion of Parliament ; how, indeed, could I do otherwise, with 
 
 your lordship's kind promise before my eyes ? Mr. , the 
 
 member for your borough of , has, I believe, accepted the 
 
 Chiltern Hundreds? I feel truly obliged to you for so 
 promptly fulfilling your promise to me."
 
 310 PELHAM; 
 
 " Hem ! my dear Pelham, hem ! " murmured Lord Dawton. 
 I bent forward as if in the attitude of listening respect, but 
 really the more clearly to perceive, and closely to enjoy, his 
 confusion. He looked up and caught my eye, and not being too 
 much gratified with its involuntary expression, he grew more 
 and more embarrassed ; at last he summoned courage. 
 
 "Why, my dear sir," he said, " I did, it is true, promise you 
 that borough ; but individual friendship must frequently be 
 sacrificed to the public good. All our party insisted upon re- 
 turning Mr. V in place of the late member : what could I 
 
 do ? I mentioned your claims ; they all, to a man, enlarged 
 upon your rival's : to be sure he is an older person, and his 
 family is very powerful in the Lower House : in short, you 
 perceive, my dear Pelham that is, you are aware you can feel 
 for the delicacy of my situation one could not appear too 
 eager for one's own friends at first, and I was forced to concede." 
 
 Lord Dawton was now fairly delivered of his speech ; it 
 was, therefore, only left me to congratulate him on his off- 
 spring. 
 
 "My dear lord," I began, "you could not have pleased me 
 
 better : Mr. V is a most estimable man, and I would not, 
 
 for the world, have had you suspected of placing such a trifle 
 as your own honor that is to say, your promise to me, before 
 the commands that is to say the interests of your party ; 
 but no more of this now. Was your lordship at the Duke 
 of 's last night ?" 
 
 Dawton seized joyfully the opportunity of changing the 
 conversation, and we talked and laughed on indifferent matters 
 till I thought it time to withdraw ; this I did with the most 
 cordial appearance of regard and esteem ; nor was it till I had 
 fairly set my foot out of his door that I suffered myself to in- 
 dulge the "black bile "at my breast. I turned towards the 
 Green Park, and was walking slowly along the principal mall 
 with my hands behind me, and my eyes on the ground, when I 
 heard my own name uttered. On looking back I perceived 
 Lord Vincent on horseback ; he stopped and conversed with 
 me. In the humor I was in with Lord Dawton, I received him 
 with greater warmth than I had done of late; and he also, 
 being in a social mood, seemed so well satisfied with our ren- 
 contre, and my behavior, that he dismounted to walk with me. 
 
 "This park is a very different scene now," said Vincent, 
 "from what it was in the times of 'The Merry Monarch' ; yet 
 it is still a spot much more to my taste than its more gaudy 
 and less classical brother of Hyde. There is something pleas-
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 311 
 
 ingly melancholy in walking over places haunted by history ; 
 for all of us live more in the past than the present." 
 
 " And how exactly alike in all ages," said I, " men have been. 
 On the very spot we are on now, how many have been actuated 
 by the same feelings that now actuate us ; how many have 
 made perhaps exactly the same remark just made by you ! It 
 is this universal identity which forms our most powerful link 
 with those that have Deeti there is a satisfaction in seeing how 
 closely we resemble the Agamemnon s of gone times, and we 
 take care to lose none of it, by thinking how closely we also 
 resemble the Thersites." 
 
 "True," replied Vincent; "if wise and great men did but 
 know how little difference there is between them and the fool- 
 ish or the mean, they would not take such pains to be wise and 
 great; to use the Chinese proverb, 'they sacrifice a picture, to 
 get possession of its ashes.' It is almost a pity that the desire 
 to advance should be so necessary to our being ; ambition is 
 often a fine, but never a felicitous, feeling. Cyprian, in a 
 beautiful passage on envy, calls it ' the moth of the soul' : but 
 perhaps, even that passion is less gnawing, less a ' tabes pectoris* 
 than ambition. You are surprised at my heat the fact is, I 
 am enraged at thinking how much we forfeit, when we look up 
 only, and trample unconsciously, in the blindness of our aspi- 
 ration, on the affections which strew our path. Now, you and 
 I have been utterly estranged from each other of late. Why ? 
 For any dispute, any disagreement in private, any discovery of 
 meanness, treachery, unworthiness in the other? No! Merely 
 because I dine with Lord Lincoln, and you with Lord Dawton, 
 voila tout. Well say the Jesuits, that they who live for the 
 public must renounce all private ties ; the very day we become 
 citizens we are to cease to be men. Our privacy is like Leo 
 Decimus ; directly it dies, all peace, comfort, joy, and sociality 
 are to die with it : and an iron age, ' barbara vis et dira malorum 
 omnium incommoda ' to succeed. 
 
 "It is a pity that we struck into different paths," said I : 
 "no pleasure would have been to me greater than making our 
 political interests the same ; but " 
 
 " Perhaps there is no but," interrupted Vincent; "perhaps, 
 like the two knights in the hackneyed story, we are only giv- 
 ing different names to the same shield, because we view it on 
 different sides ; let us also imitate them in their reconciliation, 
 as well as their quarrel, and since we have already run our 
 lances against each other, be convinced of our error, and make 
 up our difference."
 
 I was silent ; indeed, I did not like to trust myself to speak. 
 Vincent continued : 
 
 "I know," said he, " and it is in vain for you to conceal it. 
 
 that you have been ill-used by Dawton. Mr. V is my first 
 
 cousin ; he came to me the day after the borough was given to 
 him, and told me all that Clandonald and Dawton had said to 
 him at the time. Believe me, they did not spare you ; the 
 former you have grievously offended ; you know that he has 
 quarrelled irremediably with his son Dartmore, and he insists 
 that you are the friend and abettor of that ingenuous youth, in 
 all his debaucheries and extravagance tu ilium corrumpi sinis. 
 I tell you this without hesitation, for I know you are less vain 
 than ambitious, and I do not care about hurting you in the one 
 point, if I advance you in the other. As for me, I own to you 
 candidly and frankly that there are no pains I would spare to 
 secure you to our party. Join us, and you shall, as I have 
 often said, be on the parliamentary benches of our corps with- 
 out a moment of unnecessary delay. More I cannot promise 
 you, because I cannot promise more to myself ; but from that 
 instant your fortune, if I augur aught aright from your ability, 
 will be in your hands. You shake your head surely you must 
 see that our differences are not vehement ; it is a difference not 
 of measures, but men. There is but a verbal disagreement 
 between us ; and we must own the wisdom of the sentence 
 recorded in Aultis Gellius, that * he is but a madman who splits 
 the weight of things upon the hair-breadths of words.' You 
 laugh at the quaintness of the quotation ; quaint proverbs are 
 often the truest." 
 
 If my reader should think lightly of me when I own that I 
 felt wavering and irresolute at the end of this speech, let him 
 for a moment place himself in my situation : let him feel indig- 
 nant at the treachery, the injustice, the ingratitude of one 
 man ; and, at the very height of his resentment, let him be 
 soothed, flattered, courted, by the offered friendship and favor 
 of another. Let him personally despise the former, and esteem 
 the latter; and let him, above all, be convinced, as well as 
 persuaded, of the truth of Vincent's hint, viz., that no sacrifice 
 of principle, nor of measures, was required nothing but an 
 alliance against men, not measures. And who were those men ? 
 Bound to me by a single tie meriting from my gratitude a 
 single consideration ? No ! the men, above all others, who had 
 offered me the greatest affront, and deserved from me the 
 smallest esteem. 
 
 But, however human feelings might induce me to waver, I
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 313 
 
 felt that it was not by them only I was to decide. I am not a 
 man whose vices or virtues are regulated by the impulse and 
 passion of the moment : if I am quick to act, I am habitually 
 slow to deliberate. I turned to Vincent, and pressed his hand : 
 " I dare not trust myself to answer you now," said I ; " give 
 me till to-morrow ; I shall then have both considered and 
 determined." 
 
 I did not wait for his reply. I sprang from him, turned 
 down the passage which leads to Pall Mall, and hastened home 
 once more to commune with my own heart, and not to be still. 
 
 In these confessions I have made no scruple of owning my 
 errors and my foibles ; all that could occasion mirth or benefit 
 to the reader were his own. I kept a veil over the darker and 
 stormier emotions of my soul ; all that could neither amuse 
 nor instruct him are mine ! 
 
 Hours passed on : it became time to dress ; I rang for Bedos, 
 dressed as usual great emotions interfere little with the me- 
 chanical operations of life and drove to Guloseton's. 
 
 He was unusually entertaining ; the dinner too was unusually 
 good ; but, thinking that I was sufficiently intimate with my 
 host not to be obliged to belie my feelings, I remained distrait, 
 absent, and dull. 
 
 "What is the matter with you, my friend ? " said the good- 
 natured epicure ; "you have neither applauded my jokes, nor 
 tasted my escallopes ; and your behavior has trifled alike with 
 my chevreuil and my feelings?" The proverb is right, in say- 
 ing " Grief is communicative." I confess that I was eager to 
 unbosom myself to one upon whose confidence I could depend. 
 Guloseton heard me with great attention and interest. " Lit- 
 tle," said he kindly, "Little as I care for these matters myself, 
 I can feel for those who do : I wish I could serve you better 
 than by advice. However, you cannot, 1 imagine, hesitate to 
 accept Vincent's offer. What matters it whether you sit on 
 one bench or on another, so that you do not sit in a thorough 
 draught or dine at Lord Lincoln's, or Lord Dawton's, so long 
 as the cooks are equally good ? As for Dawton, I always thought 
 him a shuffling, mean fellow, who buys his wines at the second 
 price, and sells his offices at the first. Come, my dear fellow, 
 let us drink to his confusion." 
 
 So saying, Guloseton filled my glass to the brim. He had 
 sympathized with me I thought it, therefore, my duty to sym- 
 pathize with him ; nor did we part till the eyes of the/w/ vivant 
 saw more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the 
 philosophy of the sober.
 
 314 PELHAM ; 
 
 CHAPTER LXXIII. 
 
 "Si ad honestatem nati sumus, ea aut sola expetenda est, aut certe 
 omni pondere gravior est habenda quam reliqua omnia." TULLY. 
 
 " Cas. Brutus, I do observe you now of late : 
 
 I have not from your eyes that gentleness, 
 
 And show of love as I was wont to have." -Julius Ctzsar. 
 
 I ROSE at my usual early hour ; sleep had tended to calm, 
 and, I hope, also to better, my feelings. I had now leisure to 
 reflect that I had nqt embraced my party from any private or 
 interested motive ; it was not, therefore, from a private or in- 
 terested motive that I was justified in deserting it. Our pas- 
 sions are terrible sophists ! When Vincent had told me the 
 day before that it was from men, not measures, that I was to 
 'change, and that such a change could scarcely deserve the 
 name, my heart adopted the assertion, and fancied it into truth. 
 
 I now began to perceive the delusion ; were government as 
 mechanically perfect as it has never yet been (but as I trust it 
 may yet be), it would signify little who were the mere machines 
 that regulated its springs ; but, in a constitution like ours, the 
 chief character of which pardon me, ye De Lolmeites is its 
 uncertainty ; where men invariably make the measures square 
 to the dimensions of their own talent or desire ; and where, 
 reversing the maxim of the tailor, the measures so rarely make 
 the men, it required no penetration to see how dangerous it 
 was to entrust to the aristocratic prejudice of Lincoln, or 
 the vehement imbecility of Lesborough, the execution of the 
 very same measures which might safely be committed to the 
 plain sense of Dawton, and, above all, to the great and various 
 talents of his coadjutors. But what made the vital difference 
 between the two parties was less in the leaders than the body. 
 In the Dawton faction the best, the purest, the wisest of the 
 day were enrolled ; they took upon themselves the origin of all 
 the active measures, and Lord Dawton was the mere channel 
 through which those measures flowed ; the plain, the unpre- 
 tending, and somewhat feeble character of Lord Dawton's 
 mind readily conceded to the abler components of his party 
 the authority it was so desirable that they should exert. In Vin- 
 cent's party, with the exception of himself, there was scarcely 
 an individual with the honesty requisite for loving the projects 
 they affected to purpose, or the talents that were necessary for 
 carrying them into effect, even were their wishes sincere ; nor 
 was either the haughty Lincoln, or his noisy and overbearing 
 companion, Lesborough, at all of a temper to suffer that quiet
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 315 
 
 yet powerful interference of others, to which Dawton unhesi 
 tatingly submitted. 
 
 I was the more resolved to do all possible justice to Dawton's 
 party, from the inclination I naturally had to lean towards the 
 other ; and in all matters, where private pique or self-interest 
 can possibly penetrate, it has ever been the object of my ma- 
 turer consideration to direct my particular attention to that 
 side of the question which such undue partisans are the least 
 likely to espouse. While I was gradually, but clearly, feeling 
 my way to a decision, I received the following note from Gu- 
 loseton : 
 
 "I said nothing to you last night of what is now the subject 
 of my letter, lest you should suppose it arose rather from the 
 heat of an extempore conviviality, than its real source, viz., 
 a sincere esteem for your mind, a sincere affection for your 
 heart, and a sincere sympathy in your resentment and your 
 interest. 
 
 " They tell me that Lord Dawton's triumph or discomfiture 
 
 rests entirely upon the success of the motion upon , 
 
 brought before the House of Commons, on the . I 
 
 care, you know, very little, for my own part, which way this 
 question is decided ; do not think, therefore, that I make any 
 sacrifice when I request you to suffer me to follow your 
 advice in the disposal of my four votes. I imagine, of course, 
 that you would wish them to adopt the contrary side to Lord 
 Dawton ; and upon receiving a line from you to that effect, 
 they shall be empowered to do so. 
 
 " Pray, oblige me also by taking the merit of this measure 
 upon yourself, and saying (wherever it may be useful to you) 
 how entirely both the voters and their influence are at your 
 disposal. I trust we shall yet play the Bel to this Dragon, and 
 fell him from his high places. 
 
 " Pity me, my dear fried ; I dine out to-day, and feel 
 already, by an intuitive shudder, that the soup will be cold 
 and the sherry hot. Adieu. Ever yours, GULOSETON." 
 
 Now, then, my triumph, my vanity, and my revenge might 
 be fully gratified. I had before me a golden opportunity of 
 displaying my own power, and of humbling that of the minis- 
 ter. My heart swelled high at the thought. Let it be forgiven 
 me, if, for a single moment, my previous calculations and 
 morality vanished from my mind, and I saw only the offer of 
 Vincent, and the generosity of Guloseton. But I checked the 
 risings of my heart, and compelled my proud spirit to obedience.
 
 316 PELHAM ; 
 
 I placed Guloseton's letter before me, and, as I read it once 
 more in order to reply to it, the disinterested kindness and 
 delicacy of one whom I had long, in the injustice of my 
 thoughts, censured as selfish, came over me so forcibly, and 
 contrasted so deeply with the hollowness of friends more 
 sounding, alike in their profession and their creeds, that the 
 tears rushed to my eyes. 
 
 A thousand misfortunes are less affecting than a single kind- 
 ness. 
 
 I wrote, in answer, a warm and earnest letter of thanks for 
 an offer, the kindness of which penetrated me to the soul. I 
 detailed at some length the reasons which induced me to the 
 decision I had taken ; I sketched also the nature of the 
 very important motion about to be brought before the House, 
 and deduced from that sketch the impossibility of conscien- 
 tiously opposing Lord Dawton's party in the debate. I con- 
 cluded with repeating the expressions my gratitude suggested ; 
 and, after declining all interference with Lord Guloseton's 
 votes, ventured to add, that had I interfered, it would have 
 been in support of Dawton ; not as a man, but a minister not 
 as an individual friend, but a public servant. 
 
 I had just despatched this letter when Vincent entered ; I 
 acquainted him, though in the most respectful and friendly 
 terms, with my determination. He seemed greatly disap- 
 pointed, and endeavored to shake my resolution ; finding this 
 was in vain, he appeared at last satisfied, and even affected with 
 my reasons. When we parted, it was with a promise, confirmed 
 by both, that no public variance should ever again alter our 
 private opinion of each other. 
 
 When I was once more alone, and saw myself brought back 
 to the very foot of the ladder I had so far and so fortunately 
 climbed ; when I saw that, in rejecting all the overtures of my 
 friends, I was left utterly solitary and unaided among my foes ; 
 when I looked beyond, and saw no faint loophole of hope, no 
 single stepping-stone on which to recommence my broken but 
 unwearied career perhaps one pang of regret and repentance 
 at my determination came across me : but there is something 
 marvellously restorative in a good conscience, and one soon 
 learns to look with hope to the future, when one can feel justi- 
 fied in turning with pride to the past. 
 
 My horse came to the door at my usual hour for riding: with 
 what gladness I sprang upon his back, felt the free wind fresh- 
 ening over my fevered cheek, and turned my rein towards the 
 green lanes that border the great city on its western side, I
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 317 
 
 know few counsellors more exhilarating than a spirited horse. 
 I do not wonder that the Roman emperor made a consul of his 
 steed. On horseback I always best feel my powers, and sur- 
 vey my resources : on horseback I always originate my subtlest 
 schemes, and plan their ablest execution. Give me but a light 
 rein, and a free bound, and I am Cicero Cato Caesar; dis- 
 mount me, and I become a mere clod of the earth which you 
 condemn me to touch : fire, energy, ethereality, have departed ; 
 I am the soil without the sun the cask without the wine the 
 garments without the man. 
 
 I returned homewards with increased spirits and collected 
 thoughts : I urged my mind from ray own situation, and suf- 
 fered it to rest upon what Lady Roseville had told me of Regi- 
 nald Glanville's interference in my behalf. That extraordinary 
 man still continued powerfully to excite my interest ; nor could 
 I dwell, without some yearning of the kindlier affections, upon 
 his unsolicited, and, but for Lady Roseville's communication, 
 unknown exertions in my cause. Although the officers of jus- 
 tice were still actively employed in the pursuit of Tyrrell's mur- 
 derer, and although the newspapers were still full of specula- 
 tions on their indifferent success, public curiosity had begun 
 to flag upon the inquiry. I had, once or twice, been in Glan- 
 ville's company when the murder was brought upon the tapis, 
 and narrowly examined his behavior upon a subject which 
 touched him so fearfully. I could not, however, note any ex- 
 traordinary confusion or change in his countenance ; perhaps 
 the pale cheek grew somewhat paler, the dreaming eye more 
 abstracted, and the absent spirit more wandering than before ; 
 but many other causes than guilt could account for signs so 
 doubtful and minute. 
 
 "You shall soon know all," the last words which he had ad- 
 dressed to me, yet rang in my ears ; and most intensely did I 
 anticipate the fulfilment of this promise. My hopes too those 
 flatterers, so often the pleasing antitheses of reason whispered 
 that this was not the pledge of a guilty man ; and yet he had 
 said to Lady Roseville that he did not wonder at my estrange- 
 ment from him : such words seemed to require a less favorable 
 construction than those he had addressed to me ; and, in making 
 this mental remark, another, of no flattering nature to Glan- 
 ville's disinterestedness, suggested itself ; might not his inter- 
 ference for me with Lord Dawton arise rather from policy than 
 friendship ; might it not occur to him, if, as I surmised, he was 
 acquainted with my suspicions, and acknowledged their dread- 
 ful justice, that it would be advisable to propitiate my silence ?
 
 318 PELHAM ; 
 
 Such were among the thousand thoughts which flashed across 
 me, and left my speculations in debate and doubt. 
 
 Nor did my reflections pass unnoticed the nature of Lady 
 Roseville's affection for Glanville. From the seeming coldness 
 and austerity of Sir Reginald's temperament, it was likely that 
 this was innocent, at least in act ; and there was also some- 
 thing guileless in the manner in which she appeared rather to 
 exult in, than to conceal, her attachment. True that she was 
 bound by no ties ; she had neither husband nor children, for 
 whose sake love became a crime ; free and unfettered, if she 
 gave her heart to Glanville, it was also allowable to render 
 the gift lawful and perpetual by the blessing of the Church. 
 
 Alas ! how little can woman, shut up in her narrow and lim- 
 ited circle of duties, know of the wandering life and various 
 actions of her lover ! Little, indeed, could Lady Roseville, 
 when in the heat of her enthusiasm she spoke of the lofty and 
 generous character of Glanville, dream of the foul and das- 
 tardly crime of which he was more than suspected ; nor while 
 it was, perhaps, her fondest wish to ally herself to his destiny, 
 could her wildest fancies anticipate the felon's fate, which, if 
 death came not in a hastier and kinder shape, must sooner or 
 later await him. 
 
 Of Thornton I had neither seen nor heard aught since my 
 departure from Lord Chester's ; that reprieve was, however, 
 shortly to expire. I had scarcely got into Oxford Street, in my 
 way homeward, when I perceived him crossing the street with 
 another man. I turned round to scrutinize the features of his 
 companion, and, in spite of a great change of dress, a huge 
 pair of false whiskers, and an artificial appearance of increased 
 age, my habit of observing countenances enabled me to recog- 
 nize, on the instant, my intellectual and virtuous friend, Mr. 
 Job Jonson. They disappeared in a shop, nor did I think it 
 worth while further to observe them, though I still bore a re- 
 miniscitory spite against Mr. Job Jonson, which I was fully 
 resolved to wreak at the first favorable opportunity. 
 
 I passed by Lady Roseville's door. Though the hour was 
 late, and I had, therefore, but a' slight chance of finding her at 
 home, yet I thought the chance worth the trouble of inquiry. 
 To my agreeable surprise I was admitted ; no one was in the 
 drawing-room. The servant said Lady Roseville was at that 
 moment engaged, but would very shortly see me, and begged 
 I would wait. 
 
 Agitated as I was by various reflections, I walked (in the 
 restlessness of my mood) to and fro the spacious rooms which
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 319 
 
 formed Lady Roseville's apartments of reception. At the 
 far end was a small boudoir, where none but the goddess's fav- 
 ored few were admitted. As I approached towards it I heard 
 voices, and the next moment recogiiized the deep tones of 
 Glanville. I turned hastily away, lest I should overhear the 
 discourse ; but I had scarcely got three steps when the con- 
 vulsed sound of a woman's sob came upon my ear. Shortly after- 
 wards steps descended the stairs, and the street-door opened. 
 
 The minutes rolled on, and I became impatient. The ser- 
 vant re-entered Lady Roseville was so suddenly and seriously 
 indisposed that she was unable to see me. I left the house, 
 and full of bewildered conjectures returned to my apartments. 
 
 The next day was one of the most important in my life. I 
 was standing wistfully by my fireplace, listening with the most 
 mournful attention to a broken-winded hurdy-gurdy, stationed 
 opposite to my window, when Bedos announced Sir Reginald 
 Glanville. It so happened, that I had that morning taken the 
 miniature I had found in the fatal field from the secret place 
 in which I usually kept it, in order closely to examine it, lest 
 any proof of its owner, more convincing than the initials and 
 Thornton's interpretation, might be discovered by a minuter 
 investigation. 
 
 The picture was lying on the table when Glanville entered ; 
 my first impulse was to seize and secrete it ; my second to suffer 
 it to remain, and to watch the effect the sight of it might pro- 
 duce. In following the latter I thought it, however, as well to 
 choose my own time for discovering the miniature ; and, as I 
 moved to the table, I threw my handkerchief carelessly over 
 it. Glanville came up to me at once, and his countenance, 
 usually close and reserved in its expression, assumed a franker 
 and bolder aspect. 
 
 " You have lately changed towards me." he said ; "mindful 
 of our former friendship, I have come to demand the reason." 
 
 "Can Sir Reginald Glanville's memory," answered I, "sup- 
 ply him with no probable cause ? " 
 
 "It can," replied Glanville, "but I would not trust only to 
 that. Sit down, Pelham, and listen to me. I can read your 
 thoughts, and I might affect to despise their import perhaps 
 two years since I should at present I can pity and excuse 
 them. I have come to you now, in the love and confidence of 
 our early days, to claim, as then, your good opinion and 
 esteem. If you require any explanation at my hands, it shall 
 be given. My days are approaching their end. I have made 
 up my accounts with others I would do so with you. I con-
 
 320 PELHAM J 
 
 fess that I would fain leave behind me in your breast the same 
 affectionate remembrance I might heretofore have claimed, 
 and which, whatever be your suspicions, I have done nothing 
 to forfeit. I have, moreover, a dearer interest than my own 
 to consult in this wish you color, Pelham you know to 
 whom I allude ; for my sister's sake, if not for my own, you 
 will hear me." 
 
 Glanville paused for a moment. I raised the handkerchief 
 from the miniature ; I pushed the latter towards him : " Do 
 you remember this ? " said I, in a low tone. 
 
 With a wild cry, which thrilled through my heart, Glanville 
 sprang forward and seized it. He gazed eagerly and intensely 
 upon it, and his cheek flushed, his eyes sparkled, his breast 
 heaved. The next moment he fell back in his chair, in one 
 of the half-swoons to which, upon a sudden and violent emo- 
 tion, the debilitating effects of his disease subjected him. 
 
 Before I could come to his assistance he had recovered. 
 He looked wildly and fiercely upon me. " Speak," he cried, 
 "speak where got you this where? Answer for mercy's 
 sake ? " 
 
 " Recollect yourself," said I sternly. " I found that token 
 of your presence upon the spot where Tyrrell was murdered," 
 
 " True, true," said Glanville slowly, and in an absent and 
 abstracted tone. He ceased abruptly and covered his face 
 with his hands ; from this attitude he started with some sud- 
 den impulse. 
 
 " And tell me," he said, in a low, inward, exulting tone, 
 " was it was it red with the blood of the murdered man ? " 
 
 "Wretch ! " I exclaimed, "do you glory in your guilt ?" 
 
 " Hold ! " said Glanville, rising, with an altered and haughty 
 air ; " it is not to your accusations that I am now to listen : 
 if you are yet desirous of weighing their justice before you 
 decide upon them, you will have the opportunity ; I shall 
 be at home at ten this night ; come to me, and you shall know 
 all. At present, the sight of this picture has unnerved me. 
 Shall I see you ? " 
 
 I made no other rejoinder than the brief expression of my 
 assent, and Glanville instantly left the room. 
 
 During the whole of that day my mind was wrought up into 
 a state of feverish and preternatural excitement. 1 could not 
 remain in the same spot for an instant : my pulse beat with 
 the irregularity of delirium. For the last hour I placed my 
 watch before me, and kept my eyes constantly fixed upon it. 
 It was not only Glanville's confession that I was to hear ; my
 
 Oft, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 3^1 
 
 own fate, my future connection with Ellen, rested upon the 
 story of that night. For myself, when I call to mind Glan- 
 ville's acknowledgment of the picture, and his slow and invol- 
 untary remembrance of the spot where it was found, I scarcely 
 allowed my temper, sanguine as it was, to hope. 
 
 Some minutes before the hour of ten I repaired to Glan- 
 ville's house. He was alone, the picture was before him. 
 
 I drew my chair towards him in silence, and, accidentally 
 lifting up my eyes, encountered the opposite mirror. I started 
 at my own face ; the intensity and fearfulness of my interest 
 had rendered it even more hueless than that of my companion. 
 
 There was a pause for some moments, at the end of which 
 Glanville thus began. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXIV. 
 
 " I do but hide 
 
 Under these words, like embers, every spark 
 Of that which has consumed me. Quick and dark 
 The grave is yawning ; as its roof shall cover 
 My limbs with dust and worms, under and over, 
 So let oblivion hide this grief." -Julian and Maddalo. 
 ****** 
 
 " With thee the very future fled, 
 I stand amid the past alone, 
 A tomb which still shall guard the dead, 
 
 Though every earthlier trace be flown ; 
 A tomb o'er which the weeds that love 
 
 Decay their wild luxuriance wreathe ! 
 The cold and callous stone above 
 And only thou and Death beneath." 
 
 From Unpublished Poems by . 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SIR REGINALD GLANVILLE. 
 
 "You remember my character at school the difficulty with 
 which you drew me from the visionary and abstracted lone- 
 liness which, even at that time, was more consonant to my 
 taste, than all the sports and society resorted to by other boys ; 
 and the deep and, to you, inexplicable delight with which I 
 returned to my reveries and solitude again. That character has 
 continued through life the same ; circumstances have strength- 
 ened, not altered, it. So has it been with^w*/ the temper, the 
 habits, the tastes, so strongly contrasted with mine in boy- 
 hood, have lost nothing of that contrast. Your ardor for the 
 various ambition of life is still the antipodes to my indifference : 
 your daring, restless, thoughtful resolution in the pursuit still
 
 322 PELHAM ; 
 
 shames my indolence and abstraction. You are still the votary 
 of the world, but will become its conqueror I its fugitive 
 and shall die its victim. 
 
 " After we parted at school, I went for a short time to a 
 
 tutor's in shire. Of this place I soon grew weary ; and, 
 
 my father's death rendering me in a great measure my own 
 roaster, I lost no time in leaving it. J was seized with that 
 mania for travel common enough to all persons of my youth 
 and disposition. My mother allowed me an almost unlimited 
 command over the fortune eventually to be my own ; and, 
 yielding to my wishes, rather than her fears, she suffered me, 
 at the age of eighteen, to set out for the Continent alone. 
 Perhaps the quiet and reserve of my character made her think 
 me less exposed to the dangers of youth than if I had been of 
 a more active and versatile temper. This is no uncommon 
 mistake ; a serious and contemplative disposition is, however, 
 often the worst formed to acquire readily the knowledge of the 
 world, and always the most calculated to suffer deeply from 
 the experience. 
 
 " I took up my residence for some time at Spa. It is, you 
 know, perhaps, a place dull enough to make gambling the only 
 amusement ; every one played, and I did not escape the con- 
 tagion ; nor did I wish it ; for, like the minister Godolphin, 
 my habitual silence made me love gaming for its own sake, 
 because it was a substitute for conversation. This pursuit 
 brought me acquainted with Mr. Tyrrell, who was then staying 
 at Spa ; he had not, at that time, quite dissipated his fortune, 
 but was daily advancing towards so desirable a consummation. 
 A gambler's acquaintance is readily made, and easily kept, 
 provided you gamble too. 
 
 " We became as intimate as the reserve of my habits ever 
 suffered me to become with any one but you. He was many 
 years older than I, had seen a great deal of the world, had 
 mixed much in its best societies, and at that time, whatever 
 was the vulgarity of his mind, had little of the coarseness of 
 manner which very soon afterwards distinguished him ; evil 
 communication works rapidly in its results. Our acquaintance 
 was, therefore, natural enough, especially when it is considered 
 that my purse was entirely at his disposal ; for borrowing is 
 ' twice blessed,' in him that takes and him that gives the 
 receiver becomes complaisant and conceding, and the lender 
 thinks favorably of one he has obliged. 
 
 " We parted at Spa under a mutual promise to write. I for- 
 get if this promise was kept probably not ; we were not,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 323 
 
 however, the worst friends for being bad correspondents. I 
 continued my travels for about another year : I then returned 
 to England, the same melancholy and dreaming enthusiast as 
 before. Jt is true that we are the creatures of circumstances ; 
 but circumstances are also, in a great measure, the creatures 
 of us. I mean, they receive their influences from the previous 
 bent of our own minds ; what raises one would depress 
 another, and what vitiates my neighbor might correct me. 
 Thus the experience of the world makes some persons more 
 worldly, others more abstracted ; and the indulgence of the 
 senses becomes a violence to one mind, and a second nature to 
 another. As for me, I had tasted all the pleasures youth and 
 opulence can purchase, and was more averse to them than 
 ever. I had mixed with many varieties of men I was still 
 more riveted to the monotony of self. 
 
 " I cannot hope, while I mention these peculiarities, that I 
 am a very uncommon character : I believe the present age has 
 produced many such. Some time hence it will be a curious 
 inquiry to ascertain the causes of that acute and sensitive 
 morbidity of mind which has been, and still is, so epidemic a 
 disease. You know me well enough to believe, that I am not 
 fond of the cant of assuming an artificial character, or of 
 creating a fictitious interest ; and I am far from wishing to 
 impose upon you a malady of constitution for a dignity of 
 mind. You must pardon my prolixity. I own that it is very 
 painful to me to come to the main part of my confessions, and 
 I am endeavoring to prepare myself by lingering over the 
 prelude." 
 
 Glanville paused here for a few moments. In spite of the 
 sententious coolness with which he pretended to speak, I saw 
 that he was powerfully and painfully affected. 
 
 " Well," he continued, "to resume the thread of my nar- 
 rative ; after I had stayed some weeks with my mother and 
 sister, I took advantage of their departure for the Continent, 
 and resolved to make a tour through England. Rich people, 
 and I have always been very rich, grow exceedingly tired of 
 the embarrassment of their riches. I seized with delight at the 
 idea of travelling without carriages and servants ; I took merely 
 a favorite horse, and the black dog, poor Terror, which you 
 see now at my feet. 
 
 "The day I commenced this plan was to me the epoch of a 
 new and terrible existence. However, you must pardon me if 
 I am not here sufficiently diffuse. Suffice it, that I became 
 acquainted with a being whom, for the first and only time in
 
 324 PELHAM ; 
 
 my life, I loved ! This miniature attempts to express her like- 
 ness ; the initials at the back, interwoven with my own, are hers." 
 
 "Yes," said I incautiously, " they are the initials of Ger- 
 trude Douglas." 
 
 " What ! " cried Glanville, in a loud tone, which he instantly 
 checked, and continued in an indrawn, muttered whisper : 
 "How long is it since I heard that name ! And now now " 
 he broke off abruptly, and then said, with a calmer voice, " I 
 know not how you have learnt her name ; perhaps you will 
 explain? " 
 
 " From Thornton," said I. 
 
 " And has he told you more ?" cried Glanville, as if gasping 
 for breath " the history the dreadful " 
 
 " Not a word," said I hastily; "he was with me when I 
 found the picture, and he explained the initials." 
 
 " It is well ! " answered Glanville, recovering himself ; "you 
 will see presently if I have reason to love that those foul and 
 sordid lips should profane the story I am about to relate. 
 Gertrude was an only daughter ; though of gentle blood, she 
 was no match for me, either in rank or fortune. Did I say 
 just now that the world had not altered me ? See my folly ; 
 one year before I saw her, and I should not have thought her, 
 but myself, honored by a marriage ; twelve little months had 
 sufficed to God forgive me ! I took advantage of her love 
 her youth her innocence she fled with me but not to the 
 altar ! " 
 
 Again Glanville paused, and again, by a violent effort, con- 
 quered his emotion, and proceeded : 
 
 " Never let vice be done by halves ; never let a man invest all 
 his purer affections in the woman he ruins ; never let him cherish 
 the kindness, if he gratifies the selfishness, of his heart. A 
 profligate who really loves his victim is one of the most wretched 
 of beings. In spite of my successful and triumphant passion ; 
 in spite of the first intoxication of possession, and the better 
 and deeper delight of a reciprocity of thought, feeling, sym- 
 pathy, for the first time, found ; in the midst of all the luxuries 
 my wealth could produce, and of the voluptuous and spring- 
 like hues with which youth, health, and first love, clothe the 
 earth which the loved one treads, and the air which she inhales ; 
 in spite of these, in spite of all, I was anything but happy. If 
 Gertrude's cheek seemed a shade more pale, or her eyes less 
 bright, I remembered the sacrifice she had made me, and 
 believed that she felt it too. It was in vain, that, with the 
 tender and generous devotion never found but in woman
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 325 
 
 she assured me that my love was a recompense for all ; the 
 more touching was her tenderness, the more poignant was my 
 remorse. I never loved but her ; I have never, therefore, 
 entered into the commonplace of passion, and I cannot, even 
 to this day, look upon her sex as ours do in general. I thought, 
 I think so still, that ingratitude to a woman is often a more 
 odious offence I am sure it contains a more painful penalty 
 than ingratitude to a man. But enough of this : if you know 
 me, you can penetrate the nature of my feelings : if not, it is 
 in vain to expect your sympathy. 
 
 " I never loved living long in one place. We travelled over 
 the greater part of England and France. What must be the 
 enchantment of love when accompanied with innocence and 
 joy, since, even in sin, in remorse, in grief, it brings us a rap- 
 ture to which all other things are tame ! Oh ! those were 
 moments steeped in the very elixir of life ; overflowing with 
 the hoarded fondness and sympathies of hearts too full for 
 words, and yet too agitated for silence, when we journeyed 
 alone, and at night, and, as the shadows and stillness of the 
 waning hours gathered round us, drew closer to each other, 
 and concentrated this breathing world in the deep and embrac- 
 ing sentiment of our mutual love ! It was then that I laid my 
 burning temples on her bosom, and felt, while my hand clasped 
 hers, that my visions were realized, and my wandering spirit 
 had sunk unto its rest. 
 
 " I remember well that, one night, we were travelling through 
 one of the most beautiful parts of England ; it was in the very 
 height and flush of summer, and the moon (what scene of love 
 whether in reality or romance has anything of tenderness, 
 or passion, or divinity, where her light is not ! ) filled the 
 intense skies of June with her presence, and cast a sadder and 
 paler beauty over Gertrude's cheek. She was always of a 
 melancholy and despondent temper ; perhaps, for that reason, 
 she was more congenial to my own ; and when I gazed upon 
 her that night, I was not surprised to see her eyes filled with 
 tears. ' You will laugh at me,' she said, as I kissed them off 
 and inquired into the cause ; ' but I feel a presentiment that I 
 cannot shake off ; it tells me that you will travel this road 
 again before many months are passed, and that I shall not be 
 with you, perhaps not upon the earth.' She was right in all her 
 forebodings, but the suggestion of her death that came later. 
 
 " We took up our residence for some time at a beautiful 
 situation, a short distance from a small watering-place. At this 
 watering-place, to my great surprise, I met with Tyrrell. He
 
 326 PELHAM ; 
 
 had come there partly to see a relation from whom he had 
 some expectations, and partly to recruit his health, which was 
 much broken by the irregularities and excesses. I could not 
 refuse to renew my old acquaintance with him ; and, indeed, 
 I thought him too much of a man of the world, and of society, 
 to feel with him that particular delicacy in regard to Gertrude 
 which made me in general shun all intercourse with my 
 former friends. He was in great pecuniary embarrassment 
 much more deeply so than I then imagined ; for I believed the 
 embarrassment to be only temporary. However, my purse was 
 then, as before, at his disposal, and he did not scruple to avail 
 himself very largely of my offers. He came frequently to our 
 house ; and poor Gertrude, who thought I had, for her sake, 
 made a real sacrifice in renouncing my acquaintance, endeav- 
 ored to conquer her usual diffidence, and that more painful 
 feeling than diffidence natural to her station, and even to 
 affect a pleasure in the society of my friend, which she was 
 very far from feeling. 
 
 "I was detained at for several weeks by Gertrude's 
 
 confinement. The child happy being ! died a week after its 
 birth. Gertrude was still in bed, and unable to leave it, when 
 I received a letter from Ellen, to say that my mother was then 
 staying at Toulouse, and dangerously ill ; if I wished once 
 to see her, Ellen besought me to lose no time in setting off for 
 the Continent. You may imagine my situation, or rather you 
 cannot, for you cannot conceive the smallest particle of that 
 intense love I bore to Gertrude. To you to any other man 
 it might seem no extraordinary hardship to leave her even 
 for an uncertain period ; to me it was like tearing away the 
 very life from my heart. 
 
 "I procured her a sort of half companion, and half nurse ; 
 I provided for her everything that the most anxious and fear- 
 ful love could suggest ; and, with a mind full of forebodings 
 too darkly to be realized hereafter, I hastened to the nearest 
 seaport, and set sail for France. 
 
 "When I arrived at Toulouse my mother was much better, 
 but still in a very uncertain and dangerous state of health. I 
 stayed with her for more than a month, during which time 
 every post brought me a line from Gertrude, and bore back a 
 message from 'my heart to hers' in return. This was no mean 
 consolation, more especially when each letter spoke of increasing 
 health and strength. At the month's end I was preparing to 
 return my mother was slowly recovering, and I no longer had 
 any fears on her account ; but, there are links in our destiny
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 327 
 
 fearfully interwoven with each other, and ending only in the 
 anguish of our ultimate doom. The day before that fixed for 
 my departure I had been into a house where an epidemic 
 disease raged ; that night I complained of oppressive and 
 deadly illness before morning I was in a high fever. 
 
 " During the time I was sensible of my state, I wrote con- 
 stantly to Gertrude, and carefully concealed my illness ; but 
 for several days I was delirious. When I recovered, I called 
 eagerly for my letters there were none none! I could not 
 believe I was yet awake ; but days still passed on, and not 
 a line from England from Gertrude. The instant I was 
 able I insisted upon putting horses to my carriage ; I could 
 bear no longer the torture of my suspense. By the most rapid 
 journeys my debility would allow me to bear, I arrived in 
 
 England. I travelled down to by the same road that 
 
 I had gone over with her ! The words of her foreboding, at 
 that time, sank like ice into my heart, 'You will travel this 
 road again before many months are past, and I shall not be 
 with you ; perhaps I shall not be upon the earth ! ' At that 
 thought I could have called unto the grave to open for me. 
 Her unaccountable and lengthened silence, in spite of all the 
 urgency and entreaties of my letters for a reply, filled me with 
 presentiments the most fearful. Oh, God oh, God, they were 
 nothing to the truth ! 
 
 "At last I arrived at : my carriage stopped at the very 
 
 house my whole frame was perfectly frozen with dread I 
 trembled from limb to limb the ice of a thousand winters 
 seemed curdling through my blood. The bell rang once, 
 twice no answer ; I would have leaped out of the carriage ; I 
 would have forced an entrance, but I was unable to move. A 
 man fettered and spellbound by an incubus is less helpless than 
 I was. At last an old female I had never seen before appeared. 
 
 " ' Where is she ? How ! ' I could utter no more my 
 eyes were fixed upon the inquisitive and frightened counte- 
 nance opposite to my own. Those eyes, I thought, might have 
 said all that my lips could not ; I was deceived the old 
 woman understood me no more than I did her : another person 
 appeared I recognized the face : it was that of a girl, who 
 had been one of our attendants. Will you believe, that at that 
 sight, the sight of one I had seen before, and could associate 
 with the remembrance of the breathing, the living, the present 
 Gertrude, a thrill of joy flashed across me my fears seemed 
 to vanish my spell to cease ! 
 
 " I sprang from the carriage ; I caught the girl by the robe.
 
 328 PELHAM ; 
 
 'Your mistress,' said I, 'your mistress she is well she is 
 alive speak, speak ?' The girl shrieked out; my eagerness, 
 and, perhaps, my emaciated and altered appearance, terrified 
 her ; but she had the strong nerves of youth, and was soon re- 
 assured. She requested me to step in, and she would tell me 
 all. My wife (Gertrude always went by that name) was alive, 
 and, she believed, well, but she had left that place some weeks 
 since. Trembling, and still fearful, but in heaven, compara- 
 tively to my former agony, I followed the girl and the old 
 woman into the house. 
 
 " The former got me some water. ' Now,' said I, when I had 
 drunk a long and hearty draught, 'I am ready to hear all my 
 wife has left this house, you say for what place ? ' The girl 
 hesitated and looked down ; the old woman, who was some- 
 what deaf, arrd did not rightly understand my questions, or the 
 nature of the personal interest I had in the reply, answered : 
 ' What does the gentleman want ? the poor young lady who was 
 last here ? Lord help her ! " 
 
 "'What of her?' I called out in anew alarm. 'What of 
 her? Where has she gone? Who took her away ?' 
 
 ' ' Who took her ! ' mumbled the old woman, fretful at my 
 impatient tone ; ' Who took her ? Why, the mad doctor to be sure! ' 
 
 " I heard no more ; my frame could support no longer the 
 agonies my mind had undergone ; I fell lifeless on the ground. 
 
 " When I recovered it was at the dead of the night. I was 
 in bed, the old woman and the girl were at my side. I rose 
 slowly and calmly. You know, all men who have ever suffered 
 much know the strange anomalies of despair the quiet of our 
 veriest anguish. Deceived by my bearing, I learned by degrees 
 from my attendants that Gertrude had some weeks since be- 
 trayed certain symptoms of insanity ; that these, in a very few 
 hours, arose to an alarming pitch. From some reason the 
 woman could not explain, she had, a short time before, dis- 
 carded the companion I had left with her ; she was, therefore, 
 alone among servants. They sent for the ignorant practition- 
 ers of the place ; they tried their nostrums without success ; 
 her madness increased ; her attendants, with that superstitious 
 horror of insanity common to the lower classes, became more 
 and more violently alarmed ; the landlady insisted on her re- 
 moval ; and and I told you, Pelham 1 told you they sent 
 her away sent her to a madhouse ! All this I listened to ! 
 all ! Ay, and patiently. I noted down the address of her pres- 
 ent abode ; it was about the distance of twenty miles from 
 *** , J ordered fresh horses and set off immediately.
 
 6k, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 329 
 
 " I arrived there at daybreak. It was a large, old house, 
 which, like a French hotel, seemed to have no visible door ; 
 dark and gloomy, the pile appeared worthy of the purpose to 
 which it was devoted. It was a long time before we aroused 
 any one to answer our call ; at length I was ushered into a small 
 parlor how minutely I remember every article in the room ! 
 What varieties there are in the extreme passions ! Sometimes 
 the same feeling will deaden all the senses, sometimes render 
 them a hundredfold more acute ! 
 
 " At last a man of a smiling and rosy aspect appeared. He 
 pointed to a chair rubbed his hands and begged me to un- 
 fold my business ; few words sufficed to do that. I requested 
 to see his patient ; I demanded by what authority she had been 
 put under his care. The man's face altered. He was but lit- 
 tle pleased with the nature of my visit. ' The lady,' he said 
 coolly, ' had been entrusted to his care, with an adequate re- 
 muneration, by Mr. Tyrrell ; without that gentleman's permis- 
 sion, he could not think even of suffering me to see her.' I 
 controlled my passion ; I knew something, if not of the nature 
 of private madhouses, at least of that of mankind. I claimed 
 his patient as my wife ; I expressed myself obliged by his care, 
 and begged his acceptance of a further remuneration, which I 
 tendered, and which was eagerly accepted. The way was now 
 cleared there is no hell to which a golden branch will not win 
 your admittance. 
 
 "The man detained me no longer ; he hastened to lead the 
 way. We passed through various long passages : sometimes 
 the low moan of pain and weakness came upon my ear, some- 
 times the confused murmur of the idiot's drivelling soliloquy. 
 From one passage, at right angles with the one through which 
 we proceeded, broke a fierce and thrilling shriek ; it sank at 
 once into silence perhaps beneath the lash ! 
 
 "We were now in a different department of the building: 
 all was silence hushed, deep, breathless : this seemed to me 
 more awful than the terrible sounds I had just heard. My 
 guide went slowly on, sometimes breaking the stillness of the 
 dim gallery by the jingle of his keys, sometimes by a muttered 
 panegyric of himself and his humanity. I neither heeded nor 
 answered him. 
 
 "We read in the annals of the Inquisition, of every limb, 
 nerve, sinew of the victim, being so nicely and accurately 
 strained to their utmost, that the frame would not bear the ad- 
 ditional screwing of a single hair-breadth. Such seemed my 
 state. We came to a small door at the right hand ; it was the
 
 330 PELHAM ; 
 
 last but one in the passage. We paused before it. 'Stop,' 
 said I, 'for one moment'; and I was so faint and sick at heart 
 that I leaned against the wall to recover myself before I let 
 him open the door : when he did, it was a greater relief than I 
 can express to that see all was utterly dark. 'Wait, sir,' said 
 the guide, as he entered ; and a sullen noise told me that he was 
 unbarring the heavy shutter. 
 
 " Slowly the gray cold light of the morning broke in : a dark 
 figure was stretched upon a wretched bed, at the far end of 
 the room. She raised herself at the sound. She turned her 
 face towards me ; I did not fall, nor faint, nor shriek ; I stood 
 motionless, as if fixed into stone : and yet it was Gertrude 
 upon whom I gazed. Oh, Heaven ! Who but myself could 
 have recognized her? Her cheek was as the cheek of the 
 dead the hueless skin clung to the bone the eye was dull 
 and glassy for one moment ; the next it became terribly and 
 preternaturally bright, but not with the ray of intellect, or con- 
 sciousness, or recognition. She looked long and hard at me ; 
 a voice, hollow and broken, but which still penetrated my 
 heart, came forth through the wan lips, that scarcely moved 
 with the exertion. 'I am very cold,' it said; 'but if I com- 
 plain, you will beat me.' She fell down again upon the bed, 
 and hid her face. 
 
 " My guide, who was leaning carelessly by the window, turned 
 to me with a sort of smirk : ' This is her way, sir,' he said ; 
 ' her madness is of a very singular description : we have)not, as 
 yet, been able to discover how far it extends ; sometimes she 
 seems conscious of the past, sometimes utterly oblivious of 
 everything : for days she is perfectly silent, or, at least, says 
 nothing more than you have just heard ; but, at times, she 
 raves so violently, that that but I never use force where it can 
 be helped.' 
 
 "I looked at the man, but I could not answer, unless I had 
 torn him to pieces on the spot. I turned away hastily from 
 the room ; but I did not quit the the house without Gertrude 
 I placed her in the carriage, by my side, notwithstanding all 
 the protestations and fears of the keeper ; these were readily 
 silenced by the sum I gave him ; it was large enough to have 
 liberated half his household. In fact, I gathered from his con- 
 versation that Tyrrell had spoken of Gertrude as an unhappy 
 female whom he himself had seduced, and would now be rid 
 of. I thank you, Pelham, for that frown, but keep your indig- 
 nation till a fitter season for it. 
 
 " I took my victim, for I then regarded her as such, to a se-
 
 CR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 331 
 
 eluded and lonely spot ; I procured for her whatever advice 
 England could afford ; all was in vain. Night and day I was 
 by her side, but she never, for a moment, seemed to recollect 
 me : yet were there times of fierce and overpowering delirium, 
 when my name was uttered in the transport of the most pas- 
 sionate enthusiasm ; when my features as absent, though not 
 present, were recalled and dwelt upon with all the minuteness 
 of the most faithful detail ; and I knelt by her in all those 
 moments, when no other human being was near, and clasped 
 her wan hand, and wiped the dew from her forehead, and 
 gazed upon her convulsed and changing face, and called upon 
 her in a voice which could once have allayed her wildest 
 emotions ; and had the agony otseeing her eye dwell upon me 
 with the most estranged indifference, or the most vehement 
 and fearful aversion. But, ever and anon, she uttered words 
 which chilled the very marrow of my bones ; words which I 
 would not, dared not, believe, had any meaning or method in 
 their madness, but which entered into my own brain, and 
 preyed there like the devouring of a fire. There was a truth 
 in those ravings, a reason in that incoherence ; and my cup 
 was not yet full. 
 
 " At last one physician, who appeared to me to have more 
 knowledge than the rest, of the mysterious workings of her 
 dreadful disease, advised me to take her to the scenes of her 
 first childhood : ' Those scenes,' said he justly, ' are in all stages 
 of life the most fondly remembered ; and I have noted, that in 
 many cases of insanity, places are easier recalled than persons ; 
 perhaps, if we can awaken one link in the chain, it will commu- 
 nicate to the rest.' 
 
 " I took this advice, and set off to Norfolk. Her early home 
 was not many miles distant from the churchyard where you once 
 met me, and in that churchyard her mother was buried. She 
 had died before Gertrude's flight ; the father's death had fol- 
 lowed it : perhaps my sufferings were a just retribution ! The 
 house had gone into other hands, and I had no difficulty in 
 engaging it. Thank Heaven, I was spared the pain of seeing 
 any of Gertrude's relations. 
 
 " It was night when we moved to the house. I had placed 
 within the room where she used to sleep all the furniture and 
 books, with which it appeared, from my inquiries, to have been 
 formerly filled. We laid her in the bed that had held that faded 
 and altered form in its freshest and purest years. I shrouded 
 myself in one corner of the room, and counted the dull minutes 
 till the daylight dawned. I pass over the detail of my recital ;
 
 332 PELHAM; 
 
 the experiment partially succeeded would to God that it had 
 not ! Would that she had gone down to her grave with her 
 dreadful secret unrevealed ! Would but " 
 
 Here Glanville's voice failed him, and there was a brief 
 silence before he recommenced. 
 
 " Gertrude now had many lucid intervals ; but these my 
 presence were always sufficient to change into a delirious rav- 
 ing, even more incoherent than her insanity had ever yet been. 
 She would fly from me with the most fearful cries, bury her 
 face in her hands, and seem like one oppressed and haunted by 
 a supernatural visitation, as long as I remained in the room ; 
 the moment I left her, she began, though slowly, to recover. 
 
 " This was to me the bitterest affliction of all to be for- 
 bidden to nurse, to cherish, to tend her, was like taking from 
 me my last hope ! But little can the thoughtless or the worldly 
 dream of the depths of a real love ; I used to wait all day by 
 her door, and it was luxury enough to me to catch her accents, 
 or hear her move, or sigh, or even weep ; and all night, when 
 she could not know of my presence, I used to lie down by her 
 bedside ; and when I sank into a short and convulsed sleep, I 
 saw her once more, in my brief and fleeting dreams, in all the 
 devoted love, and glowing beauty, which had once constituted 
 the whole of my happiness, and my world. 
 
 " One day I had been called from my post by her door. 
 They came to me hastily she was in strong convulsions. I flew 
 upstairs, and supported her in my arms till the fits had ceased : 
 we then placed her in bed ; she never rose from it again : but 
 on that bed of death, the words, as well as the cause of her 
 former insanity, were explained the mystery was unravelled. 
 
 " It was a still and breathless night. The moon, which was 
 at its decrease, came through the half-closed shutters, and, 
 beneath its solemn and eternal light, she yielded to my entreaties, 
 and revealed all. The man my friend Tyrrell had polluted 
 her ear with his addresses, and when forbidden the house, had 
 bribed the woman I had left with her to convey his letters ; she 
 was discharged-r-but Tyrrell was no ordinary villain ; he en- 
 tered the house one evening when no one but Gertrude was 
 there. Come near me, Pelham nearer bend down your ear 
 he used force, violence ! That night Gertrude's senses de- 
 serted her you know the rest. 
 
 " The moment that I gathered from Gertrude's broken 
 sentences their meaning, that moment the demon entered into 
 my soul. All human feelings seemed to fly from my heart ; it 
 shrank into one burning, and thirsty, and fiery want and that
 
 Ok, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAtf. J33 
 
 want was for revenge ! I would have sprung from the bed- 
 side, but Gertrude's hand clung to me, and detained me ; the 
 damp, chill grasp, grew colder and colder it ceased the hand 
 fell I turned one slight, but awful shudder went over that face, 
 made yet more wan by the light of the waning and ghastly 
 moon one convulsion shook the limbs one murmur passed 
 the falling and hueless lips. I cannot tell you the rest you 
 know you can guess it. 
 
 " That day week we buried her in the lonely churchyard 
 where she had, in her lucid moments, wished to lie by the side 
 of her mother." 
 
 CHAPTER LXXV. 
 
 " I breathed, 
 
 But not the breath of human life ; 
 A serpent round my heart was wreathed, 
 
 And stung my very thought to strife." The Giaour. 
 
 " THANK Heaven, the most painful part of my story is at 
 an end. You will now be able to account for our meeting in 
 
 the churchyard at . I secured myself a lodging at a 
 
 cottage not far from the spot which held Gertrude's remains. 
 Night after night I wandered to that lonely place, and longed 
 for a couch beside the sleeper, whom I mourned in the selfish- 
 ness of my soul. I prostrated myself on the mound ; I 
 humbled myself to tears. In the overflowing anguish of my 
 heart I forgot all that had aroused its stormier passions into 
 life. Revenge, hatred all vanished. I lifted up my face to 
 the tender heavens ; I called aloud to the silent and placid 
 air ; and when I turned again to that unconscious mound, I 
 thought of nothing but the sweetness of our early love, and the 
 bitterness of her early death. It was in such moments that 
 your footstep broke upon my grief ; the instant others had 
 seen me other eyes penetrated the sanctity of my regret 
 from that instant, whatever was more soft and holy in the 
 passions and darkness of my mind seemed to vanish away like 
 a scroll. I again returned to the intense and withering re- 
 membrance which was henceforward to make the very key and 
 pivot of my existence. I again recalled the last night of 
 Gertrude's life ; I again shuddered at the low, murmured 
 sounds, whose dreadful sense broke slowly upon my soul. I 
 again felt the cold, cold, slimy grasp of those wan and dying 
 fingers ; and I again nerved my heart to an iron strength, and 
 yowed deep, deep-rooted, endless, implacable revenge.
 
 334 
 
 " The morning after the night you saw me I left my abode. 
 I went to London, and attempted to methodize my plans of 
 vengeance. The first thing to discover, was Tyrrell's present 
 residence. By accident I heard he was at Paris, and, within 
 two hours of receiving the intelligence, I set off for that city. 
 On arriving there the habits of the gambler soon discovered 
 him to my search. I saw him one night at a hell. He was 
 evidently in distressed circumstances, and the fortune of the 
 table was against him. Unperceived by him, I feasted my 
 eyes on his changing countenance, as those deadly and wear- 
 ing transitions of feeling, only to be produced by the gaming 
 table, passed over it. While I gazed upon him, a thought of 
 more exquisite and refined revenge than had yet occurred to 
 me flashed upon my mind. Occupied with the ideas it gave 
 rise to, I went into the adjoining room, which was quite 
 empty. There I seated myself, and endeavored to develop 
 more fully the rude and imperfect outline of my scheme. 
 
 "The. arch tempter favored me with a trusty coadjutor in 
 my designs. I was lost in a revery when I heard myself 
 accosted by name. I looked up, and beheld a man whom I 
 
 had often seen with Tyrrell, both at Spa, and (the 
 
 watering-place where, with Gertrude, I had met Tyrrell). He 
 was a person of low birth and character ; but esteemed, from 
 his love of coarse humor and vulgar enterprise, a man of in- 
 finite parts a sort of Yorick by the set most congenial to 
 Tyrrell's tastes. By this undue reputation, and the levelling 
 habit of gaming, to which he was addicted, he was raised, in 
 certain societies, much above his proper rank : need I say 
 that this man was Thornton ? I was but slightly acquainted 
 with him ; however, he accosted me cordially, and endeavored 
 to draw me into conversation. 
 
 ' ' Have you seen Tyrrell ? ' said he ; ' he is at it again ; 
 what's bred in the bone, you know, etc.' I turned pale with 
 the mention of Tyrrell's name, and replied very laconically, to 
 what purpose I forget. 'Ah ! ah ! ' rejoined Thornton, eyeing 
 me with an air of impertinent familiarity ; ' I see you have not 
 
 forgiven him ; he played you but a shabby trick at ; se-: 
 
 duced your mistress, or something of that sort ; he told me all 
 about it : pray, how is the poor girl now ? ' 
 
 " I made no reply ; I sank down and gasped for breath. All 
 I had suffered seemed nothing to the indignity I then endured. 
 She she who had w/^been my pride my honor life to be 
 thus spoken of- and I could not pursue the idea. I rose 
 hastily, looked at Thornton with a glance which might have
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 335 
 
 abashed a man less shameless and callous than himself, and 
 left the room. 
 
 " That night, as I tossed restless and feverish on my bed of 
 thorns, I saw how useful Thornton might be to me in the 
 prosecution of the scheme I had entered into ; and the next 
 morning I sought him out, and purchased (no very difficult 
 matter) both his secrecy and assistance. My plan of vengeance, 
 to one who had seen and observed less of the varieties of 
 human nature than you have done, might seem far-fetched and 
 unnatural ; for while the superficial are ready to allow eccen- 
 tricity as natural in the coolness of ordinary life, they never 
 suppose it can exist in the heat of the passions as if, in such 
 moments, anything was ever considered absurd in the means 
 which was favorable to the end. Were the secrets of one pas- 
 sionate and irregulated heart laid bare, there would be more 
 romance in them than in all the fables which we turn from with 
 incredulity and disdain, as exaggerated and overdrawn. 
 
 " Among the thousand schemes for retribution which had 
 chased each other across my mind, the death of my victim 
 was only the ulterior object. Death, indeed the pang of one 
 moment appeared to me but very feeble justice for the life of 
 lingering and restless anguish to which his treachery had con- 
 demned me ; but my penance, my doom, I could have forgiven : 
 it was the fate of a more innocent and injured Jjeing which 
 irritated the sting and fed the venom of my revenge. That re- 
 venge no ordinary punishment could appease. If fanaticism 
 can only be satisfied by the rack and the flames, you may 
 readily conceive a like unappeasable fury in a hatred so deadly, 
 so concentrated, and so just as mine ; and if fanaticism persuades 
 itself into a virtue, so also did my hatred. 
 
 " The scheme which I resolved upon was, to attach Tyrrell 
 more and more to the gaming-table, to be present at his infat- 
 uation, to feast my eyes upon the feverish intensity of his sus- 
 pense ; to reduce him, step by step, to the lowest abyss of 
 poverty ; to glut my soul with the abjectness and humiliation 
 of his penury ; to strip him of all aid, consolation, sympathy, 
 and friendship ; to follow him, unseen, to his wretched and 
 squalid home ; to mark the struggles of the craving nature 
 with the loathing pride ; and, finally, to watch the [frame 
 wear, the eye sink, the lip grow livid, and- all the terrible and 
 torturing progress of gnawing want, to utter starvation. Then, 
 in that last state, but not before, I might reveal myself ; stand 
 by the hopeless and succorless bed of death ; shriek out in 
 the dizzy ear a name which could treble the horrors of
 
 33^ 
 
 remembrance ; snatch from the struggling and agonizing con* 
 science the last plank, the last straw, to which, in its madness, 
 it could cling, and blacken the shadows of departing life by 
 opening to the shuddering sense the threshold of an impatient 
 and yawning hell. 
 
 " Hurried away by the unhallowed fever of these projects, 
 I thought of nothing but their accomplishment. I employed 
 Thornton, who still maintained his intimacy with Tyrrell, to 
 decoy him more and more to the gambling-house ; and, as 
 the unequal chances of the public table were not rapid enough 
 in their termination to consummate the ruin even of an im- 
 petuous and vehement gamester like Tyrrell so soon as my 
 impatience desired, Thornton took every opportunity of en- 
 gaging him in private play, and accelerating my object by the 
 unlawful arts of which he was master. My enemy was every 
 day approaching the farthest verge of ruin ; near relations he 
 had none, all his distant ones he had disobliged ; all his 
 friends, and even his acquaintance, he had fatigued by his im- 
 portunity, or disgusted by his conduct. In the whole world 
 there seemed not a being who would stretch forth a helping 
 hand to save him from the total and penniless beggary to 
 which he was hopelessly advancing. Out of the wrecks of his 
 former property, and the generosity of former friends, what- 
 ever he had already wrung, had been immediately staked at 
 the -gaming-house and as immediately lost. 
 
 " Perhaps this would not so soon have been the case, if 
 Thornton had not artfully fed and sustained his expectations. 
 He had been long employed by Tyrrell in a professional capac- 
 ity, and he knew well all the gamester's domestic affairs ; and 
 when he promised, should things come to the worst, to find 
 some expedient to restore them, Tyrrell easily adopted so nat- 
 tering a belief. 
 
 " Meanwhile, I had taken the name and disguise under favor 
 of which you met me at Paris, and Thornton had introduced 
 me to Tyrrell as a young Englishman of great wealth, and still 
 greater inexperience. The gambler grasped eagerly at an ac- 
 quaintance which Thornton readily persuaded him he could 
 turn to such account ; and I had thus every facility of mark- 
 ing, day by day, how my plot thickened, and my vengeance 
 hastened to its triumph. 
 
 " This was not all. I said, there was not in the wide world 
 a being who would have saved Tyrrell from the fate he de- 
 served and was approaching, I forgot there ivas one who still 
 clung to him with affection, and for whom he still seemed to
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 337 
 
 harbor the better and purer feelings of less degraded and 
 guilty times. This person (you will guess readily it was a 
 woman) I made it my especial business and care to wean away 
 from my prey ; I would not suffer him a consolation he had 
 denied to me. I used all the arts of seduction to obtain the 
 transfer of her affections. Whatever promises and vows 
 whether of love or wealth could effect, were tried ; nor, at 
 last, without success / triumphed. The woman became my 
 slave. It was she who, whenever Tyrrell faltered in his course 
 to destruction, combated his scruples, and urged on his reluc- 
 tunce ; it was she who informed me minutely of his pitiful 
 finances, and assisted, to her utmost, in expediting their decay. 
 The still more bitter treachery of deserting him in his veriest 
 want I reserved till the fittest occasion, and contemplated with 
 a. savage delight. 
 
 "I was embarrassed in my scheme by two circumstances : 
 first, Thornton's acquaintance with you ; and, secondly, Tyr- 
 rell's receipt (some time afterwards) of a very unexpected 
 sum of two hundred pounds, in return for renouncing all 
 further and possible claim on the purchasers of his estate. To 
 the former, so far as it might interfere with my plans, or lead 
 to my detection, you must pardon me for having put a speedy 
 termination ; the latter threw me into great consternation for 
 Tyrrell's first idea was to renounce the gaming-table, and 
 endeavor to live upon the trifling pittance he had acquired, as 
 long as the utmost economy would permit. 
 
 " This idea, Margaret, the woman I spoke of, according to 
 my instructions so artfully and successfully combated, that 
 Tyrrell yielded to his natural inclination, and returned once 
 more to the infatuation of his favorite pursuit. However, I 
 had become restlessly impatient for the conclusion to this 
 prefatory part of my revenge, and, accordingly, Thornton and 
 myself arranged that Tyrrell should be persuaded by the 
 former to risk all, even to his very last farthing,^in a private 
 game with me. Tyrrell, who believed he should readily recruit 
 himself by my unskilfulness in the game, fell easily into the 
 snare ; and on the second night of our engagement he not only 
 had lost the whole of his remaining pittance, but had signed 
 bonds owning to a debt of far greater amount than he, at that 
 time, could ever even have dreamt of possessing. 
 
 " Flushed, heated, almost maddened with my triumph, I 
 yielded to the exultation of the moment. I did not know you 
 were so near I discovered myself you remember the scene. 
 I went joyfully home : and for the first time since Gertrude's
 
 338 PELHAM ; 
 
 death, I was happy ; but there I imagined my vengeance only 
 would begin ; I revelled in the burning hope of marking the 
 hunger and extremity that must ensue. The next day, when 
 Tyrrell turned round, in his despair, for one momentary word 
 of comfort from the lips to which he believed, in the fond 
 credulity of his heart, falsehood and treachery never came, his 
 last earthly friend taunted and deserted him. Mark me, Pel- 
 ham I was by, and heard her ! 
 
 " But here my power of retribution was to close : from the 
 thirst still unslaked and unappeased, the cup was abruptly 
 snatched. Tyrrell disappeared no one knew whither. I set 
 Thornton's inquiries at work. A week afterwards he brought 
 me word that Tyrrell had died in extreme want, and from very 
 despair. Will you credit that, at hearing this news, my first 
 sensations were only rage and disappointment ? True, he 
 had died died in all the misery my heart could wish but / 
 had not seen him die ; and the death-bed seemed to me robbed 
 of its bitterest pang. 
 
 " I know not to this day, though I have often questioned 
 him, what interest Thornton had in deceiving me by this tale ; 
 for my own part, I believe that he himself was deceived;* 
 certain it is (for I inquired), that a person very much answer- 
 ing to Tyrrell's description had perished in the state Thornton 
 mentioned ; and this might, therefore, in all probability have 
 misled him. 
 
 " I left Paris, and returned, through Normandy, to England 
 (where I remained some weeks) ; there we again met : but I 
 think we did not meet till I had been persecuted by the inso- 
 lence and importunity of Thornton. The tools of our passions 
 cut both ways ; like the monarch who employed strange beasts 
 in his army, we find our treacherous allies less destructive to 
 others than ourselves. But I was not of a temper to brook the 
 tauntings, or the encroachment, of my own creature ; it had 
 been with but an ill grace that I had endured his familiarity 
 when I absolutely required his services, much less could I suffer 
 his intrusion when those services services not of love, but 
 hire were no longer necessary. Thornton, like all persons of 
 his stamp, has a low pride which I was constantly offending. 
 He had mixed with men more than my equals in rank on a 
 familiar footing, and he could ill brook the hauteur with which 
 my disgust at his character absolutely constrained me to treat 
 him. It is true, that the profuseness of my liberality was such 
 that the mean wretch stomached affronts for which he was sp 
 
 * It seems, from subsequent investigation, that this was really the case,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 339 
 
 largely paid ; but, with the cunning and malicious spite natural 
 to him, he knew well how to repay them in kind. While he 
 assisted, he affected to ridicule, my revenge ; and though he 
 soon saw that he durst not, for his very life, breathe a syllable 
 openly against Gertrude or her memory, yet he contrived, by 
 general remarks and covert insinuations, to gall me to the very 
 quick, and in the very tenderest point. Thus a deep and cor- 
 dial antipathy to each other arose, and grew, and strengthened, 
 till I believe, like the fiends in hell, our mutual hatred became 
 our common punishment. 
 
 " No sooner had I returned to England than I found him 
 here, awaiting my arrival. He favored me with frequent visits 
 and requests for money. Although not possessed of any secret 
 really important affecting my character, he knew well that he 
 was possessed of one important to my quiet ; and he availed 
 himself to the utmost of my strong and deep aversion even to 
 the most delicate recurrence to my love to Gertrude, and its 
 unhallowed and disastrous termination. At length, however, 
 he wearied me ; I found that he was sinking into the very dregs 
 and refuse of society, and I could not longer brook the idea of 
 enduring his familiarity and feeding his vices. 
 
 " I pass over any detail of my own feelings, as well as my 
 outward and worldly history. Over my mind a great change 
 had passed ; I was no longer torn by violent and contending 
 passions ; upon the tumultuous sea a dead and heavy torpor 
 had fallen ; the very winds necessary for health had ceased : 
 
 ' I slept on the abyss without a surge.' 
 
 One violent and engrossing passion is among the worst of all 
 immoralities, for it leaves the mind too stagnant and exhausted 
 for those activities and energies which constitute our real 
 duties. However, now that the tyrant feeling of my mind was 
 removed, I endeavored to shake off the apathy it had produced, 
 and return to the various occupations and business of life. 
 Whatever could divert me from my own dark memories, or give 
 a momentary motion to the stagnation of my mind, I grasped 
 at with the fondness and eagerness of a child. Thus, you found 
 me surrounding myself with luxuries which palled upon my 
 taste the instant that their novelty had passed : ncnv striving for 
 the vanity of literary fame ; now, for the emptier baubles which 
 riches could procure. At one time I shrouded myself in my 
 closet, and brooded over the dogmas of the learned, and the 
 errors of the wise ; at another, I plunged into the more en- 
 grossing and active pursuits of the living crowd which rolled
 
 34 PELHAM ; 
 
 around me, and flattered my heart that amidst the applause of 
 senators, and the whirlpool of affairs, I could lull to rest the 
 voices of the past, and the spectre of the dead. 
 
 " Whether these hopes were effectual, and the struggle not 
 in vain, this haggard and wasting form, drooping day by day 
 into the grave, can declare ; but I said I would not dwell long 
 upon this part of my history, nor is it necessary. Of one thing 
 only, not connected with the main part of my confessions, it is 
 right, for the sake of one tender and guiltless being, that I 
 should speak. 
 
 " In the cold and friendless world with which I mixed there 
 was a heart which had years ago given itself wholly up to me. 
 At that time I was ignorant of the gift I so little deserved, or 
 (for it was before I knew Gertrude) I might have returned it, 
 and been saved years of crime and anguish. Since then the 
 person I allude to had married, and, by the death of her hus- 
 band, was once more free. Intimate with my family, and more 
 especially with my sister, she now met me constantly ; her com- 
 passion for the change she perceived in me, both in mind and 
 person, was stronger than even her reserve, and this is the only 
 reason why I speak of an attachment which ought otherwise to 
 be concealed : I believe that you already understand to whom 
 I allude, and since you have discovered her weakness, it is right 
 that you should know also her virtue ; it is right that you should 
 learn, that it was not in her the fantasy or passion of a moment, 
 but a long and secreted love ; that you should learn, that it was 
 her pity, and no unfeminine disregard to opinion, which be- 
 trayed her into imprudence, and that she is, at this moment, 
 innocent of everything but the folly of loving me. 
 
 " I pass on to the time when I discovered that I had been, 
 either intentionally or unconsciously, deceived, and that my 
 enemy yet lived ! Lived in honor, prosperity, and the world's 
 blessings. The information was like removing a barrier from 
 a stream hitherto pent into quiet and restraint. All the stormy 
 thoughts, feelings, and passions, so long at rest, rushed again 
 into a terrible and tumultuous action. The newly formed 
 stratum of my mind was swept away ; everything seemed a 
 wreck, a chaos, a convulsion of jarring elements ; but this is a 
 trite and tame description of my feelings ; words would be but 
 commonplace to express the revulsion which I experienced : 
 yet, amidst all, there was one paramount and presiding thought, 
 to which the rest were as atoms in the heap the awakened 
 thought of vengeance ! But how was it to be gratified ? 
 
 " Placed as Tyrrell now was in the scale of society, every
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 34! 
 
 method of retribution but the one formerly rejected seemed at 
 an end. To that one, therefore, weak and merciful as it ap- 
 peared to me, I resorted you took my challenge to Tyrrell 
 you remember his behavior Conscience doth indeed make 
 cowards of us all ! The letter inclosed to me in his to you con- 
 tained only the commonplace argument urged so often by those 
 who have injured us : viz., the reluctance at attempting our 
 life after having ruined our happiness. When I found that he 
 had left London my rage knew no bounds ; I was absolutely 
 frantic with indignation ; the earth reeled before my eyes ; I 
 was almost suffocated by the violence the ivhirlpool of my 
 emotions. I gave myself no time to think I left town in pur- 
 suit of my foe. 
 
 " I found that still addicted, though, I believe, not so madly 
 as before, to his old amusements he was in the neighborhood 
 of Newmarket, awaiting the races shortly to ensue. No sooner 
 did I find his address, than I wrote him another challenge, still 
 more forcibly and insultingly worded than the one you took. 
 In this I said that his refusal was of no avail ; that I had sworn 
 that my vengeance should overtake him ; and that sooner or 
 later, in the face of Heaven and despite of hell, my oath should 
 be fulfilled. Remember those words, Pelham, I shall refer to 
 them hereafter. 
 
 " Tyrrell's reply was short and contemptuous ; he affected 
 to treat me as a madman. Perhaps (and I confess that the in- 
 coherence of my letter authorized such suspicion) he believed 
 I really was one. He concluded by saying, that if he received 
 more of my letters, he should shelter himself from my aggres- 
 sions by the protection of the law. 
 
 "On receiving this reply, a stern, sullen, iron spirit entered 
 into my bosom. I betrayed no external mark of passion ; I 
 sat down in silence I placed the letter and Gertrude's picture 
 before me. There, still and motionless, I remained for hours. 
 I remember well I was awakened from my gloomy revery by 
 the clock, as it struck the first hour of the morning. At that 
 lone and ominous sound the associations of romance and dread 
 which the fables of our childhood connect with it rushed coldly 
 and fearfully into my mind ; the damp dews broke out upon my 
 forehead, and the blood curdled in my limbs. In that moment 
 I knelt down and vowed a frantic and deadly oath the words 
 of which I would not now dare to repeat that before three 
 days expired, hell should no longer be cheated of its prey. I 
 rose I flung myself on my bed, and slept. 
 
 "The next day I left my abode. I purchased a strong and
 
 342 PELHAM ; 
 
 swift horse, and, disguising myself from head to foot in a long 
 horseman's cloak, I set off alone, locking in my heart the calm 
 and cold conviction that my oath should be kept. I placed, 
 concealed in my dress, two pistols ; my intention was to follow 
 Tyrrell wherever he went, till we could find ourselves alone, 
 and without the chance of intrusion. It was then my deter- 
 mination to force him into a contest, and that no trembling of 
 the hand, no error of the swimming sight, might betray my 
 purpose, to place us foot to foot, and the mouth of each pistol 
 almost to the very temple of each antagonist. Nor was I de- 
 terred for a moment from this resolution by the knowledge 
 that my own death must be as certain as my victim's. On the 
 contrary, I looked forward to dying thus, and so baffling the 
 more lingering, but not less sure, disease, which was daily wasting 
 me away, with the same fierce, yet not unquiet, delight with 
 which men have rushed into battle, and sought out a death less 
 bitter to them than life. 
 
 " For two days, though I each day saw Tyrrell, fate threw 
 into my way no opportunity of executing my design. The 
 morning of the third came Tyrrell was on the race-ground : 
 sure that he would remain there for some hours, I put up my 
 wearied horse in the town, and, seating myself in an obscure 
 corner of the course, was contented with watching, as the serpent 
 does his victim, the distant motions of my enemy. Perhaps you 
 can recollect passing a man seated on the ground, and robed 
 in a horseman's cloak. I need not tell you that it was I whom 
 you passed and accosted. I saw you ride by me ; but the mo- 
 ment you were gone I forgot the occurrence. I looked upon 
 the rolling and distant crowd as a child views the figures of 
 the phantasmagoria, scarcely knowing if my eyes deceived me, 
 feeling impressed with some stupifying and ghastly sensation 
 of dread, and cherishing the conviction that my life was not 
 as the life of the creatures that passed before me. 
 
 "The day waned ; I went back for my horse ; I returned to 
 the course, and, keeping at a distance as little suspicious as 
 possible, followed the motions of Tyrrell. He went back to 
 the town ; rested there ; repaired to a gaming-table ; stayed in 
 it a short time ; returned to his inn, and ordered his horse. 
 
 " In all these motions I followed the object of my pursuit ; 
 and my heart bounded with joy when I, at last, saw him set 
 out alone, and in the advancing twilight. I followed him till 
 he left the main road. Now, 1 thought, was my time. I re- 
 doubled my pace, and had nearly reached him, when some 
 horsemen appearing, constrained me again to slacken my pace.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 343 
 
 Various other similar interruptions occurred to delay my plot. 
 At length all was undisturbed. I spurred my horse, and was 
 nearly on the heels of my enemy, when I perceived him join 
 another man this \vasyou I clenched my teeth, and drew my 
 breath, as I once more retreated to a distance. In a short time 
 two men passed me, and I found that, owing to some accident 
 on the road, they stopped to assist you. It appears by your 
 evidence on a subsequent event that these men were Thornton 
 and his friend Dawson : at the time they passed too rapidly, 
 and I was too much occupied in my own dark thoughts, to ob- 
 serve them : still I kept up to you and Tyrrell, sometimes 
 catching the outline of your figures through the moonlight, at 
 others (with the acute sense of anxiety), only just distinguish- 
 ing the clang of your horses' hoofs on the stony ground. At 
 last, a heavy shower came on ; imagine my joy when Tyrrell 
 left you and rode off alone ! 
 
 " I passed you, and followed my enemy as fast as my horse 
 would permit ; but it was not equal to Tyrrell's, which was al- 
 most at its full speed. However, I came, at last, to a very 
 steep, and almost precipitous, descent. I was forced to ride 
 slowly and cautiously ; this, however, I the less regarded, from 
 my conviction that Tyrrell must be obliged to use the same pre- 
 caution. My hand was on my pistol with the grasp of premed- 
 itated revenge,when a shrill, sharp, solitary cry broke on my ear. 
 
 " No sound followed all was silence. I was just approach- 
 ing toward the close of the descent when a horse without its 
 rider passed me. The shower had ceased, and the moon bro- 
 ken from the cloud some minutes before ; by its light I recog- 
 nized the horse rode by Tyrrell ; perhaps, I thought, it has 
 thrown its master, and my victim will now be utterly in iny 
 power. I pushed hastily forward in spite of the hill, not yet 
 wholly passed. I came to a spot of singular desolation it was 
 a broad patch of waste land, a pool of water was on the right, 
 and a remarkable and withered tree hung over it. I looked 
 round, but saw nothing of life stirring. A dark and imper- 
 fectly developed object lay by the side of the pond I pressed 
 forward. Merciful God ! my enemy had escaped my hand, and 
 lay in the stillness of death before me ! " 
 
 "What!" I exclaimed, interrupting Glanville, for I could 
 contain myself no longer, "it was not by you then that Tyrrell 
 fell ?" With these words I grasped his hand ; and, excited as 
 I had been by my painful and wrought-up interest in his re- 
 cital, I burst into tears of gratitude and joy. Reginald Glan- 
 ville was innocent Ellen was not the sister of an assassin !
 
 344 PELHAM ; 
 
 After a short pause, Glanville continued : 
 
 " I gazed upon the upward and disterted face in a deep and 
 sickening silence ; an awe, dark and undefined, crept over my 
 heart ; 1 stood beneath the solemn and sacred heavens, and 
 felt that the hand of God was upon me that a mysterious and 
 fearful edict had gone forth ; that my headlong and unholy 
 wrath had, in the very midst of its fury, been checked, as if 
 but the idle anger of a child ; that the plan I had laid in the 
 foolish wisdom of my heart, had been traced, step by step, by 
 an all-seeing Eye, and baffled in the moment of its fancied suc- 
 cess by an inscrutable and awful doom. I had wished the 
 death of my enemy lo ! my wish was accomplished ! flow, I 
 neither knew nor guessed there, a still and senseless clod of 
 earth, without power of offence or injury, he lay beneath my 
 feet ; it seemed as if, in the moment of my uplifted arm, the 
 Divine Avenger had asserted His prerogative ; as if the angel 
 which had smitten the Assyrian had again swept forth, though 
 against a meaner victim ; and, while he punished the guilt of 
 a human criminal, had set an eternal barrier to the vengeance 
 of a human foe ! 
 
 " I dismounted from my horse, and bent over the murdered 
 man. I drew from my bosom the miniature, which never for- 
 sook me, and bathed the lifeless resemblance of Gertrude in 
 the blood of her betrayer. Scarcely had I done so before my 
 ear caught the sounds of steps ; hastily I thrust, as I thought, 
 the miniature in my bosom, remounted, and rode hurriedly 
 away. At that hour, and for many which succeeded to it, I 
 believe that all sense was suspended. I was like a man haunted 
 by a dream, and wandering under its influence ; or, as one whom 
 a spectre pursues, and for whose eye the breathing and busy 
 world is but as a land of unreal forms and flitting shadows, 
 teeming with the monsters of darkness and the terrors of the 
 tomb. 
 
 " It was not till the next day that I missed the picture. I 
 returned to the spot, searched it carefully, but in vain the 
 miniature could not be found ; I returned to town, and shortly 
 afterwards the newspapers informed me of what had subse- 
 quently occurred. I saw, with dismay, that all appearance 
 pointed to me as the criminal, and that the officers of justice 
 were at that moment tracing the clue which my cloak, and the 
 color of my horse, afforded them. My mysterious pursuit of 
 Tyrrell ; the disguise I had assumed ; the circumstance of my 
 passing you on the road, and of my flight when you approached, 
 all spoke volumes against me. A stronger evidence yet re-
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 345 
 
 mained, and it was reserved for Thornton to indicate it at 
 this moment my life is in his hands. Shortly after my return 
 to town, he forced his way into my room, shut the door, bolted 
 it, and, the moment we were alone, said, with a savage and 
 fiendish grin of exultation and defiance : ' Sir Reginald Glan- 
 ville, you have many a time and oft insulted me with your 
 pride, and more with your gifts : now it is my time to insult 
 and triumph over you know that one word of mine could 
 sentence you to the gibbet.' 
 
 " He then minutely summed up the evidence against me, 
 and drew from his pocket the threatening letter I had last 
 written to Tyrrell. You remember that therein I said my 
 vengeance was sworn against him, and that, sooner or later, it 
 should overtake him. 'Couple,' said Thornton coldly, as he 
 replaced the letter in his pocket, 'couple these words with the 
 evidence already against you, and I would not buy your life at 
 a farthing's value.' 
 
 " How Thornton came by this paper, so important to my 
 safety, I know not : but when he read it, I was startled by the 
 danger it brought upon me : one glance sufficed to show me 
 that I was utterly at the mercy of the villain who stood before 
 me : he saw and enjoyed my struggles. 
 
 ' ' Now,' said he, ' we know each other ; at present I want a 
 thousand pounds ; you will not refuse it me, I am sure ; when 
 it is gone I shall call again ; till then you can do without me.' 
 I flung him a check for the money, and he departed. 
 
 " You may conceive the mortification I endured in this sacri- 
 fice of pride to prudence : but those were no ordinary motives 
 which induced me to submit to it. Fast approaching to the 
 grave, it mattered to me but little whether a violent death 
 should shorten a life to which a limit was already set, and 
 which I was far from being anxious to retain : but I could not 
 endure the thought of bringing upon my mother and my sister 
 the wretchedness and shame which the mere suspicion of a 
 crime so enormous would occasion them ; and when my eye 
 caught all the circumstances arrayed against me, my pride 
 seemed to suffer a less mortification even in the course I adopted 
 than in the thought of the felon's gaol, and the criminal's trial ; 
 the hoots and execrations of the mob, and the death and 
 ignominious remembrance of the murderer. 
 
 " Stronger than either of these motives was my shrinking 
 and loathing aversion to whatever seemed likely to unrip the 
 secret history of the past. I sickened at the thought of Ger- 
 trude's name and fate being bared to the vulgar eye, and
 
 346 PELHAM J 
 
 exposed to the comment, the strictures, the ridicule of the 
 gaping and curious public. It seemed to me, therefore, but a 
 very poor exertion of philosophy to conquer my feelings of 
 humiliation at Thornton's insolence and triumph, and to con- 
 sole myself with the reflection that a few months must rid me 
 alike of his exactions and my life. 
 
 "But, of late, Thornton's persecutions and demands have 
 risen to such a height, that I have been scarcely able to restrain 
 my indignation and control myself into compliance. The 
 struggle is too powerful for my frame ; it is rapidly bringing 
 on the fiercest and the last contest I shall suffer, before ' the 
 wicked shall cease from troubling, and the weary be at rest.' 
 Some days since I came to a resolution which I am now about 
 to execute ; it is to leave this country and take refuge on the 
 Continent. There I shall screen myself from Thornton's pur- 
 suit, and the danger which it entails upon me ; and there, un- 
 known and undisturbed, I shall await the termination of my 
 disease. 
 
 "But two duties remained to me to fulfil before I departed ; 
 I have now discharged them both. One was due to the warm- 
 hearted and noble being who honored me with her interest and 
 affection the other to you. I went yesterday to the former ; 
 I sketched the outline of that history which I have detailed to 
 you. I showed her the waste of my barren heart, and spoke 
 toherof the disease which was wearing me away. How beauti- 
 ful is the love of woman ! She would have followed me over 
 the world, received my last sigh, and seen me to the rest I shall 
 find, at length ; and this without a hope, or thought of recom- 
 pense, even from the worthlessness of my love. 
 
 " But, enough ! Of her my farewell has been taken. Your 
 suspicions I have seen and forgiven, for they were natural ; it 
 was due to me to remove them : the pressure of your hand tells 
 me that I have done so : but I had another reason for my con- 
 fessions. I have worn away the romance of my heart, and I 
 have now no indulgence for the little delicacies and petty 
 scruples which often stand in the way of our real happiness. 
 I have marked your former addresses to Ellen, and, I confess, 
 with great joy ; for I know, amidst all your worldly ambition, 
 and the encrusted artificiality of your exterior, how warm and 
 generous is your real heart how noble and intellectual is your 
 real mind : and were my sister tenfold more perfect than I 
 believe her, I do not desire to find on earth one more deserv- 
 ing of her than yourself. I have remarked your late estrange- 
 ment from Ellen ; and, while I guessed, 1 felt that, however
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 347 
 
 painful to me, I ought to remove, the cause : she loves you 
 though, perhaps, you know it not much and truly ; and since 
 my earlier life has been passed in a selfish inactivity, I would 
 fain let it close Avith the reflection of having served two beings 
 whom I prize so dearly, and the hope that their happiness will 
 commence with my death. 
 
 " And now, Pelham, I have done ; I am weak and exhausted, 
 and cannot bear more even of your society, now. Think over 
 what I have last said, and let me see you again to-morrow ; on 
 the day after, I leave England forever." 
 
 CHAPTER LXXVI. 
 
 " But wilt thou accept not 
 
 The worship the heart lifts above, 
 
 And the Heavens reject not. 
 The desire of the moth for the star, 
 
 Of the night for the morrow, 
 The devotion to something afar 
 
 From the sphere of our sorrow ? " P. B. SHELLEY. 
 
 IT was not with a light heart for I loved Glanville too well 
 not to be powerfully affected by his awful history but with a 
 chastised and sober joy, that I now beheld my friend innocent 
 of the guilt of which my suspicions had accused him, while the 
 only obstacle to my marriage with his sister was removed. 
 True it was that the sword yet hung over his head, and that 
 while he lived there could be no rational assurance of his safety 
 from the disgrace and death of the felon. In the world's eye, 
 therefore, the barrier to my union with Ellen would have been 
 far from being wholly removed ; but, at that moment, my dis- 
 appointments had disgusted me with the world, and I turned 
 with a double yearning of heart to her whose pure and holy 
 love could be at once my recompense and retreat. 
 
 Nor was this selfish consideration my only motive in the con- 
 duct I was resolved to adopt ; on the contrary, it was scarcely 
 more prominent in my mind than those derived from giving to 
 a friend who was now dearer to me than ever his only conso- 
 lation on this earth, and to Ellen the safest protection, in case 
 of any danger to her brother. With these, it is true, were min- 
 gled feelings which, in happier circumstances, might have been 
 those of transport at a bright and successful termination to a 
 deep and devoted love ; but these I had, while Glanville's very 
 life was so doubtful, little right to indulge, and I checked them 
 as soon as they arose.
 
 PELHAM J 
 
 After a sleepless night I repaired to Lady Glanville's house. 
 It was long since I had been there, and the servant who admit- 
 ted me seemed somewhat surprised at the earliness of my visit. 
 I desired to see the mother, and waited in the parlor till she 
 came. I made but a scanty exordium to my speech. In very 
 few words I expressed my love to Ellen, and besought her me- 
 diation in my behalf ; nor did I think it would be a slight con- 
 sideration in my favor, with the fond mother, to mention Glan- 
 ville's approbation of my suit. 
 
 " Ellen is upstairs in the drawing-room," said Lady Glan- 
 ville. " I will go and prepare her to receive you if you have 
 her consent, you have mine." 
 
 " Will you suffer me then," said I," to forestall you ? Forgive 
 my impatience, and let me see her before you do." 
 
 Lady Glanville was a woman of the good old school, and 
 stood somewhat upon forms and ceremonies. I did not, there- 
 fore, await the answer, which I foresaw might not be favorable 
 to my success, but with my customary assurance left the room, 
 and hastened upstairs. I entered the drawing-room, and shut 
 the door. Ellen was at the far end ; and as I entered with a 
 light step, she did not perceive me till I was close by. 
 
 She started when she saw me ; and her cheek, before very 
 pale, deepened into crimson. " Good Heavens ! is it you ! " 
 she said falteringly. " I I thought but but excuse me for 
 an instant, I will call my mother." 
 
 " Stay for one instant, I beseech you it is from your mother 
 that I come she has referred me to you." And with a trem- 
 bling and hurried voice, for all my usual boldness forsook me, 
 I poured forth, in rapid and burning words, the history of my 
 secret and hoarded love its doubts, fears, and hopes. 
 
 Ellen sank back on her chair, overpowered and silent by her 
 feelings, and the vehemence of my own. I knelt, and took "her 
 hand ; I covered it with my kisses it was not withdrawn from 
 them. I raised my eyes and beheld in hers all that my heart 
 had hoped, but did not dare to portray. 
 
 " You you," said she, when at last she found words ; " I 
 imagined that you only thought of ambition and the world I 
 could not have dreamt of this." She ceased, blushing and em- 
 barrassed. 
 
 " It is true," said I, " that you had a right to think so, for, 
 till this moment, I have never opened to you even a glimpse 
 of my veiled heart, and its secret and wild desires ; but do you 
 think that my love was the less a treasure because it was hid- 
 den ? or the less deep because it was cherished at the bottom
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 349 
 
 of my soul ? No no ; believe me, that love was not to be 
 mingled with the ordinary objects of life ; it was too pure to 
 be profaned by the levities and follies which are all of my na- 
 ture that I have permitted myself to develop to the world. Do 
 not imagine, that, because 1 have seemed an idler with the 
 idle, selfish with the interested, and cold, and vain, and frivo- 
 lous, with those to whom such qualities were both a passport 
 and a virtue do not imagine that I have concealed within me 
 nothing more worthy of you and of myself ; my very love for 
 you shows that I am wiser and better than I have seemed. 
 Speak to me, Ellen may I call you by that name one word, 
 one syllable ! Speak to me, and tell me that you have read my 
 heart, and that you will not reject it ! " 
 
 There came no answer from those dear lips ; but their soft 
 and tender smile told me that I might hope. That hour I 
 still recall and bless ! that hour was the happiest of my life. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXVII. 
 
 "A thousand crowns, or else lay down your head." 2d Part of Henry VI. 
 
 FROM Ellen I hastened to the house of Sir Reginald. The 
 hall was in all the confusion of approaching departure. I 
 sprang over the paraphernalia of books and boxes which ob- 
 structed my way, and bounded up the stairs. Glanville was, 
 as usual, alone : his countenance was less pale than it had 
 been lately, and when I saw it brighten as I approached, I 
 hoped, in the new happiness of my heart, that he might baffle 
 both his enemy and his disease. 
 
 I told him all that had just occurred between Ellen and 
 myself. " And now," said I, as I clasped his hand, " I have a 
 proposal to make to which you must accede : let me accompany 
 you abroad ; I will go with you to whatever corner of the 
 world you may select. We will plan together every possible 
 method of concealing our retreat. Upon the past I will never 
 speak to you. In your hours of solitude I will never disturb 
 you by an unwelcome and ill-timed sympathy. I will tend upon 
 you, watch over you, bear with you, with more than the love 
 and tenderness of a brother. You shall see me only when 
 you wish it. Your loneliness shall never be invaded. When 
 you get better, as I presage you will, I will leave you to come 
 back to England, and provide for the worst, by ensuring your 
 sister a protector. I will then return to you alone, that your 
 seclusion may not be endangered by the knowledge even of 
 Ellen, and you shall have me by your side till till "
 
 35<> PELHAM ; 
 
 "The last!" interrupted Glanville. "Too too generous 
 Pelham, I feel these tears (the first I have shed for a long, 
 long time) tell you, that I feel to the heart your friendship 
 and disinterested attachment ; but in the moment your love 
 for Ellen has become successful I will not tear you from its 
 enjoyment. Believe me, all that I could derive from your 
 society could not afford me half the happiness I should have 
 in knowing that you and Ellen were blest in each other. No 
 no, my solitude will, at that reflection, be deprived of its sting. 
 You shall hear from me once again ; my letter shall contain a 
 request, and your executing that last favor must console and 
 satify the kindness of your heart. For myself, I shall die as I 
 have lived alone. All fellowship with my griefs would seem 
 tome strange and unwelcome." 
 
 I would not suffer Glanville to proceed. I interrupted him 
 with fresh arguments and entreaties, to which he seemed at 
 last to submit, and I was in the firm hope of having conquered 
 his determination, when we were startled by a sudden and 
 violent noise in the hall. 
 
 " It is Thornton," said Glanville calmly. " I told them not 
 to admit him, and he is forcing his way." 
 
 Scarcely had Sir Reginald said this, before Thornton burst 
 abruptly into the room. 
 
 Although it was scarcely noon, he was more than half in- 
 toxicated, and his eyes swam in his head with a maudlin ex- 
 pression of triumph and insolence as he rolled towards us. 
 
 " Oh, oh ! Sir Reginald," he said, " thought of giving me 
 the slip, eh ? Your d d servants said you were out ; but I 
 soon silenced them. 'Egad, I made them as nimble as cows in 
 a cage I have not learnt the use of my fists for nothing. So, 
 you're going abroad to-morrow ; without my leave, too, 
 pretty good joke that, indeed. Come, come, my brave fellow, 
 you need not scowl at me in that way. Why, you look as surly 
 as a butcher's dog with a broken head. 
 
 Glanville, who was livid with ill-suppressed rage, rose 
 haughtily. 
 
 " Mr. Thornton," he said, in a calm voice, although he was 
 trembling in his extreme passion from head to foot, " I am not 
 now prepared to submit to your insolence and intrusion. You 
 will leave this room instantly. If you have any further demands 
 upon me, I will hear them to-night, at any hour you please to 
 appoint." 
 
 " No, no, my fine fellow," said Thornton, with a coarse 
 chuckle ; " you have as much wit as three folks, two fools,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 35! 
 
 and a madman ! but you won't do me, for all that. The instant 
 my back is turned yours will be turned too ; and by the time 
 I call again, your honor will be half-way to Calais. But, bless 
 my stars, Mr. Pelham, is that you ? I really did not see you 
 before ; I suppose you are not in the secret ? " 
 
 " I have no secrets from Mr. Pelham," said Glanville ; "nor 
 do I care if you discuss the whole of your nefarious transactions 
 with me in his presence. Since you doubt my word, it is be- 
 neath my dignity to vindicate it, and your business can as well 
 be despatched now as hereafter. You have heard rightly that 
 I intend leaving England to-morrow : and now, sir, what is 
 your will ? " 
 
 " By G , Sir Reginald Glanville ! " exclaimed Thornton, 
 who seemed stung to the quick by Glanville's contemptuous 
 coldness, " you shall not leave England without my leave. Ay, 
 you may frown, but I say you shall not ; nay, you shall not 
 budge a foot from this very room unless I cry, ' Be it so ' ! " 
 
 Glanville could no longer restrain himself. He would have 
 sprung towards Thornton, but I seized and arrested him. I 
 read, in the malignant and incensed countenance of his per- 
 secutor, all the danger to which a single imprudence would 
 have exposed him, and I trembled for his safety. 
 
 I whispered, as I forced him again to his seat, " Leave me 
 alone to settle with this man, and I will endeavor to free you 
 from him." I did not tarry for his answer, but, turning to 
 Thornton, said to him coolly but civilly : " Sir Reginald Glan- 
 ville has acquainted me with the nature of your very extraordi- 
 nary demands upon him. Did he adopt my advice, he would 
 immediately place the affair in the hands of his legal advisers. 
 His ill-health, however, his anxiety to leave England, and his 
 wish to sacrifice almost everything to quiet, induce him, rather 
 than take this alternative, to silence your importunities by ac- 
 ceding to claims, however illegal and unjust. If, therefore, you 
 now favor Sir Reginald with your visit, for the purpose of 
 making a demand previous to his quitting England, and which, 
 consequently, will be the last to which he will concede, you 
 will have the goodness to name the amount of your claim, and 
 should it be reasonable, I think Sir Reginald will authorize me 
 to say that it shall be granted." 
 
 "Well, now!" cried Thornton, "that's what I call talking 
 like a sensible man : and though I am not fond of speaking to 
 a third person when the principal is present, yet as you have 
 always been very civil to me, I have no objection to treating 
 with you, Please to give Sir Reginald this paper ; if be will
 
 352 PELHAM ; 
 
 but take the trouble to sign it, he may go to the Falls of Niagara 
 for me ! I won't interrupt him so he had better put pen to 
 paper, and get rid of me at once, for I know I am as welcome 
 as snow in harvest/' 
 
 I took the paper, which was folded up, and gave it to Glan- 
 ville, who leant back on his chair, half exhausted by rage. He 
 glanced his eye over it, and then tore it into a thousand 
 pieces, and trampled it beneath his feet : " Go ! " exclaimed 
 he, " Go, rascal, and do your worst ! I will not make myself 
 a beggar to enrich you. My whole fortune would but answer 
 this demand." 
 
 " Do as you please, Sir Reginald," answered Thornton, 
 grinning; "do as you please. It's not a long walk from 
 hence to Bow Street, nor a long swing from Newgate to the 
 gallows; do as you please, Sir Reginald, do as you please !" 
 and the villain flung himself at full length on the ottoman, 
 and eyed Glanville's countenance with an easy and malicious 
 effrontery which seemed to say : " I know you will struggle, 
 but you cannot help yourself." 
 
 I took Glanville aside : " My dear friend," said I, " believe 
 me, that I share your indignation to the utmost ; but we 
 must do anything rather than incense this wretch : what is 
 his demand ?" 
 
 " I speak literally," replied Glanville, " when I say that it 
 covers nearly the whole of my fortune, except such lands as 
 are entailed upon the male heir ; for my habits of extrava- 
 gance have very much curtailed my means : it is the exact 
 sum I had set apart for a marriage gift to my sister, in addi- 
 tion to her own fortune." 
 
 "Then," said I, "you shall give it him; your sister has 
 no longer any necessity for a portion : her marriage with me 
 prevents that and with regard to yourself, your wants are not 
 many such as it is, you can share my fortune." 
 
 "No no no!" cried Glanville; and his generous nature 
 lashing him into fresh rage, he broke from my grasp, and 
 moved menacingly to Thornton. That person still lay on the 
 ottoman regarding us with an air half contemptuous, half- 
 exulting. 
 
 " Leave the room instantly," said Glanville, " or you will 
 repent it ! " 
 
 " What ! another murder, Sir Reginald ! " said Thornton. 
 " No, I am not a sparrow, to have my neck wrenched by a 
 woman's hand like yours. Give me my demand sign the 
 paper, and I will leave you for ever and a day."
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 353 
 
 "I will commit no such folly," answered Glanville. "If 
 you will accept five thousand pounds, you shall have that 
 sum ; but were the rope on my neck, you should not wring 
 from me a farthing more ! " 
 
 " Five thousand ! " repeated Thornton ; a mere drop a 
 child's toy why, you are playing with me, Sir Reginald nay, 
 I am a reasonable man, and will abate a trifle or so of my just 
 claims, but you must not take advantage of my good nature. 
 Make me snug and easy for life let me keep a brace of 
 hunters a cosy box a bit of land to it, and a girl after my 
 own heart, and I'll say quits with you. Now, Mr. Pelham, 
 who is a long-headed gentleman, and does not spit on his oum 
 blanket, knows well enough that one can't do all this for five 
 thousand pounds ; make it a thousand a year that is, give me a 
 cool twenty thousand and I won't exact another sou. 'Egad, 
 this drinking makes one deuced thirsty Mr. Pelham, just 
 reach me that glass of water / hear bees in my head ! " 
 
 Seeing that I did not stir, Thornton rose, with an oath 
 against pride : and swaggering towards the table, took up a 
 tumbler of water, which happened accidentally to be there; 
 close by it was the picture of the ill-fated Gertrude. The 
 gambler, who was evidently so intoxicated as to be scarcely 
 conscious of his motions or words (otherwise, in all probability, 
 he would, to borrow from himself a proverb illustrative of his 
 profession, have played his cards better), took up the portrait. 
 
 Glanville saw the action, and was by his side in an instant. 
 "Touch it not with your accursed hands ! " he cried, in an un- 
 governable fury. " Leave your hold this instant, or I will dash 
 you to pieces." 
 
 Thornton kept a firm grip of the picture. " Here's a to-do ! " 
 said he -tauntingly ; " was there ever such work about a poor 
 (using a word too coarse for repetition) before ?" 
 
 The word had scarcely passed his lips, when he was stretched 
 at his full length upon the ground. Nor did Glanville stop 
 there. With all the strength of his nervous frame, fully re- 
 quited for the debility of disease by the fury of the moment, 
 he seized the gamester as if he had been an infant, and dragged 
 him to the door : the next moment I heard his heavy frame 
 rolling down the stairs with no decorous slowness of descent. 
 
 Glanville reappeared. "Good Heavens !" I cried, "what 
 have you done ? " But he was too lost in his still unappeased 
 rage to heed me. He leaned, panting and breathless, against the 
 wall, with clenched teeth, and a flashing eye, rendered more 
 terribly bright by the feverish lustre natural to his disease.
 
 354 PELHAM ; 
 
 Presently I heard Thornton reascend the stairs ; he opened 
 the door, and entered but one pace. Never did human face 
 wear a mere fiendish expression of malevolence and wrath. 
 " Sir Reginald Glanville," he said, " I thank you heartily. He 
 must have iron nails who scratches a bear. You have sent me 
 a challenge, and the hangman shall bring you my answer. 
 Good-day, Sir Reginald good-day, Mr. Pelham"; and so 
 saying, he shut the door, and rapidly descending the stairs was 
 out of the house in an instant. 
 
 " There is no time to be lost," said I ; " order post-horses 
 to your carriage, and begone instantly ! " 
 
 " You are wrong," replied Glanville, slowly recovering him- 
 self. " I must not fly ; it would be worse than useless ; it 
 would seem the strongest argument against me. Remember 
 that if Thornton has really gone to inform against me, the 
 officers of justice would arrest me long before I reached Calais ; 
 or even if I did elude their pursuit so far, I should be as much 
 in their power in France as in England ; but, to tell you the 
 truth, I do not think Thornton will inform. Money, to a 
 temper like his, is a stronger temptation than revenge ; and, 
 before he has been three minutes in the air, he will perceive 
 the foUy of losing the golden harvest he may yet make of me, 
 for the sake of a momentary passion. No ; my best plan will 
 be to wait here till to-mprrow, as I originally intended. In 
 the mean while, he will, in all probability, pay me another visit, 
 and I will make a compromise with his demands." 
 
 Despite my fears, I could not but see the justice of these 
 observations, the more especially as a still stronger argument 
 than any urged by Glanville forced itself on my mind ; this 
 was my internal conviction that Thornton himself was guilty 
 of the murder of Tyrrell, and that, therefore, he would, for 
 his own sake, avoid the new and particularizing scrutiny into 
 that dreadful event which his accusation of Glanville would 
 necessarily occasion. 
 
 Both of us were wrong. Villains have passions as well as 
 honest men ; and they will, therefore, forfeit their own interest 
 in obedience to those passions, while the calculations of pru- 
 dence invariably suppose that that interest is their only rule. 
 
 Glanville was so enfeebled by his late excitement, that he be- 
 sought me once more to leave him to himself. I did so under 
 a promise that he would admit me again in the evening ; for 
 notwithstanding my persuasion that Thornton would not put 
 his threats into execution, I could not conquer a latent fore- 
 boding of dread and evil.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. $$$ 
 
 CHAPTER LXXVIII. 
 "Away with him to prison where is the provost?" Measure for Measure. 
 
 I RETURNED home perplexed by a thousand contradictory 
 thoughts upon the scene I had just witnessed ; the more I 
 reflected the more I regretted the fatality of the circumstances 
 that had tempted Glanville to accede to Thornton's demand. 
 True it was that Thornton's self-regard might be deemed a 
 sufficient guarantee for his concealment of such extortionate 
 transactions : moreover, it was difficult to say, when the for- 
 midable array of appearances against Glanville was considered, 
 whether any other line of conduct than that which he had 
 adopted could, with safety, have been pursued. 
 
 His feelings, too, with regard to the unfortunate Gertrude, I 
 could fully enter into, and sympathize with ; but, in spite of 
 all these considerations, it was with an inexpressible aversion 
 that I contemplated the idea of that tacit confession of guilt 
 which his compliance with Thornton's exactions so unhappily 
 implied ; it was, therefore, a thought of some satisfaction, that 
 my rash and hasty advice of a still further concession to those 
 extortions had not been acceded to. My present intention, in 
 the event of Glanville's persevering to reject my offer of 
 accompanying him, was to remain in England, for the purpose 
 of sifting the murder ; nor did I despair of accomplishing this 
 most desirable end, through the means of Dawson ; for there 
 was but little doubt in my own mind that Thornton and him- 
 self were the murderers, and I hoped that address or intimida- 
 tion might win a confession from Dawson, although it might 
 probably be unavailing with his hardened and crafty associate. 
 
 Occupied with these thoughts, I endeavored to while away 
 the hours till the evening summoned me once more to the 
 principal object of my reflections. The instant Glanville's 
 door was opened I saw, by one glance, that I had come too 
 late ; the whole house was in confusion ; several of the servants 
 were in the hall, conferring with each other, with that mingled 
 mystery and agitation which always accompany the fears and 
 conjectures of the lower classes. I took aside the valet, who 
 had lived with Glanville for some years, and who was remark- 
 ably attached to his master, and learned that, somewhat more 
 than an hour before, Mr. Thornton had returned to the house, 
 accompanied by three men of very suspicious appearance. 
 " In short, sir," said the man, lowering his voice to a whisper, 
 " I knew one of them by sight ; he was Mr. S., the Bow Street 
 officer ; with these men Sir Reginald left the house, merely
 
 356 PELHAM ; 
 
 saying, in his usual quiet manner, that he did not know when 
 he should return." 
 
 I concealed my perturbation, and endeavored, as far as I 
 was able, to quiet the evident apprehensions of the servant. 
 " At all events, Seymour," said I, " I know that I may trust 
 you sufficiently to warn you against mentioning the circum- 
 stance any further ; above all, let me beg of you to stop the 
 mouths of those idle loiterers in the hall and be sure that 
 you do not give any unnecessary alarm to Lady and Miss 
 Glanville." 
 
 The poor man promised, with tears in his eyes, that he would 
 obey my injunctions ; and with a calm face, but a sickening 
 heart, I turned away from the house. I knew not whither to 
 direct my wanderings ; fortunately I recollected that I should, 
 in all probability, be among the first witnesses summoned on 
 Glanville's examination, and that, perhaps, by the time I reached 
 home I might already receive an intimation to that effect ; accord- 
 ingly I retraced my steps, and on re-entering my hotel was told 
 by the waiter, with a mysterious air, that a gentleman was waiting 
 to see me. Seated by the window in my room, and wiping his 
 forehead with a red silk pocket-handkerchief, was a short, 
 thickset man, with a fiery and rugose complexion, not alto- 
 gether unlike the aspect of a mulberry : from underneath a 
 pair of shaggy brows peeped two singularly small eyes, which 
 made ample amends, by their fire, for their deficiency in size 
 they were black, brisk, and somewhat fierce in their expression. 
 A nose of that shape vulgarly termed bottled formed the " arch 
 sublime," the bridge, the twilight, as it were, between the pur- 
 ple sunset of one cheek, and the glowing sunrise of the other. 
 His mouth was small, and drawn up at each corner, like a 
 purse there was something sour and crabbed about it ; if it 
 was like a purse, it was the purse of a miser ; a fair round chin 
 had not been condemned to single blessedness on the con- 
 trary, it was like a farmer's pillion, and carried double ; on 
 either side of a very low forehead, hedged round by closely 
 mowed bristles of a dingy black, was an enormous ear, of the 
 same intensely rubicund color as that inflamed pendant of 
 flesh which adorns the throat of an enraged turkey-cock ears 
 so large, and so red, I never beheld before ; they were some- 
 thing preposterous. 
 
 This enchanting figure, which was attired in a sober suit of 
 leaden black, relieved by a long gold watch-chain, and a plen- 
 tiful decoration of seals, rose at my entrance with a solemn 
 grunt, and a still more solemn bow. I shut the door carefully,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 357 
 
 and asked him his business. As I had foreseen, it was a request 
 
 from the magistrate at to attend a private examination on 
 
 the ensuing day. 
 
 "Sad thing, sir, sad thing," said Mr. ; "it would be 
 
 quite shocking to hang a gentleman of Sir Reginald Glanville's 
 quality so distinguished an orator, too ; sad thing, sir, very 
 sad thing." 
 
 " Oh ! " said I quietly, " there is not a doubt as to Sir Regi- 
 nald's innocence of the crime laid to him ; and, probably, 
 
 Mr. , I may call in your assistance to-morrow to ascertain 
 
 the real murderers I think I am possessed of some clue." 
 
 Mr. pricked up his ears those enormous ears ! " Sir," 
 
 he said, "I shall be happy to accompany you very happy; 
 give me the clue you speak of, and I will soon find the villains. 
 Horrid thing, sir, murder very horrid. It is too hard that a 
 gentleman cannot take his ride home from a race, or a merry- 
 making, but he must have his throat cut from ear to ear ear 
 to ear, sir"; and with these words, the speaker's own auricular 
 protuberances seemed, as in conscious horror, to glow with a 
 double carnation. 
 
 " Very true, Mr. ! " said I, " say I will certainly attend 
 
 the examination till then, good-by ! " At this hint my fiery- 
 faced friend made a low bow, and blazed out of the room, like 
 the ghost of a kitchen fire. 
 
 Left to myself I revolved, earnestly and anxiously, every cir- 
 cumstance that could tend to diminish the appearances against 
 Glanville, and direct suspicion to that quarter where I was 
 confident the guilt rested. In this endeavor I passed the time 
 till morning, when I fell into an uneasy slumber which lasted 
 some hours ; on waking, it was almost time to attend the mag- 
 istrate's appointment. I dressed hastily, and soon found my- 
 self in the room of inquisition. 
 
 It is impossible to conceive a more courteous, and yet more 
 equitable man, than the magistrate whom I had the honor of 
 attending. He spoke with great feeling on the subject for 
 which I was summoned ; owned to me, that Thornton's state- 
 ment was very clear and forcible ; trusted that my evidence 
 would contradict an account which he was very loth to believe ; 
 and then proceeded to the question. I saw, with an agony 
 which I can scarcely express, that all my answers made power- 
 fully against the cause 1 endeavored to support. I was obliged 
 to own that a man on horseback passed me soon after Tyrrell 
 had quitted me ; that, on coming to the spot where the de- 
 ceased was found, I saw this same horseman on the very place j
 
 358 PELHAM ; 
 
 that I believed, nay, that I was sure (how could I evade this ?) 
 that this man was Reginald Glanville. 
 
 Farther evidence Thornton had already offered to adduce. 
 He could prove, that the said horseman had been mounted on 
 a gray horse, sold to a person answering exactly to the de- 
 scription of Sir Reginald Glanville ; moreover, that that 
 horse was yet in the stables of the prisoner. He produced a 
 letter, which, he said, he had found upon the person of the de- 
 ceased, signed by Sir Reginald Glanville, and containing the 
 most deadly threats against Sir John Tyrrell's life ; and, to 
 crown all, he called upon me to witness that we had both dis- 
 covered upon the spot where the murder was committed, a 
 picture belonging to the prisoner, since restored to him, and 
 now in his possession. 
 
 At the close of this examination, the worthy magistrate shook 
 his head, in evident distress ! " I have known Sir Reginald 
 Glanville personally," said he ; "in private as in public life, I 
 have always thought him the most upright and honorable of 
 men. I feel the greatest pain in saying that it will be my duty 
 fully to commit him for trial." 
 
 I interrupted the magistrate ; I demanded that Dawson 
 should be produced. "I have already," said he, "inquired of 
 Thornton respecting that person, whose testimony is of evident 
 importance ; he tells me that Dawson has left the country, and 
 can give me no clue to his address." 
 
 "He lies!" cried I, in the abrupt anguish of my heart ; 
 " his associate shall be produced. Hear me ; I have been, 
 next to Thornton, the chief witness against the prisoner, and 
 when I swear to you that, in spite of all appearances, I most 
 solemnly believe in his innocence, you may rely on my assur- 
 ance, that there are circumstances in his favor which have not 
 yet been considered, but which I will pledge myself hereafter 
 to adduce." I then related to the private ear of the magis- 
 trate my firm conviction of the guilt of the accuser himself. 
 I dwelt forcibly upon the circumstance of Tyrrell's having 
 mentioned to me that Thornton was aware of the large sum 
 he had on his person, and of the strange disappearance of that 
 sum, when his body was examined in the fatal field. After 
 noting how impossible it was that Glanville could have stolen 
 the money, I insisted strongly on the distressed circumstances, 
 the dissolute habits, and the hardened character, of Thornton, 
 I recalled to the mind of the magistrate the singularity of 
 Thornton's absence from home when I called there, and the 
 doubtful nature of his excuse : much more I said, but all equally
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 359 
 
 in vain. The only point where I was successful, was in press- 
 ing for a delay, which was granted to the passionate manner 
 in which I expressed my persuasion that I could confirm my 
 suspicions by much stronger data before the reprieve expired. 
 " It is very true," said the righteous magistrate, " that there 
 are appearances somewhat against the witness ; but certainly 
 not tantamount to anything above a slight suspicion. If, how- 
 ever, you positively think you can ascertain any facts to eluci- 
 date this mysterious crime, and point the inquiries of justice to 
 another quarter, I will so far strain the question as to remand 
 the prisoner to another day let us say the day after to-morrow. 
 If nothing important can before then be found in his favor, h.e 
 must be committed for trial." 
 
 CHAPTER LXXIX. 
 
 " Nihil est furacius illo ; 
 Non fuit Autolyci tarn piceaia manus." MARTIAL. 
 
 " Quo teneatn vultus mutantem Protea nodo? " HORAT. 
 
 WHEN I left the magistrate I knew not whither my next step 
 should tend. There was, however, no time to indulge the idle 
 stupor which Glanville's situation at first occasioned ; with a 
 violent effort I shook it off, and bent all my mind to discover 
 the best method to avail myself, to the utmost, of the short re- 
 prieve I had succeeded in obtaining. At length, one of those 
 sudden thoughts which, from their suddenness, appear more 
 brilliant than they really are, flashed upon my mind. I remem- 
 bered the accomplished character of Mr. Job Jonson, and the 
 circumstance of my having seen him in company with Thorn- 
 ton. Now, although it was not very likely that Thornton 
 should have made Mr. Jonson his confidant in any of those 
 affairs which it was so essentially his advantage to confine ex- 
 clusively to himself ; yet the acuteness and penetration visible 
 in the character of the worthy Job might not have lain so fal- 
 low during his companionship with Thornton but that it might 
 have made some discoveries which would considerably assist 
 me in my researches ; besides, as it is literally true in the sys- 
 tematized roguery of London that "birds of a feather flock 
 together," it was by no means unlikely that the honest Job 
 might be honored with the friendship of Mr. Dawson, as well 
 as the company of Mr. Thornton ; in which case I looked for- 
 ward with greater confidence to the detection of the notable pair. 
 
 I could not, however, conceal from myself, that this was but
 
 360 PELHAM ; 
 
 a very unstable and ill-linked chain of reasoning, and there 
 were moments when the appearances against Glanville were so 
 close a semblance of truth that all my friendship could scarcely 
 drive from my mind an intrusive suspicion that he might have 
 deceived me, and that the accusation might not be groundless. 
 
 This unwelcome idea did not, however, at all lessen the rapid- 
 ity with which I hastened towards the memorable gin-shop 
 where I had whilom met Mr. Gordon : there I hoped to find 
 either the address of that gentleman, or of the " Club " to 
 which he had taken me, in company with Tringie and Dart- 
 more : either at this said club, or of that said gentleman, I 
 .thought it not unlikely that I might hear some tidings of the 
 person of Mr. Job Jonson if not, I was resolved to return to 
 the office, and employ Mr. , my mulberry-cheeked acquaint- 
 ance of the last night, in search after the holy Job. 
 
 Fate saved me a world of trouble : as I was hastily walking 
 onwards, I happened to turn my eyes on the opposite side of the 
 way, and discovered a man dressed in what the newspapers term 
 the very height of fashion, viz., in the most ostentatious attire 
 that ever flaunted at Margate, or blazed in the Palais Royal. 
 The nether garments of \\~\\spetit maitre consisted of a pair of 
 blue tight pantaloons, profusely braided, and terminating in 
 Hessian boots, adorned with brass spurs of the most burnished 
 resplendency ; a black velvet waistcoat studded with gold stars 
 was backed^ a green frock coat, covered, notwithstanding the 
 heat of the weather, with fur, and frogged and cordonnt with 
 the most lordly indifference both as to taste and expense : a 
 small French hat, which might not have been much too large 
 
 for my lord of , was set jauntily in the centre of a system 
 
 of long black curls, which my eye, long accustomed to penetrate 
 the arcana of habilatory art, discovered at once to be a wig. A 
 fierce black mustachio, very much curled, wandered lovingly 
 from the upper lip towards the eyes, which had an unfortunate 
 prepossession for eccentricity in their direction. To complete 
 the picture, we must suppose some coloring ; and this consisted 
 in a very nice and delicate touch of the rouge pot, which 
 could not be called by so harsh a term as paint say rather 
 that it was a tinge! 
 
 No sooner had I set my eyes upon this figure than I crossed 
 over to the side of the way which it was adorning, and followed 
 its motions at a respectful but observing distance. 
 
 At length my freluquct marched into a jeweller's shop in Ox- 
 ford Street ; with a careless air I affected, two minutes after- 
 wards, to saunter into the same shop ; the shopman was show-
 
 6U, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 361 
 
 ing his bijouterie to him of the Hessians with the greatest 
 respect ; and, beguiled by the splendor of the wig and waist- 
 coat, turned me over to his apprentice. Another time I 
 might have been indignant at perceiving that the air noble, on 
 which I so much piqued myself, was by no means so univer- 
 sally acknowledged as I had vainly imagined ; at that mo- 
 ment I was too occupied to think of my insulted dignity. 
 While I was pretending to appear wholly engrossed with some 
 seals, I kept a vigilant eye on my superb fellow-customer; at 
 last I saw him secrete a diamond ring, and thrust it, by a sin- 
 gular movement of the forefinger, up the fur cuff of his capa- 
 cious sleeve ; presently some other article of minute size disap- 
 peared in the like manner. 
 
 The gentleman then rose, expressed himself very well satisfied 
 by the great taste of the jeweller, said he should look in again 
 on Saturday, when he hoped the set he had ordered would be 
 completed, and gravely took his departure amidst the prodigal 
 bows of the shopman and his helpmates. Meanwhile I bought 
 a seal of small value, and followed my old acquaintance, for the 
 reader has doubtless discovered, long before this, that the gen- 
 tleman was no other than Mr. Job Jonson. 
 
 Slowly and struttingly did the man of two virtues perform 
 the whole pilgrimage of Oxford Street. He stopped at Cum- 
 berland Gate, and, looking round, with an air of gentlemanlike 
 indecision, seemed to consider whether or not he should join the 
 loungers in the park : fortunately for the well-bred set, his 
 doubts terminated in their favor, and Mr. Job Jonson entered 
 the park. Every one happened to be thronging to Kensington 
 Gardens, and the man of two virtues accordingly cut across 
 the park as the shortest, but the least frequented, way thither, 
 in order to confer upon the seekers of pleasure the dangerous 
 honor of his company. 
 
 As soon as I perceived that there were but few persons in the 
 immediate locality to observe me, and that those consisted of 
 a tall guardsman and his wife, a family of young children and 
 their nursery-maid, and a debilitated East India captain, walk- 
 ing for the sake of his liver, I overtook the incomparable Job, 
 made him a low bow, and thus reverently accosted him : 
 
 " Mr. Jonson, I am delighted once more to meet you suffer 
 me to remind you of the very pleasant morning I passed with 
 you in the neighborhood of Hampton Court. I perceive, by 
 your mustachios and military dress, that you have entered the 
 army, since that day ; I congratulate the British troops on so 
 admirable an acquisition."
 
 362 PELHAM ; 
 
 Mr. Jonson's assurance forsook him for a moment, but he 
 lost no time in regaining a quality which was so natural to his 
 character. He assumed a fierce look, and, relevant sa mous- 
 tache, sourit amerement, like Voltaire's governor. * " D me, 
 sir," he cried, " do you mean to insult me ? I know none of 
 your Mr. Jonsons, and I never set my eyes upon you before." 
 
 " Lookye, my dear Mr. Job Jonson," replied I, " as I can prove 
 not only all I say, but much more that I shall not say such as 
 your little mistakes just now, at the jeweller's shop in Oxford 
 Street, etc., etc., perhaps it would be better for you not to oblige 
 me to create a mob, and give you in charge pardon my abrupt^ 
 ness of speech to a constable! Surely there will be no need of 
 such a disagreeable occurrence, when I assure you, in the first 
 place, that I perfectly forgive you for ridding me of the unnec- 
 essary comforts of a pocket-book and handkerchief, the un- 
 philosophical appendage of a purse,and the effeminate love-token 
 of a gold locket ; nor is this all it is perfectly indifferent to 
 me whether you levy contributions on jewellers or gentlemen, 
 and I am very far from wishing to intrude upon your harmless 
 occupations, or to interfere with your innocent amusements. I 
 see, Mr. Jonson, that you are beginning to understand me ; let 
 me facilitate so desirable an end by an additional information, 
 that, since it is preceded with a promise to open my purse, may 
 tend somewhat to open your heart ; I am at this moment in 
 great want of your assistance favor me with it, and I will pay 
 you to your soul's content. Are we friends now, Mr. Job 
 Jonson ?" 
 
 My old friend burst out into a loud laugh. " Well, sir, I must 
 say that your frankness enchants me. I can no longer dissem- 
 ble with you ; indeed, I perceive it would be useless ; besides, 
 I always adored candor it is my favorite virtue. Tell me how 
 I can help you, and you may command my services." 
 
 " One word," said I : " Will you be open and ingenuous with 
 me ? I shall ask you certain questions, not in the least affect- 
 ing your own safety, but to which, if you would serve me, you 
 must give me (and, since candor is your favorite virtue, this 
 will be no difficult task) your most candid replies. To 
 strengthen you in so righteous a course, know also that the 
 said replies will come verbatim before a court of law, and that, 
 therefore, it will be a matter of prudence to shape them as 
 closely to the truth as your inclinations will allow. To counter- 
 balance this information, which, I own, is not very inviting, I 
 repeat that the questions asked you will be wholly foreign to 
 
 * Don Fernand d' Ibarra, in the " Candide"
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAtf. 363 
 
 your own affairs, and that, should you prove of that assistance 
 to me which I anticipate, I will so testify my gratitude as to 
 place you beyond the necessity of pillaging rural young gentle- 
 men and credulous shopkeepers for the future ; all your present 
 pursuits need thenceforth only be carried on for your private 
 amusement. " 
 
 " I repeat, that you may command me," returned Mr. Jonson, 
 gracefully putting his hand to his heart. 
 
 " Pray, then," said 1, " to come at once to the point, how 
 long have you been acquainted with Mr. Thomas Thornton ?" 
 
 " For some months only," returned Job, without the least 
 embarrassment. 
 
 " And Mr. Dawson ? " said I. 
 
 A slight change came over Jonson's countenance ; he hesi- 
 tated. "Excuse me, sir," said he ; "but I am, really, perfectly 
 unacquainted with you, and I may be falling into some trap of 
 the law, of which, Heaven knows, I am as ignorant as a babe 
 unborn." 
 
 1 saw the knavish justice of this remark : and in my pre- 
 dominating zeal to serve Glanville, I looked upon the incon- 
 venience of discovering myself to a pickpocket and sharper as a 
 consideration not worth attending to. In order, therefore, to 
 remove his doubts, and, at the same time, to have a more secret 
 and undisturbed place for our conference, I proposed to him 
 to accompany me home. At first Mr. Jonson demurred, but I 
 soon half-persuaded and half-intimidated him into compliance. 
 
 Not particularly liking to be publicly seen with a person of 
 his splendid description and celebrated character, I made him 
 walk before me to Mivart's, and I followed him closely, never 
 turning my eye, either to the right or the left, lest he should 
 endeavor to escape me. There was no fear of this, for Mr. 
 Jonson was both a bold and a crafty man, and it required, per- 
 haps, but little of his penetration to discover that I was no 
 officer nor informer, and that my communication had been of 
 a nature likely enough to terminate in his advantage ; there 
 was, therefore, but little need of his courage in accompanying 
 me to my hotel. 
 
 There were a good many foreigners of rank at Mivart's, and 
 the waiters took my companion for an ambassador at least : he 
 received their homage with the mingled dignity and conde- 
 scension natural to so great a man. 
 
 As the day was now far advanced, I deemed it but hospitable 
 to offer Mr. Job Jonson some edible refreshment. With the 
 frankness on which he so justly valued himself, he accepted
 
 364 PELHAM ; 
 
 my proposal. I ordered some cold meat, and two bottles of 
 wine ; and, mindful of old maxims, deferred my business till 
 his repast was over. I conversed with him merely upon ordi- 
 nary topics, and, at another time, should have been much 
 amused by the singular mixture of impudence and shrewdness 
 which formed the stratum of his character. 
 
 At length his appetite was satisfied, and one of the bottles 
 emptied ; with the other before him, his body easily reclining 
 on my library chair, his eyes apparently cast downwards, but 
 ever and anon glancing up at my countenance with a searching 
 and curious look, Mr. Job Jonson prepared himself for our 
 conference ; accordingly I began : 
 
 " You say that you are acquainted with Mr. Dawson ; where 
 is he at present?" 
 
 "I don't know," answered Jonson laconically. 
 
 " Come," said I, " no trifling if you do not know, you can 
 learn." 
 
 " Possibly I can in the course of time," rejoined honest Job. 
 
 " If you cannot tell me his residence at once," said I, "our 
 conference is at an end ; that is a leading feature in my in- 
 quiries." 
 
 Jonson paused before he replied : " You have spoken to me 
 frankly ; let us do nothing by halves tell me, at once, the 
 nature of the service I can do you, and the amount of my re- 
 ward, and then you shall have my answer. With respect to 
 Dawson, I will confess to you that I did once know him well, 
 and that we have done many a mad prank together, which I 
 should not like the bugaboos and bulkies to know ; you will, 
 therefore, see that I am naturally reluctant to tell you anything 
 about him, unless your honor will inform me of the why and 
 the wherefore." 
 
 I was somewhat startled by this speech, and by the shrewd, 
 cunning eye which dwelt upon me, as it was uttered ; but, how- 
 ever, I was by no means sure that acceding to his proposal 
 would not be my readiest and wisest way to the object I had 
 in view. Nevertheless, there were some preliminary questions 
 to be got over first : perhaps Dawson might be too dear a friend 
 to the candid Job for the latter to endanger his safety : or per- 
 haps (and this was more probable) Jonson might be perfectly 
 ignorant of anything likely to aid me ; in this case my com- 
 munication would be useless ; accordingly I said, after a short 
 consideration : 
 
 " Patience, my dear Mr. Jonson patience ; you shall know 
 all in good time ; meanwhile I must even for Dawson's sake
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OP A GENTLEMAN. 365 
 
 question you blindfold. What, now, if your poor friend Daw- 
 son were in imminent danger, and you had, if it so pleased you, 
 the power to save him ; would you not do all you could?" 
 
 The small, coarse features of Mr. Job grew blank with a 
 curious sort of disappointment : " Is that all ? " said he. " No ! 
 Unless I were well paid for my pains in his behalf, he might go 
 to Botany Bay for all I care." 
 
 " What ! " I cried, in a tone of reproach, " is this your friend- 
 ship? I thought, just now, that you said Dawson had been an 
 old and firm associate of yours." 
 
 "An old one, your honor ; but not a firm one. A short time 
 ago, I was in great distress, and he and Thornton had, deuce 
 knows how ! about two thousand between them ; but I could 
 not worm a stiver out of Dawson that gripe-all, Thornton, got 
 it all from him." 
 
 " Two thousand pounds ! " said I, in a calm voice, though 
 my heart beat violently ; "that's a great sum for a poor fellow 
 like Dawson. How long ago is it since he had it ?" 
 
 "About two or three months," answered Jonson. 
 
 " Pray," I asked, "have you seen much of Dawson lately?" 
 
 " I have," replied Jonson. 
 
 "Indeed ! " said I. " I thought you told me, just now, that 
 you were unacquainted with his residence?" 
 
 " So I am," replied Jonson coldly, "it is not at his own house 
 that I ever see him." 
 
 I was silent, for I was now rapidly and minutely weighing 
 the benefits and disadvantages of trusting Jonson as he had de- 
 sired me to do. 
 
 To reduce the question to the simplest form of logic, he had 
 either the power of assisting my investigation, or he had not ; 
 if not, neither could he much impede it, and therefore it mat- 
 tered little whether he was in my confidence or not ; if he had 
 the power, the doubt was, whether it would be better for me to 
 benefit by it openly, or by stratagem ; that is, whether it were 
 wiser to state the whole case to him, or continue to gain what- 
 ever I was able by dint of a blind examination. Now, the dis- 
 advantage of candor was, that if it were his wish to screen 
 Dawson and his friend, he would be prepared to do so, and 
 even to put them on their guard against my suspicions ; but 
 the indifference he had testified with regard to Dawson seemed 
 to render this probability very small. The benefits of candor 
 were more prominent : Job would then be fully aware that his 
 own safety was not at stake ; and should I make it more his 
 interest to serve the innocent than the guilty, I should hava
 
 366 t>ELHAM ; 
 
 the entire advantage, not only of any actual information he 
 might possess, but of his skill and shrewdness in providing ad- 
 ditional proof, or at least suggesting advantageous hints. 
 Moreover, in spite of my vanity and opinion of my own pene- 
 tration, I could not but confess that it was unlikely that my 
 cross-examination would be very successful with so old and 
 experienced a sinner as Mr. Jonson. "Set a thief to catch a 
 thief," is among the wisest of wise sayings, and accordingly I 
 resolved in favor of a disclosure. 
 
 Drawing my chair close to Jonson's, and fixing my eye upon 
 his countenance, I briefly proceeded to sketch Glanville's situ- 
 ation (only concealing his name), and Thornton's charges. I 
 mentioned my own suspicions of the accuser, and my desire of 
 discovering Dawson, whom Thornton appeared to me artfully 
 to secrete. Lastly, I concluded with a solemn promise, that if 
 my listener could, by any zeal, exertion, knowledge, or con- 
 trivance of his own, procure the detection of the men who, I 
 was convinced, were the murderers, a pension of three hundred 
 pounds a year should be immediately settled upon him. 
 
 During my communication the patient Job sat mute and 
 still, fixing his eyes on the ground, and only betraying, by an 
 occasional elevation of the brows, that he took the slightest 
 interest in the tale : when, however, I touched upon the pero- 
 ration, which so tenderly concluded with the mention of three 
 hundred pounds a year, a visible change came over the coun- 
 tenance of Mr. Jonson. He rubbed his hands with an air of 
 great content, and one sudden smile broke over his features, 
 and almost buried his eyes amid the intricate host of wrinkles 
 it called forth : the smile vanished as rapidly as it came, and 
 Mr. Job turned round to me with a solemn and sedate aspect. 
 
 " Well, your honor," said he, " I'm glad you've told me all : 
 We must see what can be done. As for Thornton, I'm afraid 
 we shan't make much out of him, for he's an old offender, 
 whose conscience is as hard as a brickbat ; but of Dawson I 
 hope better things. However, you must let me go now, for this 
 is a matter that requires a vast deal of private consideration. 
 I shall call upon you to-morrow, sir, before ten o'clock, since 
 you say matters are so pressing ; and, I trust, you will then see 
 that you have no reason to repent of the confidence you have 
 placed in a man of honor" 
 
 So saying, Mr. Job Jonson emptied the remainder of the 
 bottle into his tumbler, held it up to the light with the gusto of 
 a connoisseur, and concluded his potations with a hearty smack 
 pf the lips, followed by a long sigh.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 367 
 
 " Ah, your honor ! " said he, " good wine is a marvellous 
 whetter of the intellect ; but your true philosopher is always 
 moderate : for my part, I never exceed my two bottles." 
 
 And with these words this true philosopher took his de- 
 parture. 
 
 No sooner was I freed from his presence than my thoughts 
 flew to Ellen ; I had neither been able to call nor write the 
 whole day ; and I was painfully fearful lest my precaution with 
 Sir Reginald's valet had been frustrated, and the alarm of his 
 imprisonment had reached her and Lady Glanville. Harassed 
 by this fear, I disregarded the lateness of the hour, and imme- 
 diately repaired to Berkeley Square. 
 
 Lady and Miss Glanville were alone and at dinner : the ser- 
 vant spoke with his usual unconcern. " They are quite well ? " 
 said I, relieved, but still anxious : and the servant replying in 
 the affirmative, I again returned home, and wrote a long and, 
 I hope, consoling letter to Sir Reginald. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXX. 
 
 " K. Henry. Lord Say, Jack Cade hath sworn to have thy head. 
 Say. Ay, but I hope your Highness shall have his." 
 
 Second Part of Henry IV. 
 
 PUNCTUAL to his appointment the next morning came Mr. 
 Job Jonson. I had been on the rack of expectation for the 
 last three hours previous to his arrival, and the warmth of my 
 welcome must have removed any little diffidence with which 
 so shamefaced a gentleman might possibly have been troubled. 
 
 At my request he sat himself down, and seeing that my 
 breakfast things were on the table, remarked what a famous 
 appetite the fresh air always gave him. I took the hint, and 
 pushed the rolls toward him. He immediately fell to work, 
 and, for the next quarter of an hour, his mouth was far too 
 well occupied for the intrusive impertinence of words. At last 
 the things were removed, and Mr. Jonson began. 
 
 " I have thought well over the matter, your honor, and I be- 
 lieve we can manage to trounce the rascals for I agree with 
 you, that there is not a doubt that Thornton and Dawson are 
 the real criminals ; but the affair, sir, is one of the greatest 
 difficulty and importance nay, of the greatest personal dan- 
 ger. My life maybe the forfeit of my desire to serve you you 
 will not, therefore, be surprised at my accepting your liberal 
 offer of three hundred a year, should I be successful ; although 
 I do assure you, sir, that it was my original intention to reject
 
 368 PELHAM j 
 
 all recompense, for I am naturally benevolent, and love doing 
 a good action. Indeed, sir, if I were alone in the world, I 
 should scorn any remuneration, for virtue is its own reward ; 
 but a real moralist, your honor, must not forget his duties on 
 any consideration, and I have a little family to whom my loss 
 would be an irreparable injury ; this, upon my honor, is my 
 only inducement for taking advantage of your generosity "; 
 and, as the moralist ceased, he took out of his waistcoat pocket 
 a paper, which he handed to me with his usual bow of defer- 
 ence. 
 
 I glanced over it it was a bond, apparently drawn up in all 
 the legal formalities, pledging myself, in case Job Jonson, be- 
 fore the expiration of three days, gave that information which 
 should lead to the detection and punishment of the true mur- 
 derers of Sir John Tyrrell, deceased, to ensure to the said Job 
 Jonson the yearly annuity of three hundred pounds. 
 
 "It is with much pleasure that I shall sign this paper," said 
 I ; " but allow me, par parent/the, to observe, that .since you 
 only accept the annuity for the sake of benefiting your little 
 family, in case of your death this annuity, ceasing with your 
 life, will leave your children as penniless as at present." 
 
 " Pardon me, your honor," rejoined Job, not a whit daunted 
 at the truth of my remark, " I can insure!" 
 
 " I forgot that," said I, signing, and restoring the paper ; 
 " and now to business." 
 
 Jonson gravely and carefully looked over the interesting doc- 
 ument I returned to him, and carefully lapping it in three en- 
 velopes, inserted it in a huge red pocket-book which he thrust 
 into an innermost pocket in his waistcoat. 
 
 " Right, sir," said he slowly ; " to business. Before I begin, 
 you must, however, promise me, upon your honor as a gentle- 
 man, the strictest secrecy as to my communications." 
 
 I readily agreed to this, so far as that secrecy did not impede 
 my present object ; and Job, being content with this condi- 
 tion, resumed. 
 
 " You must forgive me if, in order to arrive at the point in 
 question, I set out from one which may seem to you a little 
 distant." 
 
 I nodded my assent, and Job continued. 
 
 " I have known Dawson for some years ; my acquaintance 
 with him commenced at Newmarket, for I have always had a 
 slight tendency to the turf. He was a wild, foolish fellow, 
 easily led into any mischief, but ever the first to sneak out of 
 it ; in short, when he became one of us, which his extrava-
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 369 
 
 gance soon compelled him to do, we considered him as a very 
 serviceable tool, but one who, while he was quite wicked 
 enough to begin a bad action, was much too weak to go 
 through with it ; accordingly he was often employed, but 
 never trusted. By the word us, which I see has excited your 
 curiosity, I merely mean a body corporate, established fur- 
 tively and restricted solely to exploits on the turf. I think it 
 right to mention this (continued Mr. Jonson aristocratically), 
 because I have the honor to belong to many other societies to 
 which Dawson could never have been admitted. Well, sir, 
 our club was at last broken up, and Dawson was left to shift 
 for himself. His fathei was still alive, and the young hopeful, 
 having quarrelled with him, was in the greatest distress. He 
 came to me with a pitiful story, and a more pitiful face ; so 
 I took compassion upon the poor devil, and procured him, by 
 dint of great interest, admission into a knot of good fellows, 
 whom I visited, by the way, last night. Here I took him 
 under my especial care ; and, as far as I could, with such a 
 dull-headed dromedary, taught him some of the most elegant 
 arts of my profession. However, the ungrateful dog soon stole 
 back to his old courses, and robbed me of half my share of a 
 booty to which I had helped him myself. I hate treachery and 
 ingratitude, your honor ; they are so terribly ungentlemanlike ! 
 
 " I then lost sight of him till between two and three months ago, 
 when he returned to town and attended our meetings in com- 
 pany with Tom Thornton, who had been chosen a member of 
 the club some months before. Since we had met Dawson's 
 father had died, and I thought his flash appearance in town 
 arose from his new inheritance. I was mistaken ; old Dawson 
 had tied up the property so tightly that the young one could 
 not scrape enough to pay his debts ; accordingly, before he 
 came to town he gave up his life interest in the property to 
 his creditors. However that be, Master Dawson seemed at 
 the top of Fortune's wheel. He kept his horses, and sported 
 the set to champagne and venison ; in short, there would have 
 been no end to his extiavagance had not Thornton sucked 
 him like a leech. 
 
 " It was about that time that I asked Dawson for a trifle to 
 keep me from gaol ; for I was ill in bed, and could not help my- 
 self. Will you believe, sir, that the rascal told me to go and 
 be d d, and Thornton said, amen ? I did not forget the in- 
 gratitude of my prottgt, though, when I recovered I appeared 
 entirely to do so. No sooner could I walk about than I re- 
 lieved all my necessities, He is but a fool who starves, with
 
 370 PELHAM ; 
 
 all London before him ! In proportion as my finances im- 
 proved, Dawson's visibly decayed. With them decreased also 
 his spirits. He became pensive and downcast ; never joined 
 any of our parties, and gradually grew quite a useless member 
 of the corporation. To add to his melancholy, he was one 
 morning present at the execution of an unfortunate associate 
 of ours ; this made a deep impression upon him ; from that 
 moment he became thoroughly moody and despondent. He 
 was frequently heard talking to himself, could not endure to 
 be left alone in the dark, and began rapidly to pine away. 
 
 " One night when he and I were seated together, he asked me if 
 I never repented of my sins, and then added, with a groan, that 
 I had never committed the heinous crime he had. I pressed 
 him to confess, but he would not. However, I coupled that 
 half avowal with his sudden riches, and the mysterious circum- 
 stances of Sir John Tyrrell's death ; and dark suspicions came 
 into my mind. At that time, and indeed ever since Dawson re- 
 appeared, we were often in the habit of discussing the notorious 
 murder which then engrossed public attention ; and as Dawson 
 and Thornton had been witnesses on the inquest, we frequently 
 referred to them respecting it. Dawson always turned pale, 
 and avoided the subject ; Thornton, on the contrary, brazened 
 it out with his usual impudence. Dawson's aversion to the men- 
 tion of the murder now came into my remembrance with double 
 weight, to strengthen my suspicions ; and, on conversing with 
 one or two of our comrades, I found that my doubts were more 
 than shared, and that Dawson had frequently, when unusually 
 oppressed with his hypochondria, hinted at his committal of 
 some dreadful crime, and at his unceasing remorse for it. 
 
 " By degrees Dawson grew worse and worse : his health de- 
 cayed, he started at a shadow ; drank deeply, and spoke, in his 
 intoxication, words that made the hairs of our green men stand 
 on end. 
 
 " We must not suffer this,' said Thornton, whose hardy ef- 
 frontery enabled him to lord it over the jolly boys as if he were 
 their chief : ' his ravings and humdurgeon will unman all our 
 youngsters.' And so, under this pretence, Thornton had the 
 unhappy man conveyed away to a secret asylum, known only 
 to the chiefs of the gang, and appropriated to the reception of 
 persons who, from the same weakness as Dawson, were likely 
 to endanger others or themselves. There many a poor wretch 
 has been secretly immured, and never suffered to revisit the 
 light of Heaven. The moon's minions, as well as the monarch's, 
 must have their state prisoners, and their state victims,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 371 
 
 " Well, sir, I shall not detain you much longer. Last night, 
 after your obliging confidence, I repaired to the meeting ; Thorn- 
 ton was there, and very much out of humor. When our mess- 
 mates dropped off, and we were alone at one corner of the room, 
 1 began talking to him carelessly about his accusation of your 
 friend, who, I have since learnt, is Sir Reginald Glanville an 
 old friend of mine too ; ay, you may look, sir, but I can stake 
 my life to having picked his pocket one night at the opera ! 
 Thornton was greatly surprised at my early intelligence of a 
 fact hitherto kept so profound a secret ; however, I explained 
 it away by a boast of my skill in acquiring information ; and he 
 then incautiously let out that he was exceedingly vexed with 
 himself for the charge he had made against the prisoner, and 
 very uneasy at the urgent inquiries set on foot for Dawson. 
 More and more convinced of his guilt, I quitted the meeting, 
 and went to Dawson's retreat. 
 
 "For fear of his escape, Thornton had had him closely con- 
 fined in one of the most secret rooms in the house. His sol- 
 itude and the darkness of the place, combined with his remorse, 
 had worked upon a mind, never too strong, almost to insanity. 
 He was writhing with the most acute and morbid pangs of con- 
 science that my experience, which has been pretty ample, ever 
 witnessed. The old hag, who is the Hecate (you see, sir, I 
 have had a classical education) of the place, was very Ipth to 
 admit me to him, for Thornton had bullied her into a great fear 
 of the consequences of disobeying his instructions ; but she did 
 not dare to resist my orders. Accordingly I had a long inter- 
 view with the unfortunate man ; he firmly believes that Thorn- 
 ton intends to murder him ; and says that if he could escape 
 from his dungeon, he would surrender himself to the first mag- 
 istrate he could find. 
 
 " I told him that an innocent man had been apprehended 
 for the crime of which I knew he and Thornton were guilty ; 
 and then taking upon myself the office of a preacher, I ex- 
 horted him to atone, as far as possible, for his past crime, by 
 a full and faithful confession, that would deliver the innocent 
 and punish the guilty. I held out to him the hope that this 
 confession might perhaps serve the purpose of king's evidence, 
 and obtain him a pardon for his crime ; and I promised to use 
 my utmost zeal and diligence to promote his escape from his 
 present den. 
 
 " He said, in answer, that he did not wish to live ; that he 
 suffered the greatest tortures of mind ; and that the only com- 
 fort earth held out to him would be to ease his remorse by a
 
 372 PELHAM ; 
 
 full acknowledgment of his crime, and to hope for future 
 mercy by expiating his offence on the scaffold ; all this, and 
 much more to the same purpose, the hen-hearted fellow told 
 me with sighs and groans. I would fain have taken his con- 
 fession on the spot, and carried it away with me, but he re- 
 fused to give it to me, or to any one but a parson, whose 
 services he implored me to procure him. I told him, at first, 
 that the thing was impossible ; but, moved by his distress and 
 remorse, I promised, at last, to bring one to-night, who should 
 both administer spiritual comfort to him and receive his 
 deposition. My idea at the moment was to disguise myself in 
 the dress of the pater cove* and perform the double job ; 
 since then I have thought of a better scheme. 
 
 "As my character, you see, your honor, is not so highly 
 prized by the magistrates as it ought to be, any confession 
 made to me might not be of the same value as if it were made 
 to any one else to a gentleman like you, for instance ; and, 
 moreover, it will not do for me to appear in evidence against 
 any of the fraternity ; and for two reasons : first, because I 
 have sworn a solemn oath never to do so ; and secondly, 
 because I have a very fair chance of joining Sir John Tyrrell 
 in kingdom come if I do. My present plan, therefore, if it 
 meets your concurrence, would be to introduce your honor as 
 a parson, and for you to receive the confession, which, indeed, 
 you might take down in writing. This plan, I candidly con- 
 fess, is not without great difficulty, and some danger ; for I 
 have not only to impose yon upon Dawson as a priest, but 
 also upon Brimstone Bess as one of pur jolly boys ; since I 
 need not tell you that any real parson might knock a long 
 time at her door before it would be opened to him. You must, 
 therefore, be as mum as a mole unless she cants to you, and 
 your answers must then be such as I shall dictate ; otherwise 
 she may detect you, and should any of the true men be in the 
 house, we should both come off worse than we went in." 
 
 " My dear Mr. Job," replied I, " there appears to me to be a 
 much easier plan than all this ; and that is, simply to tell the 
 Bow Street officers where Dawson may be found, and I think 
 they would be able to carry him away from the arms of Mrs. 
 Brimstone Bess, without any great difficulty or danger." 
 
 Jonson smiled. 
 
 " I should not long enjoy my annuity, your honor, if I were 
 to set the runners upon our best hive. I should be stung to 
 
 order, 
 
 * Gypsy slang a parson, or minister but generally applied to a priest of the lowest
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 373 
 
 death before the week were out. Even you, should you 
 accompany me to-nigh, will never know where the spot is 
 situated, nor would you discover it again if you searched all 
 London, with the whole police at your back. Besides, Dawson 
 is not the only person in the house for whom the law is hunt- 
 ing ; there are a score others whom I have no desire to give up 
 to the gallows, hid among the odds and ends of the house, as 
 snug as plums in a pudding. Honor forbid that I should 
 betray them and for nothing, too ! No, sir, the only plan I 
 can think of is the one I proposed ; if you do not approve of 
 it (and it certainly is open to exception), I must devise some 
 other : but that may require delay." 
 
 " No, my good Job," replied I, " I am ready to attend you : 
 but could we not manage to release Dawson, as well as take 
 his deposition ? His personal evidence is worth all the written 
 ones in the world." 
 
 " Very true," answered Job, " and if it be possible to give 
 Bess the slip we will. However, let us not lose what we may 
 get by grasping at what we may not ; let us have the confession 
 first, and we'll try for the release afterwards. I have another 
 reason for this, sir, which, if you knew as much of penitent 
 prigs as I do, you would easily understand. However, it may 
 be explained by the old proverb of ' the devil was sick,' etc. 
 As long as Dawson is stowed away in a dark hole and fancies 
 devils in every corner, he may be very anxious to make con- 
 fessions which, in broad daylight, may not seem to him so 
 desirable. Darkness and solitude are strange stimulants to the 
 conscience, and we may as well not lose any advantage they 
 give us." 
 
 "You are an admirable reasoner," cried I, "and I am 
 impatient to accompany you at what hour shall it be ? " 
 
 " Not much before midnight," answered Jonson ; "but your 
 honor must go back to school and learn lessons before then. 
 Suppose Bess were to address you thus : ' Well, you parish bull 
 prig, are you for lushing jackey, or pattering in the hum box ! ' * 
 I'll be bound you would not know how to answer." 
 
 "I am afraid you are right, Mr. Jonson," said I, in a tone of 
 self-humiliation. 
 
 " Never mind," replied the compassionate Job, " we are all 
 born ignorant knowledge is not learnt in a day. A few of 
 the fiiost common and necessary words in our St. Giles's Greek 
 I shall be able to teach you before night ; and I will, before- 
 hand, prepare the old lady for seeing a young hand in the 
 
 * Well, you parson thief, are you for drinking gin, or talking in the pulpit ?
 
 374 PELHAM ; 
 
 profession. As I must disguise you before we go, and that 
 cannot well be done here, suppose you dine with me at my 
 lodgings." 
 
 " I shall be too happy," said I, not a little surprised at the 
 offer. 
 
 " I am in Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury, No. . You must 
 ask for me by the name of Captain De Courcy," said Job, with 
 dignity : "and we'll dine at five, in order to have time for your 
 preliminary initiation." 
 
 " With all my heart," said I ; and Mr. Job Jonson then rose, 
 and, reminding me of my promise of secrecy, took his de- 
 parture. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXI. 
 
 " Pectus prseceptis format amicis." HOR. 
 " Est quodam prodire tenus, si non datur ultra." Ibid. 
 
 WITH all my love of enterprise and adventure, I cannot say 
 that I should have particularly chosen the project before me 
 for my evening's amusement, had I been left solely to my own 
 will ; but Glanville's situation forbade me to think of self : and, 
 so far from shrinking at the danger to which I was about to be 
 exposed, I looked forward with the utmost impatience to the 
 hour of rejoining Jonson. 
 
 There was yet a long time upon my hands before five o'clock ; 
 and the thought of Ellen left me no doubt how it should be 
 passed. I went to Berkeley Square ; Lady Glanville rose 
 eagerly when I entered the drawing-room. 
 
 " Have you seen Reginald ? " said she, " or do you know 
 where he has gone ? " 
 
 I answered, carelessly, that he had left town for a few days, 
 and, I believed, merely upon a vague excursion, for the benefit 
 of the country air. 
 
 " You reassure us," said Lady Glanville ; " we have been quite 
 alarmed by Seymour's manner. He appeared so confused 
 when he told us Reginald had left town that I really thought 
 some accident had happened to him." 
 
 I sate myself by Ellen, who appeared wholly occupied in the 
 formation of a purse. While I was whispering into her ear 
 words which brought a thousand blushes to her cheek, Lady 
 Glanville interrupted me by an exclamation of " Have you seen 
 the papers to-day, Mr. Pelham ? " and on my reply in the neg- 
 ative, she pointed to an article in the Morning Herald, which
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 375 
 
 she said had occupied their conjectures all the morning it 
 ran thus : 
 
 " The evening before last a person of rank and celebrity was 
 
 privately carried before the magistrate at . Since then he 
 
 has undergone an examination, the nature of which, as well 
 as the name of the individual, is as yet kept a profound 
 secret." 
 
 I believe that I have so firm a command over my counte- 
 nance that I should not change tint nor muscle to hear of the 
 greatest calamity that could happen to me. I did not there- 
 fore betray a single one of the emotions this paragraph ex- 
 cited within me, but appeared, on the contrary, as much at a 
 loss as Lady Glanville, and wondered and guessed with her, 
 till she remembered my present situation in the family, and 
 left me alone with Ellen. 
 
 Why should the tete-a-tete of lovers be so uninteresting to the 
 world, when there is scarcely a being in it who has not loved ? 
 The expressions of every other feeling come home to us all 
 the expressions of love weary and fatigue us. But the inter- 
 view of that morning was far from resembling those delicious 
 meetings which the history of love at that early period of its 
 existence so often delineates. I could not give myself up to 
 happiness which a moment rifight destroy : and though I veiled 
 my anxiety and coldness from Ellen, I felt it as a crime to in- 
 dulge even the appearance of transport while Glanville lay 
 alone and in prison, with the charge of murder yet uncontro- 
 verted, and the chances of its doom undiminished. 
 
 The clock had struck four before I left Ellen, and without 
 returning to my hotel, I threw myself into a hackney-coach, 
 and drove to Charlotte Street. The worthy Job received me 
 with his wonted dignity and ease ; his lodgings consisted of a 
 first floor, furnished according to all the notions of Blooms- 
 bury elegance, viz., new, glaring Brussels carpeting ; convex 
 mirrors, with massy gilt frames, and eagles at the summit ; 
 rosewood chairs, with chintz cushions ; bright grates, with a 
 flower-pot, cut out of yellow paper, in each ; in short, all that 
 especial neatness of upholstering paraphernalia which Vincent 
 used, not inaptly, to designate by the title of " the tea- 
 chest taste." Jonson seemed not a little proud of his apart- 
 ments accordingly, I complimented him upon their ele- 
 gance. 
 
 " Under the rose be it spoken," said he, " the landlady, who 
 is a widow, believes me to be an officer on half-pay, and thinks 
 I wish to marry her ; poor woman ! my black locks and green
 
 376 PELHAM ; 
 
 coat have a witchery that surprises even me : who would be a 
 slovenly thief, when there are such advantages in being a 
 smart one ?" 
 
 " Right, Mr. Jonson ! " said I ; " but shall I own to you that 
 I am surprised that a gentleman of your talents should stoop 
 to the lower arts of the profession. I always imagined that 
 pocket-picking was a part of your business left only to the 
 plebeian purloiner ; now I know, to my cost, that you do not 
 disdain that manual accomplishment." 
 
 " Your honor speaks like a judge," answered Job ; " the fact 
 is, that I should despise what you rightly designate ' the lower 
 arts of the profession,' if I did not value myself upon giving 
 them a charm, and investing them with a dignity, never be- 
 stowed upon them before. To give you an idea of the su- 
 perior dexterity with which I manage my sleight of hand, 
 know, that four times I have been in the shop where you sa\r 
 me borrow the diamond ring, which you now remark upon my 
 little finger ; and four times have I brought back some token 
 of my visitations ; nay, the shopman is so far from suspecting 
 me, that he has twice favored me with the piteous tale of the 
 very losses that I myself brought upon him ; and I make no 
 doubt that I shall hear, in a few days, the whole history of the 
 departed diamond, now in my keeping, coupled with that of 
 your honor's appearance and custom ! Allow that it would be 
 a pity to suffer pride to stand in the way of the talents with 
 which Providence has blest me ; to scorn the little delicacies 
 of art, which I execute so well, would, in my opinion, be as ab- 
 surd as for an epic poet to disdain the composition of a perfect 
 epigram, or a consummate musician the melody of a faultless 
 song." 
 
 "Bravo! Mr. Job," said I ; "a truly great man, yon see, 
 can confer honor upon trifles." More I might have said, but 
 was stopped short by the entrance of the landlady, who was a 
 fine, fair, well-dressed, comely woman, of about thirty-nine 
 years and eleven months ; or, to speak less precisely, between 
 thirty and forty. She came to announce that dinner was served 
 below. We descended, and found a sumptuous repast of 
 roast beef and fish ; this primary course was succeeded by 
 that great dainty with common people a duck and green 
 peas. 
 
 "Upon my word, Mr. Jonson," said I, "you fare like a 
 prince ; your weekly expenditure must be pretty considerable 
 for a single gentleman." 
 
 " I don't know," answered Jonson, with an air of lordly
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 377 
 
 indifference ; "I have never paid my good hostess any coin 
 but compliments, and in all probability never shall." 
 
 Was there ever a better illustration of Moore's admonition : 
 
 " O, ladies, beware of a gay young knight," etc. 
 
 After dinner we remounted to the apartments Job emphatic- 
 ally called his own ; and he then proceeded to initiate me in 
 those phrases of the noble language of " Flash " which might 
 best serve my necessities on the approaching occasion. The slang 
 part of my Cambridge education had made me acquainted with 
 some little elementary knowledge, which rendered Jonson's pre- 
 cepts less strange and abstruse. In this lecture "sweet and 
 holy," the hours passed away till it became time for me to 
 dress. Mr. Jonson then took me into the penetralia of his bed- 
 room. I stumbled against an enormous trunk. On hearing 
 the involuntary anathema which this accident conjured up to 
 my lips, Jonson said : " Ah, sir ! do oblige me by trying to 
 move that box." 
 
 I did so, but could not stir it an inch. 
 
 "Your honor never saw a jewel box so heavy before, I think," 
 said Jonson, with a smile. 
 
 "A jewel box !" 
 
 "Yes," returned Jonson, "a jewel box, foritisfullof precious 
 stones ! When I go away not a little in my good landlady's 
 books I shall desire her, very importantly, to take the greatest 
 care of ' my box.' Egad ! it would be a treasure to McAdam ; 
 he might pound its flinty contents into a street." 
 
 With these words Mr. Jonson unlocked a wardrobe in the 
 room, and produced a full suit of rusty black. 
 
 " There ! " said he, with an air of satisfaction : "There ! this 
 will be your first step to the pulpit." 
 
 I doffed my own attire, and with " some natural sighs "at the 
 deformity of my approaching metamorphosis, I slowly indued 
 myself in the clerical garments ; they were much too wide, and 
 a little too short for me ; but Jonson turned me round, as if I 
 were his eldest son, breeched for the first time, and declared, 
 with an emphatical oath, that the clothes fitted me to a hair. 
 
 My host next opened a tin dressing-box of large dimensions, 
 from which he took sundry powders, lotions, and paints. 
 Nothing but my extreme friendship for Glanville could ever 
 have supported me through the operation I then underwent. 
 My poor complexion, thought I, with tears in my eyes, it is 
 ruined forever ! To crown all, Jonson robbed me, by four clips 
 of his scissors, of the luxuriant locks which, from the pampered
 
 378 PELHAM ; 
 
 indulgence so long accorded to them, might have rebelled 
 against the new dynasty which Jonson now elected to the crown. 
 This dynasty consisted of a shaggy, but admirably made wig, of 
 a sandy color. When I was thus completely attired from head 
 to foot, Job displayed me to myself before a full length 
 looking-glass. 
 
 Had I gazed at the reflection forever I should not have recog- 
 nized either my form or visage. I thought my soul had under- 
 gone a real transmigration, and not carried to its new body a 
 particle of the original one. What appeared the most singular 
 was, that I did not seem even to myself at all a ridiculous or 
 outre figure ; so admirably had the skill of Mr. Jonson been 
 employed. I overwhelmed him with encomiums, which he took 
 au pied de la lettre. Never, indeed, was there a man so vain of 
 being a rogue. 
 
 " But," said I, "why this disguise? Your friends will, prob- 
 ably, be well versed enough in the mysteries of metamorphosis 
 to see even through your arts ; and, as they have never beheld 
 me before, it would very little matter if I went in proprid 
 persond." 
 
 "True," answered Job, "but you don't reflect that without 
 disguise you may hereafter be recognized ; our friends walk in 
 Bond Street as well as your honor ; and, in that case, you might 
 be shot without a second, as the saying is." 
 
 " You have convinced me," said I, " and now, before we 
 start, let me say one word further respecting our object. I tell 
 you fairly, that I think Dawson's written deposition but a sec- 
 ondary point : and for this reason, should it not be supported by 
 any circumstantial or local evidence, hereafter to be ascertained, 
 it may be quite insufficient fully to acquit Glanville (in spite 
 of all appearances), and criminate the real murderers. If, 
 therefore, it \>z possible to carry off Dawson, after having se- 
 cured his confession, we must. I think it right to insist more 
 particularly on this point, as you appeared to me rather averse 
 to it this morning." 
 
 " I say ditto to your honor," returned Job ; "and you may 
 be sure that I shall do all in my power to effect your object, 
 not only from that love of virtue which is implanted in my 
 mind, when no stronger inducement leads me astray, but from 
 the more worldly reminiscence that the annuity we have agreed 
 upon is only to be given in case of success not merely for 
 well-meaning attempts. To say that I have no objection to the 
 release of Dawson would be to deceive your honor ; I own that 
 I have ; and the objection is, first, my fear lest he
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 379 
 
 respecting other affairs besides the murder of Sir John Tyr- 
 rell ; and, secondly, my scruples as to appearing to interfere 
 with his escape. Both of these chances expose me to great 
 danger ; however, one does not get three hundred a year for 
 washing one's hands, and I must balance the one against the 
 other." 
 
 " You are a sensible man, Mr. Job," said I, " and I am sure 
 you will richly earn and long enjoy your annuity." 
 
 As I said this the watchman beneath our window called 
 "Past eleven ! " and Jonson, starting up, hastily changed his 
 own gay gear for a more simple dress, and throwing over all a 
 Scotch plaid, gave me a similar one, in which I closely wrapped 
 myself. We descended the stairs softly, and Jonson let us out 
 into the street by the " open sesame " of a key, which he 
 retained about his person. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXII. 
 
 " Et cantare pares, et respondere parati." VIRGIL. 
 
 As we walked on into Tottenham Court Road, where we ex- 
 pected to find a hackney coach, my companion earnestly and 
 strenuously impressed on my mind the necessity of implicitly 
 obeying any instructions or hints he might give me in the 
 course of our adventure. " Remember," said he forcibly, 
 " that the least deviation from them will not only defeat our 
 object of removing Dawson, but even expose our lives to the 
 most imminent peril." I faithfully promised to conform to the 
 minutest tittle of his instructions. 
 
 We came to a stand of coaches. Jonson selected one, and 
 gave the coachman an order ; he took care it should not reach 
 my ears. During the half-hour we passed in this vehicle Job 
 examined and re-examined me in my "canting catechism," as 
 he termed it. He expressed himself much pleased with the 
 quickness of my parts, and honored me with an assurance that 
 in less than three months he would engage to make me as com- 
 plete a ruffler as ever nailed a swell. 
 
 To this gratifying compliment I made the best return in my 
 power. 
 
 "You must not suppose," said Jonson, some minutes after- 
 wards, "from our use of this language, that our club consists 
 of the lower order of thieves quite the contrary ; we are a 
 knot of gentlemen adventurers who wear the best clothes, ride 
 the best hacks, frequent the best gaming-houses, as. well a the
 
 380 PELHAM ; 
 
 genieelest haunts, and sometimes keep the first company in 
 London. We are limited in number : we have nothing in com- 
 mon with ordinary prigs, and should my own little private 
 amusements (as you appropriately term them) be known in the 
 set, I should have a very fair chance of being expelled for 
 ungentlemanlike practices. We rarely condescend to speak 
 "flash" to each other in our ordinary meetings, but we find it 
 necessary for many shifts to which fortune sometimes drives 
 us. The house you are going this night to visit is a sort of 
 colony we have established for whatever persons amongst us 
 are in danger of blood-money. * There they sometimes lie 
 concealed for weeks together, and are at last shipped off for 
 the Continent, or enter the world under a new alias. To this 
 refuge of the distressed we also send any of the mess who, like 
 Dawson, are troubled with qualms of conscience, which are 
 likely to endanger the commonwealth : there they remain, as 
 in a hospital, till death, or a cure ; in short, we put the house, 
 like its inmates, to any purposes likely to frustrate our enemies 
 and serve ourselves. Old Brimstone Bess, to whom I shall 
 introduce you, is, as I before said, the guardian of the place ; 
 and the language that respectable lady chiefly indulges in is 
 the one into which you have just acquired so good an insight. 
 Partly in compliment to her, and partly from inclination, the 
 dialect adopted in her house is almost entirely "flash!" and 
 you, therefore, perceive the necessity of appearing not utterly 
 ignorant of a tongue which is not only the language of the 
 country, but one with which no true boy, however high in his 
 profession, is ever unacquainted." 
 
 By the time Jonson had finished this speech, the coach 
 stopped. I looked eagerly out of the window Jonson observed 
 the motion : "We have not got half-way yet, your honor," said 
 he. We left the coach, which Jonson requested me to pay, 
 and walked on. 
 
 " Tell me frankly, sir," said Job, " do you know where you 
 are ? " 
 
 "Not in the least," replied I, looking wistfully up along, 
 dull, ill-lighted street. 
 
 Job rolled his sinister eye towards me with a searching look, 
 and then turning abruptly to the right, penetrated into a sort 
 of covered lane, or court, which terminated in an alley, that 
 brought us suddenly to a stand of three coaches ; one of these 
 Job hailed ; we entered it, a secret direction was given, and we 
 drove furiously on, faster than I should think the crazy body 
 
 * Rewards for the apprehension of thieves, etc.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 381 
 
 of hackney chariot ever drove before. I observed that we had 
 now entered a part of the town which was singularly strange 
 to me ; the houses were old, and for the most part of the 
 meanest description ; we appeared to me to be threading a 
 labyrinth of alleys ; once I imagined that I caught, through a 
 sudden opening, a glimpse of the river, but we passed so rapidly 
 that my eye might have deceived me. At length we stopped : 
 the coachman was again dismissed, and I again walked on- 
 wards, under the guidance and almost at the mercy of my 
 honest companion. 
 
 Jonson did not address me ; he was silent and absorbed, and 
 I had therefore full leisure to consider my present situation. 
 Though (thanks to my physical constitution) I am as callous to 
 fear as most men, a few chilling apprehensions certainly flitted 
 across my mind when I looked round at the dim and dreary 
 sheds houses they were not which were on either side of 
 our path ; only, here and there, a single lamp shed a sickly 
 light upon the dismal and intersecting lanes (though lane is too 
 lofty a word), through which our footsteps woke a solitary 
 sound. Sometimes this feeble light was altogether withheld, 
 and I could scarcely catch even the outline of my companion's 
 muscular frame. However, he strode on through the darkness 
 with the mechanical rapidity of one to whom every stone is 
 familiar. I listened eagerly for the sound of the watchman's 
 voice in vain ; that note was never heard in those desolate re- 
 cesses. My ear drank in nothing but the sound of our own 
 footsteps, or the occasional burst of obscene and unholy mer- 
 riment from some half-closed hovel, where Infamy and Vice 
 were holding revels. Now and then a wretched thing, in the 
 vilest extreme of want, and loathsomeness, and rags, loitered 
 by the unfrequent lamps, and interrupted our progress with 
 solicitations which made my blood run cold. By degrees even 
 these tokens of life ceased the last lamp was entirely shut from 
 view we were in utter darkness. 
 
 " We are near our journey's end now," whispered Jon- 
 son. 
 
 At these words a thousand unwelcome reflections forced 
 themselves involuntarily on my mind ; I was about to plunge 
 into the most secret retreat of men whom long habits of villany 
 and desperate abandonment had hardened into a nature which 
 had scarcely a sympathy with my own ; unarmed and defence- 
 less, I was about to penetrate a concealment upon which their 
 lives perhaps depended ; what could I anticipate from their 
 vengeance but the sure hand and the deadly knife, which their
 
 382 PELHAM ; 
 
 self-preservation would more than justify to such lawless rea- 
 soners ? And who was my companion? One who literally 
 gloried in the perfection ef his nefarious practices ; and who, 
 if he had stopped short of the worst enormities, seemed 
 neither to disown the principle upon which they were com- 
 mitted, nor to balance for a moment between his interest and 
 his conscience. 
 
 Nor did he attempt to conceal from me the danger to which 
 I was exposed ; much as his daring habits of life, and the 
 good fortune which had attended him, must have hardened his 
 nerves, even he seemed fully sensible of the peril he incurred 
 a peril certainly considerably less than that which attended tuy 
 temerity. Bitterly did I repent, as these reflections rapidly 
 passed my mind, my negligence in not providing myself with a 
 single weapon in case of need ; the worst pang of death is the 
 falling without a struggle. 
 
 However, it was no moment for the indulgence of fear, it 
 was rather one of those eventful periods which so rarely occur 
 in the monotony of common life, when our minds are sounded 
 to their utmost depths : and energies, of which we dreamt not 
 when at rest in their secret retreats, arise like spirits at the 
 summons of the wizard, and bring to the invoking mind an 
 unlooked for and preternatural aid. 
 
 There was something too in the disposition of my guide 
 which gave me a confidence in him not warranted by the occu- 
 pations of his life ; an easy and frank boldness, an ingenious 
 vanity of abilities, skilfully, though dishonestly, exerted, which 
 had nothing of the meanness and mystery of an ordinary vil- 
 lain, and which being equally prominent with the rascality they 
 adorned, prevented the attention from dwelling upon the 
 darker shades of his character. Besides, I had so closely en- 
 twined his interest with my own, that I felt there could be no 
 possible ground either for suspecting him of any deceit towards 
 me, or of omitting any art or exertion which could conduce 
 to our mutual safety, or our common end. 
 
 Forcing myself to dwell solely upon the more encouraging 
 side of the enterprise I had undertaken, I continued to move 
 on with my worthy comrade, silent and in darkness, for some 
 minutes longer ; Jonson then halted. 
 
 " Are you quite prepared, sir ? " said he, in a whisper : "If 
 your heart fails, in Heaven's name let us turn back ; the least 
 evident terror will be as much as your life is worth." 
 
 My thoughts were upon Reginald and Ellen, as I replied : 
 
 " You have told and convinced me that I may trust in you,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 383 
 
 and I have no fears ; my present object is one as strong to me 
 as life." 
 
 " I would we had a glim" rejoined Job musingly ; " I 
 should like to see your face ; but will you give me your hand, 
 sir ? " 
 
 I did, and Jonson held it in his own for more than a minute, 
 
 " 'Fore Gad, sir," said he at last, " I would you were one of 
 us. You would live a brave man, and die a game one. Your 
 pulse is like iron ; and your hand does not sway no not so 
 much as. to wave a dove's feather; it would be a burning 
 shame if harm came to so stout a heart." Job moved on a 
 few steps. "Now, sir," he whispered, "remember your flash ; 
 do exactly as I may have occasion to tell you ; and be sure to 
 sit away from the light, should we be in company." 
 
 With these words he stopped. By the touch (for it was too 
 dark to see), I felt that he was bending down, apparently in a 
 listening attitude ; presently he tapped five times at what I 
 supposed was the door, though I afterwards discovered it was 
 the shutter to a window ; upon this, a faint light broke through 
 the crevices of the boards, and a low voice uttered some sound 
 which my ear did not catch. Job replied in the same key, and 
 in words which were perfectly unintelligible to me ; the light 
 disappeared : Job moved round, as if turning a corner. I 
 heard the heavy bolts and bars of a door slowly withdraw ; 
 and in a few moments a harsh voice said, in the thieves' 
 dialect : 
 
 " Ruffling Job, my prince of prigs, is that you ? Are you 
 come to the ken alone, or do you carry double ?" 
 
 " Ah, Bess, my covess, strike me blind if my sees don't tout 
 your bingo muns in spite of the darkmans. Egad, you carry 
 a bene blink aloft. Come to the ken alone no ! my blowen ; 
 did not I tell you I should bring a pater cove, to chop up the 
 whiners for Dawson ? " * 
 
 ".Stubble it, you ben, you deserve to cly the jerk for your 
 patter ; come in, and be d d to you." f 
 
 Upon this invitation Jonson, seizing me by the arm, pushed 
 me into the house, and followed. " Go for a glim, Bess, to 
 light in the black 'un with proper respect. I'll close the gig 
 of the crib." 
 
 At this order, delivered in an authoritative tone, the old 
 
 * Etrike me blind if my eyes don't see your brandy face in spite of the night. Come to 
 the house alone no ! my woman ; did not I tell you I should bring a parson to say 
 j>rayers for Dawson ? 
 
 t Hold your tongue, fool, you deserve to be whipped for your chatter.
 
 384 PELHAM ; 
 
 woman, mumbling " strange oaths " to herself, moved away; 
 when she was out of hearing, Job whispered : 
 
 " Mark, I shall leave the bolts undrawn ; the door opens 
 with a latch, which you press thus do not forget the spring ; 
 it is easy, but peculiar ; should you be forced to run for it, 
 you will also remember, above all, when you are out of the 
 door, to turn to the right, and go straight forwards." 
 
 The old woman now reappeared with a light, and Jonson 
 ceased, and moved hastily towards her: I followed. The old 
 woman asked whether the door had been carefully closed, and 
 Jonson, with an oath at her doubts of such a matter, answered 
 in the affirmative. 
 
 We proceeded onwards through a long and very narrow pas- 
 sage, till Bess opened a small door to the right, and introduced 
 us into a large room, which, to my great dismay, I found al- 
 ready occupied by four men, who were sitting, half immersed 
 in smoke, by an oak table, with a capacious bowl of hot liquor 
 before them. At the background of this room, which resem- 
 bled the kitchen of a public-house, was an enormous screen of 
 antique fashion ; a low fire burnt sullenly in the grate, and be- 
 side it was one of those high-backed chairs, seen frequently in 
 old houses and old pictures. A clock stood in one corner, and 
 in the opposite nook was a flight of narrow stairs, which led 
 downwards, probably to a cellar. On a row of shelves were 
 various bottles of the different liquors generally in request among 
 the "flash " gentry, together with an old-fashioned fiddle, two 
 bridles, and some strange-looking tools, probably of more use 
 to true boys than to honest men. 
 
 Brimstone Bess was a woman about the middle size, but with 
 bones and sinews which would not have disgraced a prize- 
 fighter ; a cap, that might have been cleaner, was rather thrown 
 than put on the back of her head, developing, to full advantage, 
 the few scanty locks of grizzled ebon which adorned her coun- 
 tenance. Her eyes, large, black, and prominent, sparkled with 
 a fire half-vivacious, half-vixen. The nasal feature was broad 
 and fungous, and, as well as the whole of her capacious physi- 
 ognomy, blushed with the deepest scarlet : it was evident to see 
 that many a full bottle of " British compounds " had contrib- 
 uted to the feeding of that burning and phosphoric illumination, 
 which was, indeed, " the outward and visible sign of an inward 
 and spiritual grace." 
 
 The expression of the countenance was not wholly bad. 
 Amidst the deep traces of searing vice and unrestrained pas- 
 sion amidst all that was bold and unfeminine, and fierce, and
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 385 
 
 crafty there was a latent look of coarse good-humor, a twin- 
 kle of the eye that bespoke a tendency to mirth and drollery, 
 and an upward curve of the lip that showed, however the human 
 creature might be debased, it still cherished its grand charac- 
 teristic the propensity to laughter. 
 
 The garb of this dame Leonarda was by no means of that 
 humble nature which one might have supposed. A gown of 
 crimson silk, flounced and furbelowed to the knees, was taste- 
 fully relieved by a bright yellow shawl ; and a pair of heavy 
 pendants glittered in her ears, which were of the size proper to 
 receive " the big words " they were in the habit of hearing. 
 Probably this finery had its origin in the policy of her guests, 
 who had seen enough of life to know that age, which tames all 
 other passions, never tames the passion of dress in a woman's 
 heart. 
 
 No sooner did the four revellers set their eyes upon me than 
 they all rose. 
 
 " Zounds, Bess ! " cried the tallest of them, " what cull's this ? 
 Is this a bowsing ken for every cove to shove his trunk in ?" 
 
 "What ho, my kiddy!" cried Job, "don't be glimflashy ; 
 why you'd cry beef on a blater ;* the cove is a bob cull, and a 
 pal of my own ; and moreover, is as pretty a Tyburn blossom 
 as ever was brought up to ride a horse foaled by an acorn." 
 
 Upon this commendatory introduction I was forthwith sur- 
 rounded, and one of the four proposed that I should be imme- 
 diately "elected." 
 
 This motion, which was probably no gratifying ceremony, 
 Job negatived with a dictatorial air, and reminded his comrades 
 that however they might find it convenient to lower themselves 
 occasionally, yet that they were gentlemen sharpers, and not 
 vulgar cracksmen and clyfakers, and that, therefore, they ought 
 to welcome me with the good-breeding appropriate to their 
 station. 
 
 Upon this hint, which was received with mingled laughter 
 and deference (for Job seemed to be a man of might among 
 these Philistines), the tallest of the set, who bore the eupho- 
 nious appellation of Spider-shanks, politely asked me if 1 would 
 " blow a cloud with him ! " and upon my assent (for I thought 
 such an occupation would be the best excuse for silence), he 
 presented me with a pipe of tobacco, to which dame Brimstone 
 applied a light, and I soon lent my best endeavors to darken 
 still farther the atmosphere around us. 
 
 * Don't be angry ! Why you'd cry beef on a calf the man is a good fellow, and a coav 
 rade of my own, etc.
 
 386 PELHAM J 
 
 Mr. Job Jonson then began artfully to turn the conversation 
 away from me to the elder confederates of his crew ; these were 
 all spoken of under certain singular appellations which might 
 well baffle impertinent curiosity. The name of one was " the 
 Gimlet," another " Crack Crib," a third, " the Magician," a 
 fourth, " Cherry-colored Jowl." The tallest of the present 
 company was called (as I before said) "Spider-shanks," and 
 the shortest, "Fib Fakescrew"; Job himself was honored by 
 the venerabile nomen of " Guinea Pig." At last Job explained 
 the cause of my appearance ; viz., his wish to pacify Dawson's 
 conscience by dressing up one of the pals, whom the sinner 
 could not recognize, as an " autem bawler," and so obtaining 
 him the benefit of the clergy without endangering the gang by 
 his confession. The detail was received with great good-humor, 
 and Job, watching his opportunity, soon after rose, and, turn- 
 ing to me, said : 
 
 " Toddle, my bob cull we must track up the dancers and 
 tout the sinner."* 
 
 I wanted no other hint to leave my present situation. 
 
 " The ruffian cly thee, Guinea Pig, for stashing the lush/'t 
 said Spider-shanks, helping himself "out of the bowl, which was 
 nearly empty. 
 
 " Stash the lush ! " \ cried Mrs. Brimstone, " ay, and toddle 
 off to Ruggins. Why, you would not be boozing till lightman's 
 in a square crib like mine, as if you were in a flash 
 panny ?" 
 
 "That's bang- up, mort ! " cried Fib. "A square crib, in- 
 deed ! Ay, square as Mr. Newman's courtyard ding-boys on 
 three sides, and the crap on the fourth ! " 
 
 This characteristic witticism was received with great applause; 
 and Jonson taking a candlestick from the fair fingers of the 
 exasperated Mrs. Brimstone, the hand thus conveniently re- 
 leased immediately transferred itself to Fib's cheeks, with so 
 hearty a concussion that it almost brought the rash jester to 
 the ground. Jonson and I lost not a moment in taking ad- 
 vantage of the confusion this gentle remonstrance appeared 
 to occasion ; but instantly left the room and closed the door. 
 
 * Mov, my good fellow, we must go upstairs, and look at the sinner. 
 t The devil lake thee for stopping the urink. 
 
 t Stop the drink, ay, and be off to bed. You would not be drinking till day In a* 
 hone*t house like mine, as if you were in a disreputable place. 
 
 That's capital. A square crib (honest house) ! Ay, square as Newgate coach-yard-> 
 rogues on three sides, and the gallows on the fourth.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 387 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXIII. 
 
 " 'Tis true that we are in great danger ; 
 The greater, therefore, should our courage be." SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 WE proceeded a short way when we were stopped by a door ; 
 this Job opened, and a narrow staircase, lighted from above 
 by a dim lamp, was before us. We ascended, and found our- 
 selves in a sort of gallery : here hung another lamp, beneath 
 which Job opened a closet. 
 
 "This is the place where Bess generally leaves the keys," 
 said he ; " we shall find them here, I hope." 
 
 So saying Master Job entered, leaving me in the passage ; 
 but soon returned with a disappointed air. 
 
 " The old harridan has left them below," said he ; "I must 
 go down for them ; your honor will wait here till I return." 
 
 Suiting the action to the word, honest Job immediately de- 
 scended, leaving me alone with my own reflections. Just op- 
 posite to the closet was the door of some apartment ; I leant 
 accidentally against it ; it was only ajar, and gave way ; the or- 
 dinary consequence in such accidents is a certain precipitation 
 from the centre of gravity. I am not exempt from the general 
 lot, and accordingly entered the room in a manner entirely 
 contrary to that which my natural inclination would have 
 prompted me to adopt. My ear was accosted by a faint voice, 
 which proceeded from a bed at the opposite corner : it asked, 
 in the thieves' dialect, and in the feeble accents of "bodily 
 weakness, who was there ? I did not judge it necessary to 
 make any reply, but was withdrawing as gently as possible 
 when my eye rested upon a table at the foot of the bed, upon 
 which, among two or three miscellaneous articles, were depos- 
 ited a brace of pistols, and one of those admirable swords, 
 made according to the modern military regulation, for the 
 united purpose of cut and thrust. The light which enabled 
 me to discover the contents of the room proceeded from a 
 rushlight placed in the grate ; this general symptom of a vale- 
 tudinarian, together with some other little odd matters (com- 
 bined with the weak voice of the speaker), impressed me with 
 the idea of having intruded into the chamber of some sick 
 member of the crew. Emboldened by this notion, and by 
 perceiving that the curtains were drawn closely around the 
 bed, so that the inmate could have optical discernment of 
 nothing that occurred without, I could not resist taking two 
 soft steps to the table, and quietly removing a weapon, whose
 
 388 PELHAM ; 
 
 bright face seemed to invite me as a long-known and long-tried 
 friend. 
 
 This was not, however, done in so noiseless a manner but 
 what the voice again addressed me, in a somewhat louder key, 
 by the appellation of " Brimstone Bess," asking, with sundry 
 oaths, "What was the matter ?" and requesting something to 
 drink. I need scarcely say that, as before, I made no reply, 
 but crept out of the room as gently as possible, blessing my 
 good fortune for having thrown into my way a weapon with 
 the use of which, above all others, I was acquainted. Scarcely 
 had I regained the passage before Jonson reappeared with the 
 keys ; I showed him my treasure (for indeed it was of no size 
 to conceal). 
 
 " Are you mad, sir ? " said he, " or do you think that the 
 best way to avoid suspicion is to walk about with a drawn 
 sword in your hand ? I would not have Bess see you for the 
 best diamond I ever borrowed." With these words Job took 
 the sword from my reluctant hand. 
 
 " Where did you get it ? " said he. 
 
 I explained in a whisper, and Job, reopening the door I had 
 so unceremoniously entered, laid the weapon softly on a chair that 
 stood within reach. The sick man, whose senses were of course 
 rendered doubly acute by illness, once more demanded in a 
 fretful tone, who was there ! And Job replied, in the flash 
 language, that Bess had sent him up to look for her keys, 
 which she imagined she had left there. The invalid rejoined 
 by a request to Jonson to reach him a draught, and we had to 
 undergo a farther delay until his petition was complied with ; 
 we then proceeded up the passage till we came to another 
 flight of steps, which led to a door ; Job opened it, and we en- 
 tered a room of no common dimensions. 
 
 "This," said he, "is Bess Brimstone's sleeping apartment; 
 whoever goes into the passage that leads not only to Dawson's 
 room, but to the several other chambers occupied by such of 
 the gang as require particular care, must first pass through this 
 room. You see that bell by the bedside I assure you it is no 
 ordinary tintinnabulum ; it communicates with every sleeping 
 apartment in the house, and is only rung in cases of great 
 alarm, when every boy must look well to himself ; there are 
 two more of this description, one in the room which we have just 
 left, another in the one occupied by Spider-shanks, who is our 
 watch-dog, and keeps his kennel below. Those steps in the 
 common room, which seem to lead to a cellar, conduct to his 
 den. As we shall have to come back through this room, you
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 389 
 
 see the difficulty of smuggling Dawson and if the old dame 
 rung the alarm, the whole hive would be out in a moment." 
 
 After this speech Job led me from the room by a door at the 
 opposite end, which showed us a passage, similar in extent and 
 fashion to the one we had left below ; at the very extremity of 
 this was the entrance to an apartment at which Jonson stopped. 
 
 " Here," said he, taking from his pocket a small paper book 
 and an ink-horn ; " Here, your honor, take these, you may 
 want to note the heads of Dawson's confession ; we are now at 
 his door." Job then applied one of the keys of a tolerably 
 sized bunch to the door, and the next moment we were in 
 Dawson's apartment. 
 
 The room, which, though low and narrow, was of considera- 
 ble length, was in utter darkness, and the dim and flickering 
 light which Jonson held only struggled with, rather than pen- 
 etrated, the thick gloom. About the centre of the room stood 
 the bed, and sitting upright on it, with a wan and hollow coun- 
 tenance, bent eagerly towards us, was a meagre, attenuated fig- 
 ure. My recollection of Dawson, whom, it will be remem- 
 bered, I had only seen once before, was extremely faint, but it 
 had impressed me with the idea of a middle-sized and rather 
 athletic mun, with a fair and florid complexion : the creature 
 I now saw was totally the reverse of this idea. His cheeks 
 were yellow and drawn in ; his hand, which was raised in the 
 act of holding aside the curtains, was like the talons of a fam- 
 ished vulture, so thin was it, so long, so withered in its hue 
 and texture. 
 
 No sooner did the advancing light allow him to see us dis- 
 tinctly than he half sprung from the bed, and cried, in that 
 peculiar tone of joy which seems to throw off from the breast 
 a suffocating weight of previous terror and suspense : "Thank 
 God, thank God ! it is you at last ; and you have brought the 
 clergyman God bless you, Jonson, you are a true friend tome." 
 
 "Cheer up, Dawson," said Job ; "I have smuggled in this 
 worthy gentleman, who, I have no doubt, will be of great corn- 
 fort to you but you must be open with him, and tell all." 
 
 " That I will that I will," cried Dawson, with a wild and 
 vindictive expression of countenance; "if it be only to hang 
 him. Here, Jonson, give me your hand, bring the light 
 nearer I say he, the devil the fiend has been here to-day 
 and threatened to murder me ; and I have listened, and 
 listened, all night, and thought I heard his step along the 
 passage, and up the stairs, and at the door ; but it was nothing, 
 Job, nothing and you are come at last, good, kind, worthy
 
 390 PELHAM ; 
 
 Job. Oh, 'tis so horrible to be left in the dark, and not sleep 
 and in this large, large room, which looks like eternity at night 
 and one does fancy such sights, Job such horrid, horrid 
 sights. Feel my wristband, Jonson, and here at my back, you 
 would think they had been pouring water over me, but it's 
 only the cold sweat. Oh ! 'tis a fearful thing to have a bad 
 conscience, Job ; but you won't leave me till daylight, now, 
 that's a dear, good Job ! " 
 
 " For shame, Dawson," said Jonson ; " pluck up, and be a 
 man ; you are like a baby frightened by its nurse. Here's the 
 clergyman come to heal your poor wounded conscience ; will 
 you hear him now ?" 
 
 " Yes," said Dawson ; " yes ! But go out of the room I 
 can't tell all if you're here ; go, Job, go ! but you're not angry 
 with me I don't mean to offend you." 
 
 "Angry ! " said Job ; " Lord help the poor fellow ! no, to 
 be sure not. I'll stay outside the door till you've done with 
 the clergyman but make haste, for the night's almost over, 
 and it's as much as the parson's life is worth to stay here 
 after daybreak." 
 
 "I will make haste," said the guilty man tremulously; 
 " but Job, where are you going what are you doing ? Leave 
 the light ! here, Job, by the bedside." 
 
 Job did as he was desired, and quitted the room, leaving 
 the door not so firmly shut but that he might hear, if the 
 penitent spoke aloud, every particular of his confession. 
 
 I seated myself on the side of the bed, and taking the 
 skeleton hand of the unhappy man, spoke to him in the most 
 consolatory and comforting words I could summon to my 
 assistance. He seemed greatly soothed by my efforts, and at 
 last implored me to let him join me in prayer. I knelt down, 
 and my lips readily found words for that language, which, 
 whatever be the formula of our faith, seems, in all emotions 
 which come home to our hearts, the most natural method of 
 expressing them. It is here, by the bed of sickness, or 
 remorse, that the ministers of God have their real power ! It 
 is here that their office is indeed a divine and unearthly 
 mission ; and that in breathing balm and comfort, in healing 
 the broken heart, in raising the crushed and degraded spirit 
 they are the voice and oracle of the FATHER, who made us 
 in benevolence, and will judge us in mercy ! I rose, and after 
 a short pause, Dawson, who expressed himself impatient for 
 the comfort of confession, thus began : 
 
 " I have no time, sir, to speak of the earlier part of my life,
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 39! 
 
 I passed it upon the race-course, and at the gaming-table all 
 that was, I know, very wrong and wicked ; but I was a wild, 
 idle boy, and eager for anything like enterprise or mischief. 
 Well, sir, it is now more than three years ago since I first met 
 with one Tom Thor-nton ; it was at a boxing match. Tom 
 was chosen chairman at a sort of club of the farmers and yeo- 
 men ; and being a lively, amusing fellow, and accustomed to 
 the company of gentlemen, was a great favorite with all of us. 
 He was very civil to me, and I was quite pleased with his 
 notice. I did not, however, see much of him then, nor for 
 more than two years afterwards ; but some months ago we met 
 again. I was in very poor circumstances ; so was he ; and this 
 made us closer friends than we might otherwise have been. 
 He lived a great deal at the gambling-houses, and fancied he 
 had discovered a certain method of winning * at hazard. So, 
 whenever he could not find a gentleman whom he could cheat 
 with false dice, tricks at cards, etc., he would go into any hell 
 to try his infallible game. I did not, however, perceive that 
 he made a good living by it ; and though sometimes, either 
 by that method or some other, he had large sums of money in 
 his possession, yet they were spent as soon as acquired. The 
 fact was, that he was not a man that could ever grow rich ; he 
 was extremely extravagant in all things loved women and 
 drinking, and was always striving to get into the society of 
 people above him. In order to do this, he affected great care- 
 lessness of money ; and if, at a race or a cock-fight, any real 
 gentlemen would go home with him, he would insist upon 
 treating them to the best of everything. 
 
 " Thus, sir, he was always poor, and at his wit's end for 
 means to supply his extravagance. He introduced me to three 
 or four gentlemen, as he called them, but whom I have since 
 found to be markers, sharpers, and blacklegs ; and this set soon 
 dissipated the little honesty my own habits of life had left me. 
 They never spoke of things by their right names ; and, there- 
 fore, those things never seemed so bad as they really were to 
 swindle a gentleman did not sound a crime when it was called 
 ' macing a swell,' nor transportation a punishment, when it 
 was termed, with a laugh, ' lagging a cove.' Thus, insensibly, 
 my ideas of right and wrong, always obscure, became perfectly 
 confused : and the habit of treating all crimes as subjects of jest 
 in familiar conversation soon made me regard them as matters 
 of very trifling importance. 
 
 " Well, sir, at Newmarket races, this Spring meeting, Thorn- 
 
 * A very coirunori delusion, both among sharpers and their prey.
 
 392 PELHAM ; 
 
 ton and I were on the lookout. He had come down to stay, 
 during the races, at a house I had just inherited from my 
 father, but which was rather an expense to me than an advan- 
 tage ; especially as my wife, who was an inn-keeper's daughter, 
 was very careless and extravagant. It so happened that we 
 were both taken in by a jockey, whom we had bribed very 
 largely, and were losers to a very considerable amount. Among 
 other people, I lost to a Sir John Tyrrell. I expressed my 
 vexation to Thornton, who told me not to mind it, but to tell 
 Sir John that I would pay him if he came to the town ; and 
 that he was quite certain we could win enough, by his certain 
 game at hazard, to pay off my debt. He was so very urgent 
 that I allowed myself to be persuaded ; though Thornton has 
 since told me that his only motive was to prevent Sir John's 
 going to the Marquess of Chester's (where he was invited) with 
 my lord's party ; and so to have an opportunity of accomplish- 
 ing the crime he then meditated. 
 
 " Accordingly, as Thornton desired, I asked Sir John Tyr- 
 rell to come with me to Newmarket. He did so. I left him, 
 joined Thornton, and went to the gambling-house. Here we 
 were engaged in Thornton's sure game when Sir John entered. 
 I went up and apologized for not paying, and said I would pay 
 him in three months. However, Sir John was very angry, and 
 treated me with such rudeness that the whole table remarked 
 it. When he was gone, I told Thornton how hurt and indig- 
 nant I was at Sir John's treatment. He incensed me still 
 more exaggerated Sir John's conduct said I had suffered 
 the grossest insult ; and at last put me into such a passion that I 
 said that, if I was a gentleman, I would fight Sir John Tyrrell 
 across the table. 
 
 " When Thornton saw I was so moved, he took me out of 
 the room, and carried me to an inn. Here he ordered dinner, 
 and several bottles of wine. I never could bear much drink : 
 he knew this, and artfully plied me with wine till I scarcely 
 knew what I did or said. He then talked much of our desti- 
 tute situation affected to put himself out of the question 
 said he was a single man, and could easily make shift upon a 
 potato, but that I was encumbered with a wife and child, whom 
 I could not suffer to starve. He then said that Sir John Tyr- 
 rell had publicly disgraced me ; that I should be blown upon 
 the course ; that no gentleman would bet with me again, and a 
 great deal more of the same sort. Seeing what an effect he 
 had produced upon me, he then told me that he had seen Sir 
 John receive a large sum of money, which would more than
 
 6R, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 393 
 
 pay our debts, and set us up like gentlemen, and, at last, he 
 proposed to me to rob him. Intoxicated as 1 was, I was some- 
 what startled at this proposition. However, the slang terms in 
 which Thornton disguised the greatness and danger of the 
 offence, very much diminished both in my eyes so at length I 
 consented. 
 
 " We went to Sir John's inn, and learnt that he had just set 
 out : accordingly we mounted our horses and rode after him. 
 The night had already closed in. After we had got some dis- 
 tance from the main road, into the lane, which led both to my 
 house and to Chester Park for the former was on the direct 
 way to my lord's we passed a man on horseback. I only ob- 
 served that he was wrapped in a cloak, but Thornton said, di- 
 rectly we had passed him: 'I know that man well; he has 
 been following Tyrrell all day, and though he attempts to 
 screen himself, I have penetrated his disguise he is Tyrrell's 
 mortal enemy.' 
 
 ' ' Should the worst come to the worst,' added Thornton 
 (words which I did not at that moment understand), ' we can 
 make him bear the blame.' 
 
 " When we had got some way further we came up to Tyrrell 
 and a gentleman, whom, to our great dismay, we found that 
 Sir John had joined the gentleman's horse had met with an 
 accident, and Thornton dismounted to offer his assistance. 
 He assured the gentleman, who proved afterwards to be a Mr. 
 Pelham, that the horse was quite lame, and that he would 
 scarcely be able to get it home ; and he then proposed to Sir 
 John to accompany us, and said that we would put him in the 
 right road ; this offer Sir John rejected very haughtily, and we 
 rode on. 
 
 '"It's all up with us,' said I ; 'since he has joined another 
 person.' 
 
 ' ' Not at all,' replied Thornton ; 'for I managed to give the 
 horse a sly poke with my knife ; and if I know anything of Sir 
 John Tyrrell, he is much too impatient a spark to crawl along, 
 a snail's pace, with any companion, especially with this heavy 
 shower coming on.' 
 
 " ' But,' said I, for I now began to recover from my intoxica- 
 tion, and to be sensible of the nature of our undertaking, ' the 
 moon is up, and unless this shower conceals it, Sir John will 
 recognize us ; so you see, even if he leave the gentleman, it 
 will be no use, and we had much better make haste home and 
 go to bed.' 
 
 " Upon this, Thornton cursed me for a faint-hearted fellow,
 
 394 
 
 and said that the cloud would effectually hide the moon or, 
 if not, he added : 'I know how to silence a prating tongue.' 
 At these words I was greatly alarmed, and said, that if he 
 meditated murder as well as robbery, I would have nothing 
 further to do with it. Thornton laughed, and told me not to 
 be a fool. While we were thus debating a shower came on ; 
 we rode hastily to a large tree, by the side of a pond which, 
 though bare and withered, was the nearest shelter the country 
 afforded, and was only a very short distance from my house. 
 I wished to go home, but Thornton would not let me, and as I 
 was always in the habit of yielding, I remained with him, though 
 very reluctantly, under the tree. 
 
 "Presently we heard the trampling of a horse. 
 
 "'It is he it is he,' cried Thornton with a savage tone of 
 exultation, ' and alone ! Be ready ! We must make a rush 
 I will be the one to bid him to deliver you hold your tongue.' 
 
 "The clouds and rain had so overcast the night, that, 
 although it was not perfectly dark, it was sufficiently obscure to 
 screen our countenances. Just as Tyrrell approached Thorn- 
 ton dashed forward, and cried, in a feigned voice : 'Stand, on 
 your peril ! ' I followed, and we were now both by Sir John's 
 side. 
 
 " He attempted to push by us, but Thornton seized him by 
 the arm ; there was a stout struggle, in which, as yet, I had no 
 share ; at last Tyrrell got loose from Thornton, and I seized 
 him ; he set spurs to his horse, which was a very spirited and 
 strong animal ; it reared upwards, and very nearly brought me 
 and my horse to the ground : at that instant Thornton struck 
 the unfortunate man a violent blow across the head with the 
 butt-end of his heavy whip Sir John's hat had fallen before 
 in the struggle, and the blow was so stunning that it felled him 
 upon the spot. Thornton dismounted, and made me do the 
 same : 'There is no time to lose,' said he ; 'let us drag him 
 from the roadside and rifle him.' We accordingly carried him 
 (he was still senseless) to the side of the pond before men- 
 tioned. While we were searching for the money Thornton 
 spoke of, the storm ceased, and the moon broke out ; we were 
 detained some moments by the accident of Tyrrell's having 
 transferred his pocket-book from the pocket Thornton had 
 seen him put it in on the race-ground to an inner one. 
 
 "We had just discovered and seized the pocket-book when 
 Sir John awoke from his swoon, and his eyes opened upon 
 Thornton, who was still bending over him, and looking at the 
 pontents of the book to see that all was right ; the moonlight
 
 Oft, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 395 
 
 left Tyrrell in no doubt as to our persons ; and struggling hard 
 to get up, he cried, ' I know you ! I know you ! You shall 
 hang for this.' No sooner had he uttered this imprudence 
 than it was all over with him. ' We will see that, Sir John/ 
 said Thornton, setting his knee upon Tyrrell's chest, and 
 nailing him down. While thus employed he told me to feel in 
 his coat-pocket for a cnse-knife. 
 
 "'For God's sake,' cried Tyrrell, with a tone of agonizing 
 terror which haunts me still, 'spare my life !' 
 
 " ' It is too late,' said Thornton deliberately, and taking the 
 knife from my hands, he plunged it into Sir John's side, and 
 as the blade was too short to reach the vitals, Thornton drew 
 it backwards and forwards to widen the wound. Tyrrell was 
 a strong man, and still continued to struggle and call out for 
 mercy. Thornton drew out the knife Tyrrell seized it by the 
 blade, and his fingers were cut through before Thornton could 
 snatch it from his grasp ; the wretched gentleman then saw all 
 hope was over : he uttered one loud, sharp cry of despair. 
 Thornton put one hand to his mouth, and with the other 
 gashed his throat from ear to ear. 
 
 " ' You have done for him and for us now,' said I, as Thorn- 
 ton slowly rose from the body. 'No,' replied he, 'look, he 
 still moves ' ; and sure enough he did, but it was in the last 
 agony. However, Thornton, to make all sure, plunged the 
 knife again into his body : the blade came in contact with a 
 bone, and snapped in two : so great was the violence of the 
 blow, that, instead of remaining in the flesh, the broken piece 
 fell upon the ground among the long fern and grass. 
 
 " While we were employed in searching for it, Thornton, 
 whose ears were much sharper than mine, caught the sound of 
 ahorse. 'Mount! mount!' he cried, 'and let us be off!' 
 We sprung upon our horses, and rode away as fast as we could. 
 I wished to go home, as it was so near at hand ; but Thornton 
 insisted on making to an old shed, about a quarter of a mile 
 across the fields : thither, therefore, we went." 
 
 "Stop," said I : " what did Thornton do with the remaining 
 part of the case-knife? Did he throw it away, or carry 
 it with him ? 
 
 "He took it with him," answered Dawson, "for his name 
 was engraved on a silver plate on the handle ; and he was 
 therefore afraid of throwing it into the pond, as I advised, lest 
 at any time it should be discovered. Close by the shed here 
 is a plantation of young firs of some extent : Thornton and I 
 entered, and he dug a hole with the broken blade of the
 
 396 PELHAM ; 
 
 knife, and buried it, covering up the hole again with the 
 earth." 
 
 " Describe the place/ caid I. Dawson paused, and seemed 
 to recollect. I was on the very tenterhooks of suspense, for 
 I saw with one glance all the importance: of his reply. 
 
 After some moments, he shook his head : " I cannot describe 
 the place," said he, * for the wood is so thick ; yet I know the 
 exact spot so well, that, were I in any part of the plantation, 
 I could point it out immediately." 
 
 I told him to pause again, and recollect himself ; and at 
 all events, to try to indicate the place. However, his account 
 was so confused and perplexed, that I was forced to give up 
 the point in despair, and he continued. 
 
 " After we had done this, Thornton told me to hold the 
 horses, and said he would go alone, to spy whether we might 
 return : accordingly he did so, and brought back word, in 
 about half an hour, that he had crept cautiously along till in 
 sight of the place, and then, throwing himself down on his face 
 by the ridge of a bank, had observed a man (who he was sure 
 was the person with a cloak we had passed, and who, he said, 
 was Sir Reginald Glanville) mount his horse on the very spot 
 of the murder, and ride off, while another person (Mr. Pelham) 
 appeared, and also discovered the fatal place. 
 
 " 'There is no doubt now,' said he, 'that we shall have the 
 hue-and-cry upon us. However, if you are staunch and stout- 
 hearted, no possible danger can come to us ; for you may 
 leave me alone to throw the whole guilt upon Sir Reginald 
 Glanville.' " 
 
 " We then mounted, and rode home. We stole upstairs 
 by the back way. Thornton's linen and hands were stained 
 with blood. The former he took off, locked up carefully, 
 and burnt the first opportunity : the latter he washed ; and, 
 that the water might not lead to detection, drank it. We 
 then appeared as if nothing had occurred, and learnt that 
 Mr. Pelham had been to the house ; but as, very fortunately, 
 our out-buildings had been lately robbed by some idle people, 
 my wife and servants had refused to admit him. I was thrown 
 into great agitation, and was extremely frightened. However, 
 as Mr. Pelham had left a message that we were to go to the 
 pond, Thornton insisted upon our repairing there to avoid 
 suspicion." 
 
 Dawson then proceeded to say, that, on their return, as he 
 was still exceedingly nervous, Thornton insisted on his going 
 to bed. When our party from Lord Chester's came to the
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 397 
 
 house, Thornton went into Dawson's room, and made him 
 swallow a large tumbler of brandy ; * this intoxicated him so 
 as to make him less sensible to his dangerous situation. After- 
 wards, when the picture was found, which circumstance Thorn- 
 ton communicated to him, along with that of the threatening 
 letter sent by Glanville to the deceased, which was discovered 
 in Tyrrcll's pocket-book, Dawson recovered courage, and jus- 
 tice being entirely thrown on a wrong scent, he managed to 
 pass his examination without suspicion. He then went to town 
 with Thornton, and constantly attended " the club " to which 
 Jonson had before introduced him ; at first, among his new 
 comrades, and while the novel flush of the money he had so 
 fccrfully acquired lasted, he partially succeeded in stifling his 
 remorse. But the success of crime is too contrary to nature 
 to continue lon^ ; his poor wife, whom, in spite of her extrava- 
 gant, and his dissolute habits, he seemed really to love, fell ill, 
 and died ; on her deathbed she revealed the suspicions she had 
 formed of his crime, and said that those suspicions had preyed 
 upon, and finally destroyed, her health : this awoke him from 
 the guilty torpor of his conscience. His share of the money, 
 too, the greater part of which Thornton had bullied out of him, 
 was gone. He fell, as Job had said, into despondency and 
 gloom, and often spoke to Thornton so forcibly of his remorse, 
 and so earnestly of his gnawing and restless desire to appease 
 his mind by surrendering himself to justice, that the fears of 
 that villain grew, at length, so thoroughly alarmed as to pro- 
 cure his removal to his present abode. 
 
 It was here that his real punishment commenced ; closely 
 confined to his apartment at the remotest corner of the house, 
 his solitude was never broken but by the short and hurried 
 visits of his female gaoler, and (worse even than loneliness) the 
 occasional invasions of Thornton. There appeared to be in 
 that abandoned wretch what, for the honor of human nature, 
 is but rarely found, viz., a love of sin, not for its objects, but 
 itself. With a malignity doubly fiendish from its inutility, he 
 forbade Dawson the only indulgence he craved a light during 
 the dark hours ; and not only insulted him for his cowardice, 
 but even added to his terrors by threats of effectually silencing 
 them. 
 
 These fears had so wildly worked upon the man's mind that 
 prison itself appeared to him an elysium to the hell he endured: 
 and when his confession was ended, and I said : " If you can 
 be freed from this place, would you repeat before a magistrate 
 
 * A common practice with thieves who fear the weak nerves of their accomplices.
 
 398 PELHAM ; 
 
 all that you have now told me ? " he started up in delight at the 
 very thought. In truth, besides his remorse, and that inward 
 and impelling voice which, in all the annals of murder, seems to 
 urge the criminal onwards to the last expiation of his guilt be- 
 sides these, there mingled in his mind a sentiment of bitter, yet 
 cowardly, vengeance against his inhuman accomplice ; and 
 perhaps he found consolation for his own fate in the hope of 
 wreaking upon Thornton's head somewhat of the tortures that 
 ruffian had inflicted upon him. 
 
 I had taken down in my book the heads of the confession, 
 and I now hastened to Jonson, who, waiting without the door, 
 had (as I had anticipated) heard all. 
 
 " You see," said I, " that, however satisfactory this recital 
 has been, it contains no secondary or innate proofs to confirm 
 it ; the only evidence with which it could furnish us would be 
 the remnant of the broken knife, engraved with Thornton's 
 name ; but you have heard from Dawson's account how impos- 
 sible it would be in an extensive wood for any one to discover 
 the spot but himself. You will agree with me, therefore, that 
 we must not leave this house without Dawson. 
 
 Job changed color slightly. 
 
 " I see as clearly as you do," said he, "that it will be neces- 
 sary for my annuity, and your friend's full acquittal, to pro- 
 cure Dawson's personal evidence, but it is late now ; the men 
 may be still drinking below ; Bess may be still awake and stir- 
 ring ; even if she sleeps, how could we -pass her room without 
 disturbing her ? I own that I do not see a chance of effecting 
 his escape to-night, without incurring the most probable peril 
 of having our throats cut. Leave it, therefore, to me to procure 
 his release as soon as possible probably to-morrow, and let us 
 now quietly retire, content with what we have yet got." 
 
 Hitherto I had implicitly obeyed Job : it was now my turn 
 to command. "Look you," said I, calmly but sternly, " I have 
 come into this house under your guidance solely to procure the 
 evidence of that man ; the evidence he has, as yet, given may 
 not be worth a straw ; and, since I have ventured among the 
 knives of your associates, it shall be for some purpose. I 
 tell you fairly that, whether you befriend or betray me, I will 
 either leave 'these walls with Dawson, or remain in them a 
 corpse." 
 
 "You are a bold blade, sir," said Jonson, who seemed rather 
 to respect than resent the determination of my tone, " and we 
 will see what can be done ; wait here, your honor, while I go 
 down to see if the boys are gone to bed, and the coast is clear."
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 399 
 
 Job descended, and I re-entered Dawson's room. When I 
 told him that we were resolved, if possible, to effect his escape, 
 nothing could exceed his transport and gratitude ; this was, 
 indeed, expressed in so mean and servile a manner, mixed 
 with so many petty threats of vengeance against Thornton, 
 that I could scarcely conceal my disgust. 
 
 Jonson returned, and beckoned me out of the room. 
 
 "They are all in bed, sir," said he; "Bess as well as the 
 rest ; indeed, the old girl has lushed so well at the bingo, that 
 she sleeps as if her next morrow was the day of judgment. I 
 have, also, seen that the street-door is still unbarred, so that, 
 upon the whole, we have, perhaps, as good a chance to-night 
 as we may ever have again. All my fear is about that cowardly 
 lubber. I have left both Bess's doors wide open, so we have 
 nothing to do but to creep through ; as for me, I am an old 
 file, and could steal my way through a sick man's room, like a 
 sunbeam through a keyhole." 
 
 "Well," said I, in the same strain, "I am no elephant, and 
 my dancing master used to tell me I might tread on a butter- 
 fly's wing without brushing off a tint (PoorCoulon! he little 
 thought of the use his lessons would be to me hereafter !), so 
 let us be quick, Master Job." 
 
 " Stop," said Jonson ; " I have yet a ceremony to perform 
 with our caged bird. I must put a fresh gag on his mouth ; 
 for though, if he escapes, I must leave England, perhaps for 
 ever, for fear of the jolly boys, and, therefore, care not what 
 he blabs about me ; yet there are a few fine fellows amongst 
 the club whom I would not have hurt for the Indies ; so I shall 
 make Master Dawson take our last oath\\\z Devil himself 
 would not break that, I think ! Your honor will stay out- 
 side the door, for we can have no witness while it is admin- 
 istered." 
 
 Job then entered ; I stood without ; in a few minutes I heard 
 Dawson's voice in the accents of supplication. Soon after Job 
 returned. "The craven dog won't take the oath," said he, 
 " and may my right hand rot above ground before it shall turn 
 key for him unless he does." But when Dawson saw that Job 
 had left the room, and withdrawn the light, the conscience- 
 stricken coward came to the door, and implored Job to return. 
 "Will you swear, then?" said Jonson; "I will, I will," was 
 the answer. 
 
 Job then re-entered minutes passed away Job reap- 
 peared, and Dawson was dressed, and clinging hold of him : 
 " All's right ! " said he to me with a satisfied air.
 
 406 
 
 The oath had been taken. What it was I know not, but it 
 was never broken. * 
 
 Dawson and Job went first, I followed ; we passed the pas- 
 sage, and came to the chamber of the sleeping Mrs. Brimstone. 
 Job bent eagerly forward to listen before we entered ; he took 
 hold of Dawson's arm, and beckoning me to follow, stole, with 
 a step that the blind mole would not have heard, across the 
 room. Carefully did the practised thief veil the candle he 
 carried with his hand as he now began to pass by the bed. I 
 saw that Dawson trembled like a leaf, and the palpitation of 
 his limbs made his step audible and heavy. Just as they had 
 half-way passed the bed, I turned my look on Brimstone Bess, 
 and observed with a shuddering thrill her eyes slowly open, 
 and fix upon the forms of my companions. Dawson's gaze 
 had been bent in the same direction, and when he met the full, 
 glassy stare of the beldame's eyes, he uttered a faint scream. 
 This completed our danger ; had it not been for that exclama- 
 tion, Bess might, in the uncertain vision of drowsiness, have 
 passed over the third person, and fancied it was only myself 
 and Jonson, in our way from Dawson's apartment ; but no 
 sooner had her ear caught the sound than she started up, and 
 sat erect on her bed, gazing at us in mingled wrath and aston- 
 ishment. 
 
 That was a fearful moment we stood riveted to the spot ! 
 " Oh, my kiddies," cried Bess, at last finding speech, " you are 
 in Queer Street, I trow ! Plant your stumps, Master Guinea 
 Pig ; you are going to stall off the Daw's baby in prime twig, 
 eh ? But Bess stags you, my cove ! Bess stags you." f 
 
 Jonson looked irresolute for one instant ; but the next he 
 had decided. " Run, run," cried he, " for your lives "; and 
 he and Dawson (to whom fear did indeed lend wings) were 
 out of the room in an instant. I lost no time in following 
 their example ; but the vigilant and incensed hag was too 
 quick for me ; she pulled violently the bell, on which she had 
 already placed her hand ; the alarm rang like an echo in a 
 cavern ; below around far near from wall to wall from 
 chamber to chamber, the sound seemed multiplied and re- 
 peated ! And in the same breathing point of time she 
 sprang from her bed and seized me, just as I had reached the 
 door. 
 
 " On, on, on," cried Jonson's voice to Dawson, as they had 
 
 * Those conversant with the annals of Newgate well know how religiously the oaths of 
 these fearful Freemasonries are kept. 
 
 t Halt, Master Guinea Pig, you are going to steal Dawson away, eh? But Bess sees 
 you, my man, Bess sees you !
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 40! 
 
 already gained the passage, and left the whole room, and the 
 staircase beyond, in utter darkness. 
 
 With a firm, muscular, nervous gripe, which almost showed a 
 masculine strength, the hag clung to my throat and breast ; 
 behind, among some of the numerous rooms in the passage we 
 had left, I heard sounds which told too plainly how rapidly 
 the alarm had spread. 
 
 A door opened steps approached my fate seemed fixed : 
 but despair gave me energy : it was no time for the ceremonials 
 due to the beau sexe. I dashed Bess to the ground, tore my- 
 self from her relaxing grasp, and fled down the steps with all 
 the precipitation the darkness would allow. I gained the pas- 
 sage, at the far end of which hung the lamp, now weak and 
 waning in its socket, which, it will be remembered, burnt close 
 by the sick man's chamber that I had so unintentionally 
 entered. A thought flashed upon my mind, and lent me new 
 nerves and fresh speed ; I flew along the passage, guided by 
 the dying light. The staircase I had left shook with the foot- 
 steps of my pursuers. I was at the door of the sick thief I 
 burst it open seized the sword as it lay within reach on the 
 chair, where Jonson had placed it, and feeling, at the touch of 
 the familiar weapon, as if the might of ten men had been trans- 
 ferred to my single arm, I bounded down the stairs before me, 
 passed the door at the bottom, which Dawson had fortunately 
 left open, flung it back almost upon the face of my advancing 
 enemies, and found myself in the long passage which led to 
 the street-door, in safety, but in the thickest darkness. A light 
 flashed from a door to the left ; the door was that of the " Com- 
 mon room " which we had first entered ; it opened, and Spider- 
 shanks, with one of his comrades, looked forth, the former 
 holding a light. I darted by them, and, guided by their lamp, 
 fled along the passage, and reached the door. Imagine my 
 dismay, when, either through accident, or by the desire of my 
 fugitive companions to impede pursuit, I found it unexpect- 
 edly closed ! 
 
 The two villains had now come up to me ; close at their heels 
 were two more, probably my pursuers from the upper apart- 
 ments. Providentially the passage was (as I before said) ex- 
 tremely narrow, and as long as no firearms were used, nor a 
 general rush resorted to, I had little doubt of being able to 
 keep the ruffians at bay until I had hit upon the method of 
 springing the latch, and so winning my escape from the house. 
 
 While my left hand was employed in feeling the latch, I made 
 such good use of my right as to keep my antagonists at a safe
 
 403 
 
 PELHAM 
 
 distance. The one who was nearest to me was Fib Fakescrew ; 
 he was armed with a weapon exactly similar to my own. The 
 whole passage rung with oaths and threats. " Crash the cull 
 down with him down with him before he dubs the jigger. 
 Tip him the degan, Fib, fake him through and through ; if he 
 pikes, we shall all be scragged."* 
 
 Hitherto, in the confusion, I had not been able to recall Job's 
 instructions in opening the latch ; at last I remembered, and 
 pressed the screw the latch rose I opened the door ; but not 
 wide enough to escape through the aperture. The ruffians saw 
 my escape at hand. " Rush the b cove ! rush him ! " cried 
 the loud voice of one behind ; and, at the word, Fib was 
 thrown forwards upon the extended edge of my blade ; scarcely 
 with an effort of my own arm the sword entered his bosom, 
 and he fell at my feet bathed in blood : the motion which the 
 men thought would prove my destruction became my salva- 
 tion ; staggered by the fall of their companion, they gave way : 
 I seized advantage of the momentary confusion threw open 
 the door, and, mindful of Job's admonition, turned to the right, 
 and fled onwards, with a rapidity which baffled and mocked 
 pursuit. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXIV. 
 " Ille viam secat ad naves sociosque revisit." VIRGIL. 
 
 THE day had already dawned, but all was still and silent ; 
 my footsteps smote the solitary pavement with a strange and 
 unanswered sound. Nevertheless, though all pursuit had long 
 ceased, I still continued to run on mechanically, till, faint and 
 breathless, I was forced to pause. I looked round, but could 
 recongnize nothing familiar in the narrow and filthy streets ; 
 even the names of them were to me like an unknown language. 
 After a brief rest I renewed my wanderings, and at length 
 came to an alley called River Lane ; the name did not de- 
 ceive me, but brought me, after a short walk, to the Thames ; 
 there, to my inexpressible joy, I discovered a solitary boatman, 
 and transported myself forthwith to the Whitehall Stairs. 
 
 Never, I ween, did gay gallant, in the decaying part of the 
 season, arrive at those stairs for the sweet purpose of accompany- 
 ing his own mistress or another's wife to green Richmond, or 
 sunny Hampton, with more eager and animated delight than I felt 
 when rejecting the arm of the rough boatman, and leaping on the 
 
 * Kill the fellow, down with him before he opens the door. Stab him, through and 
 through ; if he gets off we shall all be hanged,"
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 403 
 
 well-known stones, I hastened to that stand of "jarvies" which 
 has often been the hope and shelter of belated member of St. 
 Stephen's or bewetted fugitive from the Opera startled a sleep- 
 ing coachman, flung myself into his vehicle and descended 
 at Mivart's. 
 
 The drowsy porter surveyed, and told me to be gone ; I had 
 forgotten, till then, my strange attire. " Pooh, my friend," 
 said I, "may not Mr. Pelham go to a masquerade as well as his 
 betters ?" My voice and words undeceived my Cerberus, and 
 I was admitted ; I hastened to bed, and no sooner had I laid 
 my head on my pillow than I fell fast asleep. It must be con- 
 fessed that I had deserved "tired Nature's sweet restorer." 
 
 I had not been above a couple of hours in the land of dreams 
 when I was awakened by some one grasping my arm : the 
 events of the past night were so fresh in my memory that I 
 sprung up as if the knife was at my throat my eyes opened 
 upon the peaceful countenance of Mr. Job Jonson. 
 
 " Thank Heaven, sir, you are safe ! I had but a very faint 
 hope of finding you here when I came." 
 
 "Why," said I, rubbing my eyes, "it is very true that I am 
 safe, honest Job : but, I believe, I have few thanks to give you 
 for a circumstance so peculiarly agreeable to myself. It would 
 have saved me much trouble, and your worthy friend, Mr. Fib 
 Fakescrew, some pain, if you had left the door open instead 
 of shutting me up with your club, as you are pleased to 
 call it ! " 
 
 " Very true, sir," said Job, "and I am extremely sorry at the 
 accident : it was Dawson who shut the door, through utter un- 
 consciousness, though I told him especially not to do it the 
 poor dog did not know whether he was on his head or his 
 heels." 
 
 " You have got him safe," said I quickly. 
 
 " Ay, trust me for that, your honor. I have locked him up 
 at home while I came here to look for you." 
 
 " We will lose no time in transferring him to safer custody," 
 said I, leaping out of bed ; " but be off to Street directly." 
 
 " Slow and sure, sir," answered Jonson. " It is for you to 
 do whatever you please, but my part of the business is over. 
 I shall sleep at Dover to-night, and breakfast at Calais to-mor- 
 row. Perhaps it will not be very inconvenient to your honor 
 to furnish me with my first quarter's annuity in advance, and to 
 see that the rest is duly paid into Lafitte's, at Paris, for the use of 
 Captain de Courcy. Where I shall live hereafter is at present 
 uncertain ; but I dare say there will be few corners except old
 
 404 PELHAM ; 
 
 England and new England in which I shall not make merry on 
 your honor's bounty." 
 
 " Pooh ! my good fellow," rejoined I, " never desert a coun- 
 try to which your talents do such credit ; stay here, and re- 
 form on your annuity. If ever I can accomplish my own 
 wishes, I will consult yours still farther ; for I shall always think 
 of your services with gratitude, though you did shut the door 
 in my face." 
 
 " No, sir," replied Job, " life is a blessing I would fain enjoy 
 a few years longer ; and, at present, my sojourn in England 
 would put it wofully in danger of ' club law.' Besides, I begin 
 to think that a good character is a very agreeable thing when 
 not too troublesome : and, as I have none left in England, I 
 may as well make the experiment abroad. If your honor will 
 call at the magistrate's, and take a warrant and an officer, for 
 the purpose of ridding me of my charge, at the very instant I 
 see my responsibility at an end I will have the honor of bidding 
 you adieu." 
 
 " Well, as you please," said I. " Curse your scoundrel's 
 cosmetics ! How the deuce am I ever to regain my natural 
 complexion ? Look ye, sirrah ! you have painted me with a 
 long wrinkle on the left side of my mouth, big enough to en- 
 gulf all the beauty I ever had. Why, water seems to have no 
 effect upon it !" 
 
 " To be sure not, sir," said Job calmly ; " I should be but a 
 poor dauber if my paints washed off with a wet sponge." 
 
 " Grant me patience ! " cried I, in a real panic : " how, in 
 the name of Heaven, are they to wash off ! Am I, before I 
 have reached my twenty-third year, to look like a Methodist 
 parson on the wrong side of forty, you rascal ! " 
 
 " The latter question your honor can best answer," returned 
 Job. " With regard to the former, I have an unguent here, if 
 you will surfer me to apply it, which will remove all other 
 colors than those which nature has bestowed upon you." 
 
 With that Job produced a small box ; and, after a brief sub- 
 mission to his skill, I had the ineffable joy of beholding myself 
 restored to my original state. Nevertheless, my delight was 
 somewhat checked by the loss of my curls : I thanked Heaven, 
 however, that the damage had been sustained after Ellen's ac- 
 ceptation of my addresses. A lover confined to one should not 
 be too destructive, for fear of the consequences to the remain- 
 der of the female world ; compassion is ever due to the fair 
 sex. 
 
 My toilet being concluded, Jonson and I repaired to the
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 405 
 
 magistrate's. He waited at the corner of the street, while I 
 entered the house : 
 
 " 'Twere vain to tell what shook the holy Man, 
 Who looked, not lovingly, at that divan." 
 
 Having summoned to my aid the redoubted Mr. of mul- 
 berry-cheeked recollection, we entered a hackney coach, and 
 drove to Jonson's lodgings, Job mounting guard on the box. 
 
 U I think, sir," said Mr. , looking up at the man of two 
 
 virtues, " that I have had the pleasure of seeing that gentleman 
 before." 
 
 " Very likely," said I ; "he is a young man greatly about 
 town." 
 
 When we had safely lodged Dawson (who seemed more col- 
 lected, and even courageous, than I had expected) in the 
 coach, Job beckoned me into a little parlor. I signed him a 
 draft on my bankers for one hundred pounds though at that 
 time it was like letting the last drop from my veins and 
 faithfully promised, should Dawson' evidence produce the de- 
 sired end (of which, indeed, there was now no doubt), that the 
 annuity should be regularly paid, as he desired. We then took 
 an affectionate farewell of each other. 
 
 " Adieu, sir ! " said Job, " I depart into a new world that of 
 honest men ! " 
 
 "If so," said I, "adieu indeed ! for on this earth we shall 
 never meet again ! " 
 
 We returned to Street. As I was descending from the 
 
 coach, a female, wrapped from head to foot in a cloak, came 
 eagerly up to me, and seized me by the arm. " For God's sake," 
 said she, in a low, hurried voice, " come aside, and speak to 
 me for a single moment." Consigning Dawson to the sole 
 charge of the officer, I did as I was desired. When we had 
 got some paces down the street, the female stopped. Though 
 she held her veil closely drawn over her face, her voice and 
 air were not to be mistaken : I knew her at once. " Glanville," 
 said she, with great agitation, "Sir Reginald Glanville; tell me, is 
 he in real danger?" She stopped short she could say no more. 
 
 " I trust not!" said I, appearing not to recognize the speaker. 
 
 " I trust not ! " she repeated ; " is that all ! " And then 
 the passionate feelings of her sex overcoming every other con- 
 sideration, she seized me by the hand and said : " Oh, Mr. 
 Pelham, for mercy's sake, tell me, is he in the power of that 
 villain Thornton ? You need disguise nothing from me ; I 
 know all the fatal history."
 
 406 PELHAM ; " 
 
 " Compose yourself, dear, dear Lady Roseville," said I 
 soothingly : " for it is in vain any longer to affect not to know 
 you. Glanville is safe ; I have brought with me a witness 
 whose testimony must release him." 
 
 " God bless you, God bless you ! " said Lady Roseville, and 
 she burst into tears ; but she dried them directly, and recov- 
 ering some portion of that dignity which never long forsakes a 
 woman of virtuous and educated mind, she resumed, proudly, 
 yet bitterly : " It is no ordinary motive, no motive which you 
 might reasonably impute to me, that he has brought me here. 
 Sir Reginald Glanville can never be anything more to me than 
 a friend but, of all friends, the most known and valued. I 
 learned from his servant of his disappearance ; and my ac- 
 quaintance with his secret history enabled me to account for it 
 in the most fearful manner. In short, I I but explanations 
 are idle now ; you will never say that you have seen me here, 
 Mr. Pelham : you will endeavor even to forget it farewell." 
 
 Lady Roseville, then drawing her cloak closely round her, 
 left me with a fleet and light step, and, turning the corner of 
 the street, disappeared. 
 
 I returned to my charge : I demanded an immediate inter- 
 view with the magistrate. "I have come," said I, "to redeem 
 my pledge, and procure the acquittal of the innocent." I then 
 briefly related my adventures, only concealing (according to 
 my promise) all description of my helpmate, Job ; and prepared 
 the worthy magistrate for the confession and testimony of 
 Dawson. That unhappy man hadjust concluded his narration 
 when an officer entered and whispered the magistrate that 
 Thornton was in waiting. 
 
 " Admit him," said Mr. , aloud. Thornton entered with 
 
 his usual easy and swaggering air of effrontery : but no sooner 
 did he set his eyes upon Dawson than a deadly and withering 
 change passed over his countenance. Dawson could not bridle 
 the cowardly petulance of his spite. " They know all, Thorn- 
 ton ! " said he, with a look of triumph. The villain turned 
 slowly from him to us, muttering something we could not hear. 
 He saw upon my face, upon the magistrate's, that his doom 
 was sealed : his desperation gave him presence of mind, and 
 he made a sudden rush to the door ; the officer in waiting 
 seized him. Why should I detail the rest of the scene ? He 
 was that day fully committed for trial, and Sir Reginald Gten- 
 ville honorably released, and unhesitatingly acquitted.
 
 OR, ADVENTUkES OF A GENTLEMAN. 407 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXV. 
 
 " Un hymen qu'on souhaite 
 
 Entre les gens comme nous est chose bientot-fait, 
 Je te veux ; meveux-tu de meme?" MOLIERE. 
 
 " So may he rest, his faults lie gently on him." SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 THE main interest of my adventures if, indeed, I may flatter 
 myself that they ever contained any is now over ; the mystery 
 is explained, the innocent acquitted, and the guilty condemned. 
 Moreover, all obstacles between the marriage of the unworthy 
 hero with the peerless heroine being removed, it would be but 
 an idle prolixity to linger over the preliminary details of an 
 orthodox and customary courtship. Nor is it for me to dilate 
 upon the exaggerated expressions of gratitude in which the af- 
 fectionate heart of Glanville found vent for my fortunate exer- 
 tions on his behalf. He was not willing that any praise to which 
 I might be entitled for them should be lost. He narrated to 
 Lady Glanville and Ellen my adventures with the comrades of 
 the worthy Job ; from the lips of the mother, and the eyes of 
 the dear sister, came my sweetest addition to the good fortune 
 which had made me the instrument of Glanville's safety and 
 acquittal. I was not condemned to a long protraction of that 
 time, which, if it be justly termed the happiest of our lives, we 
 (viz., all true lovers), through that perversity common to human 
 nature, most ardently wish to terminate. 
 
 On that day month which saw Glanville's release my bridals 
 were appointed. Reginald was even more eager than myself in 
 pressing for an early day ; firmly persuaded that his end was 
 rapidly approaching, his most prevailing desire was to witness 
 our union. This wish, and the interest he took in our happi- 
 ness, gave him an energy and animation which impressed us with 
 the deepest hopes for his ultimate recovery ; and the fatal dis- 
 ease to which he was a prey nursed the fondness of our hearts 
 by the bloom of cheek, and brightness of eye, with which it 
 veiled its desolating and gathering progress. 
 
 From the eventful day on which I had seen Lady Roseville 
 
 <in Street we had not met. She had shut herself up in her 
 
 splendid home, and the newspapers teemed with regret at the 
 reported illness and certain seclusion of one whose f$tes and 
 gayeties had furnished them with their brightest pages. The 
 only one admitted to her was Ellen. To her she had for some 
 time made no secret of her attachment and from her the daily 
 news of Sir Reginald's health was ascertained. Several times,
 
 408 
 
 when at a late hour I left Glanville's apartments, I passed the 
 figure of a woman, closely muffled, and apparently watching be- 
 fore his windows which, owing to the advance of summer, 
 were never closed to catch, perhaps, a view of his room, or a 
 passing glimpse of his emaciated and fading figure. If that sad 
 and lonely vigil was kept by her whom I suspected, deep, in- 
 deed, and mighty, was the love which could so humble the 
 heart, and possess the spirit, of the haughty and high-born 
 Countess of Roseville ! 
 
 I turn to a very different personage in this veritable histoire. 
 My father and mother were absent at Lady H.'s when my 
 marriage was fixed ; to both of them I wrote for their appro- 
 bation of my choice. From Lady Frances I received the 
 answer which I subjoin : 
 
 " MY DEAREST SON : 
 
 " Your father desires me to add his congratulations to mine 
 upon the election you have made. I shall hasten to London to 
 be present at the ceremony. Although you must not be 
 offended with me if I say, that with your person, accomplish- 
 ments, birth, and (above all) high ton, you might have chosen 
 among the loftiest and wealthiest families in the country ; yet 
 I am by no means displeased or disappointed with your future 
 wife. To say nothing of the antiquity of her name (the 
 Glanvilles intermarried with the Pelhams in the reign of Henry 
 II.) it is a great step to future distinction to marry a beauty, 
 especially one so celebrated as Miss Glanville perhaps it is 
 among the surest ways to the cabinet. The forty thousand 
 pounds which you say Miss Glanville is to receive make, to 
 be sure, but a slender income ; though, when added to your 
 own fortune, that sum in ready money would have been a 
 great addition to the Glenmorris property, if your uncle I 
 have no patience with him had not married again. 
 
 " However, you will lose no time in getting into the House 
 at all events the capital will ensure your return for a borough, 
 and maintain you comfortably till you are in the administra- 
 tion ; when of course it matters very little what your fortune 
 may be tradesmen will be too happy to have your name in^ 
 their books ; be sure, therefore, that the money is not tied up. 
 Miss Glanville must see that her own interest, as well as yours, 
 is concerned in your having the unfettered disposal of a for- 
 tune, which, if restricted, you would find it impossible to live 
 upon. Pray, how is Sir Reginald Glanville ? Is his cough as 
 bad as ever ? By the by, how is his property entailed ?
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 409 
 
 "Will you order Stonor to have the house ready for us on 
 Friday, when I shall return home in time for dinner ? Let me 
 again congratulate you most sincerely on your choice. I 
 always thought you had more common-sense, as well as genius, 
 than any young man I ever knew ; you have shown it in this 
 important step. Domestic happiness, my dearest Henry, 
 ought to be peculiarly sought for by every Englishman, how- 
 ever elevated his station ; and when I reflect upon Miss Glan- 
 ville's qualifications, and her celebrity as a beauty, I have no 
 doubt of your possessing the felicity you deserve. But be 
 sure that the fortune is not settled away from you ; poor Sir 
 Reginald is not (I believe) at all covetous or worldly, and will 
 not, therefore, insist upon the point. 
 
 " God bless you, and grant you every happiness. Ever, my 
 dear Henry, 
 
 "Your very affectionate mother, 
 
 " F. PELHAM. 
 
 " P.S. I think it will be better to give out that Miss Glan- 
 ville has eighty thousand pounds. Be sure, therefore, that you 
 do not contradict me." 
 
 The days, the weeks flew away. Ah, happy days ! yet I do 
 not regret while I recall you ! He that loves much, fears 
 even in his best-founded hopes. What were the anxious long- 
 ings for a treasure in my view only, not in my possession 
 to the deep joy of finding it forever my own. 
 
 The day arrived I was yet at my toilet, and Bedos in the 
 greatest confusion (poor fellow, he was as happy as myself !), 
 when a letter was brought me stamped with the foreign post- 
 mark. It was from the exemplary Job Jonson, and though I 
 did not even open it on that day, yet it shall be more favored 
 by the reader viz., if he will not pass over, without reading, 
 the following effusion : 
 
 " Rue des Moulins, No. , Paris. 
 " HONORED SIR : 
 
 " I arrived in Paris safely, and reading in the English papers 
 the full success of our enterprise, as well as in the Morning 
 Post of the th your approaching marriage with Miss Glan- 
 ville, I cannot refrain from the liberty of congratulating you 
 upon both, as well as of reminding you of the exact day on 
 
 which the first quarter of my annuity will be due ; it is the 
 
 of ; for I presume your honor kindly made me a present 
 
 of the draft for one hundred pounds, in order to pay my 
 travelling expenses.
 
 410 PELHAM ; 
 
 " I find that the boys are greatly incensed against me ; but as 
 Dawson was too much bound by his oath to betray a tittle 
 against them, I trust I shall ultimately pacify the club, and re- 
 turn to England. A true patriot, sir, never loves to leave his 
 native country. Even were I compelled to visit Van Diemen's 
 Land, the ties of birthplace would be so strong as to induce 
 me to seize the first opportunity of returning ! I am not, your 
 honor, very fond of the French they are an idle, frivolous, 
 penurious, poor nation. Only think, sir, the other day I saw 
 a gentleman of the most noble air secrete something at a caft, 
 Avhich I could not clearly discern ; as he wrapped it carefully 
 in paper before he placed it in his pocket, I judged that it 
 was a silver cream ewer at least ; accordingly, I followed him 
 out, and from pure curiosity I do assure your honor it was 
 from no other motive I transferred this purloined treasure to 
 my own pocket. You will imagine, sir, the interest with which 
 I hastened to a lonely spot in the Tuileries, and carefully 
 taking out the little packet, unfolded paper by paper, till I 
 came to yes, sir, till I came to five lumps of sugar! Oh, 
 the French are a mean people a very mean people I hope I 
 shall soon be able to return to England. Meanwhile, I am 
 going into Holland, to see how those rich burghers spend their 
 time and their money. I suppose poor Dawson, as well as the 
 rascal Thornton, will be hung before you receive this they 
 deserve it richly it is such fellows who disgrace the profes- 
 sion. He is but a very poor bungler who is forced to cut 
 throats as well as pockets. And now, your honor, wishing 
 you all happiness with your lady, I beg to remain, 
 
 "Your very obedient humble servant, 
 
 " FERDINAND DE COURCY, etc., etc." 
 
 Struck with the joyous countenance of my honest valet as I 
 took my gloves and hat from his hand, I could not help wishing 
 to bestow upon him a blessing similar to that I was about to pos- 
 sess. "Bedos," said I, " Bedos, my good fellow, you left your 
 wife to come to me ; you shall not surfer by your fidelity: send for 
 her we will find room for her in our future establishment." 
 
 The smiling face of the Frenchman underwent a rapid change. 
 " Ma foi" said he, in his own tongue ; " Monsieur is too good. 
 An excess of happiness hardens the heart ; and so, for fear of 
 forgetting my gratitude to Providence, I will, with Monsieur's 
 permission, suffer my adored wife to remain where she is." 
 
 After so pious a reply I should have been worse than wicked 
 had I pressed the matter any fuither. 
 
 I found all ready at Berkeley Square. Lady Glauville is ono
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 41! 
 
 of those good persons who think a marriage out of church is 
 no marriage at all ; to church, therefore, we went. Although 
 Reginald was now so reduced that he could scarcely support 
 the least fatigue, he insisted on giving Ellen away. He was 
 that morning, and had been for the last two or three days, con- 
 siderably better, and our happiness seemed to grow less selfish 
 in our increasing hope of his recovery. 
 
 When we returned from church, our intention was to set off 
 immediately to Hall, a seat which I had hired for our recep- 
 tion. On re-entering the house, Glanville called me aside I fol- 
 lowed his infirm and tremulous steps in to a private apartment. 
 
 " Pelham," said he, " we shall never meet again ! No mat- 
 ter you are now happy, and I shall shortly be so. But there 
 is one office I have yet to request from your friendship ; when 
 I am dead, let me be buried by her side, and let one tombstone 
 cover both." 
 
 I pressed his hand, and, with tears in my eyes, made him the 
 promise he required. 
 
 " It is enough," said he ; "I have no farther business with 
 life. God bless you, my friend my brother; do not let a 
 thought of me cloud your happiness." 
 
 He rose, and we turned to quit the room ; Glanville was 
 leaning on my arm ; when he had moved a few paces towards 
 the door he stopped abruptly. Imagining that the pause pro- 
 ceeded from pain or debility, I turned my eyes upon his coun- 
 tenance a fearful and convulsive change was rapidly passing 
 over it his eyes stared wildly upon vacancy. 
 
 "Merciful God is it can it be?" he said in a low, inward tone. 
 
 Before I could speak, I felt his hand relax its grasp upon my 
 arm he fell upon the floor I raised him a smile of ineffable 
 serenity and peace was upon his lips ; his face was the face of 
 an angel, but the spirit had passed away ! 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXVI. 
 
 " Now haveth good day, good men all, 
 Haveth good day, yong and old ; 
 Haveth good day, both great and small, 
 And graunt merci a thousand fold ! 
 Gif ever I might full fain I wold, 
 Don ought that were unto your leve, 
 Christ keep you out of cares cold. 
 For now 'tis time to take my leave." Old Song. 
 
 SEVKRAL months have now elapsed since my marriage. I 
 am living quietly in the country, among my books, and looking
 
 412 PELHAM J 
 
 forward with calmness, rather than impatience, to the time 
 which shall again bring me before the world. Marriage with 
 me is not that sepulchre of all human hope and energy which 
 it often is with others. I am not more partial to my arm-chair, 
 nor more averse to shaving than of yore. I do not bound my 
 prospects to the dinner-hour, nor my projects to "migrations 
 from the blue bed to the brown." Matrimony found me am- 
 bitious ; it has not cured me of the passion : but it has con- 
 centrated what was scattered, and determined what was vague. 
 If I am less anxious than formerly for the reputation to be ac- 
 quired in society, I am more eager for honor in the world ; and 
 instead of amusing my enemies, and the saloon, I trust yet to 
 be useful to my friends and to mankind. 
 
 Whether this is a hope altogether vain and idle ; whether I 
 have, in the self-conceit common to all men (thou wilt per- 
 chance add, peculiarly prominent in myself !), overrated both 
 the power and the integrity of my mind (for the one is bootless 
 without the other) neither I nor the world can yet tell. " Time," 
 says one of the fathers, "is the only touchstone which distin- 
 guishes the prophet from the boaster." 
 
 Meanwhile, gentle reader, during the two years which I pur- 
 pose devoting to solitude and study, I shall not be so occupied 
 with my fields and folios, as to become uncourteous to thee. 
 If ever thou hast known me in the city, I give thee a hearty 
 invitation to come and visit me in the country. I promise 
 thee that my wines and viands shall not disgrace the companion 
 of Guloseton ; nor my conversation be much duller than my 
 book. I will compliment thee on thy horses ; thou shalt con- 
 gratulate me upon my wife. Over old wine we will talk over 
 new events ; and, if we flag at the latter, why, we will make 
 ourselves amends with the former. In short, if thou art neither 
 very silly nor very wise, it shall be thine own fault if we are 
 not excellent friends. 
 
 I feel that it would be but poor courtesy in me, after having 
 kept company with Lord Vincent through the tedious journey 
 of these pages, to dismiss him now without one word of vale- 
 diction. May he, in the political course he has adopted, find 
 all the admiration which his talents deserve ; and if ever we 
 meet as foes, let our heaviest weapon be a quotation, and our 
 bitterest vengeance a jest. 
 
 Lord Guloseton regularly corresponds with me, and his last 
 letter contained a promise to visit me in the course of the 
 month, in order to recover his appetite (which has been much 
 relaxed of late) by the country air.
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 413 
 
 My uncle wrote to me, three weeks since, announcing the 
 death of the infant Lady Glenmorris had brought him. Sin- 
 cerely do I wish that his loss may be supplied. I have al- 
 ready sufficient fortune for my wants, and sufficient hope for 
 my desires 
 
 Thornton died as he had lived the reprobate and the ruf- 
 fian. " Pooh," said he, in his quaint brutality, to the worthy 
 clergyman who attended his last moments with more zeal than 
 success ; " Pooh, what's the difference between gospel and 
 go spell? We agree like a bell and its clapper you're 
 prating while I'm hanging" 
 
 Dawson died in prison, penitent and in peace. Cowardice, 
 which spoils the honest man, often redeems the knave. 
 
 From Lord Davvton I have received a letter, requesting me 
 lo accept a borough (in his gift), just vacated. It is a pity that 
 generosity such a prodigal to those who do not want it 
 should often be such a niggard to those who do. I need not 
 specify my answer. I hope yet to teach Lord Dawton that to 
 forgive the minister is not to forget the affront. Meanwhile, 
 I am content to bury myself in my retreat, with my mute teach- 
 ers of logic and legislature, in order, hereafter, to justify his 
 lordship's good opinion of my abilities. Fareweli, Brutus, we 
 shall meet at Philippi ! 
 
 It is some months since Lady Roseville left England ; the 
 last news we received of her informed us that she was living 
 at Sienna, in utter seclusion, and very infirm health. 
 
 " The day drags thro', though storms keep out the sun, 
 And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on." 
 
 Poor Lady Glanville ! the mother of one so beautiful, so 
 gifted, and so lost. What can I say of her which "you, and 
 you, and you " all who are parents, cannot feel a thousand 
 times more acutely, in those recesses of the heart too deep for 
 words or tears. There are yet many hours in which I find the 
 sister of the departed in grief that even her husband cannot 
 console : and I / my friend, my brother, have I forgot- 
 ten thee in death ? I lay down the pen, I turn from my em- 
 ployment thy dog is at my feet, and looking at me, as if 
 conscious of my thoughts, with an eye almost as tearful as 
 my own. 
 
 But it is not thus that I will part from my reader ; our 
 greeting was not in sorrow, neither shall be our adieus. For 
 thee, who hast gone with me through the motley course of my 
 confessions, I would fain trust that I have sometimes hinted at
 
 414 PELHAM ; 
 
 thy instruction, when only appearing to strive for thy amuse- 
 ment. But on this I will not dwell ; for the moral insisted 
 upon often loses its effect ; and all that I will venture to hope 
 is, that I have opened to thee one true, and not utterly hack- 
 neyed, page in the various and mighty volume of mankind. In 
 this busy and restless world I have not been a vague specu- 
 lator, nor an idle actor. While all around me were vigilant, I 
 have not laid me down to sleep even for the luxury of a poet's 
 dream. Like the schoolboy, I have considered study as study, 
 but action as delight. 
 
 Nevertheless, whatever I have seen, or heard, or felt, has 
 been treasured in my memory, and brooded over by my 
 thoughts. I now place the result before you : 
 
 " Si cut meus est mos, 
 Nescio quid meditans nugarum ; 
 
 but not perhaps, 
 
 " lotus in illis." * 
 
 Whatever Society whether in a higher or lower grade I 
 have portrayed, my sketches have been taken rather as a wit- 
 ness than a copyist ; for I have never shunned that circle, nor 
 that individual, which presented life in a fresh view, or man in 
 a new relation. It is right, however, that I should add, that as 
 I have not wished to be an individual satirist, rather than a 
 general observer, I have occasionally, in the subordinate char- 
 acters (such as Russelton and Gordon), taken only the outline 
 from truth, and filled up the colors at my leisure and my will.* 
 
 With regard to myself I have been more candid. I have not 
 only shown non pared manu my faults, but (grant that this is 
 a much rarer exposure) my foibles j and, in my anxiety for your 
 entertainment, I have not grudged you the pleasure of a laugh 
 even at my own expense. Forgive me, then, if I am not a 
 fashionable hero ; forgive me if I have not wept over a " blighted 
 spirit" nor boasted of a "British heart"; and allow that a 
 
 * According to my custom, meditating, I scarcely know what of trifles ; but not, per- 
 haps, wholly wrapt in them. 
 
 * May the Author, as well as the Hero, be permitted, upon this point, to solicit atten- 
 tion and belief. In all the lesser characters, of which the first idea was taken from life, 
 especially those referred to in the text, he has, for reasons perhaps obvious enough without 
 the tedium of recital, purposely introduced sufficient variation and addition to remove, in his 
 own opinion, the odium either of a copy or of a caricature. The Author thinks it the more 
 necessary in the present edition to insist upon this, with all honest and sincere earnestness, 
 because in the first it was too much the custom of criticism to judge of his sketches from 
 a resemblance to some supposed originals, and'not from adherence to that sole source of all 
 legitimate imitation, Nature Nature as exhibited in the general mass, not in the isolated 
 instance. It is the duty of the novelist rather to abstract than to copy : all humors, all in- 
 dividual peculiarities are his appropriate and fair materials : not so are the humorist and 
 the individual ! Observation should resemble the eastern bird, and while it nourishes 
 itself upon the suction of a thousand flowers, never be seen to settle upon one !
 
 OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. 415 
 
 man who, in these days of alternate Werters and Worthies, is 
 neither the one nor the other, is at least a novelty in print, 
 though, I fear, common enough in life. 
 
 And now, my kind reader, having remembered the proverb, 
 and in saying one word to thee having said two for myself, I 
 will no longer detain thee Whatever thou mayest think of me 
 and my thousand faults, both as an author and a man, believe 
 me it is with a sincere and affectionate wish for the accomplish- 
 ment of my parting words, that I bid thee -farewell! 
 
 THE END,
 
 LUCRETIA
 
 PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION. 
 
 " LUCRETIA, or the Children of Night," was begun simultaneously with 
 " The Caxtons, a Family Picture." The two fictions were intended as 
 
 pendants ; both serving, amongst other collateral aims and objects, to show 
 the influence of home education of early circumstance and example upon 
 after character and conduct. " Lucretia " was completed and published 
 before " The Caxtons." The moral design of the first was misunderstood 
 and assailed ; that of the last was generally acknowledged and approved ; the 
 moral design in both was nevertheless precisely the same. But in one it was 
 sought through the darker side of human nature ; in the other, through the 
 more sunny and cheerful one shows the evil, the other the salutary influ- 
 ences of early circumstance and training. Necessarily therefore the first re- 
 sorts to the tragic elements of awe and distress, the sec nd to the comic ele- 
 ments of humor and agreeable emotion. These differences serve to explain 
 the different reception that awaited the two, and may teach us how little the 
 real conception of an author is known, and how little it is cared for : we 
 judge not by the purpose he conceives, but according as the impressions 
 he effects are pleasurable or painful. But while I cannot acquiesce in much 
 of the hostile criticism this fiction produced at its first appearance, I readily 
 allow that, as a mere question of art, the story might have been improved in 
 itself, and rendered more acceptable to the reader, by diminishing the gloom 
 of the catastrophe. In this edition I have endeavored to do so ; and the 
 victim whose fate in the former cast of the work most revolted the reader, 
 as a violation of the trite but amiable law of Poetical Justice, is saved from 
 the hands of " The Children of Night." Perhaps whatever the faults 
 of this work it equals most oi its companions in the sus,tftinment of inter 
 est, and in that coincidence between the gradual development of motive or 
 passion, and the sequences of external events constituting plot, which mainly 
 distinguish the physical awe of tragedy from the coarse horrors of melo- 
 drama. I trust at least that I shall now find few readers, who will not read- 
 
 "TTy" acknowledge that ihe delineation of crime has only been employed for 
 the grave and impressive purpose which brings it within the due province of 
 the poet. as_an element of terror and a warning to the heart. But should 
 any candid reader, after careful perusal, close this book with a doubt as to 
 its ethical object and tendency, or as to the sanction of its sombre materials 
 Ivy the example of the great masters in imaginative composition, I will en- 
 treat him to cast his eye over the Critical Essay entitled " A Word to the 
 Public," appended to this edition, which contains all that I can desire to say 
 in definition of the purpose designed in Lucretia, and in defence of those 
 legitimate sources of tragic interest from which the narrative is derived. 
 
 LONDON, Dec. 7, 1853.
 
 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 IT is somewhere about four years since I appeared before the public as the 
 writer of a fiction, which I then intimated would probably be my last. ; but 
 bad habits are stronger than good intentions. When Fabticio, in his hos- 
 pital, resolved upon abjuring the vocation of the Poet, he was in truth re- 
 commencing his desperate career by a Farewell to the Muses : I need not 
 apply the allusion. 
 
 I must own, however, that there had long been a desire in my mind to 
 trace, in some work or other, the strange and secret wa)S through which that 
 Arch-ruler of Civilization familiarly called " Money, ' insinuates itself into 
 our thoughts and motives, our hearts and actions ; affecting those who un- 
 dervalue as those who overestimate its importance ; ruining viriues in the 
 spendthrift no less than engendering vices in the miser. But when I half 
 implied my farewell to the character of a novelist, I had imagined that this 
 conception might be best woiked out upon the stage. After some unpub- 
 lished and imperfect attempts towards so realizing my design, I found either 
 that the subject was too wide for the limits of the Drama, or that I wanted 
 that faculty of concentration which alone enables the dramatist to compress 
 multiform varieties into a very limited compass. With this design, I desired 
 to unite some exhibition of what seems to me a principal vice in the hot and 
 emulous chase for happiness or fame, fortune or knowledge, which is almost 
 synonymous with the cant phrase of "the March of Intellect," in that crisis 
 of society to which we have: arrived. The vice I allude to is Impatience. 
 That eager desire to press forward, not so much to conquer obstacles, as to 
 elude them ; that gambling with the solemn destinies of life, seeking ever to 
 set success upon the chance of a die ; that hastening from the wish conceived 
 to the end accomplished ; that thirst afier quick returns to ingenious toil, 
 and breathless spurrings along short cuts to the goal, which we see every- 
 where around us, from the Mechanics' Institute to the Stock Market, be- 
 ginning in education with the primers of infancy deluging us with " Phi- 
 losophies for the Million," and " Sciences made Easy "; characterizing the 
 books of our writers, the speeches of our statesmen, no less than the deal- 
 ings of our speculators, setm, I confess, to me, to constitute a very diseased 
 and very general symptom of the times. I hold that the greatest friend to 
 man is labor ; that knowledge without toil, if possible, were worthless ; that 
 toil in pursuit of knowledge is the best knowledge we can attain ; that the 
 continuous effort for fame is nobler than fame itself ; that it is not wealth 
 suddenly acquired which is deserving of homage, but the virtues which a 
 man exercises in the slow pursuit of wealth the abilities so called forth, the 
 self-denials so imposed : in a word, that Labor and Patience are the true 
 schoolmasters on earth. While occupied with these ideas and this belief, 
 whether right or wrong, and slowly convinced that it was only in that species 
 of composition with which I was most familiar that I could work out some 
 portion of the plan that I began to contemplate, I became acquainted with 
 the histories of two criminals, existing in our own age ; so remarkable, 
 whether from the extent and darkness of the guilt committed whether from 
 
 iv
 
 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. V 
 
 the glittering accomplishments and lively temper of the one, the profound 
 knowledge and intellectual capacities of the other that the examination and 
 analysis of characters so perverted became a study full of intense, if gloomy 
 interest. 
 
 In these persons theie appear to have been as few redeemable points as 
 can be found in Human Nature, so far as such poinis may be traced in the 
 kindly instincts and generous passions which do sometimes accompany the 
 perpetration of great crimes, and without excusing the individual, vindicate 
 the species. Yet, on the other hand, their sanguinary wickedness was not 
 the dull ferocity of brutes ; it was accompanied with instruction and cul- 
 ture : nay, it seemed to me, on studying their lives, and pondering over 
 their own letters, that through their cultivation itself we could arrive at the 
 secret of the ruthless and atrocious pre-eminence in evil these Children of 
 Night had attained that Here the monster vanished into the mortal, and 
 the phenomena that seemed aberrations from nature were explained. 
 
 I could not resist the temptation of reducing to a tale the materials which had 
 so engrossed my interest and tasked my inquiries. And in this attempt va- 
 rious incidental oppoftunies have occurred, if not of completely carrying out, 
 still of incidentally illustrating, my earlier design ; of showing the influence 
 of Mammon upon our most secret selves ; of reproving the impatience 
 which is engendered by a civilization, that with much of the good brings all 
 the evils of competition ; and of tracing throughout all the influences of 
 farly household life upon our subsequent conduct and career. In such inci- 
 dental hearings the moral may doubtless be more obvious than in the delin- 
 eation of the darker and- rarer crime which forms the staple of my narrative. 
 For in ex'raordinary guilt we are slow to recognize ordinary warnings ; we 
 say to the peaceful conscience, " This concerns thee not ! " whereas at each 
 instance of familiar fault and commonplace error we own a direct and sensi- 
 ble admonition. Yet in the portraiture of gigantic crime poets have rightly 
 found their sphere, and fulfilled their destiny, of teachers. Those terrible 
 truths which appal us in the guilt of Macbeth, or the villany of lago, have 
 their moral uses not less than the popular infirmities of Tom Jones, or the 
 everyday hypocrisy of Blifil. 
 
 Incredible as it may seem, the crimes herein related took place within the 
 last seventeen years, There has been no exaggeration as to their extent, no 
 great departure from their details the means employed, even that which 
 seems most far-fetched (the instrument of the poisoned ring), have their 
 foundation in literal facts. Nor have I much altered the social position of 
 the criminals,- nor in the least over-rated their attainments and intelligence. 
 In those more salient essentials, which will most, perhaps, provoke the Read- 
 er's incredulous wonder, I narrate a history, not invent a fiction.* All that 
 romance which our own time affords is not more the romance than the phi- 
 losophy of the time. Tragedy never quits the world it surrounds us every- 
 where. We have but to look, wakeful and vigilant, abroad, and from the 
 age of Pelops to that of Borgia, the same crimes, though under different 
 garbs, will stalk on our paths. Each age comprehends in itself specimens 
 of every virtue and every vice which has ever inspired our love or moved our 
 horror. 
 
 LONDON, November i, 1846. 
 
 * These criminals were not, however, in actual life, as in the novel, intimates and accom- 
 plices. Their crimes were of similar character, effected by similar agencies, and committed 
 at dates which embrace their several careers of guilt within the same peried : but I hv$ 
 no authority to suppose that th$ one was known to the other-.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PART THE FIRST. 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XL 
 
 XII. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 XV. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 XX. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 PROLOGUE TO PART THE FIRST, , . . 
 A FAMILY GROUP, . . '.. 
 LUCRETIA, ....... 
 
 CONFERENCES, 
 
 GUY'S OAK 
 
 HOUSEHOLD TREASON, 
 
 THE WILL 
 
 THE ENGAGEMENT, ...... 
 
 THE DISCOVERY 
 
 A SOUL WITHOUT HOPE, 
 
 THE RECONCILIATION BETWEEN FATHER AND SON, 
 EPILOGUE TO PART THE FIRST, .... 
 
 PART THE SECOND. 
 
 PROLOGUE TO PART THE SECOND 
 
 THE CORONATION, 
 
 LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT, 
 
 EARLY TRAINING FOR AN UPRIGHT GENTLEMAN, 
 
 JOHN ARDWORTH, . 
 
 THE WEAVERS AND THE WOOF 
 
 THE LAWYER AND THE BODY-SNATCHER, . 
 
 THE RAPE OF THE MATTRESS 
 
 PERCIVAL VISITS LUCRETIA, ..... 
 
 THE ROSE BENEATH THE UPAS, 
 
 THE RATTLE OF THE SNAKE, 
 
 LOVE AND INNOCENCE, ...... 
 
 SUDDEN CELEBRITY AND PATIENT HOPE, . 
 
 THE Loss OF THE CROSSING 
 
 NEWS FROM GRABMAN, 
 
 VARIETIES 
 
 THE INVITATION TO LAUGHTON 
 
 THE WAKING OF THE SERPENT 
 
 RETROSPECT, 
 
 MR. GRABMAN'S ADVENTURES, ..... 
 MORE OF MRS. JOPLIN, ...... 
 
 BECK'S DISCOVERY 
 
 THE TAPESTRY CHAMBER, ..... 
 THE SHADES ON THE DIAL, ..... 
 MURDER, TOWARDS HIS DESIGN, MOVES LIKE A GHOST, 
 
 THE MESSENGER SPEEDS, 
 
 THE SPY FLIES 
 
 LUCRETIA REGAINS HER SON 
 
 THE LOTS VANISH WITHIN THE URN, . 
 
 EPILOGUE TO PART THE SECOND 
 
 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC, , 
 
 vi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 7 
 II 
 
 25 
 
 42 
 
 51 
 
 58 
 64 
 69 
 
 116 
 
 122 
 128 
 136 
 
 173 
 184 
 197 
 208 
 213 
 230 
 234 
 244 
 250 
 
 255 
 265 
 269 
 272 
 281 
 286 
 290 
 301 
 306 
 
 3" 
 328 
 334 
 337 
 345 
 348 
 358 
 360 
 364 
 370 
 373 
 378 
 385
 
 LUCRETIA; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF NIGHT. 
 PART THE FIRST. 
 
 PROLOGUE TO PART THE FIRST. 
 
 IN an apartment at Paris, one morning during the Reign of 
 Terror, a man, whose age might be somewhat under thirty, 
 sate before a table covered with papers, arranged and labelled 
 with the methodical precision of a mind fond of order and 
 habituated to business. Behind him rose a tall bookcase, sur- 
 mounted with a bust of Robespierre, and the shelves were filled 
 chiefly with works of a scientific character ; amongst which the 
 greater number were on chemistry and medicine. There were 
 to be seen also many rare books on alchemy, the great Italian 
 historians, some English philosophical treatises, and a few MSS. 
 in Arabic. The absence from this collection of the stormy liter- 
 ature of the day seemed to denote that the owner was a quiet 
 student living apart from the strife and passions of the Revolu- 
 tion. This supposition was, however, disproved by certain 
 papers on the table, which were formally and laconically la- 
 belled "Reports on Lyons," and by packets of letters in the 
 handwritings of Robespierre and Couthon. Atone of the win- 
 dows a young boy was earnestly engaged in some occupation, 
 which appeared to excite the curiosity of the person just des- 
 cribed; for this last, after examining the child's movements for 
 a few moments with a silent scrutiny that betrayed but little of 
 the half-complacent, half-melancholy affection with which busy 
 man is apt to regard idle childhood, rose noiselessly from his 
 seat, approached the boy, and looked over his shoulder unob- 
 served. In a crevice of the wood by the window a huge black 
 spider had formed his web; the child had just discovered an- 
 other spider, and placed it in the meshes ; he was watching the
 
 8 LUCRETIA. 
 
 result of his operations. The intrusive spider stood motionless 
 in the midst of the web, as if fascinated. The rightful posses- 
 sor was also quiescent ; but a very fine ear might have caught a 
 low humming sound, which probably augured no hospitable 
 intentions to the invader. Anon, the stranger insect seemed 
 suddenly to awake from its amaze; it evinced alarm, and 
 turned to fly ; the huge spider darted forward the boy uttered 
 a chuckle of delight. The man's pale lip curled into a sinister 
 sneer, and he glided back to his seat. There, leaning his face 
 on his hand, he continued to contemplate the child. That 
 child might have furnished to an artist a fitting subject for fair 
 and blooming infancy. His light hair, tinged deeply, it is 
 true, with red, hung in sleek and glittering abundance down 
 his neck and shoulders. His features, seen in profile, were 
 delicately and almost femininely proportioned ; health glowed 
 on his cheek, and his form, slight though it was, gave promise 
 of singular activity and vigor. His dress was fantastic, and 
 betrayed the taste of some fondly foolish mother ; but the fine 
 linen, trimmed with lace, was rumpled and stained, the velvet 
 jacket unbrushed, the shoes soiled with dust; slight tokens these 
 of neglect, but serving to show that the foolish fondness which 
 had invented the dress had not of late presided over the toilet. 
 
 "Child," said the man, first in French; and observing that 
 the boy heeded him not: "Child," he repeated in English, 
 which he spoke well, though with a foreign accent "child!" 
 
 The boy turned quickly. 
 
 "Has the great spider devoured the small one?" 
 
 "No, sir," said the boy, coloring; "the small one has had 
 the best of it." The tone and heightened complexion of the 
 child seemed to give meaning to his words ; at least so the 
 man thought, for a slight frown passed over his high, thought- 
 ful brow. 
 
 "Spiders, then," he said, after a short pause, "are different 
 from men; with us, the small do not get the better of the 
 great. Hum! do you still miss your mother?" 
 
 "Oh, yes!" and the boy advanced eagerly to the table. 
 
 "Well, you will see her once again." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 The man looked towards a clock on the mantel-piece: "Be- 
 fore that clock strikes. Now, go back to your spiders." The 
 child looked irresolute and disinclined to obey ; but a stern 
 and terrible expression gathered slowly over the man's face ; 
 and the boy, growing pale as he remarked it, crept back to 
 the window.
 
 LUCRET1A. 9 
 
 The father, for such was the relation the owner of the room 
 bore to the child, drew paper and ink towards him, and wrote 
 for some minutes rapidly. Then starting up, he glanced at 
 the clock, took his hat and cloak, which lay on a chair beside, 
 drew up the collar of the mantle till it almost concealed his 
 countenance, and said: "Now, boy, come with me; I have 
 promised to show you an execution. I am going to keep my 
 promise. Come!" 
 
 The boy clapped his hands with joy ; and you might see 
 then, child as he was, that those fair features were capable of 
 a cruel and ferocious expression. The character of the whole 
 face changed. He caught up his gay cap and plume, and 
 followed his father into the streets. 
 
 Silently the two took their way toward the Barrtire du Trdne. 
 At a distance they saw the crowd growing thick and dense, as 
 throng after throng hurried past them, and the dreadful guillo- 
 tine rose high in the light blue air. As they came into the 
 skirts of the mob, the father, for the first time, took the child's 
 hand. "I must get you a good place for the show," he said, 
 with a quiet smile. 
 
 There was something in the grave, staid, courteous, yet 
 haughty bearing of the man that made the crowd give way as 
 he passed. They got near the dismal scene, and obtained en- 
 trance into a wagon already crowded with eager spectators. 
 
 And now they heard at a distance the harsh and lumbering 
 roll of the tumbril that bore the victims, and the tramp of the 
 horses which guarded the procession of death. The boy's 
 whole attention was absorbed in expectation of the spectacle, 
 and his ear was, perhaps, less accustomed to French, though 
 born and reared in France, than to the language of his moth- 
 er's lips and she was English : thus he did not hear or heed 
 certain observations of the bystanders, which made his father's 
 cheek grow paler. 
 
 "What is the batch to-day?" quoth a butcher, in the wagon. 
 
 "Scarce worth the baking only two, but one, they say, is 
 an aristocrat a ci-devant marquis," answered a carpenter. 
 
 "Ah! a marquis! Bon! And the other?" 
 
 "Only a dancer; but a pretty one, it is true: I could pity 
 her but she is English." And as he pronounced the last word, 
 with a tone of inexpressible contempt, the butcher spat, as if 
 in nausea. 
 
 "Mortdiablc! a spy of Pitt's, no doubt. What did they 
 discover?' ' 
 
 A man better dressed than the rest turned round with 3
 
 10 LUCRETIA. 
 
 smile, and answered: "Nothing worse than a lover, I believe; 
 but that lover was a proscrit. The ci-devant marquis was 
 caught disguised in her apartment. She betrayed for him a 
 good easy friend of the people, who had long loved her, and 
 revenge is sweet." 
 
 The man whom we have accompanied, nervously twitched up 
 the collar of his cloak, and his compressed lips told that he felt 
 the anguish of the laugh that circled round him. 
 
 "They are coming! There they are!" cried the boy in 
 ecstatic excitement. 
 
 "That's the way to bring up citizens," said the butcher, pat- 
 ting the child's shoulder, and opening a still better view for 
 him at the edge of the wagon. 
 
 The crowd now abruptly gave way. The tumbril was in 
 sight. A man, young and handsome, standing erect and with 
 folded arms in the fatal vehicle, looked along the mob with an 
 eye of careless scorn. Though he wore the dress of a work- 
 man, the most unpractised glance could detect, in his mien and 
 bearing, one of the hated noblesse, whose characteristics came 
 out even more forcibly at the hour of death. On the lip was 
 that smile of gay and insolent levity ; on the brow that gallant 
 if reckless contempt of physical danger, which had signalized 
 the hero-coxcombs of the old regime. Even the rude dress 
 was worn with a certain air of foppery, and the bright hair was 
 carefully adjusted as if for the holiday of the headsman. As 
 the eyes of the young noble wandered over the fierce faces of 
 that horrible assembly, while a roar of hideous triumph ans- 
 wered the look, in which for the last time the gentilhomme 
 spoke his scorn of the canaille^ the child's father lowered the 
 collar of his cloak, and slowly raised his hat from his brow. 
 The eye of the marquis rested upon the countenance thus 
 abruptly shown to him, and which suddenly became individu- 
 alized amongst the crowd that eye instantly lost its calm con- 
 tempt. A shudder passed visibly over his frame, and his cheek 
 grew blanched with terror. The mob saw the change, but not 
 the cause, and loud and louder rose their triumphant yell. The 
 sound recalled the pride of the young noble ; he started, lifted 
 his crest erect, and sought again to meet the look which had 
 appalled him. But he could no longer single it but among the 
 crowd. Hat and cloak once more hid the face of the foe, and 
 crowds of eager heads intercepted the view. The young mar- 
 quis's lips muttered, he bent down, and then the crowd caught 
 sight of his companion, who was being lifted up from the bot- 
 tom of the tumbril, where she had flung herself in horror and
 
 LuCkETIA. tf 
 
 despair. The crowd grew still in a moment, as the pale face 
 of one familiar to most of them turned wildly from place to 
 place in the dreadful scene, vainly and madly through its 
 silence imploring life and pity. How often had the sight of 
 that face, not then pale and haggard, but wreathed with rosy 
 smiles, sufficed to draw the applause of the crowded theatre ; 
 how, then, had those breasts, now fevered by the thirst of 
 blood, held hearts spellbound by the airy movements of that 
 exquisite form writhing now in no stage-mime agony ! Play- 
 thing of the city minion to the light amusement of the hour 
 frail child of Cytherea and the Graces, what relentless fate has 
 conducted thee to the shambles? Butterfly of the summer, 
 why should a nation rise to break thee upon the wheel? A 
 sense of the mockery of such an execution, of the horrible bur- 
 lesque that would sacrifice to the necessities of a mighty people 
 so slight an offering, made itself felt among the crowd. There 
 was a low murmur of shame and indignation. The dangerous 
 sympathy of the mob was perceived by the officer in attend- 
 ance. Hastily he made the sign to the headsman, and, as he 
 did so, a child's cry was heard in the English tongue: 
 "Mother mother!" The father's hand grasped the child's 
 arm, with an iron pressure; the crowd swam before the boy's 
 eyes; the air seemed to stifle him, and become blood-red; 
 only through the hum, and the tramp, and the roll of the 
 drums, he heard a low voice hiss in his ear: "Learn how they 
 perish who betray me!" 
 
 As the father said these words, again his face was bare, and 
 the woman, whose ear, amidst the dull insanity of fear, had 
 caught the cry of her child's voice, saw that face, and fell back 
 insensible in the arms of the headsman. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A FAMILY GROUP. 
 
 ONE July evening at the commencement of the present cen- 
 tury several persons were somewhat picturesquely grouped 
 along an old-fashioned terrace, which skirted the garden side of 
 a manor-house that had considerable pretensions to baronial 
 dignity. The architecture was of the most enriched and elab- 
 orate style belonging to the reign of James the First: the 
 porch, opening on the terrace, with its mullion window above, 
 was encased with pilasters and reliefs, at once ornamental and 
 massive; and the large square tower in which it was placed was
 
 12 LUCRETIA. 
 
 surmounted by a stone falcon, whose talons griped fiercely a 
 scutcheon blazoned with the five-pointed stars which heralds 
 recognize as the arms of St. John. On either side this tower 
 extended long wings, the dark brickwork of which was relieved 
 with noble stone casements and carved pediments; the high 
 roof was partially concealed by a balustrade, perforated not 
 inelegantly into arabesque designs; and what architects call 
 'the sky line' was broken with imposing effect by tall chimney 
 shafts, of various form and fashion. These wings terminated 
 in angular towers, similar to the centre, though kept duly sub- 
 ordinate to it both in size and decoration, and crowned with 
 stone cupolas. A low balustrade, of later date than that which 
 adorned the roof, relieved by vases and statues, bordered the 
 terrace, from which a double flight of steps descended to a 
 smooth lawn, intersected by broad gravel walks, shadowed by 
 vast and stately cedars, and gently and gradually mingling with 
 the wilder scenery of the park, from which it was only divided 
 by a ha-ha. 
 
 Upon the terrace, and under cover of a temporary awning, 
 sate the owner, Sir Miles St. John of Laughton, a comely old 
 man, dressed with faithful precision to the costume which he 
 had been taught to consider appropriate to his rank of gentle- 
 man, and which was not yet wholly obsolete and eccentric. 
 His hair, still thick and luxuriant, was carefully powdered, 
 and collected into a club behind. His nether man attired in 
 gray breeches and pearl-colored silk stockings; his vest of silk, 
 opening wide at the breast, and showing a profusion of frill, 
 slightly sprinkled with the pulvilio of his 'favorite martinique; 
 his three-cornered hat, placed on a stool at his side, with a 
 gold-headed crutch cane, hat made rather to be carried in 
 the hand than worn on the head the diamond in his shirt- 
 breast, the diamond on his finger, the ruffles at his wrist, all 
 bespoke the gallant, who had chatted with Lord Chesterfield, 
 and supped with Mrs. Clive. On a table before him were 
 placed two or three decanters of wine, the fruits of the season, 
 an enamelled snuff-box, in which was set the portrait of a 
 female perhaps the Chloe or Phillis of his early love-ditties 
 a lighted taper, a small china jar containing tobacco, and three 
 or four pipes of homely clay, for cherry-sticks -and meer- 
 schaums were not then in fashion; and Sir Miles St. John, 
 once a gay and sparkling beau, now a popular country gentle- 
 man, great at county meetings and sheep -shearing festivals, 
 had taken to smoking, as in harmony with his bucolic trans- 
 formation ; an old setter lay dozing at his feet ; a small span-
 
 LttCRETiA. 13 
 
 iel old, too was sauntering lazily in the immediate neighbor- 
 hood, looking gravely out for such stray bits of biscuit as had 
 been thrown forth to provoke him to exercise, and which hith- 
 erto had escaped his attention. Half seated, half reclined on 
 the balustrade, apart from the Baronet, but within reach of his 
 conversation, lolled a man in the prime of life, with an air of 
 unmistakable and sovereign elegance and distinction. Mr. 
 Vernon was a guest from London: and the London man the 
 man of clubs, and dinners, and routs, of noon loungings through 
 Bond Street, and nights spent with the Prince of Wales 
 seemed stamped not more upon the careful carelessness of his 
 dress, and upon the worn expression of his delicate features, 
 than upon the listless ennui which, characterizing both his face 
 and attitude, appeared to take pity on himself for having been 
 entrapped into the country. 
 
 Yet we should convey an erroneous impression of Mr. Ver- 
 non if we designed, by the words "listless ennui," to depict the 
 slumbrous insipidity of more modern affectation ; it was not the 
 ennui of a man to whom ennui is habitual ; it was rather the 
 indolent prostration that fills up the intervals of excitement. 
 At that day the word ' "blase" ' ' was unknown ; men had not 
 enough sentiment for satiety. There was a kind of Bacchana- 
 lian fury in the life led by those leaders of fashion among 
 whom Mr. Vernon was not the least distinguished : it was a 
 day of deep drinking, of high play, of jovial, reckless dissipa- 
 tion, of strong appetite for fun and riot, of four-in-hand coach- 
 manship, of prize-fighting, of a strange sort of barbarous man- 
 liness, that strained every nerve of the constitution ; a race of 
 life, in which three-fourths of the competitors died half-way in 
 the hippodrome. What is now the Dandy was then the Buck ; 
 and something of the Buck, though subdued by a chaster taste 
 than fell to the ordinary members of his class, was apparent in 
 Mr. Vernon's costume as well as air. Intricate folds of muslin, 
 arranged in prodigious bows and ends, formed the cravat, 
 which Brummell had not yet arisen to reform ; his hat of a 
 very peculiar shape, low at the crown and broad at the brim, 
 was worn with an air of devil-me-care defiance; his watch- 
 chain, garnished with a profusion of rings and seals, hung low 
 from his white waistcoat ; and the adaptation of his nankin 
 inexpressibles to his well-shaped limbs was a masterpiece of art. 
 His whole dress and air was not what could properly be called 
 foppish it was rather what at that time was called 'rakish.' 
 Few could so closely approach vulgarity without being vulgar: 
 of that privileged few, Mr. Vernon was one of the elect.
 
 14 LlJCRETlA. 
 
 Further on, and near the steps descending into the garden, 
 stood a man in an attitude of profound abstraction ; his arms 
 folded, his eyes bent on the ground, his brows slightly con- 
 tracted ; his dress was a plain black surtout, and pantaloons of 
 the same color; something both in the fashion of the dress, 
 and still more in the face of the man, bespoke the foreigner. 
 Sir Miles St. John was an accomplished person for that time 
 of day; he had made the grand tour; he had bought pictures 
 and statues ; he spoke and wrote well in the modern languages ; 
 and being rich, hospitable, social, and not averse from the 
 reputation of a patron, he had opened his house freely to the 
 host of emigrants whom the French Revolution had driven to 
 our coasts. Olivier Dalibard, a man of considerable learning 
 and rare scientific attainments, had been tutor in the house of 
 
 the Marquis de G , a French nobleman known many years 
 
 before to the old Baronet. The Marquis and his family had 
 been among the first emigres at the outbreak of the Revolu- 
 tion. The tutor had remained behind ; for at that time no 
 danger appeared to threaten those who pretended to no other 
 aristocracy than that of letters. Contrary, as he said, with re- 
 pentant modesty, to his own inclinations, he had been com- 
 pelled, not only for his own safety, but for that of his friends, 
 to take some part in the subsequent events of the Revolution 
 a part far from sincere, though so well had he simulated the 
 patriot that he had won the personal favor and protection of 
 Robespierre; nor till the fall of that virtuous exterminator had 
 he withdrawn from the game of politics and effected in dis- 
 guise his escape to England. As, whether from kindly or 
 other motives, he had employed the power of his position of 
 Robespierre to save certain noble heads from the guillotine 
 
 amongst others, the two brothers of the Marquis de G , he 
 
 was received with grateful welcome by his former patrons, who 
 readily pardoned his career of Jacobinism, from their belief in 
 his excuses, and their obligations to the services which that 
 very career had enabled him to render to their kindred. Oli- 
 yier Dalibard had accompanied the Marquis and his family in 
 one of the frequent visits they paid to Laughton; and when the 
 Marquis finally quitted England, and fixed his refuge at Vienna, 
 with some connections of his wife's, he felt a lively satisfaction at 
 the thought of leaving his friend honorably, if unambitiously, 
 provided for, as secretary and librarian to Sir Miles St. John. 
 In fact, the scholar, who possessed considerable powers of fas- 
 cination, had won no less favor with the English baronet than 
 he had with the French dictator. He played well both at chess
 
 LtfCRETlA. i$ 
 
 and backgammon; he was an extraordinary accountant; he 
 had a variety of information upon all points, that rendered him 
 more convenient than any cyclopaedia in Sir Miles's library; 
 and as he spoke both English and Italian with a correctness 
 and fluency extremely rare in a Frenchman, he was of consider- 
 able service in teaching languages to (as well as directing the 
 general literary education of) Sir Miles's favorite niece, whom 
 we shall take an early opportunity to describe at length. 
 
 Nevertheless, there had been one serious obstacle to Dali- 
 bard's acceptance of the appointment offered to him by Sir 
 Miles. Dalibard had under his charge a young orphan boy of 
 some ten or twelve years old a boy whom Sir Miles was not 
 long in suspecting to be the scholar's son. This child had come 
 from France with Dalibard, and (while the Marquis's family 
 were in London) remained under the eye and care of his guar- 
 dian or father, whichever was the true connection between the 
 two. But this superintendence became impossible if Dalibard 
 settled in Hampshire with Sir Miles St. John and the boy re- 
 mained in London ; nor, though the generous old gentleman 
 offered to pay for the child's schooling, would Dalibard con- 
 sent to part with him. At last, the matter was arranged : the 
 boy was invited to Laughton on a visit, and was so lively, yet 
 so well mannered, that he became a favorite, and was now fairly 
 quartered in the house with his reputed father: and not to 
 make an unnecessary mystery of this connection, such was in 
 truth the relationship between Olivier Dalibard and Honore 
 Gabriel Varney a name significant of the 'double and illegiti- 
 mate origin a French father, an English mother; dropping, 
 however, the purely French appellation of Honore\ he went 
 familiarly by that of Gabriel. Half-way down the steps stood 
 the lad, pencil and tablet in hand, sketching. Let us look over 
 his shoulder: it is his father's likeness a countenance in itself 
 not very remarkable at the first glance, for the features were 
 small, but when examined, it was one that most persons, wom- 
 en especially, would have pronounced handsome, and to 
 which none could deny the higher praise of thought and intel- 
 lect. A native of Provence, with some Italian blood in his 
 veins for his grandfather, a merchant of Marseilles, had mar- 
 ried into a Florentine family settled at Leghorn the dark 
 complexion, common with those in the south, had been sub- 
 dued, probably by the habits of the student, into a bronzed 
 and steadfast paleness, which seemed almost fair by the con- 
 trast of the dark hair which he wore unpowdered, and the still 
 darker brows which hung thick and prominent over clear gray
 
 l6 LtiCRETIA. 
 
 eyes. Compared with the features, the skull was dispropor- 
 tionally large, both behind and before ; and a physiognomist 
 would have drawn conclusions more favorable to the power 
 than the tenderness of the Provenars character, from the com- 
 pact closeness of the lips and the breadth and massiveness of the 
 iron jaw. But the son's sketch exaggerated every feature, and 
 gave to the expression a malignant and terrible irony, not now, 
 at least, apparent in the quiet and meditative aspect. Gabriel 
 himself, as he stood, would have been a more tempting study 
 to many an artist. It is true that he was small for his years; 
 but his frame had a vigor in its light proportions which came 
 from a premature and almost adolescent symmetry of shape 
 and muscular development. The countenance, however, had 
 much of effeminate beauty ; the long hair reached the shoul- 
 ders, but did not curl; straight, fine, and glossy as a girl's, 
 and, in color, of the pale auburn, tinged with red, which rarely 
 alters in hue as childhood matures to man ; the complexion 
 was dazzlingly clear and fair. Nevertheless, there was some- 
 thing so hard in the lip, so bold, though not open, in the brow, 
 that the girlishness of complexion, and even of outline, could 
 not leave, on the whole, an impression of effeminacy. All the 
 hereditary keenness and intelligence were stamped upon his 
 face at that moment ; but the expression had also a large share 
 of that very irony and malice which he had conveyed to his cari- 
 cature. The drawing itself was wonderfully vigorous and dis- 
 tinct, showing great artistic promise, and done with the rapid- 
 ity and ease which' betrayed practice. Suddenly his father 
 turned, and with as sudden a quickness the boy concealed his 
 tablet in his vest; and the sinister expression of his face 
 smoothed into a timorous smile, as his eye encountered Dali- 
 bard's. The father beckoned to the boy, who approached with 
 alacrity. "Gabriel," whispered the Frenchman, in his own 
 tongue, "where are they at this moment?" 
 
 The boy pointed silently towards one of the cedars. Dali- 
 bard mused an instant, and then slowly descending the steps, 
 took his noiseless way over the smooth turf towards the tree. 
 Its boughs drooped low and spread wide; and not till he was 
 within a few paces of the spot could his eye perceive two 
 forms, seated on a bench under the dark green canopy. He 
 then paused and contemplated them. 
 
 The one was a young man, whose simple dress and subdued 
 air strongly contrasted the artificial graces and the modish 
 languor of Mr. Vernon ; but though wholly without that name- 
 less distinction which sometimes characterizes those conscious
 
 LUCRETIA. 17 
 
 ot pure race, an ^abituated to the atmosphere of courts, he 
 had at least Nature's stamp of aristocracy, and a form eminently 
 noble, and features of manly, but surpassing beauty, which 
 were not rendered less engaging by an expression of modest 
 timidity. He seemed to be listening with thoughtful respect 
 to his companion, a young female by his side, who was speak- 
 ing to him with an earnestness visible in her gestures and her 
 animated countenance. And though there was much to notice 
 in the various persons scattered over the scene, not one, per- 
 haps not the graceful Vernon ; not the thoughtful scholar, nor 
 his fair-haired, hard-lipped son ; not even the handsome listener 
 she addressed no, not one there would so have arrested the 
 eye, whether of a physiognomist or a casual observer, as that 
 young girl, Sir Miles St. John's favorite niece and presumptive 
 heiress. 
 
 But, as at that moment the expression of her face differed 
 from that habitual to it, we defer its description. 
 
 "Do not" such were her words to her companion "do 
 not alarm yourself by exaggerating the difficulties ; do not even 
 contemplate them those be my care. Mainwaring, when I 
 loved you, when, seeing that your diffidence or your pride for- 
 bade you to be the first to speak, I overstepped the modesty or 
 the dissimulation of my sex; when I said, 'Forget that I am 
 the reputed heiress of Laughton ; see in me but the faults and 
 merits of the human being, of the wild, unregulated girl ; see 
 in me but Lucretia Clavering (here her cheeks blushed, and 
 her voice sank into a lower and more tremulous whisper), and 
 love her if you can!' When I went thus far, do not think I 
 had not measured all the difficulties in the way of our union, 
 and felt that I could surmount them." 
 
 "But," answered Mainwaring hesitatingly, "can you con- 
 ceive it possible that your uncle ever will consent? Is not 
 pride the pride of family almost the leading attribute of his 
 character? Did he not discard your mother his own sister 
 from his house and heart, for no other offence but a second 
 marriage which he deemed beneath her? Has he ever even con- 
 sented to see, much less to receive, your half-sister the child 
 of that marriage? Is not his very affection for you interwoven 
 with his pride in you, with his belief in your ambition? Has 
 he not summoned your cousin, Mr. Vernon. for the obvious 
 purpose of favoring a suit which he considers worthy of you, 
 and which, if successful, will unite the two branches of his an- 
 cient house? How is it possible that he can ever hear without 
 a scorn and indignation which would be fatal to your fortunes
 
 l8 LUCRETIA. 
 
 that your heart has presumed to choose, in William Mainwar- 
 ing, a man without ancestry or career?" 
 
 "Not without career!" interrupted Lucretia proudly. "Do 
 you think, if you were master of Laughton, that your ca- 
 reer would not be more brilliant than that of yon indolent, 
 luxurious coxcomb? Do you think that I could have been 
 poor-hearted enough to love you, if I had not recognized in 
 you energies and talents that correspond with my own am- 
 bition? For I am ambitious, as you know, and therefore my 
 mind as well as my heart went with my love for you." 
 
 "Ah, Lucretia! but can Sir Miles St. John see my future 
 rise in my present obscurity?" 
 
 "I do not say that he can, or will; but if you love me, we 
 can wait. Do not fear the rivalry of Mr. Vernon. I shall 
 know how to free myself from so tame a peril. We can wait 
 my uncle is old his habits preclude the chance of a much 
 longer life he has already had severe attacks. We are young, 
 dear Mainwaring: what is a year or two to those who hope?" 
 
 Mainwaring's face fell, and a displeasing chill passed though 
 his veins. Could this young creature, her uncle's petted and 
 trusted darling, she who should be the soother of his infirmi- 
 ties, the prop of his age, the sincerest mourner at his grave, 
 weigh coldly thus the chances of his death, and point at once 
 to the altar and the tomb? 
 
 He was saved from the embarrassment of reply by Dalibard's 
 approach. 
 
 "More than half an hour absent," said the scholar in his 
 own language, with a smile, and drawing out his watch, he 
 placed it before their eyes; "do you not think that all will miss 
 you? Do you suppose, Miss Clavering, that your uncle has 
 not, ere this, asked for his fair niece? Come, and forestall 
 him." He offered his arm to Lucretia as he spoke. She hesi- 
 tated a moment, and then, turning to Mainwaring, held out her 
 hand ; he pressed it, though scarcely with a lover's warmth ; 
 and as she walked back to the terrace with Dalibard, the young 
 man struck slowly into the opposite direction, and passing by a 
 gate, over a foot-bridge, that led from the ha-ha into the park, 
 bent his way towards a lake which gleamed below at some dis- 
 tance, half concealed by groves of venerable trees, rich with the 
 prodigal boughs of summer. Meanwhile, as they passed towards 
 the house, Dalibard, still using his native tongue, thus accosted 
 his pupil : 
 
 "You must pardon me if I think more of your interests than 
 you do ; and pardon me no less if I encroach on your secrets
 
 LUCRETIA. 19 
 
 and alarm your pride. This young man can you be guilty of 
 the folly of more than a passing caprice for his society? of 
 more than the amusement of playing with his vanity? Even if 
 that be all, beware of entangling yourself in your own meshes. " 
 
 "You do, in truth, offend me," said Lucretia, with calm 
 haughtiness, "and you have not the right thus to speak tome." 
 
 "Not the right," repeated the Provencal mournfully; "not 
 the right! Then, indeed, I am mistaken in my pupil. Do 
 you conceive that I would have lowered my pride to remain 
 here as a dependent ; that, conscious of attainments, and perhaps 
 of abilities, that should win their way, even in exile, to distinc- 
 tion, I would have frittered away my life in these rustic shades, 
 if I had not formed in you a deep and absorbing interest ; in 
 that interest I ground my right to warn and counsel you. I 
 saw, or fancied I saw, in you a mind congenial to my own a 
 mind above the frivolities of your sex a mind, in short, with 
 the grasp and energy of a man's. You were then but a child ; 
 you are scarcely yet a woman ; yet have I not given to your 
 intellect the strong food on which the statesmen of Florence 
 fed their pupil princes ; or the noble Jesuits, the noble men 
 who were destined to extend the secret empire of the imperish- 
 able Loyola?" 
 
 "You gave me the taste for a knowledge rare in my sex, I 
 own," answered Lucretia, with a slight tone of regret in her 
 voice; "and in the knowledge you have communicated I felt a 
 charm that, at times, seems to me to be only fatal. You have 
 confounded in my mind evil and good, or, rather, you have 
 left both good and evil as dead ashes, as the dust and cinder of 
 a crucible. You have made intellect the only conscience. Of 
 late, I wish that my tutor had been a village priest!" 
 
 "Of late! Since you have listened to the pastorals of that 
 meek Corydon?" 
 
 "Dare you despise him and for what? That he is good 
 and honest?" 
 
 "I despise him not because he is good and honest, but be- 
 cause he is of the common herd of men, without aim or char- 
 acter. And it is for this youth that you would sacrifice your 
 fortunes, your ambition, the station you were born to fill and 
 have been reared to improve ; this youth in whom there is 
 nothing but the lap-dog's merit sleekness and beauty. Ay, 
 frown the frown betrays you you love him ! ' ' 
 
 "And if I do?" said Lucretia, raising her tall form to its 
 utmost height, and haughtily facing her inquisitor. "And if I 
 do, what then? Is he unworthy of me? Converse with him, and
 
 20 LUCRETIA. 
 
 you will find that the noble form conceals as high a spirit. He 
 wants but wealth; I can give it to him. If his temper is gen- 
 tle, I can prompt and guide it to fame and power. He, at 
 least has education and eloquence and mind. What has Mr. 
 Vernon?" 
 
 "Mr. Vernon, I did not speak of him!" 
 
 Lucretia gazed hard upon the Provencal's countenance 
 gazed with that unpitying air of triumph with which a woman 
 who detects a power over the heart she does not desire to con- 
 quer, exults in defeating the reasons that heart appears to her 
 to prompt. "No," she said, in a calm voice, to which the ven- 
 om of secret irony gave stinging significance; "No, you spoke 
 not of Mr. Vernon ; you thought that if I looked round if I 
 looked nearer I might have a fairer choice." 
 
 "You are cruel you are unjust," said Dalibard falteringly. 
 "If I once presumed for a moment, have I repeated my 
 offence? But," he added hurriedly, "in me much as you 
 appear to despise me in me, at least, you would have risked 
 none of the dangers that beset you if you seriously set your 
 heart on Mainwaring." 
 
 "You think my uncle would be proud to give my hand to 
 Monsieur Olivier Dalibard?" 
 
 "I think and I know," answered the Provencal gravely, 
 and disregarding the taunt, "that if you had deigned to render 
 me poor exile that I am! the most enviable of men, you 
 had still been the heiress of Laugh ton." 
 
 "So you have said and urged," said Lucretia, with evident 
 curiosity in her voice; "yet how, and by what art wise and 
 subtle as you are could you have won my uncle's consent?" 
 
 "That is my secret," returned Dalibard gloomily: "and 
 since the madness I indulged is forever over ; since I have so 
 schooled my heart, that nothing, despite your sarcasm, save an 
 affectionate interest which I may call paternal, rests there let 
 us pass from this painful subject. Oh, my dear pupil, be 
 warned in time ! Know love for what it really is, in the dark 
 and complicated history of actual life, a brief enchantment, not 
 to be disdained, but not to be considered the all in all. Look 
 round the world ; contemplate all those who have married from 
 passion ten years afterwards, whither has the passion flown? 
 With a few, indeed, where there is community of object and 
 character, new excitements, new aims, and hopes, spring up ; 
 and, having first taken root in passion, the passion continues 
 to shoot out in their fresh stems and fibres, But deceive yourself 
 not; there is no such community between you and Mainwar-
 
 LUCRETIA. 21 
 
 ing. What you call his goodness you will learn hereafter to 
 despise as feeble; and what in reality is your mental power he 
 soon too soon will shudder at as unwomanly and hateful." 
 
 "Hold!" cried Lucretia tremulously. "Hold! And if he 
 does, I shall owe his hate to you to your lessons to your 
 deadly influence!" 
 
 "Lucretia, no! The seeds were in you! Can cultivation 
 force from the soil that which it is against the nature of the 
 soil to bear?" 
 
 "I will pluck out the weeds! I will transform myself!" 
 
 "Child, I defy you!" said the scholar, with a smile, that 
 gave to his face the expression his son had conveyed to it. "I 
 have warned you and my task is done." With that he bowed, 
 and leaving her, was soon by the side of Sir Miles St. John, 
 and the Baronet and his librarian a few moments after entered 
 the house, and sat down to chess. 
 
 But during the dialogues we have sketched, we must not 
 suppose that Sir Miles himself had been so wholly absorbed in the 
 sensual gratification bestowed upon Europe by the immortal 
 Raleigh, as to neglect his guest and kinsman. 
 
 "And so, Charley Vernon, it is not the fashion to smoke in 
 Lunnon" (thus Sir Miles pronounced the word, according to 
 the euphuism of his youth, and which, even at that day, still 
 lingered in courtly jargon). 
 
 "No, sir. However, to console us, we have most other vices 
 in full force." 
 
 "I don't doubt it; they say the Prince's set exhaust life 
 pretty quickly." 
 
 "It certainly requires the fortune of an earl and the consti- 
 tution of a prize-fighter to live with him." 
 
 "Yet methinks, Master Charley, you have neither one nor 
 the other." 
 
 "And therefore I see before me, and at no very great dis- 
 tance, the Bench and a consumption!" answered Vernon, 
 suppressing a slight yawn. 
 
 ' 'Tis a pity ; for you had a fine estate properly managed ; 
 and, in spite of your faults, you have the heart of a true gen- 
 tleman. Come, come!" and the old man spoke with tender- 
 ness "you are young enough yet to reform. A prudent mar- 
 riage, and a good wife, will save both your health and your 
 acres." 
 
 "If you think so highly of marriage, my dear Sir Miles, it is 
 a wonder you did not add to your precepts the value of your 
 example."
 
 22 LtfCRETIA. 
 
 "Jackanapes! I had not your infirmities! I never was a 
 spendthrift, and I have a constitution of iron!" There was a 
 pause. "Charles," continued Sir Miles, musingly, "there is 
 many an earl with a less fortune than the conjoined estates of 
 Vernon Grange and Laughton Hall. You must already have 
 understood me it is my intention to leave my estates to Lu- 
 cretia it is my wish, nevertheless, to think you will not be the 
 worse for my will. Frankly, if you can like my niece, win 
 her ; settle here while I live, put the Grange to nurse, and 
 recruit yourself by fresh air and field-sports. Zounds, Charles, 
 I love you, and that's the truth! Give me your hand!" 
 
 "And a grateful heart with it, sir," said Vernon warmly, 
 evidently affected, as he started from his indolent position, and 
 took the hand extended to him. "Believe me, I do not covet 
 your wealth, nor do I envy my cousin anything so much as 
 the first place in your regard." 
 
 "Prettily said, my boy; and I don't suspect you of insin- 
 cerity. What think you then, of my plan?" 
 
 Mr. Vernon seemed embarrassed; but, recovering himsel/ 
 with his usual ease, he replied archly, "Perhaps, sir, it will be 
 of little use to know what I think of your plan ; my fair cousin 
 may have upset it already." 
 
 "Ha, sir, let me look at you so so! You are not jesting. 
 What the deuce do you mean? Gad, man, speak out!" 
 
 "Do you not think that Mr. Monderling Mandolin what's 
 his name eh? do you not think that he is a very handsome 
 young fellow?" said Mr. Vernon, drawing out his snuff-box, 
 and offering it to his kinsman. 
 
 "Damn your snuff," quoth Sir Miles, in great choler, as he 
 rejected the proffered courtesy with a vehemence that sent half 
 the contents of the box upon the joint eyes and noses of the 
 two canine favorites dozing at his feet. The setter started up 
 in an agony; the spaniel wheezed and sniffled, and ran off, 
 stopping every moment to take his head between his paws. 
 The old gentleman continued, without heeding the sufferings 
 of his dumb friends a symptom of rare discomposure on his 
 part: 
 
 "Do you mean to insinuate, Mr. Vernon, that my niece 
 my elder niece, Lucretia Clavering condescends to notice the 
 looks, good or bad, of Mr. Mainwaring? 'Sdeath, sir, he is 
 the son of a land-agent ! Sir, he is intended for trade ! Sir, 
 his highest ambition is to be partner in some fifth-rate mercan- 
 tile house!" 
 
 "My dear Sir Miles," replied Mr. Vernon, as he continued
 
 LUCRETIA. 23 
 
 to brush away, with his scented handkerchief, such portions of 
 the prince's mixture as his nankin inexpressibles had diverted 
 from the sensual organs of Dash andPonto; "My dear Sir 
 Miles, (a nempeche pas le sentiment!" 
 
 " Empeche the fiddlestick! You don't know Lucretia. 
 There are many girls, indeed, who might not be trusted near 
 any handsome flute-playing spark, with black eyes and white 
 teeth; but Lucretia is not one of those; she has spirit and 
 ambition that would never stoop to a mesalliance ; she has the 
 mind and will of a queen old Queen Bess, I believe." 
 
 "That is saying much for her talents, sir; but if so, Heaven 
 help her intended ! I am duly grateful for the blessings you 
 propose me!" 
 
 Despite his anger, the old gentleman could not help smiling. 
 
 "Why, to confess the truth, she is hard to manage; but we 
 men of the world know how to govern women, I hope much 
 more how to break in a girl scarce out of her teens. As for 
 this fancy of yours, it is sheer folly Lucretia knows my mind. 
 She has seen her mother's fate ; she has seen her sister an exile 
 from my house why? for no fault of hers, poor thing! but 
 because she is the child of disgrace, and the mother's sin is 
 visited on the daughter's head. I am a good-natured man, I 
 fancy, as men go; but I am old-fashioned enough to care for 
 my race. If Lucretia demeaned herself to love, to encourage, 
 that lad why, I would strike her from my will, and put your 
 name where I have placed hers." 
 
 "Sir," said Vernon gravely, and throwing aside all affecta- 
 tion of manner, "this becomes serious; and I have no right 
 even to whisper a doubt by which it now seems I might benefit. 
 I think it imprudent, if you wish Miss Clavering to regard me 
 impartially as a suitor to her hand, to throw her, at her age, in 
 the way of a man far superior to myself, and to most men, in per- 
 sonal advantages a man more of her o\vn years, well educated, 
 well mannered, with no evidence of his inferior birth in his 
 appearance or his breeding. I have not the least ground for 
 supposing that he has made the slightest impression on Miss 
 Clavering, and if he has, it would be, perhaps, but a girl's in- 
 nocent and thoughtless fancy, easily shaken off by time and 
 worldly reflection ; but pardon me if I say bluntly that should 
 that be so, you would be wholly unjustified in punishing, even in 
 blaming her it is yourself you must blame for your own care- 
 lessness, and that forgetful blindness to human nature and 
 youthful emotions which, I must say, is the less pardonable in 
 gne who has known the world so intimately."
 
 24 LUCRETIA. 
 
 "Charles Vernon," said the old Baronet, "give me your 
 hand, again! I was right, at least, when I said you had the 
 heart of a true gentleman. Drop this subject for the present. 
 Who has just left Lucretia yonder?" 
 
 " ^[QWC protege the Frenchman." 
 
 "Ah, he, at least, is not blind go, and join Lucretia!" 
 
 Vernon bowed, emptied the remains of the Madeira into a 
 tumbler, drank the contents at a draught, and sauntered 
 towards Lucretia; but she, perceiving his approach, crossed 
 abruptly into one of the alleys that led to the other side of the 
 house ; and he was either too indifferent, or too well-bred, to 
 force upon her the companionship which she so evidently 
 shunned. He threw himself at length upon one of the benches 
 in the lawn, and, leaning his head upon his hand, fell into re- 
 flections, which, had he spoken, would have shaped themselves 
 somewhat thus into words : 
 
 "If I must take that girl as the price of this fair heritage, 
 shall I gain or lose? I grant that she has the finest neck and 
 shoulders I ever saw out of marble ; but far from being in love 
 with her, she gives me a feeling like fear and aversion. Add 
 to this that she has evidently no kinder sentiment for me than 
 I for her; and if she once had a heart, that young gentleman 
 has long since coaxed it away. Pleasant auspices, these, for 
 matrimony, to a poor invalid, who wishes at least to decline 
 and to die in peace! Moreover, if I were rich enough to marry 
 as I pleased if I were what, perhaps, I ought to be, heir to 
 Laughton why, there is a certain sweet Mary in the world 
 whose eyes are softer than Lucretia Clavering's: but that is a 
 dream! On the other hand, if I do not win this girl, and my 
 poor kinsman give her all or nearly all his possessions, Vernon 
 Grange goes to the usurers, and the King will find a lodging 
 for myself. What does it matter? I cannot live above two or 
 three years at the most, and can only hope, therefore, that dear 
 stout old Sir Miles may outlive me. At thirty-three I have 
 worn out fortune and life; little pleasure could Laughton give 
 me ; brief pain the Bench. Fore Gad, the philosophy of the 
 thing is on the whole against sour looks and the noose ! " Thus 
 deciding in the progress of his reverie, he smiled, and changed 
 his position. The sun had set the twilight was over the 
 moon rose in splendor from amidst a thick copse of mingled 
 beech and oak ; the beams fell full on the face of the muser, 
 and the face seemed yet paler, and the exhaustion of prema- 
 ture decay yet more evident, by that still and melancholy light 
 all ruins gain dignity by the moon. This was a ruin nobler
 
 LUCRETIA. 25 
 
 than that which painters place on their canvas ; the ruin, not of 
 stone and brick, but of humanity and spirit; the wreck of man, 
 prematurely old, not stricken by great sorrow, not bowed by 
 great toil, but fretted and mined away by small pleasures and 
 poor excitements small and poor, but daily, hourly, momently 
 at their gnome-like work. Something of the gravity and the 
 true lesson of the hour and scene, perhaps, forced itself upon 
 a mind little given to sentiment, for Vernon rose languidly, and 
 muttered : 
 
 "My poor mother hoped better things from me. It is well, 
 after all, that it is broken off with Mary ! Why should there 
 be any one to weep for me. ? I can the better die smiling, as 
 I have lived." 
 
 Meanwhile, as it is necessary we should follow each of the 
 principal characters we have introduced through the course of 
 an evening more or less eventful in the destiny of all, we return 
 to Mainwaring, and accompany him to the lake at the bottom 
 of the park, which he reached as its smooth surface glistened 
 in the last beams of the sun. He saw, as he neared the water, 
 the fish sporting in the pellucid tide ; the dragon-fly darted 
 and hovered in the air ; the tedded grass beneath his feet gave 
 forth the fragrance of crushed thyme and clover; the swan 
 paused, as if slumbering on the wave; the linnet and finch 
 sang still from the neighboring copses ; and the heavy bees 
 were winging their way home with a drowsy murmur; all 
 around were images of that unspeakable peace which Nature 
 whispers to those attuned to her music ; all fitted to lull, but not 
 to deject the spirit ; images dear to the holiday of the world- 
 worn man, to the contemplation of serene and retired age; to 
 the boyhood of poets ; to the youth of lovers. But Mainwar- 
 ing's step was heavy, and his brow clouded ; and Nature that 
 evening was dumb to him. At the margin of the lake stood a 
 solitary angler, who now (his evening's task done) was em- 
 ployed in leisurely disjointing his rod, and whistling with much 
 sweetness an air from one of Isaak Walton's songs. Mainwar- 
 ing reached the angler, and laid his hand on his shoulder : 
 
 "What sport, Ardworth?" 
 
 ' 'A few large roach with the fly, and one pike with a gudg- 
 eon a noble fellow! look at him! He was lying under the 
 reeds yonder; I saw his green back, and teased him into biting. 
 A heavenly evening! I wonder you did not follow my exam- 
 ple and escape from a set where neither you nor I can feel very 
 much at home, to this green banquet of Nature in which at least 
 no man sits below the salt-cellar, The birds are an older fam-
 
 26 LUCRETIA. 
 
 ily than the St. Johns' ; but they don't throw their pedigree in 
 our teeth, Mainwaring. " 
 
 "Nay, nay, my good friend, you wrong old Sir Miles; proud 
 he is, no doubt, but neither you nor I have had to complain of 
 his insolence." 
 
 "Of his insolence! certainly not of his condescension, 
 yes! Hang it, William, it is his very politeness that galls me. 
 
 Don't you observe that with Vernon, or Lord A , or Lord 
 
 B , or Mr. C , he is easy and off-hand, calls them by 
 
 their names, pats them on the shoulder, rates them, and swears 
 at them if they vex him ; but with you and me and his French 
 parasite it is all stately decorum and punctilious courtesy: 'Mr. 
 Mainwaring, I am delighted to see you;' 'Mr. Ardworth, as 
 you are so near, dare I ask you to ring the bell' ; 'Mons. Dali- 
 bard, with the utmost deference, I venture to disagree with 
 you.' However, don't let my foolish susceptibility ruffle your 
 pride. And you, too, have a worthy object in view, which 
 might well detain you from roach and jack-fish. Have you 
 stolen your interview with the superb Lucretia?" 
 
 "Yes, stolen, as you say: and, like all thieves not thor- 
 dughly hardened, I am ashamed of my gains." 
 
 "Sit down, my boy; this is a bank in ten thousand; there 
 that old root to lean your elbow on, this soft moss for your 
 cushion ; sit down and confess. You have something on your 
 mind that preys on you: we are old college friends out 
 with it!" 
 
 ''There is no resisting you, Ardworth," said Mainwaring, 
 smiling, and drawn from his reserve and his gloom by the 
 frank good-humor of his companion: "I should like, I own, to 
 make a clean breast of it ; and perhaps I may profit by your 
 advice. You know, in the first place, that after I left college, 
 my father, seeing me indisposed for the Church, to which he 
 had always destined me in his own heart, and for which, in- 
 deed, he had gone out of his way to maintain me at the Univer- 
 sity, gave me the choice of his own business as a surveyor and 
 land-agent, or of entering into the mercantile profession. I 
 chose the latter, and went to Southampton, where we have a 
 relation in business, to be initiated into the elementary myster- 
 ies. There I became acquainted with a good clergyman and 
 his wife, and in that house I passed a great part of my 
 time." 
 
 "With the hope, I trust, on better consideration, of gratifying 
 your father's ambition, and learning how to starve with gen- 
 tility on a cure."
 
 LUCRETIA. 27 
 
 "Not much of that, I fear." 
 
 "Then the clergyman had a daughter?" 
 
 "You are nearer the mark now," said Main waring, coloring; 
 "though it was not his daughter; a young lady lived in his 
 family, not even related to him ; she was placed there with a 
 certain allowance by a rich relation. In a word, I admired, 
 perhaps I loved this young person ; but she was without an in- 
 dependence, and I not yet provided even with the substitute of 
 money, a profession. I fancied (do not laugh at my vanity) 
 that my feelings might be returned. I was in alarm for her as 
 well as myself ; I sounded the clergyman as to the chance of 
 obtaining the consent of her rich relation, and was informed 
 that he thought it hopeless. I felt I had no right to invite her 
 to poverty and ruin, and still less to entangle further (if I had 
 chanced to touch at all) her affection. I made an excuse to 
 my father to leave the town, and returned home." 
 
 "Prudent and honorable enough, so far; unlike me; I 
 should have run off with the girl, if she loved me, and old 
 Plutus, the rascal, might have done his worst against 'Cupid. 
 But I interrupt you." 
 
 "I came back when the country was greatly agitated: public 
 meetings, speeches, mobs a sharp election going on. My 
 father had always taken keen interest in politics ; he was of the 
 same party as Sir Miles, who, you know, is red-hot upon poli- 
 tics. I was easily led partly by ambition, partly by the effect 
 of example, partly by the hope to give a new turn to my 
 thoughts to make an appearance in public." 
 
 "And a devilish creditable one, too. Why, man, your 
 speeches have been quoted with rapture by the London papers. 
 Horridly aristocratic and Pittish, it is true I think differently ; 
 but every man to his taste. Well " 
 
 "My attempts, such as they were, procured me the favor of 
 Sir Miles. He had long been -acquainted with my father, who 
 had helped him in his own elections years ago. He seemed 
 cordially delighted to patronize the son : he invited me to visit 
 him at Laughton, and hinted to my father that I was formed 
 for something better than a counting-house : my poor father 
 was intoxicated. In a word, here I am here, often for days, 
 almost weeks together, have I been a guest, always 
 welcomed." 
 
 "You pause. This is the primordium now comes the con- 
 fession, eh?" 
 
 "Why, one-half the confession is over. It was my most un- 
 merited fortune to attract the notice of Miss Clavering. Do
 
 28 LUCRETIA. 
 
 not fancy me so self-conceited as to imagine that I should ever 
 have presumed so high, but for " 
 
 "But for encouragement I understand! Well, she is a 
 magnificent creature in her way ; and I do not wonder that 
 she drove the poor little girl at Southampton out of your 
 thoughts." 
 
 "Ah! but there is the sore I am not sure that she has done 
 so. Ardworth, I may trust you?" 
 
 "With everything but half-a-guinea. I would not promise 
 to be rock against so great a temptation"; and Ardworth 
 turned his empty pockets inside out. 
 
 "Tush; be serious; or I go." 
 
 "Serious! With pockets like these, the devil's in it if I am 
 not serious. Perge, precor." 
 
 "Ardworth, then," said Mainwaring, with great emotion, 
 "I confide to you the secret trouble of my heart. This girl 
 at Southampton is Lucretia's sister her half-sister: the rich 
 relation on whose allowance she lives is Sir Miles St. John." 
 
 "Whew! My own poor dear little cousin, by the father's 
 side ! Mainwaring, I trust you have not deceived me ; you 
 have not amused yourself with breaking Susan's heart for a 
 heart, and an honest, simple, English girl's heart, she has." 
 
 "Heaven forbid! I tell you I have never even declared my 
 love and if love it were, I trust it is over. But when Sir Miles 
 was first kind to me, first invited me, I own I had the hope to 
 win his esteem, and since he had always made so strong and 
 cruel a distinction between Lucretia and Susan, I thought it 
 not impossible that he might consent at last to my union with 
 the niece he had refused to receive and acknowledge. But 
 even while the hope was in me, I was drawn on I was en- 
 tangled I was spell-bound I know not how or why; but, to 
 close my confidence, while still doubtful whether my own heart 
 is free from the remembrance of the one sister, I am pledged 
 to the other." 
 
 Ardworth looked down gravely and remained silent. He 
 was a joyous, careless, reckless youth, with unsteady character 
 and pursuits, and with something of vague poetry, much of 
 unaccommodating pride about his nature one of those youths 
 little likely to do what is called well in the world not persevering 
 enough for an independent career, too blunt and honest for a 
 servile one. But it was in the very disposition of such a per- 
 son to judge somewhat harshly of Mainwaring's disclosure, and 
 not easily to comprehend what, after all, was very natural 
 how a young man, new to life, timid by character, and of an
 
 LUCRETIA. 39 
 
 extreme susceptibility to the fear of giving pain, had, in the 
 surprise, the gratitude, the emotion, of an avowed attachment 
 from a girl, far above him in worldly position, been forced by 
 receiving to seem, at least, to return her affection. And in- 
 deed though not wholly insensible to the brilliant prospects 
 opened to him in such a connection, yet, to do him justice. 
 Mainwaring would have been equally entangled by a similar 
 avowal from a girl more his equal in the world. It was rather 
 from an amiability bordering upon weakness, than from any 
 more degrading moral imperfections, that he had been betrayed 
 into a position which neither contented his heart nor satisfied 
 his conscience. 
 
 With far less ability than his friend, Ardworth had more 
 force and steadiness in his nature, and was wholly free from 
 that morbid delicacy of temperament to which susceptible 
 and shy persons owe much of their errors and misfortunes. 
 He said, therefore, after a long pause, "My good fellow, to be 
 plain with you, I cannot say that your confession has improved 
 you in my estimation; but that is perhaps because of the 
 bluntness of my understanding. I could quite comprehend 
 your forgetting Susan (and, after all, I am left in doubt as to 
 the extent of her conquest over you), for the very different 
 charms of her sister. On the other hand, I could still better 
 understand that, having once fancied Susan, you could not 
 be commanded into love for Lucretia. But I do not compre- 
 hend your feeling love for one, and making love to the other 
 which is the long and short of the business." 
 
 "That is not exactly the true statement," answered Main- 
 waring, with a powerful effort at composure. "There are mo- 
 ments when, listening to Lucretia, when charmed by that soft- 
 ness which, contrasting the rest of her character, she exhibits 
 to none but me, struck by her great mental powers, proud of 
 an unsought triumph over such a being, I feel as if I could 
 love none but her; then, suddenly, her mood changes she utters 
 sentiments that chill and revolt me ; the very beauty seems 
 vanished from her face. I recall, with a sigh, the simple 
 sweetness of Susan, and I feel as if I deceived both my mis- 
 tress and myself. Perhaps, however, all the circumtances of 
 this connection tend to increase my doubts. It is humiliating 
 to me to know that I woo clandestinely and upon sufferance ; 
 that I am stealing, as it were, into a fortune ; that I am eating 
 Sir Miles's bread, and yet counting upon his death ; and this 
 shame in myself may make me unconsciously unjust to Lucre- 
 tia. But it is useless to reprove me for what is past; and
 
 JO LUCRETIA. 
 
 though I at first imagined you could advise me for the future, 
 I now see, too clearly, that no advice_ could avail." 
 
 "I grant that, too; for all you require is to make up your 
 mind to be fairly off with the old love, or fairly on with the 
 new. However, now you have stated your case thus frankly, 
 if you permit me, I will take advantage of the strange chance 
 of finding myself here, and watch, ponder, and counsel, if I 
 can. This Lucretia, I own it, puzzles and perplexes me; but 
 though no (Edipus, I will not take fright at the Sphynx. I 
 suppose now it is time to return. They expect some of the 
 neighbors to drink tea, and I must doff my fishing-jacket. 
 Come!" 
 
 As they strolled towards the house Ardworth broke a silence 
 which had lasted for some moments: 
 
 "And how is that dear good Fielden? I ought to have 
 guessed him at once when you spoke of your clergyman and 
 his young charge: but I did not know he was at South- 
 ampton." 
 
 "He has exchanged his living for a year, on account of his 
 wife's health, and rather, I think also, with the wish to bring 
 poor Susan nearer to Laughton, in the chance of her uncle 
 seeing her. But you are, then acquainted with Fielden?" 
 
 "Acquainted! my best friend. He was my tutor, and pre- 
 pared me for Cains College. I owe him not only the little 
 learning I have, but the little good that is left in me. I owe 
 to him apparently, also, whatever chance of bettering my 
 prospects may arise from my visit at Laughton." 
 
 "Notwithstanding our intimacy, we have, like most young 
 men not related, spoken so little of our family matters, that I 
 do not now understand how you are cousin to Susan; nor 
 what, to my surprise and delight, brought you hither three 
 days ago." 
 
 "Faith, my story is easier to explain than your own, Will- 
 iam! Here goes!" 
 
 But as Ardworth's recital partially involves references to 
 family matters not yet sufficiently known to the reader, we must 
 be pardoned if we assume to ourselves his task of narrating, 
 and necessarily enlarge on his details. 
 
 The branch of the illustrious family of St. John represented 
 by Sir Miles diverged from the parent stem of the Lords of 
 Bletshoe. With them it placed at the summit of its pedigree 
 the name of William de St. John, the Conqueror's favorite and 
 trusted warrior, and Oliva de Filgiers. With them it blazoned 
 the latter alliance, which gave to Sir Oliver St. John the lands
 
 LUCRETIA. 31 
 
 of Bletshoe by the hand of Margeret Beauchamp (by her sec- 
 ond marriage with the Duke of Somerset, grandmother to Henry 
 VII). In the following generation the younger son of a 
 younger son had founded, partly by offices of state, partly by 
 marriage with a wealthy heiress, a house of his own ; and in 
 the reign of James the First the St. Johns of Laughton ranked 
 amongst the chief gentlemen of Hampshire. From that time 
 till the accession of George III., the family, though it remained 
 untitled, had added to its consequence by inter-marriages of 
 considerable dignity, chosen, indeed, with a disregard for 
 money uncommon amongst the English aristocracy, so that the 
 estate was but little enlarged since the reign of James, though 
 profiting, of course, by improved cultivation and the different 
 value of money. On the other hand, perhaps there were 
 scarcely ten families in the country who could boast of a sim- 
 ilar directness of descent on all sides from the proudest and 
 noblest aristocracy of the soil: and Sir Miles St. John by 
 blood was, almost at the distance of eight centuries, as pure a 
 Norman as his ancestral William. His grandfather, neverthe- 
 less, had deviated from the usual disinterested practice of the 
 family, and had married an heiress, who brought the quarter- 
 ings of Vernon to the crowded escutcheon, and with these quar- 
 terings an estate of some 4000 a year, popularly known by the 
 name of Vernon Grange. This rare occurrence did not add to 
 the domestic happiness of the contracting parties, nor did it 
 lead to the ultimate increase of the Laughton possessions. 
 Two sons were born. To the elder was destined the father's 
 inheritance, to the younger the maternal property. One house 
 is not large enough for two heirs. Nothing could exceed the 
 pride of the father as a St. John, except the pride of the 
 mother as a Vernon. Jealousies between the two sons began 
 early, and rankled deep ; nor was there peace at Laughton till 
 the younger had carried away from its rental the lands of Ver- 
 non Grange ; and the elder remained just where his predeces- 
 sors stood in the point of possessions sole lord of Laughton 
 sole. The elder son, Sir Miles's father, had been, indeed, so 
 chafed by the rivalry with his brother, that in disgust he had 
 run away, and thrown himself, at the age of fourteen, into the 
 navy. By accident or by merit he rose high in that profession, 
 acquired name and fame, and lost an eye and an arm, for 
 which he was gazetted, at the same time, an admiral and a 
 baronet. 
 
 Thus mutilated and dignified, Sir George St. John retired 
 from the profession; and finding himself unmarried, and
 
 32 LUCRETIA. 
 
 haunted by the apprehension that if he died childless, Laugh- 
 ton would pass to his brother's heirs, he resolved upon con- 
 signing his remains to the nuptial couch, previous to the surer 
 peace of the family vault. At the age of fifty-nine the grim 
 veteran succeeded in finding a young lady of unblemished 
 descent, and much marked with the small-pox, who consented 
 to accept the only hand which Sir George had to offer. From 
 this marriage sprang a numerous family ; but all died in early 
 childhood, frightened to death, said the neighbors, by their 
 tender parents (considered the ugliest couple in the county), 
 except one boy (the present Sir Miles) and one daughter, many 
 years younger, destined to become Lucretia's mother. Sir 
 Miles came early into his property; and although the soften- 
 ing advance of civilization, with the liberal effects of travel, 
 and a long residence in cities, took from him that provincial 
 austerity of pride which is only seen in stanch perfection 
 amongst the lords of a village, he was yet little less susceptible 
 to the duties of maintaining his lineage pure as its representa- 
 tion had descended to him, than the most superb of his prede- 
 cessors. But owing, it was said to an early disappointment, 
 during youth and manhood, a roving and desultory life, and 
 so put off from year to year the grand experiment matrimonial, 
 until he arrived at old age, with the philosophical determina- 
 tion to select from the other branches of his house the successor 
 to the heritage of St. John. In thus arrogating to himself a 
 right to neglect his proper duties as head of a family, he found 
 his excuse in adopting his niece Lucretia. His sister had 
 chosen for her first husband a friend and neighbor of his own, 
 a younger son, of unexceptional birth, and of very agreeable 
 manners in society. But this gentleman contrived to render 
 her life so miserable that, though he died fifteen months after 
 their marriage, his widow could scarcely be expected to mourn 
 long for him. A year after Mr. Clavering's death Mrs. Claver- 
 ing married again, under the mistaken notion that she had the 
 right to choose for herself. She married Dr. Mivers, the provin- 
 cial physician who had attended her husband in his last illness 
 a gentleman by education, manners, and profession, but un- 
 happily the son of a silk-mercer. Sir Miles never forgave this 
 connection. By her first marriage Sir Miles's sister had one 
 daughter, Lucretia; by her second marriage, another daugh- 
 ter, named Susan. She survived somewhat more than a year 
 the birth of the latter: on her death Sir Miles formally 
 (through his agent) applied to Dr. Mivers for his eldest niece, 
 Lucretia Clavering, and the physician did not think himself
 
 LUCRETIA. 33 
 
 justified in withholding from her the probable advantages of a 
 transfer from his own roof to that of her wealthy uncle. He 
 himself had been no worldly gainer by his connection ; his prac- 
 tice had suffered materially from the sympathy which was felt 
 by the county families for the supposed wrongs of Sir Miles 
 St. John, who was personally not only popular, but esteemed, 
 nor less so on account of his pride : too dignified to refer even 
 to his domestic annoyances, except to his most familiar asso- 
 ciates to them, indeed, Sir Miles had said briefly, that he 
 considered a physician who abused his entrance into a noble 
 family by stealing into its alliance, was a character in whose 
 punishment all society had an interest. The words were re- 
 peated; they were thought just. Those who ventured to sug- 
 gest that Mrs. Clavering, as a widow, was a free agent, were 
 regarded with suspicion. It was the time when French princi- 
 ples were just beginning to be held in horror, especially in the 
 provinces, and when everything that encroached upon the 
 rights and prejudices of the high-born was called "a French 
 principle." Dr. Mivers was as much scouted as if he had been 
 a sans-culotte. Obliged to quit the country, he settled at a dis- 
 tance; but he had a career to commence again; his wife's 
 death enfeebled his spirits, and damped his exertions. He did 
 little more than earn a bare subsistence, and died at last, when 
 his only daughter was fourteen, poor and embarassed. On his 
 death-bed he wrote a letter to Sir Miles, reminding him that, 
 after all, Susan was his sister's child; gently vindicating him- 
 self from the unmerited charge of treachery which had blasted 
 his fortunes, .and left his orphan penniless; and closing with a 
 touching, yet a manly, appeal to the sole relative left to be- 
 friend her. The clergyman who had attended him in his dying 
 moments took charge of this letter; he brought it in person to 
 Laughton, and delivered it to Sir Miles. Whatever his errors, 
 the old Baronet was no common man. He was not vindictive, 
 though he could not be called forgiving. He had considered 
 his conduct to his sister a duty owed to his name and ances- 
 tors; she had placed herself and her youngest child out of the 
 pale of his family. He would not receive as his niece the 
 granddaughter of a silk-mercer. The relationship was extinct, 
 as in certain countries nobility is forfeited by a union with an 
 inferior class. But, niece or not, here was a claim to human- 
 ity and benevolence; and never yet had appeal been made by 
 suffering to his heart and purse in vain. 
 
 He bowed his head over the letter as his eye came to the 
 last line, and remained silent so long that the clergyman, at
 
 34 LUCRETIA. 
 
 last, moved and hopeful, approached and took his hand. It 
 was the impulse of a good man and a good priest. Sir Miles 
 looked up in surprise; but the calm, pitying face bent on him 
 repelled all return of pride. 
 
 "Sir," he said tremulously, and he pressed the hand that 
 grasped his own, "I thank you. I am not fit at this moment 
 to decide what to do: to-morrow, you shall know. And the 
 man died poor? Not in want, not in want?" 
 
 "Comfort 'yourself, worthy sir; he had, at the last, all that 
 sickness and death require, except one assurance, which I 
 ventured to whisper to him I trust not too rashly that his 
 daughter would not be left unprotected. And I pray you to re- 
 flect, my dear sir, that " 
 
 Sir Miles did not wait for the conclusion of the sentence ; 
 he rose abruptly, and left the room. Mr. Fielden (so the good 
 priest was named) felt confident of the success of his mission ; 
 but, to win it the more support, he sought Lucretia. She was 
 then seventeen : it is an age when the heart is peculiarly open 
 to the household ties to the memory of a mother to the sweet 
 name of sister. He sought this girl ; he told his tale, and 
 pleaded the sister's cause. Lucretia heard in silence; neither 
 eye nor lip betrayed emotion; but her color went and came. 
 This was the only sign that she Avas moved: moved, but how? 
 Fielden's experience in the human heart could not guess. 
 When he had done, she went quietly to her desk (it was in her 
 own room that the conference took place), she unlocked it with 
 a deliberate hand, she took from it a pocket-book and a case 
 of jewels, which Sir Miles had given her on her last birthday. 
 "Let my sister have these while I live she shall not want!" 
 
 "My dear young lady, it is not these things that she asks 
 from you ; it is your affection, your sisterly heart, your inter- 
 cession with her natural protector; these, in her name, I ask 
 for non gemmis neque ptirpurd venale, nee auro ! " 
 
 Lucretia then, still without apparent emotion, raised to the 
 good man's face, deep, penetrating, but unrevealing eyes, and 
 said slowly: 
 
 "Is my sister like my mother, who, they say, was handsome?" 
 
 Much startled by this question, Fielden answered: "I never 
 saw your mother, my dear; but your sister gives promise of 
 more than common comeliness." 
 
 Lucretia's brows grew slightly compressed. "And her edu- 
 cation has been, of course, neglected?" 
 
 "Certainly, in some points mathematics, for instance, and 
 theology. But she knows what ladies generally know : French
 
 LUCRETIA. 35 
 
 and Italian, and such like. Dr. Mivers was not unlearned in 
 the polite letters. Oh, trust me, my dear young lady, she will 
 not disgrace your family ; she will justify your uncle's favor. 
 Plead for her!" and the good man clasped his hands. 
 
 Lucretia's eyes fell musingly on the ground; but she resumed, 
 after a short pause : 
 
 "What does my uncle himself say?" 
 
 "Only that he will decide to-morrow." 
 
 "I will see him" ; and Lucretia left the room as for that object. 
 But when she had gained the stairs, she paused at the large 
 embayed casement, which formed a niche in the landing-place, 
 and gazed over the broad domains beyond; a stern smile set- 
 tled, then, upon her lips; the smile seemed to say: "In this 
 inheritance I will have no rival." 
 
 Lucretia's influence with Sir Miles was great; but here it 
 was not needed. Before she saw him he had decided on his 
 course. Her precocious, and apparently intuitive, knowledge 
 of character detected, at a glance, the safety with which she 
 might intercede. She did so, and was chid into silence. 
 
 The next morning Sir Miles took the priest's arm and walked 
 with him into the gardens. 
 
 "Mr. Fielden," he said, with the air of a man who has chosen 
 his course, and deprecates all attempt to make him swerve from 
 it, "if I followed my own selfish wishes, I should take home 
 this poor child. Stay, sir, and hear me: I am no hypocrite, 
 and I speak honestly ; I like young faces I have no family of 
 my own; I love Lucretia, and I am proud of her, but a girl 
 brought up in adversity might be a better nurse, and a more 
 docile companion let that pass. I have reflected, and I feel 
 that I cannot set to Lucretia set to children unborn the ex- 
 ample of indifference to a name degraded and a race adulter- 
 ated : you may call this pride, or prejudice I view it differ- 
 ently. There are duties due from an individual, duties due 
 from a nation, duties due from a family; as my ancestors 
 thought, so think I. They left me the charge of their name, as 
 the fief-rent by which I hold their lands. 'Sdeath, sir! pardon 
 me the expletive! I was about to say, that if I am now a 
 childless old man, it is because I have myself known tempta- 
 tion, and resisted. I loved, and denied myself what I believed 
 my best chance of happiness, because the object of my attach- 
 ment was not my equal. That was a bitter struggle; I tri- 
 umphed, and I rejoice at it, though the result was to leave all 
 thoughts of wedlock elsewhere odious and repugnant. ' These 
 principles of action have made a part of my creed as gentleman,
 
 36 LUCRET1A. 
 
 if not as Christian now, to the point. I beseech you to 
 find a fitting and reputable home for Miss Miss Mivers (the 
 lip slightly curled as the name was said) ; I shall provide suit- 
 ably for her maintenance. When she marries I will dower her, 
 provided only, and always, that her choice fall upon one who 
 will not still further degrade her lineage on her mother's side, 
 in a word, if she select a gentleman. Mr. Fielden, on this sub- 
 ject I have no more to say." 
 
 In vain the good clergyman, whose very conscience, as well 
 as reason, was shocked by the deliberate and argumentative 
 manner with which the Baronet had treated the abandonment 
 of his sister's child as an absolutely moral, almost religious, 
 duty -in vain he exerted himself to repel such sophisms, and 
 put the matter in its true light. It was easy for him to move 
 Sir Miles' s heart that was very gentle that was moved al- 
 ready ; but the crocthet in his head was impregnable. The 
 more touchingly he painted poor Susan's unfriended youth, 
 her sweet character, and promising virtues, the more Sir Miles 
 St. John considered himself a martyr to his principles, and the 
 more obstinate in the martyrdom he became. "Poor thing! 
 poor child!" he said often, and brushed a tear from his eyes; 
 "a thousand pities! Well, well, I hope she will be happy! 
 Mind, money shall never stand in the way if she have a suit- 
 able offer!" This was all the worthy clergyman, after an hour's 
 eloquence, could extract from him. Out of breath, and out of 
 patience, he gave in at last ; and the Baronet, still holding his 
 reluctant arm, led him back towards the house. After a pro- 
 longed pause Sir Miles said abruptly: "I have been thinking 
 that I may have unwittingly injured this man this Mivers 
 while I deemed only that he injured me. As to reparation to 
 his daughter, that is settled ; and, after all, though I do not 
 publicly acknowledge her, she is half my own niece." 
 
 "Half?" 
 
 "Half the father's side don't count, of course ; and, rigidly 
 speaking, the relationship is, perhaps, forfeited on the other. 
 However, that half of it I grant. Zooks, sir, I say I grant it! I 
 beg you ten thousand pardons for my vehemence. To return, 
 perhaps I can show at least that I bear no malice to this poor 
 doctor. He has relations of his own silk-mercers trade 
 has reverses. How are they off?" 
 
 Perfectly perplexed by this very contradictory and paradoxi- 
 cal, yet, to one better acquainted with Sir Miles, very charac- 
 teristic benevolence, Fielden was some time before he an- 
 swered. "Those members of Dr. Mivers's family who are in
 
 LUCRETIA. 37 
 
 trade are sufficiently prosperous; they have paid his debts; 
 t/iey, Sir Miles, will receive his daughter." 
 
 "By no means!" cried Sir Miles quickly; then recovering 
 himself, he added, "or, if you think that advisable, of course 
 all interference on my part is withdrawn." 
 
 "festina lente ! Not so quick, Sir Miles. I do not yet say 
 that it is advisable not because they are silk-mercers, the 
 which, I humbly conceive, is no sin to exclude them from grati- 
 tude for their proffered kindness but because Susan, poor 
 child ! having been brought up in different habits, may feel a 
 little strange at least at first, with " 
 
 "Strange, yes; I should hope so!" interrupted Sir Miles, 
 taking snuff with much energy; "and, by the way, I am think- 
 ing that it would be well if you and Mrs. Fielden you are mar- 
 ried, sir? That is right clergyman all marry ! If you and Mrs. 
 Fielden would take charge of her yourselves, it would be a great 
 comfort to me to think her so well placed. We differ, sir 
 but I respect you. Think of this. Well, then, the doctor has 
 left no relations that I can aid in any way." 
 
 "Strange man!" muttered Fielden. "Yes; I must not let 
 one poor youth lose the opportunity offered by your your " 
 
 "Never mind what proceed one poor youth; in the shop, 
 of course?" 
 
 "No; and by his father's side (since you so esteem such 
 vanities) of an ancient family a sister of Dr. Mivers married 
 Captain Ardworth." 
 
 "Ard worth a goodish name Ardworth of Yorkshire." 
 
 "Yes, of that family. It was, of course, an imprudent mar- 
 riage, contracted while he was only an ensign. His family did 
 not reject him, Sir Miles." 
 
 "Sir, Ardworth is a good squire's family, but the name is 
 Saxon ; there is no difference in race between the head of the 
 Ardworths, if he were a duke, and my gardener, John Hodge 
 Saxon and Saxon, both. His family did not reject him go 
 on." 
 
 "But he was a younger son in a large family himself and 
 his wife have known all the distresses common, they tell me, to 
 the poverty of a soldier, who has no resource but his pay. 
 They have a son ; Dr. Mivers though so poor himself took 
 this boy, for he loved his sister dearly, and meant to bring him 
 up to his own profession. Death frustrated this intention. 
 The boy is high-spirited and deserving." 
 
 "Let his education be completed send him to the univer- 
 sity; and I will see that he is put into some career of which his
 
 38 LUCRETIA. 
 
 father's family would approve. You need not mention to any 
 one my intentions in this respect, not even to the lad. And 
 now, Mr. Fielden, I have done my duty at least, I think so. 
 The longer you honor my house the more I shall be pleased 
 and grateful ; but this topic, allow me most respectfully to say, 
 needs and bears no further comment. Have you seen the last 
 news from the army?" 
 
 "The army! oh, fie, Sir Miles, I must speak one word 
 more may not my poor Susan have, at least, the comfort to 
 embrace her sister?" 
 
 Sir Miles mused a moment, and struck his crutch-stick thrice 
 firmly on the ground. 
 
 "I see no great objection to that; but, by the address of this 
 letter, the poor girl is too far from Laughton to send Lucretia 
 to her." 
 
 "I can obviate that objection, Sir Miles. It is my wish to 
 continue to Susan her present home amongst my own children 
 my wife loves her dearly ; and had you consented to give her 
 the shelter of your own roof, I am sure I should not have seen 
 a smile in the house for a month after. If you permit this 
 plan, as indeed you honored me by suggesting it, I can pass 
 through Southampton, on my way to my own living in Devon- 
 shire, and Miss Clavering can visit her sister there." 
 
 "Let it be so," said Sir Miles briefly; and so the conversa- 
 tion closed. 
 
 Some weeks afterwards Lucretia went in her uncle's carriage, 
 with four post-horses, with her maid and her footman went in 
 the state and pomp of heiress to Laughton to the small lodg- 
 ing-house in which the kind pastor crowded his children and 
 his young guest. She stayed there some days. She did not 
 weep when she embraced Susan : she did not weep when she 
 took leave of her ; but she showed no want of actual kindness, 
 though the kindness was formal and stately. On her return 
 Sir Miles forbore to question ; but he looked as if he expected, 
 and would willingly permit, her to speak on what might natur- 
 ally be uppermost at her heart. Lucretia, however, remained 
 silent, till at last the Baronet coloring, as if ashamed of his 
 curiosity, said: 
 
 "Is your sister like your mother?" 
 
 "You forget, sir, I can have no recollection of my 
 mother." 
 
 "Your mother had a strong family likeness to myself." 
 
 "She is not like you they say she is like Dr. Mivers." 
 
 "Oh!" said the Baronet, and he asked no more. The sis-
 
 LUCRETIA. 39 
 
 ters did not meet again : a few letters passed between them, 
 but the correspondence gradually ceased. 
 
 Young Ardworth went to college, prepared by Mr. Fielden, 
 who was no ordinary scholar, and an accurate and profound 
 mathematician a more important requisite than classical learn- 
 ing in a tutor for Cambridge. But Ardworth was idle, and 
 perhaps even dissipated. He took a common degree, and made 
 some debts, which were paid by Sir Miles without a murmur. 
 A few letters then passed between the Baronet and the clergy- 
 man as to Ardworth's future destiny ; the latter owned that 
 his pupil was not persevering enough for the Bar nor steady 
 enough for the Church. These were no great faults in Sir 
 Miles's eyes. He resolved, after an effort, to judge himself of 
 the capacities of the young man, and so came the invitation to 
 Laughton. Ardworth was greatly surprised when Fielden com- 
 municated to him this invitation, for hitherto he had not con- 
 ceived the slightest suspicion of his benefactor he had rather, 
 and naturally, supposed that some relation of his father's had 
 paid for his maintenance at the university ; and he knew 
 enough of the family history to look upon Sir Miles as the 
 proudest of men. How was it, then, that he, who would not 
 receive the daughter of Dr. Mivers, his own niece, would in- 
 vite the nephew of Dr. Mivers, who was no relation to him? 
 However, his curiosity was excited, and Fielden was urgent that 
 he should go ; to Laughton, therefore, had he gone. 
 
 We have now brought down to the opening of our narrative 
 the general records of the family it concerns ; we have reserved 
 our account of the rearing and the character of the personage 
 most important, perhaps, in the development of its events 
 Lucretia Clavering; in order to place singly before the reader 
 the portrait of her dark, misguided, and ill-boding youth. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LUCRETIA. 
 
 WHEN Lucretia first came to the house of Sir Miles St. John 
 she was an infant about four years old. The Baronet then 
 lived principally in London, with occasional visits rather to the 
 Continent or a watering-place, than to his own family mansion. 
 He did not pay any minute attention to his little ward satisfied 
 that her nurse was sedulous, and her nursery airy and com- 
 modious. When at the age of seven she began to interest him, 
 and he himself, approaching old age, began seriously to consider
 
 40 LUCRETIA. 
 
 whether he should select her as his heiress, for hitherto he had 
 not formed any decided or definite notions on the matter he 
 was startled by a temper so vehement, so self-willed, and stern- 
 ly imperious, so obstinately bent upon attaining its object, so 
 indifferently contemptuous of warning, reproof, coaxing, or 
 punishment, that her governess honestly came to him in despair. 
 The management of this unmanageable child interested Sir 
 Miles. It caused him to think of Lucretia seriously ; it caused 
 him to have her much in his society, and always in his thoughts ; 
 the result was, that by amusing and occupying him, she forced 
 a stronger hold on his affections than she might have done had 
 she been more like the ordinary run of commonplace children. 
 Of all dogs, there is no dog that so attaches a master as a dog 
 that snarls at everybody else, that no other hand can ven- 
 ture to pat with impunity; of all horses, there is none which so 
 flatters the rider, from Alexander downwards, as a horse that 
 nobody else can ride. Extend this principle to the human 
 species, and you may understand why Lucretia became so dear 
 to Sir Miles St. John she got at his heart through his vanity. 
 For though at times her brow darkened and her eye flashed 
 even at his remonstrance, she was yet no sooner in his society 
 than she made a marked distinction between him and the sub- 
 ordinates who had hitherto sought to control her. Was this 
 affection? He thought so. Alas! what parent can trace the 
 workings of a child's mind springs moved by an idle word 
 from a nurse, a whispered conference between hirelings! Was 
 it possible that Lucretia had not often been menaced, as the 
 direst evil that could befall her, with her uncle's displeasure; 
 that long before she could be sensible of mere worldly loss or 
 profit, she was not impressed with a vague sense of Sir Miles's 
 power over her fate ; nay, when trampling in childish wrath and 
 scorn upon some menial's irritable feelings, was it possible 
 that she had not been told that, but for Sir Miles, she would be 
 little better than a servant herself? Be this as it may, all weak- 
 ness is prone to dissimulate : and rare and happy is the child 
 whose feelings are as pure and transparent as the fond parent 
 deems them. There is something in children, too, which seems 
 like an instinctive deference to the aristocratic appearances 
 which sway the world. Sir Miles's stately person, his imposing 
 dress, the respect with which he was surrounded all tended 
 to beget notions of superiority and power, to which it was no 
 shame to succumb, as it was to Miss Black, the governess, 
 whom the maids answered pertly, or Martha, the nurse, whom 
 Miss Black snubbed if Lucretia tore her frock,
 
 LUCRETiA. 4* 
 
 Sir Miles's affection once won his penetration not perhaps 
 blinded to her more evident faults, but his self-love soothed 
 towards regarding them leniently there was much in Lucre- 
 tia's external gifts which justified the predilection of the 
 haughty man. As a child, she was beautiful, and perhaps, 
 from her very imperfections of temper, her beauty had that air 
 of distinction which the love of command is apt to confer. If 
 Sir Miles was with his friends when Lucretia swept into the 
 room, he was pleased to hear them call her their little "prin- 
 cess," and pleased yet more at a certain dignified tranquillity with 
 which she received their caresses or their toys, and which he re- 
 garded as the sign of a superior mind : nor was it long, in- 
 deed, before what we call a superior mind developed itself in 
 the young Lucretia. All children are quick till they are set 
 methodically to study; but Lucretia's quickness defied even 
 that numbing ordeal, by which half of us are rendered dunces. 
 Rapidity and precision in all the tasks set to her, in the com- 
 prehension of all the explanations given to her questions, evinced 
 singular powers of readiness and reasoning. 
 
 As she grew older she became more reserved and thoughtful. 
 Seeing but few children of her own age, and mixing intimately 
 with none, her mind was debarred from the usual objects which 
 distract the vivacity, the restless and wondrous observation, of 
 childhood. She came in and out of Sir Miles's library of a 
 morning, or his drawing-room of an evening till her hour for 
 rest, with unquestioned and sometimes unnoticed freedom ; 
 she listened to the conversation around her, and formed their 
 own conclusions unchecked. It has a great influence upon a 
 child, whether for good or for evil, to mix early and habitually 
 with those grown up for good to the mere intellect always ; 
 the evil depends upon the character and discretion of those 
 the child sees and hears. "Reverence the greatest is due to 
 children," exclaims the wisest of the Romans; * that is to say 
 that we must revere the candor and inexperience and innocence 
 of their minds. 
 
 Now Sir Miles's habitual associates were persons of the world ; 
 well-bred and decorous, indeed, before children, as the best of 
 the old school were, avoiding all anecdotes, all allusions, for 
 which the prudent matron would send her girls out of the room; 
 but, with that reserve, speaking of the world as the world goes ; 
 if talking of young A , calculating carelessly what he would 
 have when old A , his father, died; naturally giving to wealth 
 and station and ability their fixed importance in life; not 
 
 * Cicero. The sentiment is borrowed by Juvenal.
 
 4^ LUCRETIA. 
 
 over-apt to single out for eulogium some quiet goodness ; rather 
 inclined to speak with irony of pretensions to virtue ; rarely 
 speaking but with respect of the worldly seemings which rule 
 mankind all these had their inevitable effect upon that keen, 
 quick, yet moody and reflective, intellect. 
 
 Sir Miles removed at last to Laughton. He gave up Lon- 
 don why, he acknowledged not to himself; but it was because he 
 had outlived his age most of his old set were gone new hours, 
 new habits had stolen in. He had ceased to be of importance 
 as a marrying man, as a personage of fashion ; his health was im- 
 paired ; he shrank from the fatigues of a contested election ; he 
 resigned his seat in Parliament for his native county, and, once 
 settled at Laughton, the life there soothed and flattered him 
 there, all his former claims to distinction were still fresh. He 
 amused himself by collecting, in his old halls and chambers, 
 his statues and picture?, and felt that, without fatigue or trou- 
 ble, he was a greater man at Laughton in his old age, than he 
 had been in London during his youth. 
 
 Lucretia was then thirteen. Three years afterwards Olivier 
 Dalibard was established in the house, and from that time a 
 great change became noticeable in her. The irregular vehe- 
 mence of her temper gradually subsided, and was replaced by an 
 habitual self-command, which rendered the rare deviations 
 from it more effective and imposing. Her pride changed its 
 character wholly and permanently ; no word, no look of scorn to 
 the low-born and the poor escaped her. The masculine studies 
 which her erudite tutor opened to a grasping and inquisitive 
 mind elevated her very errors above the petty distinctions of class. 
 She imbibed earnestly what Dalibard assumed or felt the more 
 dangerous pride of the fallen angel, and set up the intellect 
 as a deity. All belonging to the mere study of mind charmed 
 and enchained her; but active and practical in her very rev- 
 eries, if she brooded, it was to scheme, to plot, to weave web 
 and mesh, and to smile in haughty triumph at her own inge- 
 nuity and daring. The first lesson of mere worldly wisdom 
 teaches us to command temper; it was worldly wisdom that 
 made the once impetuous girl calm, tranquil, and serene. Sir 
 Miles was pleased by a change that removed from Lucretia's out- 
 ward character its chief blot ; perhaps, as his frame declined, he 
 sighed sometimes to think that with so much majesty there ap- 
 peared but little tenderness; he took, however, the merits with 
 the faults, and was content upon the whole. 
 
 If the Provencal had taken more than common pains with his 
 young pupil, the pains were not solely disinterested. In plung-
 
 LUCRETIA. 43 
 
 ing her mind amidst that profound corruption which belongs 
 only to intellect cultivated in scorn of good, and in suppression 
 of heart, he had his own views to serve. He watched the age 
 when the passions ripen ; and he grasped at the fruit which 
 his training sought to mature. In the human heart ill regu- 
 lated there is a dark desire for the forbidden. This Lucretia 
 felt; this her studies cherished, and her thoughts brooded 
 over. She detected, with the quickness of her sex, the precep- 
 tor's stealthy aim. She started not at the danger. Proud of 
 her mastery over herself, she rather triumphed in luring on 
 into weakness this master-intelligence which had lighted up 
 her own, to see her slave in her teacher; to despise or to 
 pity him whom she had first contemplated with awe. And 
 with this mere pride of the understanding might be connected 
 that of the sex ; she had attained the years when woman is 
 curious to know and to sound her power. To inflame Dali- 
 bard's cupidity or ambition was easy; but to touch his 
 heart that marble heart this had its dignity and its charm. 
 Strange to say, she succeeded. The passion, as well as inter- 
 ests, of this dangerous and able man became enlisted in his 
 hopes ; and now the game played between them had a terror in 
 its suspense ; for if Dalibard penetrated not into the recesses 
 of his pupil's complicated nature, she was far from having yet 
 sounded the hell that lay black and devouring beneath his own. 
 Not through her affections those he scarce hoped for but 
 through her inexperience, her vanity, her passions, he contem- 
 plated the path to his victory over her soul and her fate. And 
 so resolute, so wily, so unscrupulous, was this person who had 
 played upon all the subtlest keys and chords in the scale of 
 turbulent life, that, despite the lofty smile with which Lucretia 
 at length heard and repelled his suit, he had no fear of the ulti- 
 mate issue, when all his projects were traversed, all his mines 
 and stratagems abruptly brought to a close, by an event which 
 he had wholly unforeseen the appearance of a rival ; the ardent 
 and almost purifying love, which, escaping awhile from all the 
 demons he had evoked, she had, with a girl's frank heart and 
 impulse, conceived for Mainwaring. And here, indeed, was 
 the great crisis in Lucretia's life and destiny. So interwoven 
 with her nature had become the hard calculations of the under- 
 standing; so habitual to her now was the zest for schem- 
 ing which revels in the play and vivacity of intrigue and plot, 
 and which Shakspeare has, perhaps, intended chiefly to de- 
 pict in the villany of lago, that it is probable Lucretia could 
 never become a character thoroughly amiable and honest. But
 
 44 LUCRETIA. 
 
 with a happy and well-placed love her ambition might have had 
 legitimate vents; her restless energies, the woman's natural 
 field in sympathies for another. The heart once opened softens 
 by use : gradually and unconsciously the interchange of affec- 
 tion, the companionship with an upright and ingenious mind (for 
 virtue is not only beautiful; it is contagious) might have had 
 their redeeming and hallowing influence. Happier, indeed, had 
 it been, if her choice had fallen upon a more commanding and 
 lofty nature. But perhaps it was the very meekness and sus- 
 ceptibility of Mainwaring's temper, relieved from feebleness by 
 his talents, which, once in play, were undeniably great, that 
 pleased her by contrast with her own hardness oi spirit and 
 despotism of will. 
 
 That Sir Miles should have been blind to the position of the 
 lovers is less disparaging to his penetration than it may appear; 
 for the very imprudence with which Lucretia abandoned her- 
 self to the society of Mainwaring during his visits at Laughton 
 took a resemblance to candor. Sir Miles knew his niece to be 
 more than commonly clever and well informed ; ; that she, 
 like him, should feel that the conversation of a superior young 
 man was a relief to the ordinary babble of their country neigh- 
 bors was natural enough ; and if now and then a doubt, a fear, 
 had crossed his mind, and rendered him more touched than he 
 liked to own by Vernon's remarks, it had vanished upon per- 
 ceiving that Lucretia never seemed a shade more pensive in 
 Mainwaring's absence. The listlessness and the melancholy 
 which are apt to accompany love, especially where unpropitious- 
 ly placed, were not visible on the surface of this strong nature. 
 In truth, once assured that Mainwaring returned her affection, 
 Lucretia reposed on the future with a calm and resolute con- 
 fidence; and her customary dissimulation closed like an un- 
 ruffled sea over all the under-currents that met and played be- 
 low. Still Sir Miles's attention once, however slightly, aroused 
 to the recollection that Lucretia was at the age when woman 
 naturally meditates upon love and marriage, had suggested, 
 afresh and more vividly, a project which had before been in- 
 distinctly conceived, viz., the union of the divided branches of 
 his house, by the marriage of the last male of the Vernons with 
 the heiress of the St. Johns. Sir Miles had seen much of Ver- 
 non himself, at various intervals: he had been present at his 
 christening, though he had refused to be his godfather, for 
 fear of raising undue expectations ; he had visited and munifi- 
 cently "tipped" him at Eton; he had accompanied him to his 
 quarters when he joined the Prince's regiment; he had come
 
 45 
 
 often in contact with him, when, at the death of his father, Ver- 
 non retired from the army and blazed in the front ranks of 
 metropolitan fashion ; he had given him counsel and had even 
 lent him money. Vernon's spendthrift habits, and dissipated, 
 if not dissolute, life, had certainly confirmed the old Baronet 
 in his intentions to trust the lands of Laughton to the lesser 
 risk which property incurs in the hands of a female, if tightly 
 settled on her, than in the more colossal and multiform lux- 
 uries of an expensive man ; and to do him justice, during the 
 flush of Vernon's riotous career, he had shrunk from the 
 thought of confiding the happiness of his niece to so unstable a 
 partner. But of late, whether from his impaired health, or his 
 broken fortunes, Vernon's follies had been less glaring. He 
 had now arrived at the mature age of thirty-three, when wild 
 oats may reasonably be sown. The composed and steadfast 
 character of Lucretia might serve to guide and direct him : and 
 Sir Miles was one of those who hold the doctrine that a re- 
 formed rake makes the best husband ; add to this, there was 
 nothing in Vernon's reputation (once allowing that his thirst 
 for pleasure was slaked) which could excite serious apprehen- 
 sions. Through all his difficulties he had maintained his honor 
 unblemished ; a thousand traits of amiability and kindness of 
 heart made him popular and beloved. He was nobody's enemy 
 but his own. His very distresses the prospect of his ruin, if 
 left unassisted by Sir Miles's testamentary dispositions were 
 arguments in his favor. And, after all, though Lucretia was 
 a nearer relation, Vernon was in truth the direct male heir, and, 
 according to the usual prejudices of family, therefore, the fit- 
 ter representative of the ancient line. With these feelings and 
 views, he had invited Vernon to his house, and we have seen al- 
 ready that his favorable impressions had been confirmed by the 
 visit. 
 
 And here, we must say, that Vernon himself had been 
 brought up in boyhood and youth to regard himself the pre- 
 sumptive inheritor of Laughton. It had been, from time im- 
 memorial, the custom of the St. Johns to pass by the claims of 
 females in the settlement of the entails; from male to male 
 the estate had gone furnishing warriors to the army, and 
 senators to the state. And if when Lucretia first came to Sir 
 Miles's house the bright prospect seemed somewhat obscure, 
 still the mesalliance of the mother, and Sir Miles's obstinate 
 resentment thereat, seemed to warrant the supposition that he 
 would probably only leave to the orphan the usual portion of a 
 daughter of the house, and that the lands would go in their
 
 46 LUCREl-IA. 
 
 ordinary destination. This belief, adopted passively, and as a 
 thing of course, had had a very prejudicial effect upon Ver- 
 non's career. What mattered that he over-enjoyed his youth; 
 that the subordinate property of the Vernons, a paltry four or 
 five thousand pounds a year, went a little too fast the splen- 
 did estates of Laughton would recover all. From this dream 
 he had only been awakened two or three years oetore by an 
 attachment he had formed to the portionless daughter of an 
 earl ; and the Grange being too far encumbered to allow him 
 the proper settlements which the lady's family required, it be- 
 came a matter of importance to ascertain Sir Miles's inten- 
 tions. Too delicate himself to sound them, he had prevailed 
 upon the earl, who was well acquainted with Sir Miles, to take 
 Laughton in his way to his own seat in Dorsetshire, and, with- 
 out betraying the grounds of his interest in the question, learn 
 carelessly, as it were, the views of the wealthy man. The 
 result had been a severe and terrible disappointment. Sir Miles 
 ,had then fully determined upon constituting Lucretia his heir- 
 ess, and, with the usual openness of his character, he had 
 plainly said so, upon the very first covert and polished allusion 
 to the subject which the earl slyly made. This discovery, in 
 breaking off all hopes of an union with Lady Mary Stanville, 
 had crushed more than mercenary expectations. It affected, 
 through his heart, Vernon's health and spirits; it rankled deep 
 and was resented at first as a fatal injury. But Vernon's native 
 nobility of disposition gradually softened an indignation which 
 his reason convinced him was groundless and unjust. Sir 
 Miles had never encouraged the expectations which Vernon's 
 family and himself had unthinkingly formed. The Baronet 
 was master of his own fortune, and after all was it not more 
 natural that he snould prefer the child he had brought up 
 and reared, to a distant relation, little more than an acquain- 
 tance, simply because man succeeded to man in the mouldy 
 pedigree of the St. Johns? And, Mary fairly lost to him, his 
 constitutional indifference to money, a certain French levity of 
 temper, a persuasion that his life was nearing its wasted close, 
 had left him without regret, as without resentment, at his kins- 
 man's decision. His boyish affection for the hearty, generous 
 old gentleman returned, and though he abhorred the country, 
 he had without a single interested thought or calculation, cor- 
 dially accepted the Baronet's hospitable overtures, and 
 deserted, for the wilds of Hampshire, "the sweet shady side of 
 Pall Mall." 
 
 We may now enter the drawing-room at Laughton, in which
 
 LUCRETIA. 47 
 
 were already assembled several of the families residing in the 
 more immediate neighborhood, and who sociably dropped in 
 to chat around the national tea-table, play a rubber at whist, or 
 make up, by the help of two or three children and two or three 
 grandpas, a merry country dance. For, in that happy day. 
 people were much more sociable than they are now, in the 
 houses of our rural thanes. Our country seats became bustl- 
 ing and animated after the Birthday ; many even of the more 
 important families resided, indeed, all the year round on their 
 estates. The Continent was closed to us ; the fastidious ex- 
 clusiveness which comes from habitual residences in cities had 
 not made that demarcation in castes and in talk, between 
 neighbor and neighbor, which exists row. Our squires were 
 less educated, less refined, but more hospitable and unassum- 
 ing. In a word, there was what does not exist now, except in 
 some districts remote from London, a rural society for those 
 who sought it. 
 
 The party, as we enter, is grouped somewhat thus but first, 
 we must cast a glance at the room itself, which rarely failed to 
 be the first object to attract a stranger's notice. It was a long, 
 and not particularly well-proportioned, apartment, according, 
 at least, to modern notions, for it had rather the appearance of 
 two rooms thrown into one. At the distance of about thirty- 
 five feet, the walls, before somewhat narrow, were met by an 
 arch, supported by carved pilasters, which opened into a space 
 nearly double the width of the previous part of the room, with 
 a domed ceiling, and an embayed window of such depth, that 
 the recess almost formed a chamber in itself. But both these 
 divisions of the apartment corresponded exactly in point of 
 decoration ; they had the same small panelling, painted a very 
 light green, which seemed almost white by candle-light, each 
 compartment wrought with an arabesque; the same enriched 
 frieze and cornice; they had the same high mantel-pieces, 
 ascending to the ceiling, with the arms of St. John in bold 
 relief They had, too, the same old-fashioned and venerable 
 furniture, draperies of thick figured velvet, with immense 
 chairs and sofas to correspond, interspersed, it is true, with 
 more modern and commodious inventions of the upholsterer's 
 art, in grave stuffed leather, or lively chintz. Two windows, 
 nearly as deep as that in the further division, broke the outline 
 of the former one, and helped to give that irregular and nooky 
 appearance to the apartment which took all discomfort from its' 
 extent, and furnished all convenience for solitary study or 
 detached flirtation. With little respect for the carved work of
 
 4& LUCREtiA, 
 
 the panels, the walls were covered with pictures brought by Sir 
 Miles from Italy, here and there marble busts and statues 
 gave lightness to the character of the room, and harmonized 
 well with that half-Italian mode of decoration which belongs 
 to the period of James the First. The shape of the chamber, 
 in its divisions, lent itself admirably to that friendly and sociable 
 intermixture of amusements which reconciles the tastes of 
 young and old. In the first division, near the fireplace, Sir 
 Miles, seated in his easy-chair, and sheltered from the opening 
 door by a sevenfold tapestry screen, was still at chess with his 
 librarian. At a little distance a middle-aged gentleman, and 
 three turbaned matrons, were cutting in at whist shilling 
 points with a half-crown bet, optional, and not much ven- 
 tured on. On tables, drawn into the recesses of the windows, 
 were the day's newspapers, Gilray's caricatures, the last new 
 publications, and such other ingenious suggestions to chit-chat. 
 And round these tables grouped those who had not yet found 
 elsewhere their evening's amusement; two or three shy young 
 clergymen, the parish doctor, four or five squires, who felt 
 great interest in politics, but never dreamt of the extravagance 
 of taking in a daily paper, and who now, monopolizing all the 
 journals they could find, began fairly with the heroic resolu- 
 tion to skip nothing, from the first advertisement to the print- 
 er's name. Amidst one of these groups Mainwaring had 
 bashfully ensconced himself. In the further division, the 
 chandelier, suspended from the domed ceiling, threw its cheer- 
 ful light over a large circular table below, on which gleamed 
 the ponderous tea-urn of massive silver, with its usual accom- 
 paniments. Nor were wanting there, in addition to those airy 
 nothings, sliced infinitesimally, from a French roll, the more 
 substantial, and now exiled cheer, of cakes plum and seed, 
 Yorkshire and saffron attesting the light hand of the house- 
 keeper, and the strong digestion of the guests. Round this 
 table were seated, in full gossip, the maids and the matrons, 
 with a light sprinkling of the bolder young gentlemen who had 
 been taught to please the fair. The warmth of the evening 
 allowed the upper casement to be opened and the curtains 
 drawn aside, and the July moonlight feebly struggled against 
 the blaze of the lights within. At this table it was Miss Clav- 
 ering's obvious duty to preside ; but that was a complaisance 
 to which she rarely condescended. Nevertheless, she had her 
 own way of doing the honor of her uncle's house, which was 
 not without courtesy and grace ; to glide from one to the other, 
 exchange a few friendly words, see that each set had its well-
 
 LUCRETIA. 49 
 
 known amusements, and, finally, sit quietly down to converse 
 with some who, from gravity or age, appeared most to neglect, 
 or be neglected by, the rest, was her ordinary, and not unpopu- 
 lar mode of welcoming the guests at Laughton not unpopu- 
 lar, for she thus avoided all interference with the flirta- 
 tions and conquests of humbler damsels, whom her station and 
 her endowments might otherwise have crossed or humbled, 
 while she ensured the good word of the old, to whom the young 
 are seldom so attentive. But if a stranger of more than pro- 
 vincial repute chanced to be present ; if some stray member of 
 Parliament, or barrister on the circuit, or wandering artist, ac- 
 companied any of the neighbors, to him Lucretia gave more 
 earnest and undivided attention. Him she sought to draw into 
 a conversation deeper than the usual babble, and with her calm, 
 searching eyes, bent on him while he spoke, seemed to fathom 
 the intellect she set in play. But as yet this evening she had 
 not made her appearance a sin against etiquette very unusual 
 in her. Perhaps her recent conversation with Dalibard had 
 absorbed her thoughts to forgetfulness of the less important 
 demands on her attention. Her absence had not interfered 
 with the gayety at the tea-table, which was frank even to 
 noisiness ; as it centered round the laughing face of Ardworth, 
 who, though unknown to most or all of the ladies present, be- 
 yond a brief introduction to one or two of the first comers from 
 Sir Miles (as the host had risen from his chess to bid them 
 welcome), had already contrived to make himself perfectly at 
 home, and outrageously popular. Niched between two bounc- 
 ing lasses he had commenced acquaintance with them in a 
 strain of familiar drollery and fun, which had soon broadened 
 its circle, and now embraced the whole group in the happy 
 contagion of good humor and young animal spirits. Gabriel, 
 allowed to sit up later than his usual hour, had not, as might 
 have been expected, attached himself to this circle, nor in- 
 deed to any ; he might be seen moving quietly about now 
 contemplating the pictures on the wall with a curious eye ; now 
 pausing at the whist table and noting the game with the inter- 
 est of an embryo gamester ; now throwing himself on an 
 ottoman, and trying to coax towards him Dash or Ponto 
 trying in vain, for both the dogs abhorred him; yet still, 
 through all this general movement, had any one taken the 
 pains to observe him closely, it might have been sufficiently 
 apparent that his keen, bright, restless eye, from the corner 
 of its long, sly lids, roved chiefly towards the three persons 
 whom he approached the least his father, Mainwaring,
 
 50 LUCRETIA. 
 
 and Mr. Vernon. This last had ensconced himself apart 
 from all, in the angle formed by one of the pilasters of the arch 
 that divided the room, so that he was in command, as it were, 
 of both sections. Reclined, with the careless grace that 
 seemed inseparable from every attitude and motion of his per- 
 son, in one of the great velvet chairs, with a book in his hand, 
 which, to say truth, was turned upside down, but in the lec- 
 ture of which he seemed absorbed he heard at one hand the 
 mirthful laughter that circled round young Ardworth, or, in its 
 pauses, caught on the other side, muttered exclamations from the 
 grave whist players: "If you had but trumped that diamond, 
 ma'am!" "Bless me. sir, it was the best heart!" And some- 
 how or other, both the laughter and the exclamations affected 
 him alike, with what then was called "the spleen" for the 
 one reminded him of his own young days of joyless, careless 
 mirth, of which his mechanical gayety now was but a mocking 
 ghost, and the other seemed a satire, a parody, on the fierce 
 but noiseless rapture of gaming, through which his passions 
 had passed when thousands had slipped away with a bland 
 smile, provoking not one of those natural ebullitions of emotion 
 which there accompanied the loss of a shilling point. And be- 
 sides this, Vernon had been so accustomed to the success of 
 the drawing-room, to be a somebody and a something in the 
 company of wits and princes, that he felt, for the first time, a 
 sense of insignificance in this provincial circle. Those fat 
 squires had heard nothing of Mr. Vernon, except that he would 
 not have Laughton he had no acres, no vote in their county 
 he was a nobody to them. Those ruddy maidens, though now 
 and then, indeed, one or two might steal an admiring glance 
 at a figure of elegance so unusual, regarded him not with the 
 female interest he had been accustomed to inspire. They felt 
 instinctively that he could be nothing to them, or they to 
 him a mere London fop, and not half so handsome as Squires 
 Bluff and Chuff. 
 
 Rousing himself from this little vexation to his vanity, with a 
 conscious smile at his own weakness, Vernon turned his looks 
 towards the door, waiting for Lucretia's entrance; and since 
 her uncle's address to him, feeling that new and indescribable 
 interest in her appearance which is apt to steal into every breast, 
 when what was before but an indifferent acquaintance is sud- 
 denly haloed with the light of a possible wife. At length the 
 door opened and Lucretia entered. Mr. Vernon lowered his 
 book, and gazed with an earnestness that partook both of 
 doubt and admiration,
 
 LUCRETIA. 51 
 
 Lucretia Clavering was tall tall beyond what is admitted to 
 be tall in woman; but in her height there was nothing either 
 awkward or masculine a figure more perfect never served for 
 model to a sculptor. The dress at that day, unbecoming as 
 we now deem it, was not to her at least, on the whole dis- 
 advantageous. The short waist gave greater sweep to her ma- 
 jestic length of limb, while the classic thinness of the drapery 
 betrayed the exact proportion and the exquisite contour. The 
 arms then were worn bare almost to the shoulder, and Lucre- 
 tia' s arms were not more faultless in shape than dazzling in 
 their snowy color the stately neck, the falling shoulders, the 
 firm, slight, yet rounded bust all would have charmed equally 
 the artist and the sensualist. Fortunately the sole defect of 
 her form was not apparent at a distance: that defect was in the 
 hand ; it had not the usual faults of female youthfulness the 
 superfluity of flesh, the too rosy healthfulness of color; on the 
 contrary, it was small and thin, but it was, nevertheless, more 
 the hand of a man than a woman ; the shape had a man's ner- 
 vous distinctness, the veins swelled like sinews, the joints of 
 the fingers were marked and prominent. In that hand, it almost 
 seemed as if the iron force of the character betrayed itself. 
 But as we have said, this slight defect, which few, if seen, would 
 hypercritically notice, could not of course be perceptible as 
 she moved slowly up the room; and Vernon's eye, glancing 
 over the noble figure, rested upon the face. Was it handsome? 
 Was it repelling? Strange that in feature it had pretensions to 
 the highest order of beauty, and yet, even that experienced 
 connoisseur in female charms was almost puzzled what sen- 
 tence to pronounce. The hair, as was the fashion of the day, 
 clustered in profuse curls over the forehead, but could not con- 
 ceal a slight line or wrinkle between the brows; and this line, rare 
 in women at any age, rare even in men at hers, gave an expres- 
 sion at once of thought and sternness to the whole face. The 
 eyebrows themselves were straight, and not strongly marked, 
 a shade or two perhaps too light, a fault still more apparent in 
 the lashes; the eyes were large, full, and, though bright, aston- 
 ishingly calm and deep, at least in ordinary moments; yet 
 withal they wanted the charm of that steadfast and open look 
 which goes at once to the heart and invites its trust; their ex- 
 pression was rather vague and abstracted. She usually looked 
 aslant while she spoke, and this, which with some appears but 
 shyness, in one so self-collected had an air of falsehood. But 
 when, at times, if earnest, and bent rather on examining those 
 she addressed than guarding herself from penetration, she fixed
 
 g2 LUCRETIA. 
 
 those eyes upon you with sudden and direct scrutiny, the gaze 
 impressed you powerfully, and haunted you with a strange 
 spell. The eye itself was of a peculiar and displeasing color 
 not blUe, nor gray, nor black, nor hazel, but rather of that cat- 
 like green, which is drowsy in the light, and vivid in the shade. 
 The profile was purely Greek, and so seen, Lucretia's beauty 
 seemed incontestable ; but in front face, and still more when 
 inclined between the two, all the features took a sharpness 
 that, however regular, had something chilling and severe; the 
 mouth was small, but the lips were thin and pale, and had an 
 expression of effort and contraction which added to the dis- 
 trust that her sidelong glance was calculated to inspire. The 
 teeth were dazzlingly white, but sharp and thin, and the eye- 
 teeth were much longer than the rest. The complexion was 
 pale, but without much delicacy ; the paleness seemed not nat- 
 ural to it, but rather that hue which study and late vigils give 
 to men ; so that she wanted the freshness and bloom of youth, 
 and looked older than she was an effect confirmed by an ab- 
 sence of roundness in the cheek, not noticeable in the profile, 
 but rendering the front face somewhat harsh as well as sharp. 
 In a word, the face and the figure were not in harmony ; the 
 figure prevented you from pronouncing her to be masculine 
 the face took from the figure the charm of feminacy. It was 
 the head of the young Augustus upon the form of Agrippina. 
 One touch more, and we close a description which already per- 
 haps the reader may consider frivolously minute. If you had 
 placed before the mouth and lower part of the face a mask or 
 bandage, the whole character of the upper face would have 
 changed at once ; the eye lost its glittering falseness, the brow 
 its sinister contraction; you would have pronounced the face 
 not only beautiful, but sweet and womanly. Take that ban- 
 dage suddenly away, and the change would have startled you, 
 and startled you the more, because you could detect no suffi- 
 cient defect or disproportion in the lower part of the counte- 
 nance to explain it. It was as if the mouth was the key to the 
 whole: the key nothing without the text, the text uncompre- 
 hended without the key. Such, then, was Lucretia Clavering 
 in outward appearance, at the age of twenty striking to the 
 most careless eye, interesting and perplexing the student in 
 that dark language, never yet deciphered, the human counte- 
 nance. The reader must have observed that the effect every 
 face that he remarks for the first time produces, is different 
 from the impression it leaves upon him when habitually seen. 
 Perhaps, no two persons differ more from each other, than
 
 LUCRETIA. 53 
 
 does the same countenance in our earliest recollection of it 
 from the countenance regarded in the familiarity of repeated 
 intercourse. And this was especially the case with Lucretia 
 Clavering's; the first impulse of nearly all who beheld it was 
 distrust that partook of fear; it almost inspired you with a 
 sense of danger. The judgment rose up against it; the heart 
 set itself on its guard. But this uneasy sentiment soon died 
 away with most observers, in admiration at the chiselled out- 
 line, which, like the Grecian sculpture, gained the more the 
 more it was examined ; in respect for the intellectual power of 
 the expression ; and in fascinated pleasure at the charm of a 
 smile, rarely employed, it is true, but the more attractive, both 
 for that reason and for its sudden effect in giving brightness 
 and persuasion to an aspect that needed them so much. It was 
 literally like the abrupt breaking out of a sunbeam ; and the 
 repellent impression of the face thus familiarized away, the 
 matchless form took its natural influence ; so that, while one 
 who but saw Lucretia for a moment might have pronounced 
 her almost plain, and certainly not prepossessing in appear- 
 ance, those with whom she lived, those whom she sought to 
 please, those who saw her daily, united in acknowledgment of 
 her beauty; and if they still felt awe, attributed it only to 
 the force of her understanding. 
 
 As she now came midway up the room, Gabriel started from 
 his seat, and ran to her caressingly. Lucretia bent down, and 
 placed her hand upon his fair locks. As she did so, he 
 whispered: 
 
 "Mr. Vernon has been watching for you." 
 
 "Hush! Where is your father?" 
 
 "Behind the screen, at chess with Sir Miles." 
 
 "With Sir Miles!" and Lucretia's eyes fell with the direct 
 gaze we have before referred to upon the boy's face. 
 
 "I have been looking over them pretty often," said he 
 meaningly: "they have talked of nothing but the game." 
 
 Lucretia lifted her head, and glanced round with her furtive 
 eye; the boy divined the search, and with a scarce perceptible 
 gesture pointed her attention to Mainwaring's retreat. Her 
 vivid smile passed over her lips, as she bowed slightly to her 
 lover, and then withdrawing the hand which Gabriel had taken 
 in his own, she moved on, passed Vernon with a commonplace 
 word or two, and was soon exchanging greetings with the gay 
 merry-makers in the further part of the room. A few minutes 
 afterwards the servants entered, the tea-table was removed, 
 chairs thrust back, a single lady of a certain age volunteered
 
 54 LUCRET1A. 
 
 her services at the piano, and dancing began within the ample 
 space which the arch fenced off from the whist-players. Ver- 
 non had watched his opportunity, and at the first sound of the 
 piano had gained Lucretia's side, and with grave politeness 
 pre-engaged her hand for the opening dance. 
 
 At that day, though it is not so very long ago, gentlemen 
 were not ashamed to dance, and to dance well ; it was no lan- 
 guid saunter through a quadrille; it was fair, deliberate, skil- 
 ful dancing, amongst the courtly; free, bounding movement 
 amongst the gay. 
 
 Vernon, as might be expected, was the most admired per- 
 former of the evening ; but he was thinking very little of the 
 notice he at last excited ; he was employing such ingenuity as 
 his experience of life supplied to the- deficiencies of a very im- 
 perfect education, limited to the little flogged into him at Eton, 
 in deciphering the character and getting at the heart of his fair 
 partner. 
 
 "I wonder you do not make Sir Miles take you to London, 
 my cousin, if you will allow me to call you so. You ought to 
 have been presented." 
 
 "I have no wish to go to London yet." 
 
 "Yet!" said Mr. Vernon, with the somewhat fade gallantry 
 of his day; "beauty even like yours has little time to spare." 
 
 "Hands across, hands across !" cried Mr. Ard worth. 
 
 "And," continued Mr. Vernon, as soon as a pause was per- 
 mitted to him, "there is a song which the Prince sings, written 
 by some sensible old-fashioned fellow, which says: 
 
 ' ' Gather your rosebuds while you may, 
 For Time is still a-flying.'" 
 
 "You have obeyed the moral of the song yourself, I believe, 
 Mr. Vernon." 
 
 "Call me cousin, or Charles Charley, if you like as most 
 of my friends do: nobody ever calls me Mr. Vernon; I don't 
 know myself by that name." 
 
 "Down the middle, we are all waiting for you," shouted 
 Ardworth. 
 
 And down the middle with wondrous grace glided the ex- 
 quisite nankins of Charley Vernon. 
 
 The dance now, thanks to Ardworth, became too animated 
 and riotous to allow more than a few broken monosyllables till 
 Vernon and his partner gained the end of the set, and then, 
 flirting his partner's fan, he recommenced: 
 
 "Seriously, my cousin, you must sometimes feel very much 
 moped here."
 
 LUCRETIA. 55 
 
 "Never!" answered Lucretia. Not once had her eye rested 
 on Mr. Vernon. She felt that she was sounded. 
 
 "Yet I am sure you have a taste fc~ the pomps and vanities. 
 Aha! there. is ambition under those careless curls," said Mr. 
 Vernon, with his easy adorable impertinence. 
 
 Lucretia winced. 
 
 "But if I were ambitious, what field for ambition could I 
 find in London?" 
 
 "The same as Alexander empire, my cousin." 
 
 "You forget that I am not a man. Man indeed, may hope 
 for an empire. It is something to be a Pitt, or even a Warren 
 Hastings." 
 
 Mr. Vernon stared. Was this stupidity, or what? 
 
 "A woman has an empire more undisputed than Mr. Pitt's, 
 and more pitiless than that of Governor Hastings." 
 
 "Oh. pardon me, Mr. Vernon " 
 
 "Charles, if you please." 
 
 Lucretia' s brow darkened. 
 
 ' ' Pardon me, ' ' she repeated ; ' 'but these compliments, if such 
 they are meant to be, meet a very ungrateful return. A wom- 
 an's empire over gauzes and ribbons, over tea-tables and 
 drums, over fops and coquettes, is not worth a journey from 
 Laughton to London." 
 
 'You think you can despise admiration?" 
 
 "What you mean by admiration yes." 
 
 "And love, too?" said Vernon, in a whisper. 
 
 Now Lucretia at once and abruptly raised her eyes to her 
 partner. Was he aiming at her secret? Was he hinting at in- 
 tentions of his own? The look chilled Vernon, and he turned 
 away his head. 
 
 Suddenly, than, in pursuance of a new train of ideas, Lucre- 
 tia altered her manner to him. She had detected what before 
 she had surmised. This sudden familiarity on his part arose 
 from notions her uncle had instilled the visitor had been 
 incited to become the suitor. Her penetration into character, 
 which from childhood had been her passionate study, told her 
 that on that light, polished, fearless nature, scorn would have 
 slight effect to meet the familiarity would be the best means to 
 secure a friend, to disarm a wooer. She changed then her man- 
 ner ; she summoned up her extraordinary craft: she accepted the 
 intimacy held out to her, not to unguard herself, but to lay 
 open her opponent. It became necessary to her to know this 
 man, to have such power as the knowledge might give her. 
 Insensibly and gradually she led her companion away from his
 
 50 LUCRETtA. 
 
 design of approaching her own secrets or character, into frank 
 talk about himself. All unconsciously he began to lay bare to 
 his listener the infirmities of his erring, open heart. Silently 
 she looked down, and plumbed them all: the frivolity, the 
 recklessness, the half-gay, half-mournful sense of waste and 
 ruin. There, blooming amongst the wrecks, she saw the fair- 
 est flowers of noble manhood, profuse and fragrant still gen- 
 erosity and courage, and disregard for self. Spendthrift and 
 gambler, on one side the medal ; gentleman and soldier, on the 
 other. Beside this maimed and imperfect nature she measured 
 her own prepared and profound intellect, and as she listened, 
 her smile became more bland and frequent. She could afford 
 to be gracious ; she felt superiority, scorn, and safety. 
 
 As this seeming intimacy had matured, Vernon and his part- 
 ner had quitted the dance, and were conversing apart in the 
 recess of one of the windows, which the newspaper readers had 
 deserted, in the part of the room where Sir Miles and Dali- 
 bard, still seated, were about to commence their third game at 
 chess. The Baronet's hand ceased from the task of arranging 
 his pawns, his eye was upon the pair, and then, after a long 
 and complacent gaze, it looked round without discovering the 
 object it sought. 
 
 "I am about to task your kindness most improperly, Mon- 
 sieur Dalibard," said Sir Miles, with that politeness so dis- 
 pleasing to Ardworth, "but will you do me the favor to move 
 aside that fold of the screen. I wish for a better view of our 
 young people. Thank you very much." 
 
 Sir Miles now discovered Mainwaring, and observed that far 
 from regarding with self-betraying jealousy the apparent flirta- 
 tion going on between Lucretia and her kinsman, he was en- 
 gaged in animated conversation with the chairman of the quar- 
 ter sessions. Sir Miles was satisfied, and ranged his pawns. 
 All this time, and indeed ever since they had sat down to play, 
 the Provencal had been waiting with the patience that belonged 
 to his character, for some observation from Sir Miles on the 
 subject which his sagacity perceived was engrossing his 
 thoughts. There had been about the old gentleman a fidgety 
 restlessness which showed that something was on his mind. 
 His eyes had been frequently turned towards his niece since 
 her entrance; once or twice he had cleared his throat and 
 hemmed, his usual prelude to some more important com- 
 munication and Dalibard had heard him muttering to him- 
 self, and fancied he caught the name of "Mainwaring." And 
 indeed the Baronet had been repeatedly on the verge of sound-
 
 LUCRETIA. 57 
 
 ing his secretary, and as often had been checked both by pride 
 in himself and pride for Lucretia. It seemed to him beneath 
 his own dignity and hers even to hint to an inferior a fear, 
 a doubt, of the heiress of Laughton. Olivier Dalibard could 
 easily have led on his patron; he could easily, if he pleased it, 
 have dropped words to instill suspicion and prompt question, 
 but that was not his object; he rather shunned than courted 
 any reference to himself upon the matter ; for he knew that 
 Lucretia, if she could suppose that he, however indirectly, had 
 betrayed her to her uncle, would at once declare his own suit 
 to her, and so procure his immediate dismissal ; while aware 
 of her powers of dissimulation, and her influence over her 
 uncle, he feared that a single word from her would suffice to 
 remove all suspicion in Sir Miles, however ingeniously im- 
 planted, and however truthfully grounded. But all the while, 
 under his apparent calm, his mind was busy, and his passions 
 burning. 
 
 "Pshaw, your old play the bishop again!" said Sir Miles, 
 laughing, as he moved a knight to frustrate his adversary's sup- 
 posed plan; and then turning back, he once more contemplated 
 the growing familiarity between Vernon and his niece. This 
 time he could not contain his pleasure ; ' ' Dalibard, my dear sir, ' ' 
 he said, rubbing his hands, "look yonder; they would make a 
 handsome couple!" 
 
 "Who, sir?" said the Provenfal, looking another way, with 
 dogged stupidity. 
 
 "Who? Damn it, man! Nay, pray forgive my ill man- 
 ners but I felt glad, sir, and proud, sir. -Who? Charley 
 Vernon and Lucretia Clavering. " 
 
 "Assuredly, yes. Do you think that there is a chance of so 
 happy an event?" 
 
 "Why, it depends only on Lucretia; I shall never force 
 her." Here Sir Miles stopped, for Gabriel, unperceived before, 
 picked up his patron's pocket-handkerchief. 
 
 Oilvier Dalibard's gray eyes rested coldly on his son. "You 
 are not dancing to-night, my boy. Go; I like to see you 
 amused." 
 
 The boy obeyed at once, as he always did, the paternal 
 commands. He found a partner, and joined a dance just 
 begun ; and in the midst of the dance, Honore Gabriel Varney 
 seemed a new being; not Ardworth himself so thoroughly en- 
 tered into the enjoyment of the exercise, the lights, the music. 
 With brilliant eyes and dilated nostrils, he seemed prematurely 
 to feel all that is exciting and voluptuous in that exhilaration,
 
 58 LUCRETIA. 
 
 which to childhood is usually so innocent. His glances fol- 
 lowed the fairest form ; his clasp lingered in the softest hand ; 
 his voice trembled as the warm breath of his partner came on 
 his cheeks. 
 
 Meanwhile the conversation between the chess-players con- 
 tinued. 
 
 "Yes," said the Baronet, "it depends only on Lucretia, 
 and she seems pleased with Vernon; who would not be?" 
 
 "Your penetration rarely deceives you, sir. I own I think 
 with you. Does Mr. Vernon know that you would permit the 
 alliance?" 
 
 " Yes; but " the Baronet stopped short. 
 
 "You were saying but but what, Sir Miles?" 
 
 "Why the dog affected diffidence; he has some fear lest he 
 should not win her affections but luckily, at least, they are 
 disengaged." 
 
 Dalibard looked grave, and his eye, as if involuntarily, 
 glanced towards Mainwaring. As ill luck would have it, the 
 young man had then ceased his conversation with the chair- 
 man of the quarter sessions, and with arms folded, brow con- 
 tracted, and looks earnest, anxious, and intent, was contemplat- 
 ing the whispered conference between Lucretia and Vernon. 
 
 Sir Miles's eye had followed his secretary's, and his face 
 changed. His hand fell on the chess-board, and upset half 
 the men; he uttered a very audible "Zounds!" 
 
 "I think, Sir Miles," said the Provencal, rising as if con- 
 scious that Sir Miles wished to play no more; "I think that 
 if you spoke soon to Miss Clavering, as to your views with 
 regard to Mr. Vernon, it might ripen matters; for I have heard 
 it said by French mothers and our French women understand 
 the female heart, sir that a girl having no other affection is 
 often prepossessed at once in favor of a man whom she knows 
 beforehand is prepared to woo and to win her, whereas without 
 that knowledge he would have seemed but an ordinary 
 acquaintance." 
 
 "It is shrewdly said, my dear Monsieur Dalibard; and for 
 more reasons than one, the sooner I speak to her the better. 
 Lend me your arm it is time for supper I see the dance is 
 over." 
 
 Passing by the place where Mainwaring still leant, the Baro- 
 net looked at him fixedly. The young man did not notice the 
 gaze. Sir Miles touched him gently. He started as from a 
 revery. 
 
 "You have not danced, Mr. Mainwaring."
 
 LUCRETIA. 59 
 
 "I dance so seldom, Sir Miles," said Mainwaring, coloring. 
 
 "Ah! you employ your head more than, your heels, young 
 gentleman ; very right I must speak to you to-morrow. Well, 
 ladies, I hope you have enjoyed yourselves. My dear Mrs. 
 Vesey, you and I are old friends, you know, many a minuet 
 we have danced together, eh? We can't dance now but we 
 can walk arm in arm together still. Honor me. And your 
 little grandson vaccinated, eh! Wonderful invention! To 
 supper, ladies to supper!" 
 
 The company were gone. The lights were out all save the 
 lights of heaven, and they came bright and still through the 
 casements: Moonbeam and Starbeam, they seemed now to 
 have the old house to themselves. In came the rays, brighter 
 and longer and bolder like fairies that march, rank upon 
 rank, into their kingdom of solitude. Down the oak stairs, 
 from the casements, blazoned with heraldry, moved the rays, 
 creepingly, fearfully. On the armor in the hall clustered the 
 rays, boldly and brightly, till the steel shone out like a mirror. 
 In the library, long and low, they just entered, stopped short 
 it was no place for their play. In the drawing-room, now de- 
 serted, they were more curious and adventurous. Through 
 the large window, still open, they came in freely and archly, 
 as if to spy what had caused such disorder; the stiff chairs out 
 of place, the smooth floor despoiled of its carpet, that flower 
 dropped on the ground, that scarf forgotten on the table the 
 rays lingered upon them all. Up and down, through the 
 house, from the base to the roof, roved the children of the air, 
 and found but two spirits awake amidst the slumber of the rest. 
 
 In that tower to the east in the tapestry chamber, "with the 
 large gilded bed in the recess, came the rays, tamed and wan, 
 as if scared by the grosser light on the table. By that table sat 
 a girl, her brow leaning on one hand ; in the other she held a 
 rose it is a love-token, exchanged with its sister rose, by 
 stealth, in mute sign of reproach for doubt excited an assur- 
 ance and a reconciliation. A love-token! Shrink not, ye 
 rays there is something akin to you in 'love. But, see, the 
 hand closes convulsively on the flower it hides it not in the 
 breast it lifts it not to the lip ; it throws it passionately aside. 
 "How long!" muttered the girl impetuously; "How long! 
 and to think that will here cannot shorten an hour!" Then 
 she rose, and walked to and fro, and each time she gained a 
 certain niche in the chamber she paused, and then irresolutely 
 passed on again. What is in that niche? Only books. What 
 can books teach thee, pale girl? The step treads firmer; this
 
 60 LUCRETIA. 
 
 time it halts more resolved. The hand that clasped the flower 
 takes down a volume. The girl sits again before the light. 
 See, O rays, what is the volume? Moon and Starbeam, ye 
 love what lovers read by the lamp in the loneliness. No love- 
 ditty this; no yet holier lesson to patience and moral to hope. 
 What hast thou, young girl, strong in health and rich in years, 
 with the lore of the leech, with prognostics, and symptoms, 
 and diseases? She is tracing with hard eyes the signs that 
 precede the grim enemy in his most sudden approach the 
 habits that invite him, the warnings that he gives. He whose 
 wealth shall make her free has twice had the visiting shock 
 he starves not he lives free! She closes the volume, and, 
 musing, metes him out the hours and days he has to live. 
 Shrink back, ye rays! The love is disenhallowed: while the 
 hand was on the rose the thought was on the charnel. 
 
 Yonder, in the opposite tower, in the small casement near 
 the roof, came the rays ; Childhood is asleep. Moon and 
 Starbeam, ye love the slumbers of the child! The door 
 opens a dark figure steals noiselessly in. The father comes to 
 look on the sleep of his son. Holy tenderness, if this be all! 
 
 "Gabriel, wake!" said a low, stern voice, and a rough hand 
 shook the sleeper. 
 
 The sharpest test of those nerves upon which depends the 
 mere animal courage is to be roused suddenly in the depth of 
 night by a violent hand. The impulse of Gabriel, thus 
 startled, was neither of timidity nor surprise. It was that of 
 some Spartan boy, not new to danger: with a slight cry, and a 
 fierce spring, the son's hand clutched at the father's throat. 
 Dalibard shook him off with an effort, and a smile half in ap- 
 proval, half in irony, played by the moonlight over his lips. 
 
 "Blood will out, young tiger," said he. "Hush, and hear 
 me!" 
 
 "Is it you, father?" said Gabriel; "I thought, I dreamed " 
 
 "No matter; think dream always, that man should be 
 prepared for defence from peril!" 
 
 "Gabriel (and the pale scholar seated himself on the bed), 
 turn your face to mine nearer; let the moon fall on it; lift 
 your eyes look at me so! Are you not playing false to me? 
 Are you not Lucretia's spy, while you are pretending to be 
 mine? It is so; your eye betrays you. Now, heed me; you 
 have a mind beyond your years. Do you love best the miser- 
 able garret in London, the hard fare and squalid dress, or your 
 lodgment here, the sense of luxury, the sight of splendor, the 
 atmosphere of wealth? You have the choice before you,"
 
 LUCRETIA. 6l 
 
 "I choose as you would have me, then," said the boy 
 "the last." 
 
 "I believe you. Attend! You do not love me that is 
 natural you are the son of Clara Varney ! You have sup- 
 posed that in loving Lucretia Clavering you might vex or thwart 
 me, you scarce knew how ; and Lucretia Clavering has gold 
 and gifts, and soft words, and promises, to bribe withal. I now 
 tell you openly my plan with regard to this girl: it is my aim 
 to marry her to be master of this house and these lands. If 
 I succeed, you share them with me. By betraying me, word 
 or look, to Lucretia, you frustrate this aim ; you plot against 
 our rise and to our ruin. Deem not that you could escape 
 my fall ; if I am driven hence as you might drive me you 
 share my fate ; and, mark me, you are delivered up to my 
 revenge! You cease to be my son you are my foe. Child! 
 you know me." 
 
 The boy, bold as he was, shuddered ; but after a pause, 
 so brief that a breath scarce passed between his silence and 
 his words, he replied, with emphasis: 
 
 "Father, you have read my heart. I have been persuaded 
 by Lucretia (for she bewitches me), to watch you at least, 
 when you are with Sir Miles. I knew that this was mixed up 
 with Mr. Mainwaring. Now that you have made me understand 
 your own views, I will be true, to you true without threats." 
 
 The father looked hard on him, and seemed satisfied with 
 the gaze. "Remember, at least, that your future rests upon 
 your truth : that is no threat that is a thought of hope. Now 
 sleep or muse on it." He dropped the curtain which his hand 
 had drawn aside, and stole, from the room as noiselessly as he 
 had entered. The boy slept no more. Deceit, and cupidity, 
 and corrupt ambition, were at work in his brain. Shrink back, 
 Moon and Starbeam! On that child's brow play the demons 
 who had followed the father's step to his bed of sleep. 
 
 Back to his own room, close at hand, crept Olivier Dalibard. 
 The walls were lined with books many in language and deep 
 in lore. Moon and Starbeam, ye love the midnight solitude of 
 the scholar ! The Provencal stole to the casement, and looked 
 forth. All was serene ; breathless trees, and gleaming sculp- 
 ture, and whitened sward, girdled by the mass of shadow. Of 
 what thought the man? not of the present loveliness which the 
 scene gave to his eye, nor of the future mysteries which the 
 stars should whisper to the soul. Gloomily over a stormy and 
 a hideous past roved the memory, stored with fraud and foul 
 with crime; plan upon plan, schemed with ruthless wisdom,
 
 02 LUCRETIA. 
 
 followed up by remorseless daring, and yet all now a ruin and 
 a blank! an intellect at war with good, and the good had con- 
 quered! But the conviction neither touched the conscience, nor 
 enlightened the reason ; he felt, it is true, a moody sense of 
 impotence, but it brought rage, not despondency : it was not 
 that he submitted to Good, as too powerful to oppose, but that 
 he deemed he had not yet gained all the mastery over the arsenal 
 of Evil. And evil he called it not. Good and evil to him were 
 but subordinate genii, at the command of Mind ; they were the 
 slaves of the lamp. But had he got at the true secret of the 
 lamp itself? "How is it," he thought, as he turned impatiently 
 from the casement, "that I am baffled here, where my fortunes 
 seemed most assured? Here the mind has been of my own 
 training, and prepared by nature to my hand ; here all oppor- 
 tunity has smiled. And suddenly the merest commonplace, in 
 the vulgar lives of mortals an unlooked-for rival, rival, too, 
 of the mould I had taught her to despise : one of the stock gal- 
 lants of a comedy : no character, but youth and fair looks yea, 
 the lover of the stage starts up, and the fabric of years is over- 
 thrown." As he thus mused, he placed his hand upon a small 
 box on one of the tables. "Yet, within this," resumed his 
 soliloquy, and he struck the lid, that gave back a dull sound 
 "within this I hold the keys of life and death ! Fool, the power 
 does not reach to the heart, except to still it. Verily and in- 
 deed were the old heathens mistaken? Are there no philtres to 
 change the current of desire? But touch one chord in a girl's 
 affection, and all the rest is mine all all lands, station, 
 power all the rest are in the opening of this lid!" 
 
 Hide in'the cloud, O Moon! Shrink back, ye Stars! send 
 not your holy, pure, ard trouble-lulling light to the counte- 
 nance blanched and livid with the thoughts of murder. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CONFERENCES. 
 
 THE next day Sir Miles did not appear at breakfast ; not 
 that he was unwell, but that he meditated holding certain audi- 
 ences, and on such occasions the good old gentleman liked to 
 prepare himself. He belonged to a school in which, amidst 
 much that was hearty and convivial, there was much also that, 
 nowadays, would seem stiff and formal, contrasting the other 
 school immediately succeeding him, which Mr. Vernon repre- 
 sented, and of which the Charles Surface of Sheridan is a faith*
 
 LUCRETIA. 63 
 
 ful and admirable type. The room that Sir Miles appropriated 
 to himself was properly speaking, the state apartment, called in 
 the old inventories, "King James's chamber"; it was on the 
 first floor, communicating with the picture gallery, which at 
 the farther end opened upon a corridor, admitting to the princi- 
 pal bedrooms. As Sir Miles cared nothing for holiday state, 
 he had unscrupulously taken his cubiculum in this chamber, 
 which was really the handsomest in the house, except the ban- 
 quet hall ; placed his bed in one angle, with a huge screen be- 
 fore it, filled up the space with his Italian antiques and curiosi- 
 ties, and fixed his favorite pictures on the faded gilt leather 
 panelled on the walls. His main motive in this was the com- 
 munication with the adjoining gallery, which, when the weather 
 was unfavorable, furnished ample room for his habitual walk. 
 He knew how many strides by the help of his crutch made a 
 mile, and this was convenient. Moreover, h'e liked to look, 
 when alone, on those old portraits of his ancestors, which 
 he had religiously conserved in their places, preferring to 
 thrust his Florentine and Venetian masterpieces into bed- 
 rooms and parlors rather than to dislodge from the gallery 
 the stiff ruffs, doublets, and fardingales of his predecessors. 
 It was whispered in the house, that the Baronet, whenever 
 he had to reprove a tenant, or lecture a dependent, took 
 care to have him brought to his sanctum through the full 
 length of this gallery, so that the victim might be duly prepared 
 and awed by the imposing effect of so stately a journey, and 
 the grave faces of all the generations of St. John, which could 
 not fail to impress him with the dignity of the family, and 
 alarm him at the prospect of the injured frown of its repre- 
 sentative. Across this gallery now, following the steps of the 
 powdered valet, strode young Ardworth ; starting now and then 
 at some portrait more than usually grim, more often wondering 
 why his boots, that never creaked before, should creak on those 
 particular boards, and feeling a quiet curiosity without the least 
 mixture of fear or awe, as to what old Square-toes intended to 
 say to him. But all feeling of irreverence ceased when, shown 
 into the Baronet's room, and the door closed, Sir Miles rose 
 with a smile and cordially shaking his hand, said, dropping the 
 punctilious courtesy of Mister: "Ardworth, sir, if I had a 
 little prejudice against you, before you came, you have con- 
 quered it. You are a fine, manly, spirited fellow, sir ; and you 
 have an old man's good wishes, which are no bad beginning to 
 a young man's good fortunes." 
 
 The color rushed over Ardworth's forehead, and a tear sprang
 
 64 LUCRETIA. 
 
 to his eye. He felt a rising at his throat, as he stammered out 
 some not very audible reply. 
 
 "I wished to see you, young gentleman, that I might judge 
 myself what you like best, and what would best fit you. Your 
 father is in the army; what say you to a pair of colors?" 
 
 "Oh, Sir Miles, that is my utmost ambition! Anything but 
 law, except the Church ; anything but the Church, except a 
 desk and a counter!" 
 
 The Baranet, much pleased, gave him a gentle pat on the 
 shoulder. "Ha, ha! we gentlemen, you see, (for the Ard- 
 worths are very well born very) we gentlemen understand 
 each other ! Between you and me, I never liked the law ; never 
 thought a man of birth should belong to it take money for 
 lying shabby shocking ! Don't let that go any further! The 
 Church mother Church I honor her! Church and State go 
 together ! But one ought to be very good to preach to others ; 
 better than you and I are, eh, eh? ha, ha! Well, then, you 
 like the army: there's a letter for you to the Horse Guards; 
 go up to town ; your business is done ; and, as for your outfit, 
 read this little book at your leisure." And Sir Miles thrust a 
 pocket-book into Ardworth's hand. 
 
 "But pardon me," said the young man, much bewildered. 
 "What claim have I, Sir Miles, to such generosity? I know 
 that my uncle offended you." 
 
 "Sir, that's the claim!" said Sir Miles gravely. "I cannot 
 live long!" he added, with a touch of melancholy in his voice; 
 "let me die in peace with all ! perhaps I injured your uncle? 
 Who knows but, if so, he hears and pardons me now?" 
 
 "Oh, Sir Miles ! " exclaimed the thoughtless, generous-hearted 
 young man, "and my little playfellow, Susan, your own niece!" 
 
 Sir Miles drew back haughtily ; but the burst that offended 
 him rose so evidently from the heart, was so excusable from its 
 motive, and the youth's ignorance of the world, that his frown 
 soon vanished, as he said, calmly and gravely : 
 
 "No man, my good sir, can allow to others the right to touch 
 on his family affairs; I trust I shall be just to the poor young 
 lady ; and so, if we never meet again, let us think well of each 
 other. Go, my boy! Serve your king and your country!" 
 
 "I will do my best, Sir Miles, if only to merit your kind- 
 ness." 
 
 "Stay a moment: you are intimate, I find, with young Main- 
 waring?" 
 
 "An old college friendship, Sir Miles." 
 
 "The army will not do for him, eh?"
 
 LUCRETIA. 65 
 
 "He is too clever for it, "sir." 
 
 "Ah, he'd make a lawyer, I suppose glib tongue enough! 
 And can talk well, and lie, if he's paid for it?" 
 
 "I don't know how lawyers regard those matters, Sir Miles; 
 but if you don't make him a lawyer, Tarn sure you must leave 
 him an honest man." 
 
 "Really and truly '" 
 
 "Upon my honor I think so." 
 
 "Good-day to you, and good luck. You must catch the 
 coach at the lodge; for, I see by the papers that, in spite of 
 all the talk about peace, they are raising regiments like 
 wildfire." 
 
 With very different feelings from those with which he had 
 entered the room, Ardworth quitted it. He hurried into his 
 own chamber to thrust his clothes into his portmanteau, and, 
 while thus employed, Mainwaring entered. 
 
 "Joy, my dear fellow! wish me joy! I am going to town 
 into the army abroad to be shot at, thank Heaven! That 
 dear old gentleman! just throw me that coat, will you?" 
 
 A very few more words sufficed to explain what had passed to 
 Mainwaring; he sighed when his friend had finished: "I wish 
 I were going with you!" 
 
 "Do you? Sir Miles has only got to write another letter to 
 the Horse Guards; but no, you are meant to be something 
 better than food for powder; and, besides, your Lucretia! 
 Hang it, I am sorry I cannot stay to examine her as I had 
 promised ; but I have seen enough to know that she certainly 
 loves you. Ah, when she changed flowers with you, you did 
 not think I saw you sly, was not I? Pshaw! she was only play- 
 ing with Vernon ! But still, do you know, Will, now that Sir 
 Miles has spoken to me so, that I could have sobbed 'God bless 
 you, my old boy!' 'pon my life, I could! now do you know 
 that I feel enraged with you for abetting that girl to deceive 
 him." 
 
 ' ' I am enraged with myself ; and ' ' Here a servant entered 
 and informed Mainwaring that he had been searching for him ; 
 Sir Miles requested to see him in his room. Mainwaring 
 started like a culprit. Never fear," whispered Ardworth; "he 
 has no suspicion of you, I'm sure. Shake hands; when shall 
 we meet again? Is it not odd, I who am a Republican by theory, 
 taking King George's pay to fight against the French? No use 
 stopping now to moralize on such contradictions. John Tom, 
 what's your name here, my man, here, throw that portmanteau 
 on your shoulder, and come to the lodge." And so, full of
 
 66 LUCRETIA. 
 
 health, hope, vivacity, and spirit, "John Walter Ardworth de- 
 parted on his career. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mainwaring slowly took his way to Sir Miles. 
 As he approached the gallery, he met Lucretia, who was com- 
 ing from her own room. "Sir Miles has sent forme," he said 
 meaningly. He had time for no more, for the valet was at the 
 door of the gallery, waiting to usher him to his host. 
 
 ' ' Ha ! you will say not a word that can betray us ; guard your 
 looks, too!" whispered Lucretia hurriedly; "afterwards, join 
 me by the cedars." She passed on towards the staircase, and 
 glanced at the large clock that was placed there. "Past eleven ; 
 Vernon is never up before twelve. I must see him before my 
 uncle sends for me, as he will send if he suspects " She 
 paused, went back to her room, rang for her maid, dressed as 
 for walking, and said, carelessly: "If Sir Miles wants me, I am 
 gone to the rectory, and shall probably return by the village, 
 so that I shall be back about one." Towards the rectory, in- 
 deed, Lucretia bent her way; but half-way there, turned back, 
 and passing through the plantation at the rear of die house, 
 .awaited Mainwaring on the bench beneath the cedars. He 
 was not long before he joined her. His face was sad and 
 thoughtful; and when he seated himself by her side, it was with 
 a weariness of spirit that alarmed her. 
 
 "Well," said she fearfully, and she placed her hand on his. 
 
 "Oh, Lucretia," he exclaimed, as he pressed that hand, with 
 an emotion that came from other passions than love, "we, or 
 rather /, have done great wrong. I have been leading you to 
 betray your uncle's trust, to convert your gratitude to him into 
 hypocrisy. I have been unworthy of myself. I am poor, I am 
 humbly born ; but, till I came here, I was rich and proud in 
 honor. I am not so now. Lucretia, pardon me pardon me ! 
 Let the dream be over ; we must not sin thus ; for it is, and 
 the worst of sin treachery. We must part: forget me!" 
 
 "Forget you! Never, never, never!" cried Lucretia, with 
 suppressed, but most earnest, vehemence, her breast heaving, 
 her hands, as he dropped the one he held, clasped together, her 
 eyes, full of tears, transformed at once into softness, meek- 
 ness, even while racked by passion and despair. 
 
 "Oh, William, say anything reproach, chide, despise me, 
 for mine is all the fault ; say anything but that word 'part.' I 
 have chosen you, I have sought you out, I have wooed you if 
 you will ; be it so. I cling to you, you are my all all that 
 saves me from from myself," she added falteringly, and in 
 a hollow voice. "Your love you know not what it is to me.'
 
 LUCRETIA. 67 
 
 I scarcely knew it myself before. I feel what it is now, when 
 you say 'part. ' ' 
 
 Agitated and tortured, Mainwaring writhed at these burning 
 words, bent his face low, and covered it with his hands. 
 
 He felt her clasp struggling to withdraw them, yielded, and 
 saw her kneeling at his feet. His manhood, and his gratitude, 
 and his heart, all moved by that sight in one so haughty, he 
 opened his arms, and she fell on his breast. "You will never 
 say 'part' again, William?" she gasped convulsively. 
 
 "But what are we to do?" 
 
 "Say, first, what has passed between you and my uncle." 
 
 "Little to relate ; for I can repeat words, not tones and looks. 
 Sir Miles spoke to me, at first kindly and encouragingly, about 
 my prospects, said it was time that I should fix myself, added 
 a few words with menacing emphasis against what he called 
 'idle dreams and desultory ambition,' and observing that I 
 changed countenance for I felt that I did his manner be- 
 came more cold and severe. Lucretia, if he has not detected 
 our secret, he more than suspects my my presumption. 
 Finally, he said, dryly, that I had better return home, consult 
 with my father, and that if I preferred entering into the service 
 of the government to any mercantile profession, he thought 
 he had sufficient interest to promote my views. But, clearly 
 and distinctly, he left on my mind one impression : that my 
 visits here are over." 
 
 "Did he allude to me to Mr. Vernon?" 
 
 "Ah, Lucretia. Do you know him so little his delicacy, his 
 pride?" 
 
 Lucretia was silent, and Mainwaring continued : 
 
 "I felt that I was dismissed; I took my leave of your uncle; 
 I came hither with the intention to say farewell forever." 
 
 "Hush, hush! That thought is over! And you return to 
 your father's ; perhaps better so ; it is but hope deferred : and, 
 in your absence, I can the more easily allay all suspicion, if 
 suspicion exist; but I must write to you ; we must correspond. 
 William, dear William, write often, write kindly ; tell me in 
 every letter, that you love me that you love only me that 
 you will be patient, and confide." 
 
 "Dear Lucretia," said Mainwaring tenderly, and moved by 
 the pathos of her earnest and imploring voice: "but you for- 
 get; the bag is always brought first to Sir Miles; he will rec- 
 ognize my hand ; and to whom can you trust your own letters?" 
 
 "True," replied Lucretia despondingly ; and there was a 
 pause: suddenly she lifted her head, and cried: "but your
 
 68 LUCRETIA. 
 
 father's house is not far from this not ten miles we can find 
 a spot at the remote end of the park, near the path through the 
 great wood; there I can leave my letters; there I can find 
 yours." 
 
 "But it must be seldom. If any of Sir Miles's servants see 
 me, if " 
 
 "Oh, William, William, this is not the language of love!" 
 
 "Forgive me, I think of you!" 
 
 "Love thinks of nothing but itself; it is tyrannical, absorb- 
 ing; it forgets even the object loved, it feeds on danger, it 
 strengthens by obstacles," said Lucretia, tossing her hair from 
 her forehead, and with an expression of dark and wild power 
 on her brow and in her eyes: "Fear not for me, I am sufficient 
 guard upon myself; even while I speak, I think ; yes, I have 
 thought of the very spot. You remember that hollow oak at 
 the bottom of the dell, in which Guy St. John, the cavalier, is 
 said to have hid himself from Fairfax's soldiers. Every Mon- 
 day I will leave a letter in that hollow ; every Tuesday you can 
 search for it and leave your own. This is but once a week ; 
 there is no risk here." 
 
 Main waring' s conscience still smote him; but he had not 
 the strength to resist the energy of Lucretia. The force of her 
 character seized upon the weak part of his own : its gentleness, 
 its fear of inflicting pain, its reluctance to say "no" that 
 simple cause of misery to the over-timid. A few sentences 
 more, full of courage, confidence, and passion, on the part of 
 the woman, of constraint, and yet of soothed and grateful affec- 
 tion, on that of the man, and the affianced parted. 
 
 Mainwaring had already given orders to have his trunks 
 sent to him at his father's; and, a hardy pedestrian by habit, 
 he now struck across the park, passed the dell and the hollow 
 tree, commonly called "Guy's Oak," and across woodland and 
 fields golden with ripening corn, took his way to the town, in 
 the center of which, square, solid, and imposing, stood the re- 
 spectable residence of his bustling, active, electioneering father. 
 
 Lucretia's eye followed a form as fair as ever captivated 
 maiden's glance till it was out of sight; and then, as she 
 emerged from the shade of the cedars into the more open space 
 of the garden, her usual thoughtful composure was restored to 
 her steadfast countenance. On the terrace she caught sight of 
 Vernon, who had just quitted his own room, where he always 
 breakfasted alone, and who was now languidly stretched on a 
 bench, and basking in the sun. Like all who have abused life, 
 Vernon was not the same man in the early part of the day.
 
 LUCRETIA. 69 
 
 The spirits that rose to temperate heat the third hour after 
 noon, and expanded into glow when the lights shone over the 
 gay carousers, at morning were flat and exhausted. With hol- 
 low eyes, and that weary fall of the muscles of the cheeks 
 which betrays the votary of Bacchus, the convivial three- 
 bottle man, Charley Vernon forced a smile, meant to be airy 
 and impertinent, to his pale lips, as he rose with effort, and 
 extended three fingers to his cousin. 
 
 "Where have you been hiding? Catching bloom from the 
 roses? You have the prettiest shade of color just enough 
 not a hue too much. And there is Sir Miles's valet gone to the 
 rectory, and the fat footman puffing away towards the village, 
 and I, like a faithful warden, from my post at the castle, all 
 looking out for the truant." 
 
 "But who wants me, cousin?" said Lucretia, with the full 
 blaze of her rare and captivating smile. 
 
 "The knight of Laughton confessedly wants thee, O damsel! 
 The knight of the Bleeding Heart may want thee more dare 
 he own it?" 
 
 And with a hand that trembled a little, not with love at 
 least it trembled always a little before the Madeira at luncheon 
 he lifted hers to his lips. 
 
 "Compliments again, words idle words!" said Lucretia, 
 looking down bashfully. 
 
 "How can I convince thee of my sincerity, unless thou takest 
 my life as its pledge, maid of Laughton?" 
 
 And very much tired of standing, Charley Vernon drew her 
 gently to the bench, and seated himself by her side. Lucretia's 
 eyes were still downcast, and she remained silent; Vernon, 
 suppressing a yawn, felt that he was bound to continue. There 
 was nothing very formidable in Lucretia's manner. 
 
 "Fore Gad!" thought he, "I suppose I must take the heir- 
 ess after all ; the sooner 'tis over, the sooner I can get back to 
 Brook Street." 
 
 "It is premature, my fair cousin," said he, aloud; "prema- 
 ture after less than a week's visit, and only some fourteen or 
 fifteen hours' permitted friendship and intimacy, to say what 
 is uppermost in my thoughts, but we spendthrifts are slow at 
 nothing, not even at wooing. By sweet Venus, then, fair cousin, 
 you look provokingly handsome! Sir Miles, your good uncle, 
 is pleased to forgive all my follies and faults, upon one con- 
 dition, that you will take on yourself the easy task to reform 
 me. Will you, my fair cousin? Such as I am, you behold me! 
 I am. no sinner in the disguise of a saint! My fortune is spent;
 
 70 LUCRETIA. 
 
 my health is not strong; but a young widow's is no mournful 
 position. I am gay when I am well ; good-tempered when 
 ailing. I never betrayed a trust can you trust me with your- 
 self?" 
 
 This was a long speech, and Charley Vernon felt pleased that 
 it was over. There was much in it that would have touched 
 a heart even closed to him, and a little genuine emotion had 
 given light to his eyes and color to his cheek. Amidst all the 
 ravages of dissipation, there was something interesting in his 
 countenance, and manly in his tone and his gesture. But 
 Lucretia was only sensible to one part of his confession her 
 uncle had consented to his suit. This was all of which she 
 desired to be assured, and against this she now sought to screen 
 herself. 
 
 "Your candor, Mr. Vernon," she said, avoiding his eye, 
 "deserves candor in me. I cannot affect to misunderstand 
 you ; but you take me by surprise I was so unprepared for 
 this. Give me time; I must reflect. " 
 
 "Reflection is dull work in the country; you can reflect 
 more amusingly in town, my fair cousin." 
 
 "I will wait, then, till I find myself in town." 
 
 "Ah, you make me the happiest, the most grateful of men," 
 cried Mr. Vernon, rising with a semi-genuflexion, which seemed 
 to imply. "Consider yourself knelt to," just as a courteous 
 assailer, with a motion of the hand, implies, "Consider yourself 
 horsewhipped." 
 
 Lucretia, who, with all her intellect, had no capacity for hu- 
 mor, recoiled and looked up in positive surprise. 
 
 "I do not understand you, Mr. Vernon," she said, with aus- 
 tere gravity. 
 
 "Allow me the bliss of flattering myself that you, at least 
 are understood," replied Charley Vernon, with imperturbable 
 assurance. "You will wait to reflect till you are in town ; that 
 is to say, the day after our honeymoon, when you awake in 
 Mayfair. " 
 
 Before Lucretia could reply, she saw the indefatigable valet 
 formally approaching, with the anticipated message that Sir 
 Miles requested to see her. She replied hurriedly to this last, 
 that she would be with her uncle immediately, and when he had 
 again disappeared within the porch, she said, with a constrained 
 effort at frankness: 
 
 "Mr. Vernon, if I have misunderstood your words, I think 
 I do not mistake your character. You cannot wish to take ad- 
 Vantage of my affection for my uncle, and the passive obedience
 
 LUCRETIA. 71 
 
 I owe to him, to force me into a step of which of which 
 I have not yet sufficiently considered the results. If you really 
 desire that my feelings should be consulted, that I should 
 not pardon me consider myself sacrificed to the family pride 
 of my guardian, and the interests of my suitor " 
 
 "Madam!" exclaimed Vernon, reddening. 
 
 Pleased with the irritating effect her words had produced, 
 Lucretia continued calmly: " If, in a word, I am to be a free 
 agent in a choice on which my happiness depends, forbear to 
 urge Sir Miles further at present forbear to press your suit 
 upon me. Give me the delay of a few months : I shall know 
 how to appreciate your delicacy." 
 
 "Miss Clavering, " answered Vernon, with a touch of the 
 St. John haughtiness, "I am in despair that you should even 
 think so grave an appeal to my honor necessary. I am well 
 aware of your expectations and my poverty. And believe me, 
 I would rather rot in a prison than enrich myself by forcing 
 your inclinations. You have tmt to say the word, and I will 
 (as becomes me as man and gentleman) screen you from all 
 chance of Sir Miles's displeasure, by taking it on myself to de- 
 cline an honor of which I feel, indeed, very undeserving." 
 
 "But I have offended you," said Lucretia softly, while she 
 turned aside to conceal the glad light of her eyes ; ' 'pardon me ; 
 and, to prove that you do so, give me your arm to my uncle's 
 room." 
 
 Vernon, with rather more of Sir Miles's antiquated stiffness 
 than his own rakish ease, offered his arm, with a profound 
 reverence, to his cousin ; and they took their way to the house. 
 Not till they had passed up the stairs, and were even in the 
 gallery, did further words pass between them. Then Vernon 
 said: "But what is your wish, Miss Clavering? On what 
 footing shall I remain here?" 
 
 "Will you suffer me to dictate?" replied Lucretia, stopping 
 short with well-feigned confusion, as if suddenly aware that the 
 right to dictate gives the right to hope. 
 
 "Ah, consider me at least as your slave!" whispered Ver- 
 non, as his eye resting on the contour of that matchless 
 neck, partially and advantageously turned from him, he began 
 with his constitutional admiration of the sex to feel interested 
 in a pursuti that now seemed, after piquing, to flatter his 
 self-love. 
 
 "Then I will use the privilege when we meet again," an- 
 swered Lucretia ; and drawing her arm gently from his, she 
 passed on to her uncle, leaving Vernon midway in the gallery.
 
 ^2 LUCRETIA. 
 
 Those faded portraits looked down on her with that melan- 
 choly gloom which the effigies of our dead ancestors seem mys- 
 teriously to acquire. To noble and aspiring spirits, no homily 
 to truth, and honor, and fair ambition is more eloquent, than 
 the mute and melancholy canvas from which our fathers, made, 
 by death, our household gods, contemplate us still. They ap- 
 pear to confide to us the charge of their unblemished names. 
 They speak to us from the grave, and, heard aright, the pride 
 of family is the guardian angel of its heirs. But Lucretia, 
 with her hard and scholastic mind, despised as the veriest weak- 
 ness all the poetry that belongs to the sense of a pure descent. 
 It was because she was proud as the proudest in herself, that 
 she had nothing but contempt for the virtue, the valor, or the 
 wisdom of those that had gone before. So with a brain busy 
 with guile and stratagem, she trod on beneath the eyes of the 
 simple and spotless Dead. 
 
 Vernon, thus left alone, mused a few moments on what had 
 passed between himself and the heiress, and then slowly retrac- 
 ing his steps, his eye roved along the stately series of his line. 
 "Faith!" he muttered, "if my boyhood had been passed in 
 this old gallery, His Royal Highness would have lost a good 
 fellow and hard drinker; and His Majesty would have had, 
 perhaps, a more distinguished soldier certainly, a worthier 
 subject. If I marry this lady, and we are blessed with a son, 
 he shall walk through this gallery once a day, before he is 
 flogged into Latin ! ' ' 
 
 Lucretia's interview with her uncle was a masterpiece of art. 
 What pity that such craft and subtlety were wasted in our little 
 day, and on such petty objects; under the Medici, that spirit 
 had gone far to the shaping of history. Sure, from her uncle's 
 openness, that he would plunge at once into the subject for 
 which she deemed she was summoned, she evinced no repug- 
 nance, when, tenderly kissing her, he asked, "If Charles Ver- 
 non had a chance of winning favor in her eyes?" She knew 
 that she was safe in saying "No" : that her uncle would never 
 force her inclinations. Safe so far as Vernon was concerned ; 
 but she desired more; she desired thoroughly to quench all 
 suspicion that her heart was pre-occupied ; entirely to remove 
 from Sir Miles's thoughts the image of Mainwaring; and a 
 denial of one suitor might quicken the Baronet's eyes to the 
 concealment of the other. Nor was this all : if Sir Miles was 
 seriously bent upon seeing her settled in marriage before his 
 death, the dismissal of Vernon might only expose her to the 
 importunity of new candidates, more difficult to deal with.
 
 LttCRETU. 73 
 
 Vernon himself she could use as the shield against the arrows 
 of a host. Therefore, when Sir Miles repeated his question, 
 she answered with much gentleness and seeming modest sense, 
 that "Mr. Vernon had much that must prepossess in his 
 favor; that in addition to his own advantages he had one, the 
 highest in her eyes, her uncle's sanction and approval. But," 
 and she hesitated with becoming and natural diffidence, "were 
 not his habits unfixed and roving? So it was said; she knew 
 not herself; she would trust her happiness to her uncle. But 
 if so, and if Mr. Vernon were really disposed to change, would 
 it not be prudent to try him try him where there was tempta- 
 tion; not in the repose of Laughton, but amidst his own 
 haunts of London? Sir Miles had friends who would honestly 
 inform him of the result. She did but suggest this : she was 
 too ready to leave all to her dear guardian's acuteness and 
 experience." 
 
 Melted by her docility, and in high approval of the pru- 
 dence which betokened a more rational judgment than he him- 
 self had evinced, the good old man clasped her to his breast, 
 and shed tears as he praised and thanked her; she had de- 
 cided, as she always did, for the best. Heaven forbid that she 
 should be wasted on an incorrigible man of pleasure! "And," 
 said the frank-hearted gentleman, unable longer to keep any 
 thought concealed; "And to think that I could have wronged 
 you, for a moment, my own noble child ! That I could have been 
 dolt enough to suppose that the good looks of that boy Main- 
 waring might have caused you to forget what but you change 
 color!" For, with all her dissimulation, Lucretia loved too 
 ardently not to shrink at that name thus suddenly pronounced. 
 "Oh, " continued the Baronet, drawing her towards him still 
 more closely, while with one hand he put back her face that he 
 might read its expression the more closely ; "Oh, if it had been 
 so if it be so, I will pity, not blame you, for my neglect was 
 the fault ; pity you, for I have known a similar struggle ; ad- 
 mire you in pity, for you have the spirit of your ancestors, 
 and you will conquer the weakness. Speak ! Have I 
 touched on the truth? Speak without fear, child! You 
 have no mother; but in age a man sometimes gets a mother's 
 heart." 
 
 Startled and alarmed as the lark when the step nears its nest, 
 Lucretia summoned all the dark wile of her nature to mislead 
 the intruder. "No, uncle, no; I am not so unworthy. You 
 misconceived my emotion." 
 
 "Ah, you know that he has had the presumption to love
 
 74 LUCRET1A. 
 
 you the puppy! And you feel the compassion you women 
 always feel for such offenders? Is that it?" 
 
 Rapidly Lucretia considered if it would be wise to leave that 
 impression on his mind; on one hand, it might account for a 
 moment's agitation, and if Mainwaring were detected hovering 
 near the domain, in the exchange of their correspondence, it 
 might appear but the idle, if hopeless, romance of youth, which 
 haunts the mere home of its object; but, no; on the other 
 hand, it left his banishment absolute and confirmed. Her res- 
 olution was taken with a promptitude that made her pause not 
 perceptible. 
 
 "No, my dear uncle," she said, so cheerfully that it removed 
 all doubt from the mind of her listener, "but Monsieur Dali- 
 bard has rallied me on the subject, and I was so angry with 
 him, that when you touched on it I thought more of my quar- 
 rel with him than of poor timid Mr. Mainwaring himself. 
 Come now, own it, dear sir! Monsieur Dalibard has instilled 
 this strange fancy into your head." 
 
 "No, 'Slife: if he had taken such a liberty, I should have 
 lost my librarian. No, I assure you, it was rather Vernon : 
 you know true love is jealous." 
 
 "Vernon!" thought Lucretia; "he must go, and at once." 
 Sliding from her uncle's arms to the stool at his feet, she then 
 led the conversation more familiarly back into the channel it 
 had lost, and when at last she escaped, it was with the under- 
 standing that, without promise or compromise, Mr. Vernon 
 should return to London at once, and be put upon the ordeal, 
 through which she felt assured it was little likely he should 
 pass with success. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 GUY'S OAK. 
 
 THREE weeks afterwards, the life at Laughton seemed re- 
 stored to the cheerful and somewhat monotonous tranquillity 
 of its course, before chafed and disturbed by the recent inter- 
 ruptions to the stream. Vernon had departed, satisfied with 
 the justice of the trial imposed on him, and far too high- 
 spirited to seek to extort from niece or uncle any engagement 
 beyond that which, to a nice sense of honor, the trial itself im- 
 posed. His memory and his heart were still faithful to Mary; 
 but his senses, his fancy, his vanity, were a little involved in 
 his success with the heiress. Though so free from all merce-
 
 LUCRKTIA. 75 
 
 nary meanness, Mr. Vernon was still enough man of the world 
 to be sensible of the advantages of the alliance which had first 
 been pressed on him by Sir Miles ; and from which Lucretia 
 herself appeared not to be averse. The season of London was 
 over, but there was always a set, and that set the one in which 
 Charley Vernon principally moved, who found town fuller than 
 the country. Besides he went occasionally to Brighton, which 
 was then to England what Baise was to Rome. The Prince was 
 holding gay court at the Pavilion, and that was the atmosphere 
 which Vernon was habituated to breathe. He was no parasite 
 of royalty: he had that strong personal affection to the Prince 
 which it is often the good fortune of royalty to attract. Nothing 
 is less founded than the complaint which poets put into the lips 
 of princes, that they have no friends ; it is, at least, their own 
 perverse fault if that be the case ; a little amiability, a little 
 of frank kindness, goes so far when it emanates from the rays 
 of a crown! But Vernon was stronger than Lucretia deemed 
 him ; once contemplating the prospect of a union which was to 
 consign to his charge the happiness of another, and feeling all 
 that he should owe in such a marriage to the confidence both 
 of niece and uncle, he evinced steadier principles than he had 
 ever made manifest, when he had only his own fortune to mar, 
 and his own happiness to trifle with. He joined his old compan- 
 ions ; but he kept aloof from their more dissipated pursuits. 
 Beyond what was then thought the venial error of too devout 
 libations to Bacchus, Charley Vernon seemed reformed. 
 
 Ardworth had joined a regiment which had departed for the 
 field of action. Mainwaring was still with his father, and had 
 not yet announced to Sir Miles any wish or project for the 
 future. 
 
 Olivier Dalibard, as before, passed his mornings alone in his 
 chamber, his noon and his evenings with Sir Miles. He 
 avoided all private conferences with Lucretia. She did not 
 provoke them. Young Gabriel amused himself in copying Sir 
 Miles's pictures, sketching from Nature, scribbling in his 
 room, prose or verse, no matter which (he never showed his 
 lucubrations) pinching the dogs when he could catch them 
 alone, shooting the cats, if they appeared in the plantation, on 
 pretence of love for the young pheasants, sauntering into the 
 cottages, where he was a favorite, because of his good looks, 
 but where he always contrived to leave the trace of his visits 
 in disorder and mischief, upsetting the tea-kettle and scalding 
 the children, or, what he loved dearly, setting two gossips by 
 the ears. But these occupations were over by the hour Lucre-
 
 76 LUCRETiA. 
 
 tia left her apartment. From that time he never left her out 
 of view ; and, when encouraged to join her at his usual privi- 
 leged times, whether in the gardens at sunset, or in her even- 
 ing niche in the drawing-room, he was sleek, silken, and caress- 
 ing as Cupid, after plaguing the Nymphs, at the feet of Psyche. 
 These two strange persons had indeed apparently that sort of 
 sentimental familiarity which is sometimes seen between a fair 
 boy and a girl much older than himself; but the attraction that 
 drew them together was an indefinable instinct of their simi- 
 larity in many traits of their several characters the whelp- 
 leopard sported fearlessly round the she-panther. Before 
 Olivier's midnight conference with his son, Gabriel had drawn 
 closer and closer to Lucretia, as an ally against his father ; for 
 that father he cherished feelings which, beneath the most docile 
 obedience, concealed horror and hate and something of the 
 ferocity of revenge. And if young Varney loved any one on 
 earth except himself, it was Lucretia Clavering. She had ad- 
 ministered to his ruling passions, which were for effect and dis- 
 play ; she had devised the dress which set off to the utmost his 
 exterior, and gave it that picturesque and artistic appearance 
 which he had sighed for in his study of the portraits of Titian 
 and Vandyke. She supplied him (for in money she was gener- 
 ous) with enough to gratify and forestall every boyish caprice, 
 and this liberality now turned against her, for it had increased 
 into a settled vice his natural taste for extravagance, and made 
 all other considerations subordinate to that of feeding his 
 cupidity. She praised his drawings, which, though self-taught, 
 were indeed extraordinary ; predicted his fame as an artist ; 
 lifted him into consequence amongst the guests by her notice 
 and eulogies; and what, perhaps, won him more than all, he 
 felt that it was to her to Dalibard's desire to conceal before 
 her his more cruel propensities that he owed his father's 
 change from the most refined severity to the most paternal 
 gentleness. 
 
 And thus he had repaid her, as she expected, by a devotion 
 which she trusted to employ against her tutor himself, should 
 the baffled aspirant become the scheming rival and the secret 
 foe. But now, thoroughly aware of the gravity of his father's 
 objects, seeing before him the chance of a settled establish- 
 ment at Laughton, a positive and influential connection with 
 Lucretia ; and on the other hand, a return to the poverty he 
 recalled with disgust, and the terrors of his father's solitary 
 malice and revenge, he entered fully into Dalibard's sombre 
 plans, and, without scruple or remorse, would have abetted
 
 LUCREftA. ?7 
 
 any harm to his benefactress. Thus craft doomed to have 
 accomplices in craft resembles the spider whose web, spread 
 indeed for the fly, attracts the fellow-spider that shall thrust 
 it forth, and profit by the meshes it has woven for a victim, 
 to surrender to a master. 
 
 Already young Varney, set quietly and ceaselessly to spy 
 every movement of Lucretia's, had reported to his father two 
 visits to the most retired part of the park ; but he had not yet 
 ventured near enough to discover the exact spot, and his very 
 watch on Lucretia had prevented the detection of Mainwaring 
 himself in his stealthy exchange of correspondence. Dalibard 
 bade him continue his watch, without hinting at his ulterior 
 intentions, for, indeed, in these he was not decided. Even 
 should he discover any communication between Lucretia and 
 Mainwaring, how reveal it to Sir Miles without forever pre- 
 cluding himself from the chance of profiting by the betrayal? 
 Could Lucretia ever forgive the injury, and could she fail to 
 detect the hand that inflicted it? His only hope was in the 
 removal of Mainwaring from his path by other agencies than 
 his own, and (by an appearance of generosity and self-aban- 
 donment ; in keeping her secret, and submitting to his fate) he 
 trusted to regain the confidence she now withheld from him, 
 and use it to his advantage when the time came to defend him- 
 self from Vernon. For he had learned from Sir Miles the 
 passive understanding with respect to that candidate for her 
 hand ; and he felt assured that had Mainwaring never existed, 
 could he cease to exist for her hopes, Lucretia, despite her 
 dissimulation, would succumb to one she feared but respected, 
 rather than to one she evidently trifled with and despised. 
 
 "But the course to be taken must be adopted after the evi- 
 dence is collected, " thought the subtle schemer, and he tran- 
 quilly continued his chess with the Baronet. 
 
 Before, however, Gabriel could make any further discover- 
 ies, an event occurred which excited very different emotions 
 amongst those it more immediately interested. 
 
 Sir Miles had, during the last twelve months, been visited 
 by two seizures, seemingly of an apoplectic character. 
 Whether they were apoplexy or the less alarming attacks that 
 arise from some more gentle congestion, occasioned by free 
 living and indolent habits, was matter of doubt with his phy- 
 sician not a very skillful, though a very formal, man. Country 
 doctors were not then the same able, educated, and scien- 
 tific class that they are now rapidly becoming. Sir Miles him- 
 self so stoutly and so eagerly repudiated the least hint of the
 
 78 LUCREfiA. 
 
 more unfavorable interpretation, that the doctor, if not con- 
 vinced by his patient, was awed from expressing plainly a con- 
 trary opinion. There are certain persons who will dismiss 
 their physician if he tells them the truth : Sir Miles was one of 
 them. 
 
 In his character there was a weakness not uncommon to the 
 proud. He did not fear death, but he shrank from the thought 
 that others should calculate on his dying. He was fond of his 
 power, though he exercised it gently : he knew that the power 
 of wealth and station is enfeebled in proportion as its depen- 
 dents can foresee the date of its transfer. He dreaded, too, 
 the comments which are always made on those visited by his 
 peculiar disease : "Poor Sir Miles! An apoplectic fit! His 
 intellect must be very much shaken he revoked at whist last 
 night memory sadly impaired!" This may be a pitiable 
 foible; but heroes and statesmen have had it most: pardon it 
 in the proud old man. He enjoined the physician to state 
 throughout the house and the neighborhood that the attacks 
 were wholly innocent and unimportant. The physician did 
 so, and was generally believed ; for Sir Miles seemed as lively 
 and as vigorous after them as before. Two persons alone were 
 not deceived Dalibard and Lucretia. The first, at an earlier 
 part of B his life, had studied pathology with the- profound re- 
 search and ingenious application which he brought to bear 
 upon all he undertook. He whispered from the first to 
 Lucretia : 
 
 "Unless your uncle changes his habits, takes exercise, and 
 forbears wine and the table, his days are numbered." 
 
 And when this intelligence was first conveyed to her, before 
 she had become acquainted with Mainwaring, Lucretia felt 
 the shock of a grief sudden and sincere. We have seen how 
 these better sentiments changed as a human life became an 
 obstacle in her way. In her character, what phrenologists call 
 "destructiveness, " in the comprehensive sense of the word, 
 was superlatively developed. She had not actual cruelty ; she 
 was not bloodthirsty: those vices belong to a different cast of 
 character. She was rather deliberately and intellectually un- 
 sparing: a goal was before her; she must march to it; all in 
 the way were but hostile impediments. At first, however, Sir 
 Miles was not in the way, except to fortune, and for that, as 
 avarice was not her leading vice, she could well wait; there- 
 fore, at this hint of the Provencal's, she ventured to urge 
 her uncle to abstinence and exercise, but Sir Miles was touchy 
 on the subject ; he feared the interpretations which great change
 
 LUCRETIA. ?<) 
 
 of habits might suggest, the memory of the fearful warning 
 died away, and he felt as well as before, for, save an old rheu- 
 matic gout (which had long since left him, with no other appar- 
 ent evil but a lameness in the joints that rendered exercise un- 
 welcome and painful), he possessed one of those comfortable, 
 and often treacherous constitutions, which evince no displeas- 
 ure at irregularities, and bear all liberties with philosophical 
 composure. Accordingly, he would ha/e his own way; and he 
 contrived to coax or to force his doctor to an authority on his 
 side: wine was necessary to his constitution; much exercise 
 was a dangerous fatigue. The second attack, following four 
 months after the first, was less alarming, and Sir Miles fancied 
 it concealed even from his niece ; but three nights after his re- 
 covery, the old Baronet sat musing alone for some time in his 
 own room before he retired to rest. Then he rose, opened his 
 desk, and read his will attentively, locked it up with a slight 
 sigh, and took down his Bible. The next morning he des- 
 patched the letters which summoned Ardworth and Vernon to 
 his house; and, as he quitted his room, his look lingered with 
 melancholy fondness upon the portraits in the gallery. No 
 one was by the old man to interpret these slight signs, in which 
 lay a world of meaning. 
 
 A few weeks after Vernon had left the house, and in the 
 midst of the restored tranquillity we have described, it so hap- 
 pened that Sir Miles's physician, after dining at the hall, had 
 been summoned to attend one of the children at the neighbor- 
 ing rectory, and there he spent the night. A little before day- 
 break his slumbers were disturbed ; he was recalled in all haste 
 to -Laughton Hall. For the third time, he found Sir Miles 
 speechless. Dalibard was by his bedside. Lucretia had not 
 been made aware of the seizure ; for Sir Miles had previously 
 told his valet (who of late slept in the same room) never to 
 alarm Miss Clavering if he was taken ill. The doctor was 
 about to apply his usual remedies; but when he drew forth 
 his lancet, Dalibard placed his hand on the physician's 
 arm: 
 
 "Not ////.$ time," he said slowly, and with emphasis; "it will 
 be his death." 
 
 "Pooh, sir!" said the doctor disdainfully. 
 
 "Do so, then! Bleed him, and take the responsibility. I 
 have studied medicine; I know these symptoms. In this 
 case the apoplexy may spare, the lance kills.'" 
 ' The physician drew back dismayed and doubtful. 
 
 "What would you do, then?"
 
 &> LUCRETIA. 
 
 "Wait three minutes longer the effect of the cataplasms I 
 have applied. If they fail " 
 
 "Ay, then?" 
 
 "A chill bath, and vigorous friction." 
 
 "Sir, I will never permit it." 
 
 "Then murder your patient your own way." 
 
 All this while Sir Miles lay senseless, his eyes wide open, his 
 teeth locked. The doctor drew near, looked at the lancet, and 
 said irresolutely; 
 
 "Your practice is new to me; but if you have studied medi- 
 cine, that's another matter. Will you guarantee the success of 
 your plan?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Mind, I wash my hands of it; I take Mr. Jones to wit- 
 ness" : and he appealed to the valet. 
 
 "Call up the footman, and lift your master," said Dalibard; 
 and the doctor, glancing round, saw that a bath, filled some 
 seven or eight inches deep with water, stood already prepared 
 in the room. Perplexed and irresolute, he offered no obstacle 
 to Dalibard 's movements. The body, seemingly lifeless, was 
 placed in the bath ; and the servants, under Dalibard's direc- 
 tions, applied vigorous and incessant friction. Several min- 
 utes elapsed before any favorable symptoms took place; at 
 length, Sir Miles heaved a deep sigh, and the eyes moved, a 
 minute or two more, and the teeth chattered ; the blood, set in 
 motion, appeared on the surface of the skin : life ebbed back ; 
 the danger was past ; the dark foe driven from the citadel. Sir 
 Miles spoke audibly, though incoherently, as he was taken 
 back to his bed, warmly covered up, the lights removed, noise 
 forbidden, and Dalibard and the doctor remained in silence by 
 the bedside. 
 
 "Rich man," thought Dalibard, "thine hour is not yet 
 come; thy wealth must not pass to the boy Mainwaring. " 
 
 Sir Miles's recovery under the care of Dalibard, who now 
 had his own way, was as rapid and complete as before. Lucre- 
 tia, when she heard the next morning of the attack, felt, we 
 dare not say, a guilty joy, but a terrible and feverish agitation. 
 Sir Miles himself, informed by his valet of Dalibard's wrestle 
 with the doctor, felt a profound gratitude, and reverent won- 
 der for the simple means to which he probably owed his restor- 
 ation ; and he listened with a docility which Dalibard was not 
 prepared to expect, to his learned secretary's urgent admoni- 
 tions as to the life he must lead, if he desired to live at all. 
 Convinced, at last, that wine and good cheer had not block-
 
 LUCRETIA. 8l 
 
 aded out the enemy, and having to do, in Olivier Dalibard, 
 with a very different temper from the doctor's, he assented 
 with a tolerable grace to the trial of a strict regimen and to 
 daily exercise in the open air. Dalibard now became con- 
 stantly with him ; the increase of his influence was as natural as 
 it was apparent. Lucretia trembled ; she divined a danger in 
 his power, now separate from her own, and which threatened 
 to be independent of it. She became abstracted and uneasy ; 
 jealousy of the Provencal possessed her. She began to meditate 
 schemes for his downfall. At this time, Sir Miles received the 
 following letter from Mr. Fielden : 
 
 "SOUTHAMPTON, August 20, 1801. 
 
 "DEAR SIR MILES: You will remember that I informed 
 you when I arrived at Southampton, with my dear young 
 charge; and Susan has twice written to her sister, implying the 
 request which she lacked the courage, seeing that she is timid, 
 expressly to urge, that Miss Clavering might again be per- 
 mitted to visit her. Miss Clavering has answered, as might be 
 expected from the propinquity of the relationship ; but she has 
 perhaps the same fears of offending you that actuate her sis- 
 ter. But now, since the worthy clergyman who had under- 
 taken my parochial duties has found the air insalubrious, and 
 prays me not to enforce the engagement by which we had ex- 
 changed our several charges for the space of a calendar year, 
 I am reluctantly compelled to return home, my dear wife, 
 thank Heaven, being already restored to health, which is an 
 unspeakable mercy; and I am sure I cannot be sufficiently 
 grateful to Providence, which has not only provided me with a 
 liberal independence of more than two hundred pounds a year, 
 but the best of wives and the most dutiful of children posses- 
 sions that I venture to call 'the riches of the heart.' Now, I pray 
 you, my dear Sir Miles, to gratify these two deserving young 
 persons, and to suffer Miss Lucretia incontinently to visit her 
 sister. Counting on your consent, thus boldly demanded, I 
 have already prepared an apartment for Miss Clavering; and 
 Susan is busy in what, though I do not know much of such 
 feminine matters, the whole house declares to be a most beau- 
 tiful and fanciful toilet cover, with roses and forget-me-nots 
 cut out of muslin, and two large silk tassels, which cost her 
 three shillings and fourpence. I cannot conclude, without 
 thanking you from my heart for your noble kindness to young 
 Ardworth. He is so full of ardor and spirit, that I remember, 
 poor lad, when I left him, as I thought, hard at work on that
 
 52 LUCRETIA. 
 
 well-known problem of Euclid, vulgarly called the Asses' 
 Bridge, I found him describing a figure of 8 on the village 
 pond, which was only just frozen over! Poor lad! Heaven 
 will take care of him, I know, as it does of all who take no 
 care of themselves. Ah, Sir Miles, if you could but see 
 Susan such a nurse, too, in illness ! 
 "I have the honor to be, Sir Miles, 
 
 "Your most humble, poor servant to command, 
 
 "MATTHEW FIELDEN." 
 
 Sir Miles put this letter in his niece's hand, and said kindly. 
 "Why not have gone to see your sister before? I should not 
 have been angry. Go, my child, as soon as you like : to- 
 morrow is Sunday no travelling that day but the next, the 
 carriage shall be at your order." 
 
 Lucretia hesitated a moment. To leave Dalibard in sole 
 possession of the field, even for a few days, was a thought of 
 alarm; but what evil could he do in that time? And her 
 pulse beat quickly ! Main waring could come to Southampton ! 
 She could see him again, after more than six weeks' absence ! 
 She had so much to relate and to hear; she fancied his last 
 letter had been colder and shorter ; she yearned to hear him 
 say with his own lips, that "he loved her still"! This idea 
 banished or prevailed over all others. She thanked her uncle 
 cheerfully and gayly, and the journey was settled. 
 
 "Be at watch early on Monday," said Olivier to his son. 
 
 Monday came: the Baronet had ordered the carriage to be 
 at the door at ten. A little before eight Lucretia stole out, 
 and took her way to Guy's Oak. Gabriel had placed himself 
 in readiness ; he had climbed a tree at the bottom of the park 
 (near the place where hitherto he had lost sight of her) ; she 
 passed under it, on through a dark grove of pollard oaks. 
 When she was at a sufficient distance the boy dropped from 
 his perch ; with the stealth of an Indian he crept on her trace, 
 following from tree to tree, always sheltered, always watchful ; 
 he saw her pause at the dell, and look round; she descended 
 into the hollow; he slunk through the fern; he gained the 
 marge of the dell, and looked down she was lost to his sight. 
 At length, to his surprise, he saw the gleam of her robe emerge 
 from the hollow of a tree her head stooped as she came 
 through the aperture ; he had time to shrink back amongst the 
 fern; she passed on hurriedly, the same way she had taken, 
 back to the house; then into the dell crept the boy. Guy's 
 Oak, vast and venerable, with gnarled green boughs below, and
 
 LUCRETIA. 83 
 
 sere branches above, that told that its day of fall was decreed 
 at last, rose high from the abyss of the hollow high and far- 
 seen amidst the trees that stood on the vantage-ground above, 
 even as a great name soars the loftier when it springs from the 
 grave. A dark and irregular fissure gave entrance to the heart 
 of the oak ; the boy glided in and looked round ; he saw noth- 
 ing, yet something there must be. The rays of the early sun 
 did not penetrate into the hollow; it was as dim as a cave. 
 He felt slowly in every crevice, and a startled moth or two 
 flew out. It was not for moths that the girl had come to 
 Guy's Oak! He drew back, at last, in despair; as he did so, 
 he heard a low, sound close at hand, a low, murmuring, angry 
 sound, like a hiss he looked round, and through the dark, 
 two burning eyes fixed his own he had startled a snake from 
 its bed. He drew out in time, as the reptile sprang; but now 
 his task, search, and object were forgotten. With the versa- 
 tility of a child, his thoughts were all on the enemy he had 
 provoked. That zest of prey which is inherent in man's 
 breast, which makes him love the sport and the chase, and 
 maddens boyhood and age with the passion for slaughter, leapt 
 up within him ; anything of danger, and contest, and excite- 
 ment gave Gabriel Varney a strange fever of pleasure. He 
 sprang up the sides of the dell, climbed the park pales on 
 which it bordered, was in the wood where the young shoots 
 rose green and strong from the underwood ; to cut a staff for 
 the strife, to descend again into the dell, creep again through 
 the fissure, look round for those vengeful eyes, was quick done 
 as the joyous play of the impulse. The poor snake had slid 
 down in content and fancied security; its young, perhaps, 
 were not far off ; its wrath had been the instinct Nature gives 
 to the mother. It hath done thee no harm yet, boy ; leave it in 
 peace! The young hunter had no ear to such whisper of pru- 
 dence or mercy. Dim and blind in the fissure, he struck the 
 ground and the tree with his stick, shouted out, bade the eyes 
 gleam, and defied them; whether or not the reptile had spent 
 its ire in the first fruitless spring, and this unlooked-for return 
 of the intruder rather daunted than exasperated, we leave those 
 better versed in natural history to conjecture ; but, instead of 
 obeying the challenge and courting the contest, it glided by 
 the sides of the oak, close to the very feet of its foe, and, 
 emerging into the light, dragged its gray coils through the 
 grass; but its hiss still betrayed it. Gabriel sprang through 
 the fissure, and struck at the craven, insulting it with a laugh of 
 scorn as he struck, Suddenly it halted, suddenly reared its
 
 84 LUCRETIA. 
 
 crest ; the throat swelled with venom, the tongue darted out, 
 and again, green as emeralds, glared the spite of its eyes. No 
 fear felt Gabriel Varney ; his arm was averted ; he gazed 
 spelled and admiringly, with the eye of an artist. Had he had 
 pencil and tablet at that moment, he would have dropped his 
 weapon for the sketch, though the snake had been as deadly as 
 the vipers of Sumatra. The sight sunk into his memory, to be 
 reproduced often by the wild, morbid fancies of his hand. 
 Scarce a moment, however, had he for the gaze; the reptile 
 sprang, and fell, baffled and bruised by the involuntary blow of 
 its enemy. As it writhed on the grass, how its colors came 
 out; how graceful were the movements of its pain! And still 
 the boy gazed, till the eye was sated, and the cruelty returned. 
 A blow a second a third all the beauty is gone; shapeless, 
 and clotted with gore, that elegant head ; mangled and dissevered 
 the airy spires of that delicate shape, which had glanced in its 
 circling involutions, free and winding, as a poet's thoughts 
 through his verse. The boy trampled the quivering relics into 
 the sod, with a fierce animal joy of conquest, and turned once 
 more towards the hollow, for a last, almost hopeless, survey. 
 Lo, his object was found. In his search for the snake either 
 his staff, or his foot, had disturbed a layer of moss in the cor- 
 ner; the faint ray, ere he entered the hollow, gleamed upon 
 something white. He emerged from the cavity with a letter 
 in his hand ; he read the address, thrust it into his bosom, 
 and as stealthily, but more rapidly, than he had come, took 
 his way to his father. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 HOUSEHOLD TREASON. 
 
 THE Provencal took the letter from his son's hand, and 
 looked at him with an approbation half-complacent, half- 
 ironical. "Monfils!" said he, patting the boy's head gently; 
 "why should we not be friends? We want each other; we 
 have the strong world to fight against." 
 
 "Not if you are master of this place." 
 
 "Well answered; no; then we shall have the strong world 
 on our side, and shall have only rogues and the poor to make 
 war on." Then, -with a quiet gesture, he dismissed his son, 
 and gazed slowly on the letter. His pulse, which was usually 
 low, quickened, and his lips were tightly compressed ; he 
 shrank from the contents with a jealous pang; as a light quiv- 
 ers strugglingly in a noxious vault, love, descended into that
 
 LUCRET1A. 85 
 
 hideous breast, gleamed upon dreary horrors, and warred with 
 the noxious atmosphere ; but it shone still. To this dangerous 
 man, every art that gives power to the household traitor was 
 familiar ; he had no fear that the violated seal should betray 
 the fraud which gave the contents to the eye that, at length, 
 steadily fell upon the following lines : 
 
 "DEAREST, AND EVER DEAREST: 
 
 "Where art thou at this moment? What are thy thoughts? 
 Are they upon me? I write this at the dead of night. I pic- 
 ture you to myself as my hand glides over the paper. I think 
 I see you, as you look on these words, and envy them the gaze 
 of those dark eyes. Press your lips to the paper. Do you feel 
 the kiss that I leave there? Well, well! It will not be for long 
 now that we shall be divided. Oh, what joy, when I think 
 that I am about to see you. Two days more, at most three, 
 and we shall meet shall we not? I am going to see my sister. 
 I subjoin my address. Come, come, come ; I thirst to see you 
 once more. And I did well to say, 'Wait, and be patient' ; 
 we shall not wait long : before the year is out, I shall be free. 
 My uncle has had another and more deadly attack. I see its 
 trace in his face, in his step, in his whole form and bearing. 
 The only obstacle between us is fading away. Can I grieve 
 when I think it? Grieve when life with you spreads smiling 
 beyond the old man's grave? And why should age, that has 
 survived all passion, stand with its chilling frown, and the mis- 
 erable prejudices the world has not conquered, but strength- 
 ened into a creed why should age stand between youth and 
 youth? I feel your mild eyes rebuke me as I write. But 
 chide me not that on earth I see only youj And it will be 
 mine to give you wealth and rank! Mine to see the homage of 
 my own heart reflected from the crowd who bow not to the 
 statue, but the pedestal. Oh, how I shall enjoy your revenge 
 upon the proud ! For I have drawn no pastoral scenes in the 
 picture of the future. No; I see you leading senates, and 
 duping fools. I shall b by your side, your partner, step after 
 step, as you mount the height, for I am ambitious, you know, 
 William; and not less, because I love! Rather ten thousand 
 times more so. I would not have you born great and noble, 
 for what then could we look to? What use all my schemes, 
 and my plans, and aspirings? Fortune, accident, would have 
 taken from us the great zest of life, which is desire. 
 
 "When I see you, I shall tell you that I have some fears of 
 Olivier Dalibard: he has evidently some wily project in view.
 
 86 LUCRETIA. 
 
 He, who never interfered before with the blundering physician, 
 now thrusts him aside, affects to have saved the old man, at- 
 tends him always. Dares he think to win an influence, to turn 
 against me? Against us? Happily, when I shall come back, 
 my uncle will probably be restored to the false strength which 
 deceives him ; he will have less need of Dalibard, and then 
 then let the Frenchman beware ! I have already a plot to turn 
 his schemes to his own banishment. Come to Southampton,, 
 then, as soon as you can perhaps the day you receive this 
 on Wednesday, at farthest. Your last letter implies blame of 
 my policy with respect to Vernon. Again I say, it is necessary 
 to amuse my uncle to the last. Before Vernon can advance a 
 claim, there will be weeping at Laughton. I shall weep, too, 
 perhaps ; but there will be joy in those tears, as well as sorrow : 
 for then, when I can clasp thy hand I can murmur, 'It is mine 
 at last, and forever ! ' 
 
 "Adieu! No, not adieu to our meeting, my lover, my be- 
 loved! Thy LUCRETIA!" 
 
 An hour after Miss Clavering had departed on her visit, 
 Dalibard returned the letter to his son, the seal seemingly un- 
 broken, and bade him replace it in the hollow of the tree, but 
 sufficiently in sight to betray itself to the first that entered. 
 He then communicated the plan he had formed for its detec- 
 tion a plan which would prevent Lucretia ever suspecting 
 the agency of his son or himself; and this done, he joined 
 Sir Miles in the gallery. Hitherto, in addition to his other 
 apprehensions in revealing to the Baronet Lucretia' s clandestine 
 intimacy with Mainwaring, Dalibard had shrunk from the 
 thought that the disclosure would lose her the heritage which 
 had first tempted his avarice or ambition ; but now his jealous 
 and his vindictive passions were aroused, and his whole plan 
 of strategy was changed. He must crush Lucretia, or she would 
 crush him, as her threats declared. To ruin her in Sir Miles's 
 eyes, to expel her from his house, might not, after all, weaken 
 his own position, even with regard to power over herself. If 
 he remained firmly established at Laughton, he could affect 
 intercession, he could delay at least, any precipitate union with 
 Mainwaring, by practising on the ambition which he still saw 
 at work beneath her love ; he might become a necessary ally, 
 and then, why then his ironical smile glanced across his lips. 
 But beyond this his quick eye saw fair prospects to self-interest : 
 Lucretia banished ; the heritage not hers ; the will to be altered ; 
 Dalibard esteemed indispensable to the life of the Baronet i
 
 LUCRETIA. 87 
 
 Come, there was hope here, not for the heritage, indeed, but at 
 least for a munificent bequest. 
 
 At noon some visitors, bringing strangers from London, 
 whom Sir Miles had invited to see the house (which was one of 
 the lions of the neighborhood, though not professedly a show 
 place), were expected. Aware of this, Dalibard prayed the 
 Baronet to rest quiet till his company arrived, and then he said, 
 carelessly : 
 
 "It will be a healthful diversion to your spirits to accompany 
 them a little in the park ; you can go in your garden chair ; you 
 will have new companions to talk with by the way; and it is 
 always warm and sunny at the slope of the hill, towards the 
 bottom of the park." 
 
 Sir Miles assented cheerfully : the guests came ; strolled over 
 the house, admired the pictures and the armor, and the hall 
 and the staircase ; paid due respect to the substantial old-fash- 
 ioned luncheon ; and then, refreshed, and in great good humor, 
 acquiesced in Sir Miles's proposition to saunter through the 
 park. 
 
 The poor Baronet was more lively than usual. The younger 
 people clustered gayly round his chair (which was wheeled by 
 his valet), smiling at his jests, and charmed with his courteous 
 high breeding. A little in the rear walked Gabriel, paying 
 special attention to the prettiest and merriest girl of the com- 
 pany, who was a great favorite with Sir Miles, perhaps fc>r 
 those reasons. 
 
 "What a delightful old gentleman!" said the young lady. 
 "How I envy Miss Clavering such an uncle!" 
 
 "Ah, but you are a little out of favor to-day, I can tell you," 
 said Gabriel laughingly; "you were close by Sir Miles when 
 he went through the picture-gallery, and you never asked him 
 the history of the old knight in the buff doublet and blue sash." 
 
 "Dear me what of that?" 
 
 "Why, that was brave Colonel Guy St. John, the cavalier; 
 the pride and boast of Sir Miles: you know his weakness. He 
 looked so displeased when you said, 'What a droll looking 
 figure!' I was on thorns for you !" 
 
 "What a pity! I would not offend dear Sir Miles for the 
 world." 
 
 "Well, it's easy to make it up with him. Go, and tell him 
 that he must take you to see Guy's Oak, in the dell, that you 
 have heard so much about it ; and when you get him on his 
 hobby, it is hard if you can't make your peace." 
 
 "Oh, I'll certainly do it, Master Varney;" and the young
 
 88 LUCRET1A. 
 
 lady lost no time in obeying the hint. Gabriel had set other 
 tongues on the same cry, so that there was a general exclama- 
 tion, when the girl named the subject: "Oh, Guy's Oak, by 
 all means!" 
 
 Much pleased with the enthusiasm this memorial of his pet 
 ancestor produced, Sir Miles led the way to the dell, and, paus- 
 ing as he reached the verge, said: 
 
 "I fear I cannot do you the honors: it is too steep for my 
 chair to descend safely." 
 
 Gabriel whispered the fair companion whose side he still 
 kept to. 
 
 "Now, my dear Sir Miles," cried the girl, "I positively wont 
 stir without you; I am sure we could get down the chair 
 without a jolt. Look there, how nicely the ground slopes! 
 Jane, Lucy, my dears, let us take charge of Sir Miles. Now 
 then." 
 
 The gallant old gentleman would have marched to the breach 
 in such guidance : he kissed the fair hands that lay so tempt- 
 ingly on his chair, and then rising with some difficulty, said: 
 
 "No, my dears, you have made me so young again, that I 
 think I can walk down the steep with the best of you." 
 
 So, leaning partly on his valet, and by the help of the hands 
 extended to him, step after step, Sir Miles, with well-disguised 
 effort, reached the huge roots of the oak. 
 
 "The hollow then was much smaller," said he, "so he was 
 not so easily detected as a man would be now : the damned 
 crop-ears I beg pardon, my dears the rascally rebels, poked 
 their swords through the fissure, and two went, one through his 
 jerkin, one through his arm ; but he took care not to swear at 
 the liberty, and they went away, not suspecting him." 
 
 While thus speaking, the young paople were already playfully 
 struggling which should first enter the oak. Two got prece- 
 dence, and went in and out, one after the other. Gabriel 
 breathed hard: "The blind owlets!" thought he; "And I 
 put the letter where a mole would have seen it!" 
 
 "You know the spell when you enter an oak tree where the 
 fairies have been," he whispered, to the fair object of his notice. 
 "You must turn round three times, look carefully on the ground, 
 and you will see the face you love best. If I was but a little 
 older, how I should pray! " 
 
 "Nonsense!" said the girl, blushing, as she now slid through 
 the crowd, and went timidly in ; presently she uttered a little 
 exclamation. 
 
 The gallant Sir Miles stooped down to see what was the
 
 LUCRETIA. 89 
 
 matter, and offering his hand as she came out, was startled to 
 see her holding a letter. 
 
 "Only think what I have found!" said the girl. "What a 
 strange place for a post-office ! Bless me ! It is directed to 
 Mr. Mainwaring!" 
 
 "Mr. Mainwaring!" cried three or four voices; but the 
 Baronet's was mute. His eye recognized Lucretia's hand ; his 
 tongue clove to the roof of his mouth ; the blood surged, like a 
 sea, in his temples ; his face became purple. Suddenly Gabriel, 
 peeping over the girl's shoulder, snatched away the letter. 
 
 "It is my letter it is mine! What a shame in Mainwaring 
 not to have come for it as he promised ! " 
 
 Sir Miles looked round, and breathed more freely. 
 
 "Yours, Master Varney !" said the young lady, astonished. 
 "What can make your letters to Mr. Mainwaring such a 
 secret?" 
 
 "Oh! You'll laugh at me; but but I wrote a poem on 
 Guy's Oak, and Mr. Mainwaring promised to get it into the 
 County Paper for me ; and as he was to pass close by the park 
 
 pales, through the wood yonder, on his way to D last 
 
 Saturday, we agreed that I should leave it here ; but he has 
 forgotten his promise, I see. ' ' 
 
 Sir Miles grasped the boy's arm with a convulsive pressure 
 of gratitude. There was a general cry for Gabriel to read his 
 poem on the spot ; but the boy looked sheepish, and hung 
 down his head, and seemed rather more disposed to cry than 
 to recite. Sir Miles, with an effort at simulation that all his 
 long practice of the world never could have nerved him to, un- 
 excited by a motive less strong than the honor of his blood and 
 house, came to the relief of the young wit that had just come 
 to his own. 
 
 "Nay," he said, almost calmly, "I know our young poet is 
 too shy to oblige you. I will take charge of your verses, Mas- 
 ter Gabriel"; and, with a grave air of command, he took the 
 letter from the boy, and placed it in his pocket. 
 
 The return to the house was less gay than the visit to the 
 oak. The Baronet himself made a feverish effort to appear 
 blithe and debonnair as before ; but it was not successful. For- 
 tunately the carriages were all at the door as they reached the 
 house, and, luncheon being over, nothing delayed the parting 
 compliments of the guests. As the last carriage drove away, 
 Sir Miles beckoned to Gabriel, and bade him follow him into 
 his room. 
 
 When there, he dismissed his valet, and said:
 
 90 LUCRETIA. 
 
 "You know, then, who wrote this letter. Have you been 
 in the secret of the correspondence? Speak the truth, my dear 
 boy; it shall cost you nothing." 
 
 'Oh, Sir Miles!" cried Gabriel earnestly, "I know nothing 
 whatever beyond this that I saw the hand of my dear, kind 
 Miss Lucretia; that I felt, I hardly knew why, that both you 
 and she would not have those people discover it, which they 
 would if the letter had been circulated from one to the other, 
 for some one would have known the hand as well as myself, 
 and therefore I spoke, without thinking, the first thing that 
 came into my head." 
 
 "You you have obliged me and my niece, sir," said the 
 Baronet tremulously ; and then with a forced and sickly smile, 
 he added: "Some foolish vagary of Lucretia's, I suppose; I 
 must scold her for it. Say nothing about it, however, to any 
 one." 
 
 "Oh no, sir!" 
 
 "Good-by, my dear Gabriel!" 
 
 "And that boy saved the honor of my niece's name my 
 mother's grandchild! Oh, God, this is bitter! In my old 
 age, too!" 
 
 He bowed his head over his hands, and tears forced them- 
 selves through his fingers. He was long before he had courage 
 to read the letter, though he little foreboded all the shock that 
 it would give him. It was the first lettter, not destined to 
 himself, of which he had ever broken the seal. Even that rec- 
 ollection made the honorable old man pause; but his duty was 
 plain and evident, as head of the house, and guardian to his 
 niece. Thrice he wiped his spectacles; still they were dim, 
 still the tears would come. He rose tremblingly, walked to the 
 window, and saw the stately deer grouped in the distance, saw 
 the church spire, th*t rose above the burial-vault of his ances- 
 tors, and his heart sunk deeper and deeper, as he muttered : 
 "Vain pride! pride!" Then he crept to the door, and locked 
 it, and at last, seating himself firmly, as a wounded man to some 
 terrible operation, he read the letter. 
 
 Heaven support thee, old man .' Thou hast to pass through 
 the bitterest trial which honor and affection can undergo 
 household treason ! When the wife lifts high the blushless front, 
 and brazens out her guilt; when the child, with loud voice, 
 throws off all control, and makes boast of disobedience, man re- 
 volts at the audacity ; his spirit arms against his wrong its face, 
 at least, is bare; the blow, if sacrilegious, is direct. But when 
 mild v.'ords and soft kisses conceal the worst foe Fate can arm ;
 
 LUCRETIA. 91 
 
 ivhen amidst the confidence of the heart starts up the form of 
 Perfidy; when out from the reptile swells the fiend in its terror; 
 when the breast on which man leaned for comfort has taken 
 counsel to deceive him; when he learns that, day after day, 
 the life entwined with his own has been a lie and a stage-mime, 
 he feels not the softness of grief, nor the absorption of rage ; it 
 is mightier than grief, and more withering than rage ; it is a 
 horror that appals. The heart does not bleed ; the tears do 
 not flow, as in woes to which humanity is commonly subjected; 
 it is as if something that violates the course of nature had taken 
 place ; something monstrous and out of all thought and fore- 
 warning; for the domestic traitor is a being apart from the orbit 
 of a criminals ; the felon has no fear of his innocent children ; 
 with a price on his head, he lays it in safety on the bosom 
 of his wife. In his home, the ablest man, the most subtle and 
 suspecting, can be as much a dupe as the simplest. Were it 
 not so as the rule, and the exceptions most rare, this world 
 were the riot of a hell ! 
 
 And therefore it is that to the household perfidy, in all lands, 
 in all ages, God's curse seems to cleave, and to God's curse 
 man abandons it: he does not honor it by hate, still less will 
 he lighten and share the guilt by descending to revenge. He 
 turns aside with a sickness and loathing, and leaves Nature to 
 purify from the earth the ghastly phenomenon she abhors. 
 
 Old man, that she wilfully deceived thee; that she abused 
 thy belief, and denied to thy question, and profaned maiden- 
 hood to stealth all this might have galled thee, but to these 
 wrongs old men are subjected ; they give mirth to our farces ; 
 maid and lover are privileged impostors. But to have counted 
 the sands in thine hour-glass; to have sate by thy side, marvel- 
 ling when the worms should have thee ; and looked smiling on 
 thy face for the signs of the death-writ die quick, old man, 
 the executioner hungers for the fee! 
 
 There were no tears in those eyes when they came to the 
 close ; the letter fell noiselessly to the floor, and the head sank 
 on the breast, and the hands drooped upon the poor crippled 
 limbs, whose crawl in the sunshine hard youth had grudged. 
 He felt humbled, stunned, crushed ; the pride was clean gone 
 from him ; the cruel words struck home worse than a cipher, 
 did he then but cumber the earth? At that moment, old Ponto, 
 the setter, shook himself, looked up, and laid his head in his mas- 
 ter's lap ; and Dash, jealous, rose also, and sprang, not actively 
 for Dash was old too, upon his knees, and licked the numbed 
 drooping hands. Now, people praise the fidelity of dogs till
 
 92 LUCRKTIA. 
 
 the theme is worn out, but nobody knows what a dog is, unless 
 he has been deceived by men; then, that honest face; then, 
 that sincere caress ; then, that coaxing whine that never lied ! 
 Well ihen, what then? A dog is long-lived if he live to ten 
 years: small career this to truth and friendship! Now, when 
 Sir Miles felt that he was not deserted, and his look met those 
 four fond eyes, fixed with that strange wistfulness which, in 
 our hours of trouble, the eyes of a dog sympathizingly assume, 
 an odd thought for a sensible man passed into him, showing, 
 more than pages of sombre elegy, how deep was the sudden 
 misanthropy that blackened the world around. "When I am 
 dead," ran that thought, "is there one human being whom I 
 can trust to take charge of the old man's dogs?" 
 So let the scene close! 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE WILL. 
 
 THE next day, or rather the next evening, Sir Miles St. John 
 was seated before his unshared chicken ; seated alone, and 
 vaguely surprised at himself, in a large, comfortable room in his 
 old hotel, Hanover Square; yes, he had escaped. Hast thou, 
 O Reader, tasted the luxury of escape from a home where the 
 charm is broken, where Distrust looks askant from the Lares ! 
 In vain had Dalibard remonstrated, conjured up dangers, and 
 asked at least to accompany him. Excepting his dogs and his 
 old valet, who was too like a dog in his fond fidelity to rank 
 amongst bipeds, Sir Miles did not wish to have about him a 
 single face familiar at Laughto" Dalibard especially. Lucre- 
 tia's letter had hinted at plans and designs in Dalibard. It 
 might be unjust, it might be ungrateful, but he grew sick at 
 the thought that he was the centre stone of stratagems and plots. 
 The smooth face of the Provencal took a wily expression in his 
 eyes; nay, he thought his very footmen watched his steps as if 
 to count how long before they followed his bier! So, break- 
 ing from all roughly, with a shake of his head, and a laconic as- 
 sertion of business in London, he got into his carriage his 
 own old bachelor's lumbering travelling carriage and bade 
 the post-boys drive fast, fast. Then, when he felt alone quite 
 alone and the gates of the lodge swung behind him, he rubbed 
 his hands with a schoolboy's glee, and chuckled loud, as if he 
 enjoyed not only the sense but the fun of his safety; as if he 
 had done something prodigiously cunning and clever.
 
 LUCRETIA. 93 
 
 So when he saw himself snug in his' old well-remembered 
 hotel, in the same room as of yore, when returned, brisk and 
 gay, from the breezes of Weymouth, or the brouillards of Paris, 
 he thought he shook hands again with his youth. Age and 
 lameness, apoplexy and treason, all were forgotten for the mo- 
 ment. And when, as the excitement died, those grim spectres 
 came back again to his thoughts, they found their victim braced 
 and prepared, standing erect on that hearth, for whose hospitality 
 he paid his guinea a day, his front proud and defying. He 
 felt yet that he had fortune and power, that a movement of his 
 hand could raise and strike down ; that, at the verge of the 
 tomb, he was armed, to punish or reward, with the balance and 
 the sword. Tripped in the smug waiter, and announced "Mr. 
 Parchmount." 
 
 "Set a chair, and show him in." 
 
 The lawyer entered. 
 
 "My dear Sir Miles, this is indeed a surprise. What has 
 brought you to town?" 
 
 "The common whim of the old, sir. I would alter my will." 
 
 Three days did lawyer and client devote to the task, for Sir 
 Miles was minute, and Mr. Parchmount was precise; and little 
 difficulties arose, and changes in the first outline were made; 
 and Sir Miles, from the very depth of his disgust, desired not 
 to act only from passion. In that last deed of his life, the old 
 man was sublime. He sought to rise out of the mortal, fix his 
 eyes on the Great Judge, weigh circumstances and excuses, 
 and keep justice even and serene. 
 
 Meanwhile, unconscious of the train laid afar, Lucretia re- 
 posed on the mine ; reposed, indeed, is not the word, for she 
 was agitated and restless, that Mainwaring had not obeyed her 
 summons. She wrote to him again from Southampton the 
 third day of her arrival ; but before his answer came, she re- 
 ceived this short epistle from London : 
 
 "Mr. Parchmount presents his compliments to Miss Claver- 
 ing, and, by desire of Sir Miles St. John, requests her not to 
 return to Laughton. Miss Clavering will hear further in a few 
 days, when Sir Miles has concluded the business that has 
 brought him to London." 
 
 This letter, if it excited much curiosity, did not produce 
 alarm. It was natural that Sir Miles should be busy in wind- 
 ing up his affairs; his journey to London for that purpose was 
 no ill omen to her prospects, and her thoughts flew back to the 
 one subject that tyrannized over them. Main waring' s reply, 
 which came two days afterwards, disquieted her much more.
 
 94 LUCRETIA. 
 
 He had not found the letter she had left for him in the tree. 
 He was full of apprehensions; he condemned the imprudence 
 of calling on her at Mr. Fielden's; he begged her to renounce 
 the idea of such a risk. He would return again to Guy's Oak, 
 and search more narrowly had she changed the spot where 
 the former letters were placed? Yet now, not even the non- 
 receipt of her letter, which she ascribed to the care with which 
 she had concealed it amidst the dry leaves and moss, disturbed 
 her so much as the evident constraint with which Mainwaring 
 wrote; the cautious and lukewarm remonstrance which ans- 
 wered her passionate appeal. It may be that her very doubts, 
 at times, of Mainwaring' s affection had increased the ardor of 
 her own attachment ; for in some natures, the excitement of 
 fear deepens love more than the calmness of trust. Now with 
 the doubt for the first time flashed the resentment, and her 
 answer to Mainwaring was vehement and imperious. But the 
 next day came a messenger express from London, with a letter 
 from Mr. Parchmount, that arrested for the moment even the 
 fierce current of love. 
 
 When the task had been completed ; the will signed, sealed, 
 and delivered, the old man had felt a load lifted from his 
 heart. Three or four of his old friends, ban vivants like himself, 
 had seen his arrival duly proclaimed in the newspapers, and 
 had hastened to welcome him. Warmed by the genial sight of 
 faces associated with the frank joys of his youth, Sir Miles, if 
 he did not forget the prudent counsels of Dalibard, conceived 
 a proud bitterness of joy in despising them. Why take such 
 care of the worn-out carcase? His will was made. What was 
 left to life so peculiarly attractive? He invited his friends to a 
 feast worthy of old ; seasoned revellers were they, with a free 
 gout for a vent to all indulgence. So they came ; and they 
 drank, and they laughed, and they talked back their young 
 days; they saw not the nervous irritation, the strain on the 
 spirits, the heated membrane of the brain, which made Sir Miles 
 the most jovial of all. It was a night of nights ; the old fellows 
 were lifted back into their chariots or sedans. Sir Miles alone 
 seemed as steady and sober as if he had supped with Diogenes. 
 His servant, whose respectful admonitions had been awed into 
 silence, lent him his arm to bed, but Sir Miles scarcely touched 
 it. The next morning, when the servant (who slept in the 
 same room) awoke, to his surprise the glare of a candle 
 streamed on his eyes; he rubbed them: could he see right? 
 Sir Miles was seated at the table; he must have got up, and 
 lighted a candle to write noiselessly, indeed. The servant
 
 LUCRETIA. 95 
 
 looked and looked, and the stillness of Sir Miles awed him; he 
 was seated on an arm-chair, leaning back. As awe succeeded 
 to suspicion, he sprang up, approached his master, took his 
 hand ; it was cold, and fell heavily from his clasp Sir Miles 
 must have been dead for hours. 
 
 The pen lay on the ground, where it had dropped from the 
 hand ; the letter on the table was scarcely commenced ; the 
 words ran thus: 
 
 "LUCRETIA: 
 
 "You will return no more to my house. You are free as if I 
 were dead ; but I shall be just. Would that I had been so to 
 your mother to your sister! But I am old now, as you say, 
 and " 
 
 To none who could have seen into that poor proud heart, at 
 the moment the hand paused forever, what remained unwritten 
 would have been clear. There was, first, the sharp struggle to 
 conquer loathing repugnance, and address at all the false and 
 degraded one; then came the sharp sting of ingratitude ; then 
 the idea of the life grudged, and the grave desired ; then the 
 stout victory over scorn ; the resolution to be just ; then the 
 reproach of the conscience, that for so far less an offence, the 
 sister had been thrown aside the comfort, perhaps, found in 
 her gentle and neglected child, obstinately repelled then the 
 conviction of all earthly vanity and nothingness ; the look on 
 into life, with the chilling sentiment that affection was gone ; 
 that he could never trust again ; that he was too old to open 
 his arms to new ties; and then, before felt singly, all these 
 thoughts united, and snapped the chord! 
 
 In announcing his mournful intelligence, with more feeling 
 than might have been expected from a lawyer (but even his 
 lawyer loved Sir Miles) Mr. Parchmount observed, "that as the 
 deceased lay at an hotel, and as Miss Clavering's presence 
 would not be needed in the performance of the last rites, she 
 would probably forbear the journey to town. Nevertheless, 
 it was Sir Miles's wish that the will should be opened as soon 
 as possible after his death, and it would doubtless, contain in- 
 structions as to- his funeral, it would be well that Miss Claver- 
 ing and her sister should immediately depute some one to 
 attend the reading of the testament, on their behalf. Per- 
 haps Mr. Fielden would kindly undertake that melancholy 
 office." 
 
 To do justice to Lucretia, it must be said, that her first 
 emotions, on the receipt of this letter, were tho. f e of a poignant
 
 96 LUCRETIA. 
 
 and remorseful grief, for which she was unprepared. But how 
 different it is to count on what shall follow death, and to know 
 that death has come! Susan's sobbing sympathy availed not, 
 nor Mr. Fielden's pious and careful exhortations ; her own sin- 
 ful thoughts and hopes came back to her, haunting and stern as 
 furies. She insisted at first upon going to London ; gazing 
 once more on the clay : nay, the carriage was at the door, for 
 all yielded to her vehemence ; but then her heart misgave her : 
 she did not dare to face the dead ! Conscience waved her 
 back from the solemn offices of nature ; she hid her face with 
 her hands, shrunk again into her room ; and Mr. Fielden, as- 
 suming unbidden the responsibility, went alone. 
 
 Only Vernon (summoned from Brighton), the good clergy- 
 man, and the lawyer, to whom, as sole executor, the will was 
 addressed, and in whose custody it had been left, were present 
 when the seal of the testament was broken. The will was long, 
 as is common when the dust that it disposes of covers some 
 fourteen or fifteen thousand acres. But out of the mass of 
 technicalities and repetitions, these points of interest rose sali- 
 ent: To Charles Vernon, of Vernon Grange, Esq., and his 
 heirs by him lawfully begotten, were left all the lands and 
 woods and manors that covered that space in the Hampshire 
 map, known by the name of the "Laugh ton property," on con- 
 dition that he and his heirs assumed the name and arms of St. 
 John; and on the failure of Mr. Vernon's issue, the estate 
 passed, first (with the same conditions) to the issue of Susan 
 Mivers ; next, to that of Lucretia Clavering. There the entail 
 ceased, and the contingency fell to the rival ingenuity of law- 
 yers in hunting out, amongst the remote and forgotten de- 
 scendants of some ancient St. John, the heir-at-law. To Lu- 
 cretia Clavering, without a word of endearment, was bequeathed 
 10,000, the usual portion which the house of St. John had 
 allotted to its daughters ; to Susan Mivers the same sum, but 
 with the addition of these words, withheld from her sister: 
 " and my blessing! " To Olivier Dalibard, an annuity of 200 
 a year; to Honore Gabriel Varney, 3000; to the Rev. 
 Matthew Fielden, 4000; and the same sum to John Walter 
 Ardworth. To his favorite servant, Henry Jones, an ample 
 provision, and the charge of his dogs Dash and Ponto, with an 
 allowance therefor, to be paid weekly, and cease at their 
 deaths. Poor old man ; he made it the interest of their guard- 
 ian not to grudge their lees of life ! To his other attendants, 
 suitable and munificent bequests, proportioned to the length of 
 their services. For his body, he desired it buried in the vault
 
 LUCRET1A. 97 
 
 of his ancestors without pomp, but without a pretence to a 
 humility which he had not manifested in life ; and he requested 
 that a small miniature in his writing-desk should be placed in 
 his coffin. That last injunction was more than a sentiment, it 
 bespoke the moral conviction of the happiness the original 
 might have conferred on his life ; of that happiness his pride 
 had deprived him; nor did he repent, for he had deemed 
 pride a duty ; but the mute likeness, buried in his grave that 
 told the might of the sacrifice he had made! Death removes 
 all distinctions, and in the coffin the Lord of Laughton might 
 choose his partner. 
 
 When the will had been read, Mr. Parchmount produced 
 two letters, one addressed in the hand of the deceased to Mr. 
 Vernon, the other in the lawyer's own hand to Miss Clavering. 
 The last enclosed the fragment found on Sir Miles's table, and 
 her own letter to Mainwaring, redirected to her in Sir Miles's 
 boldest and stateliest autograph. He had, no doubt, meant to 
 return it in the letter left uncompleted. 
 
 The letter to Vernon contained a copy of Lucretia's fatal 
 epistle, and the following lines to Vernon himself: 
 
 "Mv DEAR CHARLES: 
 
 "With much deliberation, and with natural reluctance to 
 reveal to you my niece's shame, I feel it my duty to transmit 
 to you the accompanying enclosure, copied from the original 
 with my own hand, which the task sullied. I do so, first, be- 
 cause otherwise you might, as I should have done in your 
 place, feel bound in honor to persist in the offer of your hand 
 feel bound the more, because Miss Clavering is not my heiress ; 
 secondly, because had her attachment been stronger than her 
 interest, and she had refused your offer, you might still have 
 deemed her hardly and capriciously dealt with by me, and not 
 only sought to augment her portion, but have profaned the 
 house of my ancestors by receiving her there, as an honored 
 and welcome relative and guest. Now, Charles Vernon, I 
 believe, to the utmost of my poor judgment, I have done what 
 is right and just. I have taken into consideration that this 
 young person has been brought up as a daughter of my house, 
 and what the daughters of my house have received, I bequeath 
 her ; I put aside, as far as I can, all resentment of mere family 
 pride ; I show that I do so, when I repair my harshness to my 
 poor sister, and leave both her children the same provision. 
 And if you exceed what I have done for Lucretia, unless, on 
 more dispassionate consideration than I can give, you consci-
 
 98 LUCRETIA. 
 
 entiously think me wrong, you insult my memory and impugn 
 my justice; be it in this as your conscience dictates; but I 
 entreat, I adjure, I command at least, that you never knowingly 
 admit by a hearth, hitherto sacred to unblemished truth and 
 honor, a person who has desecrated it with treason. As gen- 
 tleman to gentleman, I impose on you this solemn injunction. 
 I could have wished to leave that young woman's children 
 barred from the entail ; but our old tree has so few branches ! 
 You are unwedded ; Susan, too. I must take my chance that 
 Miss Clavering's children, if ever they inherit, do not imitate 
 the mother. I conclude she will wed that Mainwaring; her 
 children will have a low-born father. Well, her race, at least, 
 is pure. Clavering and St. John are names to guarantee faith 
 and honor ; yet you see what she is ! Charles Vernon, if her 
 issue inherit the soul of gentlemen, it must come, after all, not 
 from the well-born mother! I have lived to say this; I, who 
 but perhaps if we had looked more closely into the pedigree of 
 those Claverings! 
 
 "Marry yourself; marry soon, Charles Vernon, my dear 
 kinsman ; keep the old house in the old line, and true to its 
 old fame. Be kind and good to my poor ; don't strain on the 
 tenants. By the way, Farmer Strongbow owes three years' 
 rent; I forgive him; pension him off; he can do no good to 
 the land, but he was born on it, and must not fall on the par- 
 ish. But to be kind and good to the poor, not to strain on the 
 tenants, you must learn not to waste, my dear Charles. A 
 needy man can never be generous without being unjust. How 
 give, if you are in debt? You will think of this now now 
 while your good heart is soft ; while your feelings are moved. 
 Charley Vernon, I think you will shed a tear when you see my 
 arm-chair still and empty. And I would have left you the 
 care of my dogs, but you are thoughtless, and will go much to 
 London, and they are used to the country now. Old Jones 
 will have a cottage in the village; he has promised to live 
 there; drop in now and then, and see poor Ponto and Dash. 
 It is late, and old friends come to dine here. So, if anything 
 happens to me, and we don't meet again, good-bye, and God 
 bless you. 
 
 "Your affectionate kinsman, 
 
 "MILES ST. JOHN."
 
 LUCRETIA. 99 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE ENGAGEMENT. 
 
 IT is somewhat less than three months after the death of Sir 
 Miles St. John; November reigns in London. And "reigns" 
 seems scarcely a metaphysical expression as applied to the sul- 
 len, absolute sway, which that dreary month (first in the 
 dynasty of Winter) spreads over the passive, dejected city. 
 Elsewhere in England November is no such gloomy, grim fel- 
 low as he is described. Over the brown glebes and changed 
 woods in the country his still face looks contemplative and 
 mild, and he has soft smiles, too, at times, lighting up his taxed 
 vassals the groves, gleaming where the leaves still cling to the 
 boughs, and reflected in dimples from the waves which still 
 glide free from his chains. But as a conqueror, who makes his 
 home in the capital, weighs down with hard policy the mutin- 
 ous citizens, long ere his iron influence is felt in the province, 
 so the first tyrant of Winter has only rigor and frowns for Lon- 
 don. The very aspect of the wayfarers has the look of men 
 newly enslaved; cloaked and muffled, they steal to and fro 
 through the dismal fogs. Even the children creep timidly 
 through the streets; the carriages go cautious and hearse-like 
 along; daylight is dim and obscure; the town is not filled, nor 
 the brisk mirth of Christmas commenced ; the unsocial shad- 
 ows flit amidst the mist, like men on the eve of a fatal conspir- 
 acy. Each other month in London has its charms for the 
 experienced. Even from August to October, when The Sea- 
 son lies dormant, and Fashion forbids her sons to be seen 
 within hearing of Bow, the true lover of London finds pleasure 
 still at hand, if he search for her duly the early walks through 
 the parks and green Kensington Gardens, which now change 
 their character of resort, and seem rural and countrylike, but 
 yet with more life than the country ; for on the benches be- 
 neath the trees, and along the sward and up the malls, are liv- 
 ing beings enough to interest the eye and divert the thoughts, if 
 you are a guesser into character, and amateur of the human 
 face; fresh nurserymaids and playful children, and the old 
 shabby-genteel buttoned-up officer, musing on half-pay, as he 
 sits alone in some alcove of Kenna, or leans pensive over the rail 
 of the vacant Ring ; and early tradesman, or clerk from the 
 suburban lodging, trudging brisk to his business, for business 
 never ceases in London; then at noon, what delight to escape 
 to the banks at Putney or Richmond, the row up the river;
 
 100 LUCRETIA. 
 
 the fishing-punt; the ease at your inn till dark! Or, if this 
 tempt not, still Autumn shines clear and calm over the roofs, 
 where the smoke has a holiday ; and how clean gleam the vis- 
 tas through the tranquillized thoroughfares, and as you saunter 
 along, you have all London to yourself, Andrew Selkirk, but 
 with the mart of the world for your desert! And when Octo- 
 ber comes on, it has one characteristic of spring, life busily 
 returns to the city; you see the shops bustling up, trade flow- 
 ing back; as birds scent the April, so the children of com- 
 merce plume their wings, and prepare for the first slack returns 
 of the season. But November! Strange the taste, stout the 
 lungs, grief-defying the heart of the visitor who finds charms 
 and joy in a London November. 
 
 In a small lodging house in Bulstrode Street, Manchester 
 Square, grouped a family in mourning, who had had the temer- 
 ity to come to town in November, for the purpose, no doubt, 
 of raising their spirits. In the dull, small drawing-room of the 
 dull, small house, we introduce to you, first, a middle-aged 
 gentleman, whose dress showed, what dress now fails to show, 
 his profession ; nobody could mistake the cut of the cloth, and 
 the shape of the hat, for he had just come in from a walk, and 
 not from discourtesy, but abstraction, the broad brim still shad- 
 owed his pleasant, placid face. Parson spoke out in him, from 
 beaver to buckle. By the coal fire, where, through volumes of 
 smoke, fussed and flickered a pretension to flame, sate a mid- 
 dle-aged lady, whom, without being a conjuror, you would pro- 
 nounce at once to be wife to the parson: and sundry children 
 sate on stools all about her, with one book between them, and a 
 low whispered murmur from their two or three pursed-up lips, 
 announcing that that book was superfluous. By the last of 
 three dim-looking windows, made dimmer by brown moreen 
 draperies, edged genteelly with black cotton velvet, stood a girl 
 of very soft and pensive expression of features ; pretty, un- 
 questionably excessively pretty but there was something so 
 delicate and elegant about her; the bend of her head, the 
 shape of her slight figure, the little fair hands crossed one on 
 each other, as the face mournfully and listlessly turned to the 
 window, that 'pretty' would have seemed a word of praise, too 
 often proffered to milliner and serving maid; nevertheless, 
 it was perhaps the right one; handsome would have implied 
 something statelier and more commanding; beautiful, greater 
 regularity of feature, of richness of coloring. The parson, 
 who, since his entrance, had been walking up and down the 
 small room, with his hands behind him, glancing now and then
 
 LUCRETIA. JOI 
 
 at the young lady, but not speaking, at length paused from 
 that monotonous exercise by the chair of his wife, and touched 
 her shoulder. She stopped from her work, which, more en- 
 grossing than elegant, was nothing less than what is technically 
 called "the taking in" of a certain blue jacket, which was about 
 to pass from Matthew, the eldest born, to David, the second, 
 and looked up at her husband affectionately; her husband, 
 however, spoke not ; he only made a sign, partly with his eyt- 
 brow, partly with a jerk of his thumb over his right shoulder, 
 in the direction of the young lady we have described, and 
 then completed the pantomime with a melancholy shake of the 
 head. The wife turned round, and looked hard, the scissors 
 horizontally raised in one hand, while the other reposed on the 
 cuff of the jacket. At this moment a low knock was heard at 
 the street door. The worthy pair saw the .girl shrink back, 
 with a kind of tremulous movement ; presently there came the 
 sound of a footstep below, the creak of a hinge on the ground 
 floor, and again, all was silent. 
 
 "That is Mr. Mainwaring's knock," said one of the 
 children. 
 
 The girl left the room abruptly, .and, light as was her step, 
 they heard her steal up the stairs. 
 
 "My dears," said the parson, "it wants an hour yet to dark; 
 you may go and walk in the square." 
 
 "'Tis so dull in that ugly square, and they wont let us into 
 the green. I am sure we'd rather stay here," said one of the 
 children, as spokesman for the rest, and they all nestled closer 
 round the hearth. 
 
 "But, my dears," said the parson simply, "I want to talk 
 alone with your mother. However, if you like best to go and 
 keep quiet in your own room, you may do so." 
 
 "Or we can go into Susan's?" 
 
 "No," said the parson; "you must not disturb Susan." 
 
 "She never used to care about being disturbed. I wonder 
 what's come to her?" 
 
 The parson made no rejoinder to this half-petulant question. 
 The children consulted together a moment, and resolved that 
 the square, though so dull, was less dull than their own little 
 attic. That being decided, it was the mother's turn to address 
 them. And though Mr. Fielden was as anxious and fond as most 
 fathers, he grew a little impatient before comforters, kerchiefs, 
 and muffatees were arranged, and minute exordiums as to the 
 danger of crossing the street, and the risk of patting strange 
 dogs, etc., etc., were half-way concluded; with a shrug and a
 
 102 LUCRETIA. 
 
 smile, he at length fairly pushed out the children, shut the 
 door, and drew his chair close to his wife's. 
 
 "My dear," he began, at once, "I am extremely uneasy 
 about that poor girl." 
 
 "What! Miss Clavering? Indeed, she eats nothing at all, 
 and sits so moping alone ; but she sees Mr. Mainwaring every 
 day. What can we do? She is so proud, I'm afraid of her." 
 
 "My dear, I was not thinking of Miss Clavering, though I 
 did not interrupt you, for it is very true that she is much to be 
 pitied." 
 
 "And I am sure it was for her sake alone that you agreed to 
 Susan's request, and got Blackman to do duty for you at the 
 vicarage, while we all came up here, in hopes London town 
 would divert her. We left all at sixes and sevens; and I 
 should not at all wonder if John made away with the apples." 
 
 "But, I say," resumed the parson, without heeding that 
 mournful foreboding, "I say, I was then only thinking of 
 Susan. You see how pale and sad she is grown." 
 
 "Why, she is so very soft-hearted, and she must feel for her 
 sister." 
 
 "But her sister, though she thinks much, and keeps aloof 
 from us, is not sad herself; only reserved. On the contrary, I 
 believe she has now got over even poor Sir Miles's death." 
 
 "And the loss of the great property!" 
 
 "Fie, Mary!" said Mr. Fielden, almost austerely 
 
 Mary looked down, rebuked, for she was not one of the 
 high-spirited wives who despise their husbands for goodness. 
 
 "I beg pardon, my dear," she said meekly; "it was very 
 wrong in me; but I cannot do what I will I cannot like 
 that Miss Clavering." 
 
 "The more need to judge her with charity. And if what I 
 fear is the case, I'm sure we can't feel too much compassion 
 for the poor blinded young lady." 
 
 "Bless my heart, Mr Fielden, what is it you mean?" 
 
 The parson looked round to be sure the door was quite 
 closed, and replied in a whisper: "I mean, that I fear William 
 Mainwaring loves not Lucretia, but Susan." 
 
 The scissors fell from the hand of Mrs. Fielden ; and though 
 one point stuck in the ground, and the other point threatened 
 war upon flounces and toes, strange to say, she did not even 
 stoop to remove the chevaux de frise. 
 
 "Why, then, he's a most false-hearted young man!" 
 
 "To blame, certainly," said Fielden. "I don't say to the con- 
 trary, though I like the young man, and am sure that he is mor* 1
 
 LUCRETIA. 103 
 
 timid than false. I may now tell you for I want your advice, 
 Mary what I kept secret before. When Mainwaring visited 
 us, many months ago, at Southampton, he confessed to me 
 that he felt warmly for Susan, and asked if I thought Sir Miles 
 would consent. I knew too well how proud the poor old gen- 
 tleman was to give him any such hopes. So he left very hon- 
 orably. You remember, after he went, that Susan's spirits 
 were low you remarked it." 
 
 "Yes, indeed, I remember. But when the first shock of Sir 
 Miles's death was over, she got back her sweet color, and 
 looked cheerful enough." 
 
 "Because, perhaps, then she felt that she had a fortune to 
 bestow on Mr. Mainwaring, and thought all obstacle was over." 
 
 "Why, how clever you are! How did you get at her 
 thoughts?" 
 
 "My own folly my own rash folly," almost groaned Mr. 
 Fielden. "For, not guessing that Mr. Mainwaring could have 
 got engaged meanwhile to Lucretia, and suspecting how it was 
 with Susan's poor little heart, I let out, in a jest Heaven for- 
 give me! what William had said; and the dear child blushed, 
 and kissed me, and why, a day or two after, when it was 
 fixed that we should come up to London, Lucretia informed 
 me, with her freezing politeness, that she was to marry Main- 
 waring herself, as soon as her first mourning was over." 
 
 "Poor, dear dear Susan!" 
 
 "Susan behaved like an angel; and when I broached it to 
 her, I thought she was calm ; and I am sure she prayed with 
 her whole heart that both might be happy." 
 
 "I'm sure she did. What is to be done? I understand it 
 all now. Dear me, dear me! a sad piece of work, indeed." 
 And Mrs. Fielden abstractedly picked up the scissors. 
 
 "It was not till our coming to town, and Mr. Mainwaring's 
 visits to Lucretia, that her strength gave way." 
 
 "A hard sight to bear: I never could have borne it, my love. 
 If I had seen you paying court to another, I should have I 
 don't know what I should have done! But what an artful 
 wretch this young Mainwaring must be." 
 
 "Not very artful; for you see that he looks even sadder than 
 Susan. He got entangled somehow, to be sure. Perhaps he 
 had given up Susan in despair; and Miss Clavering, if 
 haughty, is no doubt a very superior young lady ; and, I dare 
 say, it is only now in seeing them both together, and compar- 
 ing the two, that he feels what a treasure he has lost. Well, 
 what do you advise, Mary? Mainwaring, no doubt, is bound
 
 104 LUCRETIA. 
 
 in honor to Miss Clavering ; but she will be sure to discover, 
 sooner or later, the state of his feelings, and then I tremble for 
 both. I'm sure she will never be happy, while he will be 
 wretched ; and Susan I dare not think upon Susan she has 
 a cough that goes to my heart." 
 
 "So she has; that cough you don't know the money I 
 spend on black-currant jelly! What's my advice? Why, I'd 
 speak to Miss Clavering at once, if I dared. I'm sure love 
 never will break her- heart; and she's so proud, she'd throw him 
 off without a sigh, if she knew how things stood." 
 
 "I believe you are right," said Mr. Fielden; "for truth is 
 the best policy after all. Still, it's scarce my business to med- 
 dle ; and if it were not for Susan well, well, I must think of 
 it, and pray Heaven to direct me." 
 
 This conference suffices to explain to the reader the stage to 
 which the history of Lucretia had arrived. Willingly we pass 
 over what it were scarcely possible to describe her first shock 
 at the fall from the expectations of her life ; fortune, rank, and, 
 what she valued more than either, power, crushed at a 
 blow. From the dark and sullen despair into which she was 
 first plunged, she was roused into hope into something like 
 joy by Mainwaring's letters. Never had they been so warm 
 arid so tender; for the young man felt not only poignant 
 remorse that he had been the cause of her downfall (though she 
 broke it to him with more delicacy than might have been ex- 
 pected from the state of her feelings and the hardness of her 
 character), but he felt also imperiously the obligations which 
 her loss rendered more binding than ever. He persuaded, he 
 urged, he forced himself into affection ; and, probably, with- 
 out a murmur of his heart, he would have gone with her to 
 the altar, and, once wedded, custom and duty would have 
 strengthened the chain imposed on himself, had it not been for 
 Lucretia' s fatal eagerness to see him, to come up to London, 
 where she induced him to meet her for with her came Susan ; 
 and in Susan's averted face, and trembling hand, and mute 
 avoidance of his eye, he read all which the poor dissembler 
 fancied she concealed. But the die was cast, the union an- 
 nounced, the time fixed, and day by day he came to the 
 house, to leave it in anguish and despair. A feeling they 
 shared in common caused these two unhappy persons to shun 
 each other. Mainwaring rarely came into the usual sitting- 
 room of the family ; and when he did so, chiefly in the even- 
 ing, Susan usually took refuge in her own room. If they met, 
 it was by accident, on the stairs, or at the sudden opening of a
 
 LtJCRfctiA. t 165 
 
 door; then not only no word, but scarcely even a look was ex- 
 changed ; neither had the courage to face the other. Perhaps, 
 of the two, the reserve weighed most on Susan ; perhaps, she 
 most yearned to break the silence, for she thought she divined 
 the cause of Mainwaring's gloomy and mute constraint, in 
 the upbraidings of his conscience, which might doubtless 
 recall, if no positive pledge to Susan, at least, those words and 
 tones which betray one heart, and seek to allure the other ; 
 and the profound melancholy stamped on his whole person, 
 apparent even to her hurried glance, touched her with a com- 
 passion free from all the bitterness of selfish reproach. She 
 fancied she could die happy if she could remove that cloud 
 from his brow, that shadow from his conscience. Die for 
 she thought not of life. She loved gently, quietly ; not with 
 the vehement passion that belongs to stronger natures; but it 
 was the love of which the young and the pure have died. The 
 face of the Genius was calm and soft ; and only by the low- 
 ering of the hand do you see that the torch burns out, and that 
 the image too serene for earthly love is the genius of loving 
 Death. 
 
 Absorbed in the egotism of her passion, increased, as is ever 
 the case with women, even the worst, by the sacrifices it had 
 cost her ; and if that passion paused, by the energy of her am- 
 bition, which already began to scheme and reconstruct new 
 scaffolds to repair the ruined walls of the past, Lucretia as yet 
 had not detected what was so apparent to the simple sense of 
 Mr. Fielden. That Mainwaring was grave, and thoughtful, 
 and abstracted, she ascribed only to his grief at the thought of 
 her loss, and his anxieties for her altered future; and in her 
 efforts to console him, her attempts to convince him that 
 greatness in England did not consist only in lands and manors ; 
 that in the higher walks of life which conduct to the Temple 
 of Renown, the leaders of the procession are the aristocracy of 
 knowledge and of intellect, she so betrayed, not generous 
 emulation and high-souled aspiring, but the dark, unscrupulous, 
 tortuous ambition of cunning, stratagem, and intrigue, that 
 instead of feeling grateful and encouraged, he shuddered and 
 revolted. How, accompanied and led by a spirit which he felt 
 to be stronger and more commanding than his own how pre- 
 serve the whiteness of his soul, the uprightness of his honor! 
 Already he felt himself debased. But in the still trial of 
 domestic intercourse, with the daily, hourly dripping on the 
 stone, in the many struggles between truth and falsehood, guile 
 and candor, which men and, above all, ambitious men must
 
 io6 LUCRET1A. 
 
 wage, what darker angel would whisper him in his monitor? 
 Still he was bound bound with an iron band ; he writhed, but 
 dreamed not of escape. 
 
 The day after that of Fielden's conference with his wife, an 
 unexpected visitor came to the house. Olivier Dalibard 
 called. He had not seen Lucretia since she had left Laughton, 
 nor had any correspondence passed between them. He came 
 at dusk, just after Main waring' s daily visit was over, and Lu- 
 cretia was still in the parlor, which she had appropriated to her- 
 self. Her brow contracted as his name was announced, and 
 the maid-servant lighted the candle on the table, stirred the 
 fire, and gave a tug at the curtains. Her eye, glancing from 
 his, round the mean room, with its dingy, horsehair furniture, 
 involuntarily implied the contrast between the past state and 
 the present, which his sight could scarcely help to impress on 
 her. But she welcomed him with her usual stately composure, 
 and without reference to what had been. Dalibard was secretly 
 anxious to discover if she suspected himself of any agency in 
 the detection of the eventful letter, and, assured by her man- 
 ner that no such thought was yet harbored, he thought it best 
 to imitate her own reserve. He assumed, however, a manner 
 that, far more respectful than he ever before observed to his 
 pupil, was nevertheless sufficiently kind and familiar to restore 
 them gradually to their old footing ; and that he succeeded was 
 apparent, when, after a pause, Lucretia said abruptly: "How 
 did Sir Miles St. John discover my correspondence with Mr. 
 Mainwaring?" 
 
 "Is it possible that you are ignorant? Ah, how how should 
 you know it?" And Dalibard so simply explained the occur- 
 rence, in which, indeed, it was impossible to trace the hand 
 that had moved springs which seemed so entirely set at work 
 by an accident, that despite the extreme suspiciousness of her 
 nature, Lucretia did not see a pretence for accusing him. In- 
 deed, when he related the little subterfuge of Gabriel, his 
 attempt to save her by taking the letter on himself, she felt 
 thankful to the boy, and deemed Gabriel's conduct quite in 
 keeping with his attachment to herself. And this accounted 
 satisfactorily for the only circumstance that had ever troubled 
 her with a doubt, viz., the legacy left to Gabriel. She knew 
 enough of Sir Miles to be aware that he would be grateful to 
 any one who had saved the name of his niece, even while most 
 embittered against her, from the shame attached to clandes- 
 tine correspondence. 
 
 "It is strange, nevertheless," said she thoughtfully, after a
 
 LUCRETIA. 107 
 
 pause, "that the girl should have detected the letter, concealed, 
 as it was, by the leaves that covered it." 
 
 "But," answered Dalibard readily, "you see two or three 
 persons had entered before, and their feet must have displaced 
 the leaves." 
 
 "Possibly; the evil is now past recall." 
 
 "And Mr. Main waring? Do you still adhere to one who has 
 cost you so much, poor child?" 
 
 "In three months more I shall be his wife." 
 
 Dalibard sighed deeply, but offered no remonstrance. 
 
 "Well," he said, taking her hand with mingled reverence 
 and affection; "Well, I oppose your inclinations no more, for 
 now there is nothing to risk, you are mistress of your own for- 
 tune ; and since Mainwaring has talents, that fortune will suffice 
 for a career. Are you at length convinced that I have conquered 
 my folly? that I was disinterested when I incurred your dis- 
 pleasure? If so, can you restore to me your friendship? You 
 will have some struggle with the world, and, with my long ex- 
 perience of men and life, even I, the poor exile, may assist 
 you." 
 
 And so thought Lucretia; for with some dread of Dalibard's 
 craft, she yet credited his attachment to herself, and she felt 
 profound admiration for an intelligence more consummate and 
 accomplished than any ever yet submitted to her comprehen- 
 sion. From that time, Dalibard became an habitual visitor at 
 the house; he never interfered with Lucretia's interviews with 
 Mainwaring; he took the union for granted, and conversed 
 with her cheerfully on the prospects before her ; he ingratiated 
 himself with the Fieldens, played with the children, made him- 
 self at home, and in the evenings when Mainwaring, as often 
 as he could find the excuse, absented himself from the family 
 circle, he contrived to draw Lucretia into more social inter- 
 course with her homely companions than she had before con- 
 descended to admit. Good Mr. Fielden rejoiced: here was 
 the very person, the old friend of Sir Miles, the preceptor of 
 Lucretia herself, evidently most attached to her, having in- 
 fluence over her the very person to whom to confide his em- 
 barrassment. One day, therefore, when Dalibard had touched 
 his heart by noticing the paleness of Susan, he took him aside, 
 and told him all. "And now," concluded the pastor, hoping 
 he had found one to relieve him of his dreaded and ungracious 
 task, "don't you think that I or, rather, you as so old a 
 friend, should speak frankly to Miss Clavering herself." 
 
 "No, indeed," said the Provenfal quickly; "if we spoke to
 
 Io8 LUCRETIA. 
 
 her she would disbelieve us. She would no doubt appeal to 
 Main waring, and Mainwaring would have no choice but to con- 
 tradict us. Once put on his guard, he would control his very 
 sadness. Lucretia, offended, might leave your house, and cer- 
 tainly she would regard her sister as having influenced your 
 confession a position unworthy Miss Mivers. But do not 
 fear; if the evil be so, it carries with it its inevitable remedy. 
 Let Lucretia discover it herself; but, pardon me, she must have 
 seen, at your first reception of Mainwaring, that he had before 
 been acquainted with you?" 
 
 "She was not in the room when we first received Mainwaring, 
 and I have always been distant to him, as you may suppose, 
 for I felt disappointed and displeased. Of course, however, 
 she is aware that we knew him before she did. What of that?" 
 
 "Why; do you think then he told her at Laughton of this ac- 
 quaintance? That he spoke of Susan? I suspect not." 
 
 "I cannot say, I am sure," said Mr. Fielden. 
 
 "Ask her that question accidentally, and for the rest be dis- 
 creet, my dear sir. I thank you for your confidence. I will 
 watch well over my poor young pupil. She must not, indeed, 
 be sacrificed to a man whose affections are engaged else- 
 where." 
 
 Dalibard trod on air as he left the house ; his very counte- 
 nance had changed ; he seemed ten years younger. It was 
 evening; and suddenly, as he came into Oxford Street, he en- 
 countered a knot of young men, noisy and laughing loud, ob- 
 structing the pavement, breaking jests on the more sober passen- 
 gers, and attracting the especial and admiring attention of sun- 
 dry ladies in plumed hats and scarlet pelisses ; for the streets 
 then enjoyed a gay liberty which has vanished from London 
 with the lanterns of the watchman. Noisiest, and most con- 
 spicuous of these descendants of the Mohawks, the sleek and 
 orderly scholar beheld the childish figure of his son. Nor did 
 Gabriel shrink from his father's eye, stern and scornful as it 
 was, but rather braved the glance with an impudent leer. 
 
 Right, however, in the midst of the group, strode the Pro- 
 vencal, and laying his hand very gently on the boy's shoulder, 
 he said: "My son, come with me." 
 
 Gabriel looked irresolute, and glanced at his companions. 
 Delighted at the prospect of a scene, they now gathered round, 
 with countenances and gestures that seemed little disposed to 
 acknowledge the parental authority. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said Dalibard, turning a shade more pale, for 
 though morally most resolute, physically he was not brave j
 
 "Gentlemen, I must beg you to excuse me this child is my 
 son!" 
 
 "But Art is his mother," replied a tall, raw-boned young man, 
 with long tawny hair streaming down from a hat very much 
 battered. "At the juvenile age, the child is consigned to the 
 mother! Have I said it?" and he turned round theatrically 
 to his comrades. 
 
 "Bravo!" cried the rest, clapping their hands. 
 
 "Down with all tyrants and fathers hip, hip, hurrah!" 
 and the hideous diapason nearly split the drum of the ears into 
 which it resounded. 
 
 "Gabriel," whispered the father, "you had better follow 
 me, had you not? Reflect!" So saying, he bowed low to the 
 unpropitious assembly, and, as if yielding the victory, stepped 
 aside, and crossed over towards Bond Street. 
 
 Before the din of derision and triumph died away, Dalibard 
 looked back, and saw Gabriel behind him. 
 
 "Approach, sir," he said, and as the boy stood still, he 
 added: "I promise peace, if you will accept it." 
 
 "Peace, then!" answered Gabriel, and he joined his father's 
 side. 
 
 "So," said Dalibard, "when I consented to your studying 
 Art, as you call it, under your mother's most respectable 
 brother, I ought to have contemplated what would be the natu- 
 ral and becoming companions of the rising Raffaele I have given 
 to the world." 
 
 "I own, sir," replied Gabriel demurely, "that they are 
 riotous fellows, but some of them are clever, and 
 
 "And excessively drunk," interrupted Dalibard, examin- 
 ing the gait of his son. "Do you learn that accomplishment 
 also, by way of steadying your hand for the easel?" 
 
 "No, sir; I like wine well enough, but I would not be 
 drunk for the world. I see people when they are drunk are 
 mere fools, let out their secrets, and show themselves up." 
 
 "Well said," replied the father, almost admiringly; "but a 
 truce with this bantering, Gabriel. Can you imagine that I 
 will permit you any longer to remain with that vagabond Var- 
 ney, and yon crew of Vauricns? You will come home with 
 me; and if you must be a painter, I will look out for a more 
 trustworthy master." 
 
 "I shall stay where I am," answered Gabriel firmly, and 
 compressing his lips with a force that left them bloodless. 
 
 "What, boy? Do I hear right? Dare you disobey me? 
 Dare you defy?"
 
 lid LtlCREtlA. 
 
 "Not in your house, so I will not enter it again." 
 
 Dalibard laughed mockingly. 
 
 "Peste! but this is modest! You are not of age, yet, Mr. 
 Varney; you are not free from a father's tyrannical control." 
 
 "The law does not own you as my father, I am told, sir; 
 you have said my name rightly it is Varney, not Dalibard. 
 We have no rights over each other; so at least says Tom Pass- 
 more, and his father's a lawyer!" 
 
 Dalibard's hand griped his son's arm fiercely. Despite his 
 pain, which was acute, the child uttered no cry ; but he growled 
 beneath his teeth, "Beware ! beware! Or my mother's son may 
 avenge her death ! " 
 
 Dalibard removed his hand, and staggered as if struck. Glid- 
 ing from his side, Gabriel seized the occasion to escape ; he 
 paused, however, midway in the dull, lamplit kennel, when he 
 saw himself out of reach, and then approaching cautiously, 
 said: "I know I am a boy, but you have made me man enough 
 to take care 'of myself. Mr. Varney, my uncle, will maintain 
 me ; when of age, old Sir Miles has provided for me. Leave 
 me in peace ; treat me as free ; and I will visit you, help you 
 when you want me, obey you still; yes, follow your instruc- 
 tions; for I know you are" he paused "you oxQivise but if 
 you seek again to make me your slave, you will only find me 
 your foe. Good-night ; and remember that a bastard has no 
 father ! ' ' 
 
 With these words he moved on, and hurrying down the street, 
 turned the corner, and vanished. 
 
 Dalibard remained motionless for some minutes ; at length, 
 he muttered: "Ay, let him go, he is dangerous! What son 
 ever revolted even from the worst father, and throve in life? 
 Food for the gibbet! What matters?" 
 
 When next Dalibard visited Lucretia, his manner was 
 changed; the cheerfulness he had before assumed gave place 
 to a kind of melancholy compassion ; he no longer entered into 
 her plans for the future, but would look at her mournfully, 
 start up, and walk away. She would have attributed the change 
 to some return of his ancient passion, but she heard him once 
 murmur with unspeakable pity: "Poor child poor child!" 
 A vague apprehension seized her, first, indeed, caught from 
 some remarks dropped by Mr. Fielden, which were less dis- 
 creet than Dalibard had recommended. A day or two after- 
 wards she asked Mainwaring, carelessly, "why he had never 
 spoken to her at Laughton of his acquaintance with Fielden." 
 
 "You asked me that before," he said, somewhat sullenly.
 
 LtfCRETiA. lit 
 
 "Did I? I forget! But how was it? Tell me again." 
 
 "I scarcely know, " he replied confusedly; "we were always 
 talking of each other, or poor Sir Miles our own hopes and 
 fears. ' ' 
 
 This was true, and a lover's natural excuse. In the present 
 of love all the past is forgotten. 
 
 "Still," said Lucretia, with her sidelong glance "still, as 
 you must have seen much of my own sister " 
 
 Mainwaring, while she spoke, was at work on a button on 
 his gaiter (gaiters were then worn tight at the ankle), the effort 
 brought the blood to his forehead. 
 
 "But," he said, still stooping at his occupation, "you were 
 so little intimate with your sister, I feared to offend. Family 
 differences are so difficult to approach." 
 
 Lucretia was satisfied at the moment. For so vast was her 
 stake in Mainwaring's heart, so did her whole heart and soul 
 grapple to the rock left serene amidst the deluge, that she hab- 
 itually and resolutely thrust from her mind all the doubts that 
 at times invaded it. 
 
 "I know," she would often say to herself; "I know he 
 does not love as I do but man never can, never ought to love 
 as woman! Were I a man, I should scorn myself if I could 
 be so absorbed in one emotion as I am proud to be now 1, 
 poor woman! I know," again she would think; "I know how 
 suspicious and distrustful I am ; I must not distrust him ; I 
 shall only irritate I may lose him : I dare not distrust, it would 
 be too dreadful." 
 
 Thus, as a system vigorously embraced by a determined mind, 
 she had schooled and forced herself into reliance on her lover. 
 His words now, we say, satisfied her at the moment ; but after- 
 wards, in absence, they were recalled, in spite of herself in 
 the midst of fears, shapeless and undefined. Involuntarily she be- 
 gan to examine the countenance, the movements, of her sister; 
 to court Susan's society more than she had done, for her pre- 
 vious indifference had now deepened into bitterness. Susan, 
 the neglected and despised, had "become her equal, nay, more 
 than her equal; Susan's children would have precedence to 
 her own in the heritage of Laughton! Hitherto she had never 
 deigned to talk to her in the sweet familiarity of sisters so 
 placed, never deigned to confide to her those feelings for her 
 future husband, which burned lone and ardent in the close 
 vault of her guarded heart. Now, however, she began to name 
 him, wind her arm into Susan's, talk of love and home, and 
 the days to come; and as she spoke she read the workings of
 
 114 tUCRfctlA. 
 
 her siste-r's face. That part of the secret grew clear almost at 
 the first glance. Susan loved loved William Mainwaring; 
 but was it not a love hopeless and unreturned? Might not this 
 be the cause that had made Mainwaring so reserved? He 
 might have seen, or conjectured, a conquest he had not sought ; 
 and hence, with manly delicacy, he had avoided naming Susan 
 to Lucretia; and now, perhaps, sought the excuses which at 
 times had chafed and wounded her for not joining the house- 
 hold circle. If one of those who glance over these pages chance 
 to be a person more than usually able and acute a person who 
 has loved and been deceived he or she, no matter which, will 
 perhaps recall those first moments when the doubt, long put 
 off, insisted to be heard ; a weak and foolish heart gives way 
 to the doubt at once, not so the subtler and more powerful ; 
 it rather, on the contrary, recalls all the little circumstances 
 that justify trust and make head against suspicion ; it will not 
 render the citadel at the mere sound of the trumpet ; it arms 
 all its forces, and bars its gates on the foe. Hence it is, that 
 the persons most easy to dupe in matters of affection are usually 
 those most astute in the larger affairs of life. Moliere, reading 
 every riddle in the vast complexities of human character, and 
 clinging, in self-imposed credulity, to his profligate wife, is a 
 type of a striking truth. Still, a foreboding, a warning instinct, 
 withheld Lucretia from plumbing farther into the deeps of her 
 own fears. So horrible was the thought that she had been de- 
 ceived, that, rather than face it, she would have preferred to 
 deceive herself. This poor, bad heart shrunk from inquiry; 
 it trembled at the idea of condemnation. She hailed, with a 
 sentiment of release that partook of rapture, Susan's abrupt 
 announcement one morning, that she had accepted an invita- 
 tion from some relations of her father, to spend some time with 
 them at their villa near Hampstead ; she was to go the end of the 
 week. Lucretia hailed it, though she saw the cause. Susan 
 shrank from the name of Mainwaring on Lucretia'slips shrank 
 from the familiar intercourse so ruthlessly forced on her! 
 With a bright eye, that day, Lucretia met her lover; yet she 
 would not tell him of Susan's intended departure ; she had not 
 the courage. 
 
 Dalibard was foiled. This contradiction in Lucretia's tem- 
 per so suspicious, so determined puzzled even his penetra- 
 tion. He saw that bolder tactics were required. He waylaid 
 Mainwaring on the young man's way to his lodgings, and, after 
 talking to him on indifferent matters, asked him carelessly, 
 whe*ber b<? did not think Susan far gone in a decline. Affecting
 
 LUCRETIA. 113 
 
 not to notice the convulsive start with which the question was 
 received, he went on: 
 
 "There is evidently something on her mind; I observe that 
 her eyes are often red as with weeping poor girl ! Perhaps 
 some silly love affair. However, we shall not see her again 
 before your marriage; she is going away in a day or two; the 
 change of air may possibly yet restore her: I own, though, I 
 fear the worst. At this time of the year, and in your climate, 
 such complaints as I take hers to be are rapid. Good-day. 
 We may meet this evening." 
 
 Terror-stricken at these barbarous words, Mainwaring no 
 sooner reached his lodgings than he wrote and despatched a 
 note to Fielden, entreating him to call. 
 
 The Vicar obeyed the summons, and found Mainwaring in 
 a state of mind bordering on distraction ; nor when Susan was 
 named did Fielden 's words take the shape of comfort; for he 
 himself was seriously alarmed for her health ; the sound of her 
 low cough rang in his ears, and he rather heightened than 
 removed the picture which haunted Mainwaring Susan, 
 stricken, dying, broken-hearted ! 
 
 Tortured both in heart and conscience, Mainwaring felt as if 
 he had but one wish left in the world to see Susan once more ! 
 What to say he scarce knew ; but for her to depart depart, 
 perhaps, to her grave, believing him coldly indifferent; for 
 her not to know, at least, his struggles, and pronounce his 
 pardon, was a thought beyond endurance. After such an in- 
 terview both would have new fortitude ; each would unite in 
 encouraging the other in the only step left to honor. And 
 this desire he urged upon Fielden with all the eloquence of 
 passionate grief, as he entreated him to permit and procure 
 one last conference with Susan. But this the plain sense and 
 straightforward conscience of the good man long refused. If 
 Mainwaring had been left in the position to explain his heart 
 to Lucretia, it would not have been for Fielden to object; but 
 to have a clandestine interview with one sister while betrothed 
 to the other, bore in itself a character too equivocal to meet 
 with the simple Vicar's approval. 
 
 "What can you apprehend?" exclaimed the young man, al- 
 most fiercely for, harassed and tortured, his mild nature was 
 driven to bay. "Can you suppose that I shall encourage my 
 own misery by the guilty pleadings of unavailing love? All that 
 I ask is the luxury yes, the luxury long unknown to me, of 
 candor; to place fairly and manfully before Susan the position 
 in which fate has involved me, Can you suppose that we shall
 
 114 LUCRETIA. 
 
 not both take comfort and strength from each other? Our 
 duty is plain and obvious; but it grows less painful, encouraged 
 by the lips of a companion in suffering. I tell you fairly, that 
 see Susan I will and must. I will watch round her home wher- 
 ever it be, hour after hour; come what may, I will find my oc- 
 casion. Is it not better that the interview should be under 
 your roof, within the same walls which shelter her sister? There > 
 the place itself imposes restraint on. despair. Oh, sir, this is no 
 time for formal scruples be merciful, I beseech you, not to 
 me, but to Susan. I judge of her by myself. 1 know that I 
 shall go to the altar more resigned to the future, if for once I 
 can give vent to what weighs upon my heart. She will then 
 see as I do, that the path before me is inevitable, she will com- 
 pose herself to face the fate that compels us. We shall swear 
 tacitly to each other, not to love, but to conquer love. Believe 
 me, sir, I am not selfish in this prayer: an instinct, the intui- 
 tion which human grief has into the secrets of human grief, 
 assures me that that which I ask is the best consolation you can 
 afford to Susan. You own she is ill suffering. Are not 
 your fears for her very life O Heaven, for her very life 
 gravely awakened? And yet you see, we have been silent to 
 each other! Can speech be more fatal in its results than 
 silence? Oh, for her sake hear me ! " 
 
 The good man's tears fell fast; his scruples were shaken; 
 there was truth in what Mainwaring urged. He did not yield ; 
 but he promised to reflect, and inform Mainwaring, by a line, 
 in the evening. Finding this was all he could effect, the young 
 man at last suffered him to leave the house, and Fielden hast- 
 ened to take counsel of Dalibard ; that wily persuader soon 
 reasoned away Mr. Fielden 's last faint objection: it now only 
 remained to procure Susan's assent to the interview, and to ar- 
 range that it should be undisturbed. Mr. Fielden should take 
 out the children the next morning. Dalibard volunteered to 
 contrive the absence of Lucretia at the hour appointed. Mrs. 
 Fielden, alone, should remain within, and might, if it were 
 judged proper, be present at the interview, which was fixed for 
 the forenoon in the usual drawing-room. Nothing but Susan's 
 consent was now necessary, and Mr. Fielden ascended to her 
 room. He knocked twice; no sweet voice bade him enter; he 
 opened the door gently Susan was in prayer. At the oppo- 
 site corner of the room, by the side of her bed, she knelt, her 
 face buried in her hands, and he heard, low- and indistinct, the 
 murmur broken by the sob. But gradually, and, as he stood 
 unperceived, sob and murmur ceased ; prayer had its custorr,-
 
 LUCRETIA. 115 
 
 ary and blessed effect with the pure and earnest. And when 
 Susan rose, though the tears yet rolled down her cheeks, the 
 face was serene as an angel's. 
 
 The pastor approached, and took her hand ; a blush then 
 broke over her countenance, she trembled, and her eyes fell on 
 the ground. "My child," he said solemnly, "God will hear 
 you!" And, after those words, there was a long silence. He 
 then drew her passively towards a seat, and sate down by her, 
 embarrassed how to begin. At length he said, looking somewhat 
 aside: "Mr. Mainwaring has made me a request a prayer 
 which relates to you, and which I refer to you. He asks you 
 to grant him an interview, before you leave us to-morrow, if 
 you will. I refused at first ; I am in doubt still ; for, my dear, 
 I have always found that, when the feelings move us r our duty 
 becomes less clear to the human heart corrupt, we know, but 
 still it is often a safer guide than our reason ; I never knew 
 reason unerring, except in mathematics; we have no Euclid 
 (and the good man smiled mournfully) in the problems of real 
 life ; I will not urge you one way or the other; I put the case 
 before you. Would it, as the young man says, give you comfort 
 and strength to see him once again while, while in short, be- 
 fore your sister is I mean before that is, would it soothe you 
 now, to have an unreserved communication with him? He im- 
 plores it. What shall I answer?" 
 
 "This trial, too!" muttered Susan, almost inaudibly; "this 
 trial which I once yearned for," and the hand clasped in Fiel- 
 den's was as cold as ice ; then, turning her eyes to her guardian 
 somewhat wildly, she cried : " But to what end ? What object ? 
 Why should he wish to see me?" 
 
 "To take greater courage to do his duty; to feel less un- 
 happy at at " 
 
 "I will see him," interrupted Susan firmly; "he is right, it 
 will strengthen both I will see him!" 
 
 "But human nature is weak, my child; if my heart be so 
 now, what will be yours?" 
 
 "Fear me not," answered Susan, with a sad wandering smile ; 
 and she repeated vacantly, "I will see him!" 
 
 The good man looked at her, threw his arms round her wasted 
 form, and, lifting up his eyes, his lips stirred with such half- 
 syllabled words as fathers breathe on high.
 
 n6 LUCRETIA. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE DISCOVERY. 
 
 DALIBARD had undertaken to get Lucretia from the house ; 
 in fact, her approaching marriage rendered necessary a com- 
 munication with Mr. Parchmount, as executor to her uncle's 
 will, relative to the transfer of her portion ; and she had asked 
 Dalibard to accompany her thither, for her pride shrank from 
 receiving the lawyer in the shabby parlor of the shabby lodging- 
 house; she therefore, that evening, fixed the next day, before 
 noon, for the visit. A carriage was hired for the occasion, and, 
 when it drove off, Mr. Fielden took his children a walk to Prim- 
 rose Hill, and called, as was agreed, on Mainwaring by the way. 
 
 The caiUage had scarcely rattled fifty yards through the 
 street when Dalibard fixed his eyes, with deep and solemn 
 ;ommiseration, on Lucretia. Hitherto, with masterly art, he 
 had kept aloof from direct explanations with his pupil; he 
 knew that she would distrust no one like himself. The plot 
 was now ripened, and it was time for the main agent to con- 
 duct the catastrophe. The look was so expressive that Lucre- 
 tia felt a chill at her heart, and could not help exclaiming: 
 "What has happened? You have some terrible tidings to 
 communicate?" 
 
 "I have indeed to say that which may, perhaps, cause you 
 to hate me forever ; as we hate those who report our afflictions. 
 I must endure this ; I have struggled long between my indig- 
 nation and my compassion. Rouse up your strong mind, and 
 hear me. Mainwaring loves your sister!" 
 
 Lucretia uttered a cry that seemed scarcely to come from a 
 human voice. 
 
 "No no!" she gasped out; "Do not tell me. I will hear 
 no more I will not believe you ! " 
 
 With an inexpressible pity and softness in his tone, this man, 
 whose career had given him such profound experience in the 
 frailties of the human heart, continued: "I do not ask you to 
 believe me, Lucretia; I would not now speak, if you had not 
 the opportunity to convince yourself ; even those with whom 
 you live are false to you ; at this moment, they have arranged 
 all for Mainwaring to steal, in your absence, to your sister; in 
 a few moments more he will be with her; if you yourself would 
 learn what passes between them, you have the power." 
 
 "I have I have not not the courage; drive on faster- 
 faster,"
 
 LUCRETIA. li; 
 
 Dalibard again was foiled. In this strange cowardice, there 
 was something so terrible, yet so touching, that it became sub- 
 lime; it was the grasp of a drowning soul at the last plank. 
 
 "You are right, perhaps," he said, after a pause; and wisely 
 forbearing all taunt and resistance, he left the heart to its own 
 workings. 
 
 Suddenly, Lucretia caught at the check-string: "Stop," she 
 exclaimed; "Stop, I will not, I cannot endure this suspense, 
 to last through a life ! I will learn the worst. Bid him drive 
 back." 
 
 "We must descend and walk; you forget we must enter un- 
 suspected" ; and Dalibard, as the carriage stopped, opened the 
 door, and let down the steps. 
 
 Lucretia recoiled, then pressing one hand to her heart, she 
 descended without touching the arm held out to her. 
 
 Dalibard bade the coachman wait, and they walked back to 
 the house. 
 
 "Yes, he may see her," exclaimed Lucretia, her face bright- 
 ening. "Ah, there you have not deceived me; I see your strat- 
 agem I despise it; I know she loves him ; she has sought this 
 interview. He is so mild and gentle, so fearful to give pain ; 
 he has consented, from pity that is all. Is he not pledged to 
 me? He, so candid, so ingenuous! There must be truth 
 somewhere in the world. If he is false, where find truth? 
 Dark man, must I look for it in you? You!" 
 
 "It is not my truth I require you to test; I pretend not to 
 truth universal ; I can be true to one, as you may yet discover: 
 but I own your belief is not impossible ; my interest in you 
 may have made me rash and unjust; what you may overhear, 
 far from destroying, may confirm forever your happiness. 
 Would that it may be so!" 
 
 "It must\>t so," returned Lucretia, with a fearful gloom on 
 her brow and in her accent; "I will interpret every word to 
 my own salvation." 
 
 Dalibard's countenance changed, despite his usual control 
 over it. He had set all his chances upon this cast, and it was 
 more hazardous than he had deemed. He had counted too 
 much upon the jealousy of common natures. After all, how 
 little to the ear of one resolved to deceive herself might pass 
 between these young persons, meeting not to avow attachment, 
 but to take courage from each other! What restraint might 
 they impose on their feelings! Still the game must be played 
 out. 
 
 As they now neared the house, Dalibard looked carefully
 
 tlS LUCRETIA. 
 
 round, lest they should encounter Mainwaring on his way to it. 
 He had counted on arriving before the young man could get 
 there. 
 
 "But," said Lucretia, breaking silence, with an ironical 
 smile; "But (for your tender anxiety forme has, no doubt, 
 provided all means and contrivance, all necessary aids to base- 
 ness and eaves-dropping, that can assure my happiness) how 
 am I to be present at this interview?" 
 
 "I have provided, as you say," answered Dalibard, in the tone 
 of a man deeply hurt, "those means which I, who have found the 
 world one foe and one traitor, deemed the best, to distinguish 
 falsehood from truth. I have arranged that we shall enter the 
 house unsuspected. Mainwaring and your sister will be in the 
 drawing-room ; the room next to it will be vacant, as Mr, 
 Fielden is from home ; there is but a glass door between the 
 two chambers." 
 
 "Enough, enough!" and Lucretia turned round, and placed 
 her hand lightly on the Provencal's arm. "The next hour will 
 decide whether the means you suggest to learn truth and de- 
 fend safety will be familiar or loathsome to me for life ; will 
 decide whether trust is a madness: whether you, my youth's 
 teacher, are the wisest of men, or only the most dangerous." 
 
 "Believe me, or not, when I say, I would rather the decision 
 should condemn me; for I, too, have need of confidence in 
 men." 
 
 Nothing further was said ; the dull street was quiet and des- 
 olate as usual. Dalibard had taken with him the key of the 
 house-door. The door opened noiselessly; they were in the 
 house. Main waring' s cloak was in the hall; he had arrived a 
 few moments before them. Dalibard pointed silently to that 
 evidence in favor of his tale. Lucretia bowed her head, but 
 with a look that implied defiance; and (still without a word) 
 she ascended the stairs, and entered the room appointed for 
 concealment. But as she entered, at the further corner of the 
 chamber she saw Mrs. Fielden seated seated, remote and out 
 of hearing. The good-natured woman had yielded to Mainwar- 
 ing's prayer, and Susan's silent look that enforced it, to let their 
 interview be unwitnessed. She did not perceive Lucretia till 
 the last walked glidingly, but firmly, up to her, placed a burn- 
 ing hand on her lips, and whispered: "Hush, betray me not; 
 my happiness for life Susan's his are at stake! I must 
 hear what passes; it is my fate that is deciding. Hush I 
 command! For I have the right!" 
 
 Mrs. Fielden was awed and startled ; and before she could
 
 LUCRETIA. 119 
 
 recover even breath, Lucretia had quitted her side, and taken 
 her post at the fatal door. She lifted the corner of the curtain 
 from the glass panel, and looked in. 
 
 Mainwaring was seated at a little distance from Susan, whose 
 face was turned from her. Mainwaring's countenance was in 
 full view. But it was Susan's voice that met her ear; and 
 though sweet and low, it was distinct, and even firm. It was 
 evident from the words that the conference had but just begun. 
 
 "Indeed, Mr. Mainwaring, you have nothing to explain 
 nothing of which to accuse yourself. It was not for this, be- 
 lieve me," and here Susan turned her face, and its aspect of 
 heavenly innocence met the dry lurid eye of the unseen wit- 
 ness; "not for this, believe me, that I consented to see you. 
 If I did so, it was only because I thought because I feared 
 from your manner when we met at times, still more from your 
 evident avoidance to meet me at all, that you were unhappy 
 (for I know you kind and honest) ; unhappy at the thought 
 that you had wounded me, and my heart could not bear that, 
 nor, perhaps, my pride either. That you should have for- 
 gotten me " 
 
 "Forgotten you!" 
 
 "That you should have been captivated" (continued Susan 
 in a more hurried tone) "by one so superior to me in all 
 things as Lucretia, is very natural. I thought, then thought 
 only that nothing could cloud your happiness but some re- 
 proach of a conscience too sensitive. For this I have met 
 you met you without a thought which Lucretia would have a 
 right to blame, could she read my heart; met you (and the 
 voice for the first time faltered), that I might say, 'Be at 
 peace: it is your sister that addresses you. Requite Lucretia's 
 love; it is deep and strong; give her, as she gives to you a 
 whole heart, and in your happiness, I, your sister sister to 
 both / shall be blest." With a smile inexpressibly touching 
 and ingenious she held out her hand as she ceased. Mainwar- 
 ing sprang forward, and, despite her struggle, passed it to his 
 lips his heart. 
 
 "Oh," he exclaimed, in broken accents, which gradually 
 became more clear and loud, "what what have I lost! Lost 
 forever! No, no, I will be worthy of you! I do not I dare 
 not say that I love you still ! I feel what I owe to Lucretia. 
 How I became first ensnared, infatuated; how, with your 
 image graven so deeply here " 
 
 "Mainwaring Mr. Mainwaring I must not hear you. Is 
 this your promise?"
 
 I2d LUCRETtA. 
 
 "Yes, you must hear me yet. How I became engaged to 
 your sister so different, indeed, from you I start in amaze 
 and bewilderment when I seek to conjecture. But so it was. 
 For me she has forfeited fortune, rank all which that proud, 
 stern heart so prized and coveted. Heaven is my witness how 
 I have struggled to repay her affection with my own; if I can- 
 not succeed, at least, all that faith and gratitude can give are 
 hers. Yes; when I leave you, comforted by your forgiveness, 
 your prayers, I shall have strength to tear you from my heart; 
 it is my duty my fate. With a firm step I will go to these 
 abhorred nuptials. Oh, shudder not; turn not away! For- 
 give the word; but I must speak my heart will out yes, ab- 
 horred nuptials ! Between my grave and the altar, would 
 would that I had a choice!" 
 
 From this burst, which in vain from time to time Susan had 
 sought to check, Mainwaring was startled by an apparition 
 which froze his veins, as a ghost from the grave. The door 
 was thrown open, and Lucretia stood in the aperture stood, 
 gazing on him, face to face; and her own was so colorless, so 
 rigid, so locked in its livid and awful solemnity of aspect, that 
 it was, indeed, as one risen from the dead. 
 
 Dismayed by the abrupt cry, and the changed face of her 
 lover, Susan turned and beheld her sister. With the impulse 
 of the pierced and loving heart, which divined all the agony 
 inflicted, she sprang to Lucretia's side, she fell to the ground, 
 and clasped her knees. 
 
 "Do no heed do not believe him: it is but the frenzy of a 
 moment. He spoke but to deceive me me, who loved him 
 once! Mine alone mine is the crime. He knows all your 
 worth; pity pity pity on yourself, on him on me!" 
 
 Lucretia's eyes fell with the glare of a fiend upon the implor- 
 ing face lifted to her own. Her lips moved, but no sound was 
 audible. At length she drew herself from her sister's clasp, 
 and walked steadily up to Mainwaring. She surveyed him 
 with a calm and cruel gaze, as if she enjoyed his shame and 
 terror. Before, however, she spoke, Mrs. Fielden, who had 
 witched, as one spellbound, Lucretia's movements, and with- 
 out hearing what had passed, had the full foreboding of what 
 would ensue, but had not stirred till Lucretia herself terminated 
 the suspense, and broke the charm of her awe before she 
 spoke, Mrs. Fielden rushed in, and giving vent to her agita- 
 tion in loud sobs, as she threw her arms round Susan, who 
 was still kneeling on the floor, brought something of grotesque 
 to the more tragic and fearful character of the scene.
 
 LUCRETIA. 121 
 
 "My uncle was right; there is neither courage nor honor in 
 the low-born! He, the schemer, too, is right. All hollow 
 all false!" Thus said Lucretia, with a strange sort of musing 
 accent, at first scornful, at last only quietly abstracted. "Rise, 
 sir," she then added, with her most imperious tone; "do you 
 not hear your Susan weep? Do you fear in my presence to 
 console her? Coward to her, as forsworn to me. Go, sir, you 
 are free!" 
 
 "Hear me," faltered Mainwaring, attempting to seize her 
 hand; "I do not ask you to forgive; but " 
 
 "Forgive, sir!" interrupted Lucretia, rearing her head, and 
 with a look of freezing and unspeakable majesty, "there is 
 only one person here who needs a pardon; but her fault is in- 
 expiable: it is the woman who stooped beneath her! " 
 
 With these words, hurled from her with a scorn which 
 crushed, while it galled, she mechanically drew round her form 
 her black mantle; her eye glanced on the deep mourning of the 
 garment, and her memory recalled all that that love had cost 
 her; but she added no other reproach. Slowly she turned 
 away: passing Susan, who lay senseless in Mrs. Fielden'sarms, 
 she paused, and kissed her forehead. 
 
 "When she recovers, madam," she said, to Mrs. Fielden, 
 who was moved and astonished by this softness, "say, that Lu- 
 cretia Clavering uttered a vow, when she kissed the brow of 
 William Mainwaring's future wife!" 
 
 Olivier Dalibard was still seated in the parlor below when 
 Lucretia entered. Her face yet retained its almost unearthly 
 rigidity and calm; but a sort of darkness had come over its 
 ashen pallor that shade so indescribable which is seen in the 
 human face, after long illness, a day or two before death. 
 Dalibard was appalled, for he had too often seen that hue in 
 the dying, not to recognize it now. His emotion was suffi- 
 ciently genuine to give more than usual earnestness to his voice 
 and gesture, as he poured out every word that spoke sympathy 
 and soothing. For a long time Lucretia did not seem to hear 
 him; at last her face softened the ice broke. 
 
 Motherless friendless lone alone forever undone un- 
 done!" she murmured. Her head sunk upon the shoulder 
 of her fearful counsellor, unconscious of its resting-place, and 
 she burst into teajs tears which, perhaps, saved her reason or 
 her life.
 
 122 LUCRETIA. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A SOUL WITHOUT HOPE. 
 
 WHEN Mr. Fielden returned home Lucretia had quitted the 
 house. She left a line for him in her usual bold, clear hand- 
 writing, referring him to his wife for explanation of the reasons 
 that forbade a further residence beneath his roof. She had 
 removed to an hotel, until she had leisure to arrange her plans 
 for the future. In a few months she should be of age; and in 
 the mean while, who now living claimed authority over her? 
 For the rest she added: "I repeat what I told Mr. Mainwar- 
 ing, all engagement between us is at an end; he will not insult 
 me either by letter or by visit. It is natural that I should at pres- 
 ent shrink from seeing Susan Mivers. Hereafter, if permitted, 
 I will visit Mrs. Mainwaring. " 
 
 Though all had chanced as Mr. Fielden had desired (if, as 
 he once half meditated, he had spoken to Lucretia herself), 
 though a marriage that could have brought happiness to none, 
 and would have made the misery of two, was at an end, he yet 
 felt a bitter pang, almost of remorse, when he learned what had 
 occurred. And Lucretia, before secretly disliked (if any one 
 he could dislike), became dear to him at once, by sorrow and 
 compassion. Forgetting every other person he hurried to the 
 hotel Lucretia had chosen, but her coldness deceived and her 
 pride repelled him. She listened drily to all he said, and 
 merely replied: "I feel only gratitude at- my escape. Let this 
 subject now close forever." 
 
 Mr. Fielden left her presence with less anxious and commis- 
 erating feelings; perhaps all had chanced for the best. And, 
 on returning home, his whole mind became absorbed in alarm 
 for Susan. She was delirious and in great danger; it was 
 many weeks before she recovered. Meanwhile Lucretia had 
 removed into private apartments, of which she withheld the 
 address. During this time, therefore, they lost sight of her. 
 
 If, amidst the punishments with which the sombre imagina- 
 tion of poets have diversified the Realm of the tortured Shad- 
 ows, it had depicted some soul condemned to look evermore 
 down into an abyss all change to its gaze forbidden chasm 
 upon chasm, yawning deeper and deeper, darker and darker, 
 endless and infinite; so that, eternally gazing, the soul became, 
 as it were, a part of the abyss, such an image would symbol 
 forth the state of Lucretia' s mind.
 
 LUCRETIA. 123 
 
 It was not the mere desolation of one whom love has aban- 
 doned and betrayed. In the abyss were mingled inextricably 
 together the gloom of the past and of the future; there, the 
 broken fortunes, the crushed ambition, the ruin of the worldly 
 expectations long inseparable from her schemes; and amidst 
 them, the angry shade of the more than father, whose heart she 
 had wrung, and whose old age she had speeded to the grave. 
 These sacrifices to love, while love was left to her, might have 
 haunted her at moments, but a smile, a word, a glance banished 
 the regret and the remorse. Now, love being razed out of 
 life, the ruins of all else loomed dismal amidst the darkness; 
 and a voice rose up, whispering, "Lo, fool! what thou hast 
 lost because thou didst believe and love!" And this thought 
 grasped together the two worlds of being the what has been 
 and the what shall be. All hope seemed stricken from the 
 future as a man strikes from the calculations of his income the 
 returns from a property irrevocably lost. At her age. but few 
 of her sex have parted with religion, but even such mechanical 
 faith as the lessons of her childhood, and the constrained con- 
 formities with Christian ceremonies, had instilled, had long 
 since melted away in the hard scholastic scepticism of her fatal 
 tutor a scepticism which had won, with little effort, a reason 
 delighting in the maze of doubt, and easily narrowed into the 
 cramped and iron logic of disbelief, by an intellect that scorned 
 to submit where it failed to comprehend. Nor had faith 
 given place to those large moral truths from which philosophy 
 has sought to restore the proud statue of pagan Virtue as a 
 substitute for the meek symbol of the Christian cross. Ey tem- 
 perament unsocial, nor readily moved to the genial and benev- 
 olent, that absolute egotism in which Olivier Dalibard centred 
 his dreary ethics seemed sanctioned to Lucretia by her studies 
 into the motives of man and the history of the world. She 
 had read the chronicles of states and the memoirs of states- 
 men, and seen how craft carries on the movements of an age. 
 Those Viscontis, Castruccios, and Medici; those Richelieus, 
 and Mazarins, and de Retzs; those Loyolas, and Mahomets, 
 and Cromwells; those Monks and Godolphins; those Marl- 
 boroughs and Walpoles; those founders of history, and dynas- 
 ties, and sects; those leaders and dapers of men, greater or 
 lesser, corruptors or corrupt all standing out prominent and 
 renowned from the guiltless arid laurelless obscure seemed to 
 win, by the homage of posterity, the rewards that attend the 
 deceivers of their time. By a superb arrogance of generaliza- 
 tion, she transferred into private life, and the rule of common-
 
 124 LUCRETIA. 
 
 place actions, the policy that, to the abasement of honor, has 
 so often triumphed, in the guidance of states. Therefore, be- 
 times the whole frame of society was changed to her eye, from 
 the calm aspect it wears to those who live united with their 
 kind; she viewed all seemings with suspicion; and before she 
 had entered the world, prepared to live in it as a conspirator 
 in a city convulsed, spying and espied, schemed against and 
 scheming here the crown for the crafty, there the axe for 
 the outwitted. 
 
 But her love, for love is trust, had led her half-way forth 
 from this maze of the intellect. That fair youth of inexperi- 
 ence and candor, which seemed to bloom out in the face of her 
 betrothed ; his very shrinking from the schemes so natural to 
 her, that to her they seemed even innocent; his apparent reli- 
 ance on mere masculine ability, with the plain aids of perse- 
 verance and honesty all had an attraction that plucked her 
 back from herself. If she clung to him, firmly, blindly, cred- 
 ulously, it was not as the lover alone. In the lover, she beheld 
 .the good angel. Had he only died to her, still the angel smile 
 would have survived and warned. But the man had not died, 
 the angel itself had deceived; the wings could uphold her no 
 more they had touched the mire, and were sullied with the 
 soil; with the stain, was forfeited the strength. All was deceit 
 and hollowness and treachery. Lone again in the universe, 
 rose the eternal 7. So down into the abyss she looked, depth 
 upon depth, and the darkness had no relief, and the deep had 
 no end. 
 
 Olivier Dalibard alone, of all she knew, was admitted to her 
 seclusion. He played his part as might be expected from the 
 singular patience and penetration which belonged to the genius 
 of his character. He forbore the most distant allusion to his 
 attachment or his hopes. He evinced sympathy rather, by 
 imitating her silence, than attempts to console. When he spoke, 
 he sought to interest her mind, more than to heal directly the 
 deep wounds of her heart. There is always, to the afflicted, a 
 certain charm in the depth and bitterness of eloquent misan- 
 thropy. And Dalibard, who professed not to be a man-hater, 
 but a world-scorner, had powers of language and of reasoning 
 commensurate with his astute intellect and his profound re- 
 search. His society became not only a relief, it grew almost a 
 want, to that stern sorrower. But, whether alarmed or not by 
 the influence she felt him gradually acquiring, or whether, 
 through some haughty desire to rise once more aloft from the 
 state of her rival and her lover, she made one sudden effort to
 
 LUCRETIA. 125 
 
 grasp at the rank from which she had been hurled. The only 
 living person, whose connection could reopen to her the great 
 world, with its splendors and its scope to ambition, was Charles 
 Vernon. She scarcely admitted to her own mind the idea that 
 she would now accept, if offered, the suit she had before de- 
 spised; she did not even contemplate the renewal of that suit; 
 though there was something in the gallant and disinterested 
 character of Vernon which should have made her believe he 
 would regard their altered fortunes rather as a claim on his 
 honor than a release to his engagements. But hitherto no 
 communication had passed between them, and this was strange 
 if he retained the same intentions which he had announced at 
 Laughton. Putting aside, we say, however, all such consider- 
 ations, Vernon had sought her friendship, called her "cousin," 
 enforced the distant relationship between them. Not as lover, 
 but as kinsman, the only kinsman of her own rank she pos- 
 sessed, his position in the world, his connections, his brilliant 
 range of acquaintance, made his counsel for her future plans, his 
 aid in the re-establishment of her consequence (if not as wealthy, 
 still as well born), and her admission amongst her equals, of 
 price and value. It was worth sounding the depth of the 
 friendship he had offered, even if his love had passed away 
 with the fortune on which doubtless it had been based. 
 
 She took a bold step; she wrote to Vernon, not even to al- 
 lude to what had passed between them : her pride forbade 
 such unwomanly vulgarity. The baseness that was in her 
 took at least a more delicate exterior. She wrote to him 
 simply and distantly, to state that there were some books and 
 trifles of hers left at Laughton, which she prized beyond their 
 trivial value; and to request, as she believed him to be absent 
 from the hall, permission to call at her old home, in her way to 
 a visit in a neighboring county, and point out to whomsoever 
 he might appoint to meet her, the effects she deemed herself 
 privileged to claim. The letter was one merely of business, 
 but it was a sufficient test of the friendly feelings of her former 
 suitor. 
 
 She sent this letter to Vernon's house in London, and the 
 next day came the answer. 
 
 Vernon, we must own, entirely sympathized with Sir Miles 
 in the solemn injunctions the old man had bequeathed. Im- 
 mediately after the death of one to whom we owe gratitude and 
 love, all his desires take a sanctity irresistible and ineffable. 
 We adopt his affections, his dislikes, his obligations, and his 
 wrongs. And after he had read the copy of Lucretia's letter,
 
 126 LUCRETIA. 
 
 enclosed to him by Sir Miles, the conquest the poor Baronet 
 had made over resentment and vindictive emotion, the evident 
 effort at passionless justice with which he had provided becom- 
 ingly for his niece, while he cancelled her claims as his heiress, 
 had filled Vernon with a reverence for his wishes and decisions, 
 that silenced all those inclinations to over-generosity which an 
 unexpected inheritance is apt to create towards the less fortu- 
 nate expectants; nevertheless, Lucretia's direct application, 
 her formal appeal to his common courtesy as host and kinsman, 
 perplexed greatly a man ever accustomed to a certain chivalry 
 towards the sex; the usual frankness of his disposition sugges- 
 ted, however, plain dealing as the best escape from his dilem- 
 ma, and therefore he answered thus: 
 
 "MADAM: 
 
 "Under other circumstances it would have given me no 
 common pleasure to place the house, that you so long inhabited, 
 again at your disposal. And I feel so painfully the position 
 which my refusal of your request inflicts upon me, that rather 
 than resort to excuses and pretexts, which, while conveying an 
 impression of my sincerity, would seem almost like an insult to 
 yourself, I venture frankly to inform you, that it was the dying 
 wish of my lamented kinsman, in consequence of a letter which 
 came under his eye, that the welcome you had hitherto re- 
 ceived at Laughton should be withdrawn. Pardon me, Mad- 
 am, if I express myself thus bluntly; it is somewhat necessary 
 to the vindication of my character in your eyes, both as regards 
 the honor of your request and my tacit resignation of hopes, 
 fervently, but too presumptuously, entertained. In this most 
 painful candor, Heaven forbid that I should add wantonly to 
 your self-reproaches for the fault of youth and inexperience, 
 which I should be the last person to judge rigidly, and which, 
 had Sir Miles's life been spared, you would doubtless have 
 amply repaired. The feelings which actuated Sir Miles in his 
 latter days might have changed; but the injunction those feel- 
 ings prompted I am bound to respect. 
 
 "For the mere matter of business on which you have done 
 me the honor to address me, I have only to say, that any orders 
 you may give to the steward, or transmit through any person 
 you may send to the hall, with regard to the effects you so nat- 
 urally desire to claim, shall be implicitly obeyed. 
 
 "And believe me, Madam (though I do not presume to add 
 those expressions which might rather heighten the offence I 
 fear this letter will give you), that the assurance of your happi-
 
 LUCRETIA. \2'J 
 
 ness in the choice you have made, and which now no obstacle 
 
 can oppose, will considerably lighten the pain with which I 
 
 shall long recall my ungracious reply to your communication. 
 
 "I have the honor to be, etc. etc. 
 
 "C. VERNON ST. JOHN 
 "Brook Street, Dec. 28, 18 ." 
 
 The receipt of such a letter could hardly add to the pro- 
 founder grief which preyed in the innermost core of Lucretia's 
 heart, but in repelling the effort she had made to distract that 
 grief by ambition, it blackened the sullen despondency with 
 which she regarded the future. As the insect in the hollow 
 snare of the ant-lion, she felt that there was no footing up the 
 sides of the cave into which she had fallen the sand gave way 
 to the step. But despondency in her brought no meekness; 
 the cloud did not descend in rain; resting over the horizon, its 
 darkness was tinged with the fires which it fed. The heart, 
 already so embittered, was stung and mortified into intolerable 
 shame and wrath. From the home that should have been hers, 
 in which, as acknowledged heiress, she had smiled down on 
 the ruined Vernon, she was banished by him who had sup- 
 planted her, as one worthless and polluted. Though, from 
 motives of obvious delicacy, Vernon had not said expressly that 
 he had seen the letter to Maimvaring, the unfamiliar and for- 
 mal tone which he assumed indirectly declared it, and betrayed 
 the impression it had made in spite of his reserve. A living man 
 then was in possession of a secret which justified his disdain, 
 and that man was master of Laughton! The suppressed rage 
 which embraced the lost lover extended darkly over this wit- 
 ness to that baffled and miserable love. But what availed rage 
 against either? Abandoned and despoiled, she was powerless 
 to avenge. It was at this time, when her prospects seemed 
 most dark, her pride was most crushed, and her despair of the 
 future at its height, that she turned to Dalibard as the only 
 friend left to her under the sun. Even the vices she perceived 
 in him became merits, for they forbade him to despise her. 
 And now, this man rose suddenly into another and higher as- 
 pect of character: of late, though equally deferential to her, 
 there had been something more lofty in his mien, more assured 
 on his brow; gleams of a secret satisfaction, even of a joy, that 
 he appeared anxious to suppress, as ill in harmony with her 
 causes for dejection, broke out in his looks and words. At 
 length, one day, after some preparatory hesitation, he informed 
 her that he was free to return to France; that even without
 
 128 LUCRETIA. 
 
 the peace between England and France, which (known undefc 
 the name of the Peace of Arniens) had been just concluded, 
 he should have crossed the Channel. The advocacy and inter- 
 est of friends, whom he had left at Paris, had already brought 
 him under the special notice of the wonderful man who then 
 governed France, and who sought to unite in its service every 
 description and variety of intellect. He should return to 
 France, and then why, then, the ladder was on the walls of 
 Fortune and the foot planted on the step! As he spoke, con- 
 fidently and sanguinely, with the verve and assurance of an 
 able man who sees clear the path to his goal; as he sketched 
 with rapid precision the nature of his prospects and his hopes, 
 all that subtle wisdom which had before often seemed but 
 vague and general took practical shape and interest, thus ap- 
 plied to the actual circumstances of men; the spirit of intrigue, 
 which seemed mean when employed on mean things, swelled 
 into statesmanship and masterly genius to the listener, when 
 she saw it linked with the large objects of masculine ambi- 
 tion. Insensibly, therefore, her attention became earnest, her 
 mind aroused. The vision of a field, afar from the scenes of 
 her humiliation and despair a field for energy, stratagem, and 
 contest invited her restless intelligence. As Dalibard had 
 profoundly calculated, there was no new channel for her affec- 
 tions; the source was dried up, and the parched sands heaped 
 over it; but while the heart lay dormant, the mind rose, sleep- 
 less, chafed, and perturbed. Through the mind, he indirectly 
 addressed and subtly wooed her. 
 
 "Such," he said, as he rose to take leave; "Such is the 
 career to which I could depart with joy if I did not depart 
 alone!" 
 
 "Alone!" That word, more than once that day, Lucretia 
 repeated to herself; "Alone!" And what career was left to 
 her she, too, alone! 
 
 In certain stages of great grief, our natures yearn for excite- 
 ment. This has made some men gamblers; it has made even 
 women drunkards; it had effect over the serene calm and 
 would-be divinity of the Poet-sage. When his son dies, Goethe 
 does not mourn, he plunges into the absorption of a study un- 
 cultivated before. But in the great contest of life, in the whirl- 
 pool of actual affairs, the stricken heart finds all the gambl- 
 ing, the inebriation, and the study. 
 
 We pause here. We have pursued long enough that patient 
 analysis, with all the food for. reflection that it possibly affords, 
 to which we were insensibly led on by an interest, dark and
 
 LUCRETlA. 129 
 
 fascinating, that grew more and more upon us as we proceeded 
 in our research into the early history of a person fated to per- 
 vert no ordinary powers into no commonplace guilt. 
 
 The charm is concluded, the circle closed round; the self- 
 guided seeker after knowledge has gained the fiend for the 
 familiar. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE RECONCILIATION BETWEEN FATHER AND SON. 
 
 WE pass over an interval of some months. 
 
 A painter stood at work at the easel; his human model be- 
 fore him. He was employed on a nymph the Nymph Gala- 
 tea. The subject had been taken before by Salvator, whose 
 genius found all its elements in the wild rocks, gnarled fantas- 
 tic trees, and gushing waterfalls of the landscape; in the huge 
 ugliness of Polyphemus the lover; in the grace and suavity and 
 conscious abandonment of the nymph, sleeking her tresses 
 dripping from the bath. The painter, on a large canvas (for 
 Salvator's picture, at least the one we have seen, is among the 
 small sketches of the great artistic creator of the romantic and 
 grotesque), had transferred the subject of the master; but he 
 had left subordinate the landscape and the giant, to concentrate 
 all his art on the person of the Nymph. Middle-aged was the 
 painter, in truth; but he looked old. His hair, though long, 
 was gray and thin; his face was bloated by intemperance; and 
 his hand trembled much, though from habit no trace of the 
 tremor was visible in his work. 
 
 A boy, near at hand, was also employed on the same subject, 
 with a rough chalk and a bold freedom of touch. He was 
 sketching his design of a Galatea and Polyphemus on the wall; 
 for the wall was only whitewashed, and covered already with 
 the multiform vagaries whether of master or pupils; caricatures 
 and demigods, hands and feet, torsos and monsters, and Ve- 
 nuses; the rude creations, all mutilated, jarring, and mingled, 
 gave a cynical, mocking, devil may-care kind of aspect to the 
 sanctum of art. It was like the dissection-room of the anato- 
 mist. The boy's sketch was more in harmony with the walls 
 of the studio than the canvas of the master. His nymph, ac- 
 curately drawn from the undressed proportions of the model 
 down to the waist, terminated in the scales of a fish. The 
 forked branches of the trees stretched weird and imp-like as 
 the hands of skeletons. Polyphemus, peering over the rocks, 
 had the leer of a demon; and in his gross features there was a
 
 130 LUCRETIA. 
 
 certain distorted, hideous likeness of the grave and symmetri- 
 cal lineaments of Olivier Dalibard. 
 
 All around was slovenly, squalid, and poverty-stricken; 
 rickety, worn-out, rush-bottom chairs; unsold, unfinished pic- 
 tures, pell-mell in the corner, covered with dust; broken casts 
 of plaster; a lay-figure battered in its basket-work arms, with 
 its doll-like face all smudged and besmeared: a pot of porter 
 and a noggin of gin on a stained deal table, accompanied by 
 two or three broken, smoke-blackened pipes, some tattered song- 
 books, and old numbers of the Covent Garden Magazine, be- 
 trayed the tastes of the artist, and accounted for the shaking 
 hand and the bloated form. A jovial, disorderly, vagrant dog 
 of a painter, was Tom Varney! A bachelor, of course hu- 
 morous and droll a boon companion, and a terrible borrower: 
 clever enough in his calling; with pains and some method, he 
 had easily gained subsistence and established a name; but he 
 had one trick that soon ruined him in the business part of his 
 profession. He took a fourth of his price in advance; and 
 having once clutched the money, the poor customer might go 
 hang for his picture! The only things Tom Varney ever 
 fairly completed were those for which no order had been 
 given; for in their^ somehow or other, his fancy became inter- 
 ested, and on them he lavished the gusto which he really pos- 
 sessed. But the subjects were rarely salable. Nymphs and 
 deities undraperied have few worshippers in England amongst 
 the buyers of "furniture pictures." And, to say truth, nymph 
 and deity had usually a very equivocal look; and if they came 
 from the gods, you would swear it was the gods of the galleries 
 of Drury. When Tom Varney sold a picture, he lived upon 
 clover till the money was gone. But the poorer and less steady 
 alumni of the rising school, especially those at war with the 
 Academy from which Varney was excluded, pitied, despised, 
 yet liked and courted him withal. In addition to his good 
 qualities of blithe song-singer, droll story-teller, and stanch 
 Bacchanalian, Tom Varney was liberally good-natured in com- 
 municating instruction really valuable to those who knew how 
 to avail themselves of a knowledge he had made almost worth- 
 less to himself. He was a shrewd, though good-natured critic, 
 had many little secrets of coJoring and composition, which an 
 invitation to supper, or the loan of ten shillings, was sufficient 
 to bribe from him. Ragged, out of elbows, unshaven, and 
 slipshod, he still had his set, amongst the gay and the young 
 a precious master, a profitable set, for his nephew, Master 
 Honore Gabriel ! But the poor rapscallion had a heart larger
 
 LUCRETIA. 131 
 
 than many honest, painstaking men. As soon as Gabriel had 
 found him out, and entreated refuge from his fear of his father, 
 the painter clasped him tight in his great slovenly arms, sold a 
 Venus half-price to buy him a bed and a washstand, and swore 
 a tremendous oath, "that the son of his poor guillotined sister 
 should share the last shilling in his pocket, the last drop in his 
 can." 
 
 Gabriel, fresh from the cheer of Laughton, and spoiled by 
 the prodigal gifts of Lucretia, had little gratitude for shillings 
 and porter. Nevertheless, he condescended to take what he 
 could get, while he sighed, from the depths of a heart in which 
 cupidity and vanity had become the predominant rulers, for a 
 destiny more worthy his genius, and more in keeping with the 
 sphere from which he had descended. 
 
 The boy finished his sketch with an impudent wink at the 
 model, flung himself back on his chair, folded his arms, cast a 
 discontented glance at the whitened seams of the sleeves, and 
 soon seemed lost in his own reflections. The painter worked 
 on in silence. The model, whom Gabriel's wink had aroused, 
 half-flattered, half-indignant for a moment, lapsed into a doze. 
 Outside the window, you heard the song of a canary a dingy, 
 smoke-colored canary that seemed shedding its plumes, for 
 they were as ragged as the garments of its master; still it con- 
 trived to sing trill-trill-trill-trill-trill, as blithely as if free in 
 its native woods, or pampered by fair hands in a gilded cage. 
 The bird was the only true artist there: it sang, as the poet 
 sings, to obey its nature and vent its heart. Trill-trill-trillela- 
 la-la-trill-trill, went the song louder, gayer than usual, for 
 there was a gleam of April sunshine struggling over the roof- 
 tops. The song at length roused up Gabriel; he turned his 
 chair round, laid his head on one side, listened, and looked 
 curiously at the bird. 
 
 At length, an idea seemed to cross him: he rose, opened the 
 window, drew in the cage, placed it on the chair, then took 
 up one of his uncle's pipes, walked to the fireplace, and thrust 
 the shank of the pipe into the bars. When it was red-hot he 
 took it out by the bowl, having first protected his hand from 
 the heat by wrapping round it his handkerchief; this done, he 
 returned to the cage. His movements had wakened up the 
 dozing model. She eyed them at first with dull curiosity, then 
 with lively suspicion ; and presently starting up with an excla- 
 mation, such as no novelist but Fielding dare put into the 
 mouth of a female much less a nymph of such renown 
 as Galatea she sprang across the room, well-nigh upset-
 
 132 LUCRETIA. 
 
 ting easel and painter, and fastened firm hold on Gabriel's 
 shoulders. 
 
 "The varment!" she cried vehemently; "the good-for- 
 nothing varment! If it had been a jay, or a nasty raven, well 
 and good! But a poor little canary!" 
 
 "Hoity-toity! What are you about, nephew? What's the 
 matter?" said Tom Varney, coming up to the strife. And, 
 indeed, it was time, for Gabriel's teeth were set in his catlike 
 jaws, and the glowing point of the pipe-shank was within an 
 inch of the cheek of the model. 
 
 "What's the matter?" replied Gabriel sullenly; "Why, I 
 was only going to try a little experiment." 
 
 "An experiment? Not on my canary, poor, dear, little 
 thing! The hours and hours that creature has strained its 
 throat to say 'sing and be merry,' when I had not a rap in my 
 pocket! It would have made a stone feel to hear it." 
 
 "But I think I can make it sing much better than ever 
 only just let me try! They say, that if you put out the eyes of 
 a canary, it Gabriel was not allowed to conclude his sen- 
 tence; for here rose that clamor of horror and indignation, 
 from both painter and model, which usually greets the an- 
 nouncement of every philosophical discovery, at least, when 
 about to be practically applied; and in the midst of the hub- 
 bub, the poor little canary, who had been fluttering about the 
 cage to escape the hand of the benevolent operator, set up no 
 longer the cheering trill-trillela-la-trill, but a scared and heart- 
 breaking chirp a shrill, terrified twit-twit-twitter twit. 
 
 "Damn the bird! Hold your tongues!" cried Gabriel Var- 
 ney, reluctantly giving way; but still eyeing the bird with the 
 scientific regret with which the illustrious Majendie might con- 
 template a dog which some brute of a master refused to disem- 
 bowel for the good of the colics of mankind. 
 
 The model seized on the cage, shut the door of the wires, 
 and carried it off. Tom Varney drained the rest of his porter, 
 and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his coat. 
 
 "And to use my pipe for such cruelty! Boy, boy, I could 
 not have believed it! But you were not in earnest oh, no, 
 impossible! Sukey, my love Galatea, the divine calm thy 
 breast; Cupid did but jest: 
 
 ' Cupid is the God of Laughter, 
 Quip, and jest, and joke, sir.' " 
 
 "If you don't whip the little wretch within an inch of his 
 life, he'll have a gallows end on't," replied Galatea. 
 "Go, Cupid, go and kiss Galatea, and make your peace:
 
 LUCRETIA. 133 
 
 ' Oh, leave a kiss within the cup, 
 And I'll not ask for wine ! ' 
 
 And 'tis no use asking for wine, or for gin either not a drop 
 in the noggin!" 
 
 All this while, Gabriel, disdaining the recommendations held 
 forth to him, was employed in brushing his jacket with a very 
 mangy-looking brush; and when he had completed that opera- 
 tion, he approached his uncle, and coolly thrust his hands into 
 that gentleman's waistcoat-pockets. 
 
 "Uncle, what have you done with those seven shillings? I 
 am going out to spend the day." 
 
 "If you give them to him, Tom, I'll scratch your eyes out," 
 cried the model ; "and then we'll see how you'll sing. Whip 
 him, I say whip him ! " 
 
 But, strange to say, this liberty of the boy's quite re-opened 
 the heart of his uncle it was a pleasure to him, who put his 
 hands so habitually into o^her people's pockets, to be invested 
 with the novel grandeur of the man sponged upon. "That's 
 right, Cupid, son of Cytherea; all's common property amongst 
 friends. Seven shillings, I have 'em not! 'They now are five 
 who once were seven'; but such as they are, we'll share! 
 
 ' Let old Timotheus yield the prize, 
 Or both divide the crown.' " 
 
 "Crowns bear no division, my uncle," said Gabriel dryly, 
 and he pocketed the five shillings. Then, having first secured 
 his escape, by gaining the threshold, he suddenly seized one of 
 the rickety chairs by its leg, and regardless of the gallantries due 
 to the sex, sent it right against the model, who was shaking her 
 fist at him. A scream, and a fall, and a sharp twit from the 
 cage, which was hurled nearly into the fireplace, told that the mis- 
 sive had taken effect. Gabriel did not wait for the probable 
 reaction; he was in the streets in an instant. 
 
 "This wont do," he muttered to himself ; "there is no getting 
 on here. Foolish, drunken vagabond ; no good to be got from 
 him. My father is terrible, but he will make his way in the 
 world. Umph! if I were but his match and why not? I am 
 brave, and he is not. There's fun, too, in danger." 
 
 Thus musing he took his way to Dalibard's lodgings. His 
 father was at home. Now, though they were but lodgings, 
 and the street not in fashion, Olivur Dalibard's apartments 
 had an air of refinement, and even elegance, that contrasted 
 both the wretched squalor of the abode Gabriel had just left, 
 and the meanness of Dalibard's former quarters in London.
 
 134 LUCRETIA. 
 
 The change seemed to imply that the Provei^al had already 
 made some way in the world. And, truth to say, at all times, 
 even in the lowest ebb of his fortunes, there was that inde- 
 scribable neatness and formality of precision about all the ex- 
 terior seemings of the ci-devant friend of the prirn Robespierre 
 which belong to those in whom order and method are strongly 
 developed qualities which give even to neediness a certain 
 dignity. As the room and its owner met the eye of Gabriel, on 
 whose senses all externals had considerable influence, the un- 
 grateful young ruffian recalled the kind, tattered, slovenly uncle, 
 whose purse he had just emptied, without one feeling milder 
 than disgust. Olivier Dalibard, always careful, if simple, in his 
 dress, with his brow of grave intellectual power, and his mien 
 imposing, not only from its calm, but from that nameless refine- 
 ment which rarely fails to give to the student the air of a 
 gentleman Olivier Dalibard he might dread, he might even 
 detest ; but he was not ashamed of him. 
 
 "I said I would visit you, sir, if you would permit me," said 
 Gabriel, in a tone of respect, not unmingled with some defi- 
 ance, as if in doubt of his reception. 
 
 The father's slow, full eye, so different from the sidelong, 
 furtive glance of Lucretia, rested on the son, as if to penetrate 
 his very heart. 
 
 "You look pale and haggard, child: you are fast losing your 
 health and beauty. Good gifts these, not to be wasted before 
 they can be duly employed. But you have taken your choice. 
 Be an artist copy Tom Varney, and prosper." 
 
 Gabriel remained silent, with his eyes on the floor. 
 
 "You come in time for my farewell," resumed Dalibard. 
 "It is a comfort, at least, that I leave your youth so honorably 
 protected. I am about to return to my country ; my career is 
 once more before me!" 
 
 "Your country ; to Paris?" 
 
 "There are fine pictures in the Louvre a good place to in- 
 spire an artist ! " 
 
 "You go alone, father?" 
 
 "You forget, young gentleman, you disown me as father! Go 
 alone! I thought I told you in the times of our confidence 
 that I should marry Lucretia Clavering. I rarely fail in my 
 plans. She has lost Laughton, it is true, but ten thousand 
 pounds will make a fair commencement to fortune, even at 
 Paris. Well, what do you want with me, worthy godson of 
 Honore Gabriel Mirabeau?" 
 
 "Sir, if you will let me, I will go with you/'
 
 LUCRETIA. 135 
 
 Dalibard shaded his brow with his hand, and reflected on the 
 filial proposal. On the one hand, it might be convenient, and 
 would certainly be economical to rid himself evermore of the 
 mutinous son who had already thrown off his authority ; on the 
 other hand, there was much in Gabriel, mutinous and even 
 menacing as he had lately become, that promised an unscrupu- 
 lous tool or a sharp-witted accomplice, with interests that every 
 year the ready youth would more and more discover were bound 
 up in his plotting father's. This last consideration, joined, if 
 not to affection still to habit, to the link between blood and 
 blood, which even the hardest find it difficult to sever, prevailed. 
 He extended his pale hand to Gabriel, and said gently: 
 
 "I will take you, if we rightly understand each other. Once 
 again in my power, I might constrain you to my will, it is true. 
 But I rather confer with you as man to man than as man to 
 boy." 
 
 "It is the best way," said Gabriel firmly. 
 
 "I will use no harshness, inflict no punishment, unless, in- 
 deed, amply merited by stubborn disobedience or wilful deceit. 
 But if I meet with these, better rot on a dunghill than come 
 with me! I ask implicit confidence in all my suggestions, 
 prompt submission to all my requests. Grant me but these, 
 and I promise to consult your fortune as my own ; to gratify 
 your tastes as far as my means will allow ; to grudge not your 
 pleasures; and, when the age for ambition comes, to aid your 
 rise if I rise myself; nay, if well contented with you, to re- 
 move the blot from your birth, by acknowledging and adopt- 
 ing you formally as my son." 
 
 "Agreed! and I thank you," said Gabriel. "And Lucretia 
 is going? Oh, I so long to see her!" 
 
 "See her not yet; but next week." 
 
 "Do not fear that I should let out about the letter. I should 
 betray myself if I did," said the boy, bluntly betraying his 
 guess at his father's delay. 
 
 The evil scholar smiled. 
 
 "You will do well to keep it secret for your own sake; for 
 mine, I should not fear. Gabriel, go back now to your master; 
 you do right, like the rats, to run from the falling house. 
 Next week I will send for you, Gabriel!" 
 
 Not, however, back to the studio went the boy. He saun- 
 tered leisurely through the gayest streets, eyed the shops, and 
 the equipages, the fair women, and the well-dressed men eyed 
 with envy, and longings, and visions of pomps and vanities to 
 come ; then, when the day began to close, he sought out a
 
 136 LUCRETIA. 
 
 young painter, the wildest and maddest of the crew to whom 
 his uncle had presented their future comrade and rival, and 
 went with this youth, at half-price, to the theatre, not to gaze 
 on the actors or study the play, but to stroll in the saloon. A 
 supper in the Finish completed the void in his pockets, and 
 concluded his day's rank experience of life. By the gray 
 dawn he stole back to his bed, and as he laid himself down, he 
 thought with avid pleasure of Paris, its gay gardens, and bril- 
 liant shops, and crowded streets ; he thought, too, of his father's 
 calm confidence of success; of the triumph that already had 
 attended his wiles a confidence and a triumph which, excit- 
 ing his reverence and rousing his emulation, had decided his 
 resolution. He thought, too, of Lucretia, with something of 
 affection, recalled her praises and bribes, her frequent media- 
 tion with his father, and felt that they should have need of each 
 other. Oh, no, he never would tell her of the snare laid at 
 Guy's Oak never, not even if incensed with his father! An 
 instinct told him that that offence could never be forgiven, and 
 that, henceforth, Lucretia's was a destiny bound up in his own. 
 He thought, too, of Dalibard's warning and threat. But, with 
 fear itself, came a strange excitement of pleasure ; to grapple, 
 if necessary, he a mere child, with such a man! His heart 
 swelled at the thought. So at last he fell asleep, and dreamed 
 that he saw his mother's trunkless face dripping gore, and frown- 
 ing on him; dreamed that he heard her say: "Goest thou to the 
 scene of my execution only to fawn upon my murderer?" Then 
 a nightmare of horrors, of scaffolds, and executioners, and 
 grinning mobs, and agonized faces, came on him, dark, con- 
 fused, and indistinct. And he woke, with his hair standing on 
 end, and heard below, in the rising sun, the merry song of the 
 poor canary trill-lill-lill, trill-trill-lill-lill-la? Did he feel glad 
 that his cruel hand had been stayed? 
 
 EPILOGUE TO PART THE FIRST. 
 
 IT is a year since the November day on which Lucretia 
 Clavering quitted the roof of Mr. Fielden. And first we must 
 recall the eye of the reader to the old-fashioned terrace at 
 Laughton ; the jutting porch, the quaint balustrades, the broad, 
 dark, changeless cedars on the lawn beyond. The day is clear 
 and mild, for November in the country is often a gentle month, 
 On that terrace walked Charles Vernon, now known by his ne>* 
 name of St. John. Is it the change of name that has sc* 
 changed the person? Can the wand of the Herald's Offica
 
 1<JCRETIA. I3f 
 
 have filled up the hollows of the cheek, and replaced by elastic 
 vigor the listless languor of the tread? No; there is another 
 and a better cause for that 'healthful change. Mr. Vernon St. 
 John is not alone a fair companion leans on his arm. See, 
 she pauses to press closer to his side, gaze on his face, and 
 whisper, "We did well to have hope and faith!" 
 
 The husband's faith had not been so unshaken as his Mary's, 
 and a slight blush passed over his cheek as he thought of his 
 concession to Sir Miles' s wishes, and his overtures to Lucretia 
 Clavering. Still that fault had been fairly acknowledged to 
 his wife, and she felt, the moment she had spoken, that she had 
 committed an indiscretion ; nevertheless, with an arch touch of 
 womanly malice, she added softly : 
 
 "And Miss Clavering, you persist in saying, was not really 
 handsome?" 
 
 "My love," replied the husband gravely, "you would oblige 
 me by not recalling the very painful recollections connected 
 with that name. Let it never be mentioned in this house." 
 
 Lady Mary bowed her graceful head in submission; she 
 understood Charles's feelings. For though he had not shown 
 her Sir Miles's letter and its enclosure, he had communicated 
 enough to account for the unexpected heritage, and to lessen 
 his wife's compassion for the disappointed heiress. Neverthe- 
 less, she comprehended that her husband felt an uneasy twinge 
 at the idea that he was compelled to act hardly to the one 
 whose hopes he had supplanted. Lucretia's banishment from 
 Laughton was a just humiliation, but it humbled a generous 
 heart to inflict the sentence. Thus, on all accounts, the re- 
 membrance of Lucretia was painful and unwelcome to the suc- 
 cessor of Sir Miles. There was a silence; Lady Mary pressed 
 her husband's hand. 
 
 "It is strange," said he, giving vent to his thoughts at that 
 tender sign of sympathy in his feeling; "strange that, after all, 
 she did not marry Mainwaring, but fixed her choice on that 
 supple Frenchman. But she has settled abroad now, perhaps 
 for life a great relief to my mind. Yes, let us never recur 
 to her." 
 
 "Fortunately," said Lady Mary, with some hesitation, "she 
 does not seem to have created much interest here. The poor 
 seldom name her to me, and our neighbors only with surprise 
 at her marriage. In another year she will be forgotten ! " 
 
 Mr. St. John sighed. Perhaps he felt how much more easily 
 he had been forgotten, were he the banished one, Lucretia the 
 possessor! His light nature, however, soon escaped from all
 
 138 LUCRETIA. 
 
 thoughts and sources of annoyance, and he listened with com- 
 placent attention to Lady Mary's gentle plans for the poor, and 
 the children's school, and the cottages that ought to be repaired, 
 and the laborers that ought to be employed. For, though it 
 may seem singular, Vernon St. John, insensibly influenced by his 
 wife's meek superiority, and corrected by her pure companion- 
 ship, had begun to feel the charm of innocent occupations; 
 more, perhaps, than if he had been accustomed to the larger 
 and loftier excitements of life, and missed that stir of intellect 
 which is the element of those who have warred in the democ- 
 racy of letters, or contended for the leadership of States. He 
 had begun already to think that the country was no such exile 
 after all. Naturally benevolent, he had taught himself to 
 share the occupations his Mary had already found in the busy 
 "luxury of doing good," and to conceive that brotherhood of 
 charity which usually unites the lord of the village with its poor. 
 
 "I think, what with hunting once a week (I will not venture 
 more till my pain in the side is quite gone), and with the help 
 of some old friends at Christmas, we can get through the win- 
 ter very well, Mary." 
 
 "Ah, those old friends! I dread them more than the hunt- 
 ing!" 
 
 "But we'll have your grave father, and your dear, precise, 
 excellent mother, to keep us in order. And if I sit more than 
 half an hour after dinner, the old butler shall pull me out by 
 the ears. Mary, what do you say to thinning the grove yonder? 
 We shall get a better view of the landscape beyond. No, hang 
 it! dear old Sir Miles loved his trees better than the prospect 
 I wont lop a bough. But that avenue we are planting will be 
 certainly a noble improvement " 
 
 "Fifty years hence, Charles!" 
 
 "It is our duty to think of posterity," answered the ci-devant 
 spendthrift, with a gravity that was actually pompous. "But 
 hark! Is that two o'clock? Three, by Jove! How time flies! 
 And my new bullocks that I was to see at two! Come down to 
 the farm, that's my own Mary. Ah, your fine ladies are not 
 such bad housewives after all!" 
 
 "And your fine gentlemen " 
 
 . "Capital farmers! I had no idea till last week that a prize 
 ox was so interesting an animal. One lives to learn. Put me 
 in mind, by the by, to write to Coke about his sheep." 
 
 "This way, dear Charles; we can go round by the village, 
 and see poor Ponto and Dash." 
 
 The tears rushed to Mr. St. John's eyes. "If poor Sir Miles
 
 LUCREtlA. *39 
 
 could have known you!" he said, with a sigh; and, though 
 the gardeners were at work on the lawn, he bowed his head, 
 and kissed the blushing cheek of his wife as heartily as if he 
 had been really a farmer. 
 
 From the terrace at Laughton, turn to the humbler abode 
 of our old friend the Vicar the same day, the same hour. 
 Here also the scene is without doors: we are in the garden of 
 the vicarage ; the children are playing at hide and seek amongst 
 the espaliers, which screen the winding gravel walks from the 
 esculents more dear to Ceres than to Flora. The vicar is seated 
 in his little parlor, from which a glazed door admits into the 
 garden. The door is now open, and the good man has paused 
 from his work (he had just discovered a new emendation in the 
 first chorus of the Medea), to look out at the rosy faces that 
 gleam to and fro across the scene. His wife, with a basket in 
 her hand, is standing without the door, but a little aside, not 
 to obstruct the view. 
 
 "It does one's heart good to see them," said the Vicar; 
 "Little dears!" 
 
 "Yes, they ought to be dear at this time of the year," ob- 
 served Mrs. Fielden, who was absorbed in the contents of the 
 basket. 
 
 "And so fresh!" 
 
 "Fresh, indeed! How different from London ! In London 
 they were not fit to be seen ; as old as I am sure I can't guess 
 how old they were. But you see here they are new laid every 
 morning!" 
 
 "My dear!" said Mr. Fielden, opening his eyes; "New laid 
 every morning! " 
 
 "Two dozen and four." 
 
 "Two dozen and four! What on earth are you talking about, 
 Mrs. Fielden?" 
 
 "Why the eggs to be sure, my love!" 
 
 "Oh! "said the Vicar, "two dozen and four! You alarmed 
 me a little; 'tis of no consequence only my foolish mistake. 
 Always prudent and saving, my dear Sarah ; just as if poor Sir 
 Miles had not left us that munificent fortune, I may call it." 
 
 "It will not go very far when we have our young ones to 
 settle. And David is very extravagant already: he has torn 
 such a hole in his jacket!" 
 
 At this moment up the gravel walk two young persons came 
 in sight. The children darted across them, whooping and 
 laughing, and vanished in the further recess of the garden. 
 
 "All is for the best blind mortals that we are. All is for
 
 140 LUCRETIA. 
 
 the best!" said the Vicar musingly, as his eyes rested upon 
 the approaching pair. 
 
 "Certainly, my love; you are always right, and it is wicked 
 to grumble. Still, if you saw what a hole it was past patch- 
 ing, If ear!" 
 
 "Look round!" said Mr. Fielden benevolently. "How we 
 grieved for them both; how wroth we were with William! 
 How sad for Susan ! And now see them they will be the 
 better man and wife for their trial!" 
 
 "Has Susan then consented? I was almost afraid she never 
 would consent. How often have I been almost angry with her, 
 poor lamb, when I have heard her accuse herself of causing her 
 sister's unhappiness, and declare with sobs that she felt it a 
 crime to think of William Mainwaring as a husband." 
 
 "I trust I have reasoned her out of a morbid sensibility, 
 which, while it could not have rendered Lucretia the happier, 
 must have ensured the wretchedness of herself and William. 
 But if Lucretia had not married, and so forever closed the door 
 on William's repentance (that is, supposing he did repent), I 
 believe poor Susan would rather have died of a broken heart, 
 than have given her hand to Mainwaring." 
 
 "It was an odd marriage of that proud young lady's, after 
 all," said Mrs. Fielden; "so much older than her a foreigner, 
 too!" 
 
 "But he is a very pleasant man, and they had known each 
 other so long. I did not, however, quite like a sort of cun- 
 ning he showed, when I came" to reflect on it, in bringing Lu- 
 cretia back to the house ; it looks as if he had laid a trap for 
 her from the first." 
 
 "Ten thousand pounds! A great catch fora foreigner!" 
 observed Mrs. Fielden, with the shrewd instinct of her sex ; 
 and then she added, in the spirit of a prudent sympathy equal- 
 ly characteristic: "But I think you say Mr. Parchmount per- 
 suaded her to allow half to be settled on herself. That will be 
 a hold on him." 
 
 "A bad hold, if that be all, Sarah. There is a better he is 
 a learned man and a scholar. Scholars are naturally domestic, 
 and make good husbands." 
 
 "But you know he must be a papist!" said Mrs. Fielden. 
 
 "Umph!" muttered the Vicar irresolutely. 
 
 While the worthy couple were thus conversing, Susan and 
 her lover, not having finished their conference, had turned 
 back through the winding walk. 
 
 "Indeed," said William, drawing her arm closer to his side,
 
 LUCRETIA. i4l 
 
 "these scruples, these fears, are cruel to me as well as to your- 
 self. If you were no longer existing, I could be nothing to 
 your sister. Nay, even were she not married, you must know 
 enough of her pride to be assured that I can retain no place in 
 her affections. What has chanced was not our crime. Per- 
 haps Heaven designed to save, not only us, but herself, from 
 the certain misery of nuptials so inauspicious!" 
 
 "If she would but answer one of my letters!" sighed Susan; 
 "or if I could but know that she were happy and contented!" 
 
 "Your letters must have miscarried; you are not sure even 
 of her address. Rely upon it she is happy. Do you think 
 that she would a second time 'have stooped beneath her' " 
 Mainwaring's lip writhed as he repeated that phrase "if her 
 feelings had not been involved? I would not wrong your sis- 
 ter; I shall ever feel gratitude for the past, and remorse for 
 my own shameful weakness; still I must think that the nature 
 of her attachment to me was more ardent than lasting." 
 
 "Ah, William, how can you know her heart?" 
 
 "By comparing it with yours. Oh, there, indeed, I may 
 anchor my faith! Susan, we were formed for each other! 
 Our natures are alike, save that yours, despite its surpassing 
 sweetness, has greater strength in its simple candor. You will 
 be my guide to good. Without you I should have no aim in 
 life, no courage to front the contests of this world. Ah, this 
 hand trembles still!" 
 
 "William, William, I cannot repress a foreboding, a super- 
 stition! At night I am haunted with that pale face, as I saw 
 it last, pale with suppressed despair. Oh, if ever Lucretia 
 could have need of us need of our services, our affections; if 
 we could but repair the grief we have caused her!" 
 
 Susan's head sank on her lover's shoulder. She had said 
 "need of us" "need of our services." In those simple 
 monosyllables the union was pledged, the identity of their lots 
 in the dark urn was implied. 
 
 From this scene turn again the slide shifts in the lantern 
 we are at Paris. In the ante-chamber at the Tuileries a crowd 
 of expectant courtiers and adventurers gaze upon a figure 
 who passes with modest and downcast eyes through the throng; 
 he has just left the closet of the First Consul. 
 
 "Par Dieu!" said B , "power, like misery, makes us 
 
 acquainted with strange bedfellows. I should like to hear what 
 the First Consul can have to say to Olivier Dalibard. " 
 
 Fouche\ who at that period was scheming for the return to 
 Jiis old dignities as minister of police, smiled slightly, and an-
 
 142 LUCREi-fA. 
 
 swered: "In a time when the air is filled with daggers, one 
 who was familiar with Robespierre has his uses. Olivier 
 Dalibard is a remarkable man. He is one of those children of 
 the Revolution whom that great mother is bound to save." 
 
 "By betraying his brethren?" said B dryly. 
 
 "I do not allow the inference. The simple fact is that Dali- 
 bard has spent many years in England; he has married an Eng- 
 glishwoman of birth and connections; he knows well the Eng- 
 lish language and English people; and just now, when the First 
 Consul is so anxious to approfondir the popular feelings of that 
 strange nation, with whose government he is compelled to go 
 to war, he may naturally have much to say to so acute an ob- 
 server as Olivier Dalibard." 
 
 "Um!" said B ; "with such patronage, Robespierre's 
 
 friend should hold his head somewhat higher!" 
 
 Meanwhile Olivier Dalibard, crossing the gardens of the pal- 
 ace, took his way to the Faubourg St. Germain. There was 
 no change in the aspect of this man; the same meditative tran- 
 quillity characterized his downward eyes and bended brow; 
 the same precise simplicity of dress which had pleased the prim 
 taste of Robespierre gave decorum to his slender, stooping 
 form. No expression more cheerful, no footstep more elastic, 
 bespoke the exile's return to his native land, or the sanguine 
 expectations of Intellect restored to a career. Yet, to all ap- 
 pearance, the prospects of Dalibard were bright and promis- 
 ing. The First Consul was at that stage of his greatness when 
 he sought to employ in his service all such talent as the Revo- 
 lution had made manifest, provided only that it was not 
 stained with notorious bloodshed, or too strongly associated 
 with the Jacobin clubs. His quick eye seemed to have discov- 
 ered already the abilities of Dalibard, and to have appreciated 
 the sagacity and knowledge of men which had enabled this 
 subtle person to obtain the friendship of Robespierre, without 
 sharing in his crimes. He had been frequently closeted with 
 Buonaparte; he was in the declared favor of Fouche, who, 
 though not at that period at the head of the police, was too 
 necessary amidst the dangers of the time, deepened as they 
 were by the rumors of some terrible and profound conspiracy, 
 to be laid aside, as the First Consul had at one moment de- 
 signed. One man alone, of those high in the State, appeared 
 to distrust Olivier Dalibard the celebrated Cambacdres. But 
 with his aid the Provencal could dispense. What was the 
 secret of Dalibard' s power? Was it, in truth, owing solely to 
 his native talent, and his acquired experience, especially of
 
 LtfCkfctiA. 143 
 
 England? Was it by honorable means that he had won the 
 ear of the First Consul? We may be sure of the contrary; for 
 it is a striking attribute of men once thoroughly tainted by the 
 indulgence of vicious schemes and stratagems, that they become 
 wholly blinded to those plain paths of ambition which common- 
 sense makes manifest to ordinary ability. If we regard narrowly 
 the lives of great criminals, we are often very much startled by the 
 extraordinary acuteness, the profound calculation, the patient 
 meditative energy which they have employed upon the concep- 
 tion and execution of a crime. We feel inclined to think that 
 such intellectual power would have commanded great distinc- 
 tion, worthily used and guided; but we never find that these 
 great criminals seem to have been sensible of the opportunities 
 to real eminence which they have thrown away. Often we ob- 
 serve that there have been before them vistas into worldly 
 greatness, which, by no uncommon prudence and exertion, 
 would have conducted honest men, half as clever, to fame and 
 power; but, with a strange obliquity of vision, they appear to 
 have looked from these broad, clear avenues into some dark, 
 tangled defile, in which, by the subtlest ingenuity, and through 
 the most besetting perils, he might attain at last to the success 
 of a fraud, or the enjoyment of a vice. In crime once in- 
 dulged, there is a wonderful fascination; and the fascination is, 
 not rarely, great in proportion to the intellect of the criminal. 
 There is always hope of reform for a dull, uneducated, stolid 
 man, led by accident or temptation into guilt; but where a man 
 of great ability, and highly educated, besots himself in the 
 intoxication of dark and terrible excitements, takes impure 
 delight in tortuous and slimy ways, the good angel abandons 
 him forever. 
 
 Olivier Dalibard walked musingly on, gained a house in one 
 of the most desolate quarters of the abandoned Faubourg, 
 mounted the spacious stairs, and rang at the door of an attic 
 next the roof. After some moments, the door was slowly and 
 cautiously opened, and two small fierce eyes, peering through 
 a mass of black tangled curls, gleamed through the aperture. 
 The gaze seemed satisfactory. 
 
 "Enter, friend," said the inmate, with a sort of complacent 
 grunt; and, as Dalibard obeyed, the man reclosed, and barred 
 the door. 
 
 The room was bare to beggary; the ceiling, low and sloping, 
 was blackened with smoke. A wretched bed, two chairs, a 
 table, a strong chest, a small cracked looking-glass, completed 
 the inventory. The dress of the occupier was not in keeping
 
 144 LUCRETIA. 
 
 with the chamber; true that it was not such as was worn by the 
 wealthier classes, but it betokened no sign of poverty. A blue 
 coat, with high collar, and half of military fashion, was but- 
 toned tight over a chest of vast girth; the nether garments were 
 of leather, scrupulously clean, and solid, heavy riding boots 
 came half-way up the thigh. A more sturdy, stalwart, strong- 
 built knave never excited the admiration which physical power 
 always has a right to command: and Dalibard gazed on him 
 with envy. The pale scholar absolutely sighed as he thought 
 what an auxiliary to his own scheming mind would have been 
 so tough a frame ! 
 
 But even less in form than face did the man of thews and 
 sinews contrast the man of wile and craft. Opposite that high 
 forehead, with its massive development of organs, scowled the 
 low front of one to whom thought was unfamiliar; protuberant, 
 indeed, over the shaggy brows, where phrenologists place the 
 seats of practical perception strongly marked in some of the 
 brutes, as in the dog but almost literally devoid of those 
 higher organs, by which we reason, and imagine, and construct. 
 But in rich atonement for such deficiency, all the animal 
 reigned triumphant in the immense mass and width of the skull 
 behind. And as the hair, long before, curled in close rings to 
 the nape of the bull-like neck, you saw before you one of those 
 useful instruments to ambition and fraud, which recoil at no dan- 
 ger, comprehend no crime, are not without certain good quali- 
 ties, under virtuous guidance, for they have the fidelity, the 
 obedience, the stubborn courage of the animal; but which, 
 under evil control, turn those very qualities to unsparing evil 
 bull-dogs to rend the foe, as bull-dogs to defend the master. 
 
 For some moments the two men gazed silently at each other. 
 At length, Dalibard said, with an air of calm superiority: 
 
 "My friend, it is time that I should be presented to the 
 chiefs of your party!" 
 
 "Chiefs, par tons les diables!" growled the other; "we 
 Chouans are all chiefs, when it comes to blows. You have 
 seen my credentials; you know that I am a man to be trusted; 
 what more do you need?" 
 
 "For myself nothing; but my friends are more scrupulous. 
 I have sounded, as I promised, the heads of the old Jacobin 
 party, and they are favorable. This upstart soldier, who has 
 suddenly seized in his iron grasp all the fruits of the Revolution, 
 is as hateful to them as to you. But, que voulez-vous, mon cher ? 
 men are men! It is one thing to destroy Buonaparte; it is 
 another thing to restore the Bourbons. How can the Jacobin
 
 LUCRETIA. 145 
 
 chiefs depend on your assurance, or my own, that the Bour- 
 bons will forget the old offences, and reward the new service? 
 You apprise me, so do your credentials, that A. prince of the 
 blood is engaged in this enterprise; that he will appear at the 
 proper season. Put me in direct communication with this rep- 
 resentative of the Bourbons, and I promise in return, if his as- 
 surances are satisfactory, that you shall have an e~meute to be 
 felt from Paris to Marseilles. If you cannot do this, I am 
 useless; and I withdraw " 
 
 "Withdraw! Garde a vous, Monsieur le Savant! No man 
 withdraws alive from a conspiracy like ours." 
 
 We have said before that Olivier Dalibard was not physically 
 brave; and the look of the Chouan, as those words were said, 
 would have frozen the blood of many a bolder man. But the 
 habitual hypocrisy of Dalibard enabled him to disguise his fear, 
 and he replied, dryly: 
 
 '''Monsieur le Chouan, it is not by threats that you will gain 
 adherents to a desperate cause, which, on the contrary, re- 
 quires mild words and flattering inducements. If you commit 
 a violence a murder man cher, Paris is not Bretagne; we 
 have a police; you will be discovered." 
 
 "Ha, ha! What then? Do you think I fear the guillo- 
 tine?" 
 
 "For yourself, no; but for your leaders, yes! Tf you are 
 discovered, and arrested for crime, do you fancy that the police 
 will not recognize the right arm of the terrible George Cadou- 
 dal? That they will not guess that Cadoudal is at Paris? 
 That Cadoudal will not accompany you to the guillotine?" 
 
 The Chouan's face fell. Olivier watched him, and pursued 
 his advantage. 
 
 "I asked you to introduce to me this shadow of a prince, 
 under which you would march to a counter-revolution. But 
 I will be more easily contented. Present me to George 
 Cadoudal, the hero of Morbihan; he is a man in whom I can 
 trust, and with whom I can deal. What! you hesitate? How 
 do you suppose enterprises of this nature can be carried on? 
 If, from fear and distrust of each other, the man you would 
 employ cannot meet the chief who directs him, there will be 
 delay, confusion, panic; and you will all perish by the execu- 
 tioner. And for me, Pierre Guillot, consider my position: I 
 am in some favor with the First Consul; I have a station of 
 respectability; a career lies before me. Can you think that I 
 will hazard these, with my head to boot, like a rash child? 
 Do you suppose that, in entering into this terrible contest, I
 
 146 LUCRETIA. 
 
 would consent to treat only with subordinates? Do not de- 
 ceive yourself. Again, I say, tell your employers that they 
 must confer with me directly, or je m'en lave les mains." 
 
 "I will repeat what you say," answered Guillot sullenly. 
 "Is this all?" 
 
 "All for the present," said Dalibard, slowly drawing on his 
 gloves, and retreating towards the door. The Chouan watched 
 him with a suspicious and sinister eye; and as the Provencal's 
 hand was on the latch, he laid his own rough grasp on Dali- 
 bard' s shoulder: 
 
 "I know not how it is, Monsieur Dalibard, but I mistrust 
 you." 
 
 "Distrust is natural and prudent to all who conspire," re- 
 plied the scholar quietly. "I do not ask you to confide in 
 me: your employers bade you seek me; I have mentioned my 
 conditions; let them decide." 
 
 "You carry it off well, Monsieur Dalibard. And I am under 
 a solemn oath, which poor George made me take, knowing me 
 to be a hot-headed, honest fellow mauvaise tete, if you will; 
 that I will keep my hand off pistol and knife upon mere suspi- 
 cion; that nothing less than his word or than clear and positive 
 proof of treachery shall put me out of good humor and into 
 warm blood. But bear this with you, Monsieur Dalibard, if I 
 once discover that you use our secrets to betray them; should 
 George see you, and one hair of his head come to injury 
 through your hands, I will wring your neck as a housewife 
 wrings a pullet's." 
 
 "I don't doubt your strength or your ferocity, Pierre Guillot ; 
 but my neck will be safe ; you have enough to do to take care 
 of your own au revvtr." 
 
 With a tone and look of calm and fearless irony, the scholar 
 thus spoke and left the room ; but when he was on the stairs, 
 he paused, and caught at the balustrade; the sickness as of 
 terror at some danger past, or to be, came over him ; and this 
 contest between the sell-command, or simulation, which be- 
 longs to moral courage, and the feebleness of natural and con- 
 stitutional cowardice, would have been sublime if shown in a 
 noble cause. In one so corrupt, it but betrayed a nature doub- 
 ly formidable; for treachery and murder hatch their brood 
 amidst the folds of a hypocrite's cowardice. 
 
 While thus the interview between Dalibard and the conspira- 
 tor, we must bestow a glance upon the Provencal's home. 
 
 In an apartment in one of the principal streets, between the 
 Boulevards and the Rue St. Honore, a boy and a woman sate
 
 LUCRETIA. 147 
 
 side by side, conversing in whispers. The boy was Gabriel 
 Varney, the woman Lucretia Dalibard. The apartment was 
 furnished in the then modern taste which affected classical 
 forms ; and though not without a certain elegance, had some- 
 thing meagre and comfortless in its splendid tripods and thin- 
 legged chairs. There was in the apartment that air which be- 
 speaks the struggle for appearances that struggle familiar with 
 those of limited income, and vain aspirings, who want the taste 
 which smoothes all inequalities, and gives a smile to home; that 
 taste which affection seems to prompt, if not to create ; which 
 shows itself in a thousand nameless, costless trifles, each a 
 grace. No sign was there of the household cares or industry 
 of women. No flowers, no music, no embroidery frame, no 
 work-table. Lucretia had none of the sweet feminine habits 
 which betray so lovelily the whereabouts of women. All was 
 formal and precise, like rooms which we enter and leave, not 
 those in which we settle and dwell. 
 
 Lucretia herself is changed : her air is more assured, her com- 
 plexion more pale, the evil character of her mouth more firm 
 and pronounced. 
 
 Gabriel, still a mere boy in years, has a premature look of 
 man. The down shades his lips. His dress, though showy 
 and theatrical, is no longer that of boyhood. His rounded 
 cheek has grown thin, as with the care and thought which beset 
 the anxious step of youth on entering into life. 
 
 Both, as before remarked, spoke in whispers ; both from time 
 to time glanced fearfully at the door ; both felt that they be- 
 longed to a hearth round which smile not the jocund graces 
 of trust and love, and the heart's open ease. 
 
 "But," said Gabriel; "But if you would be safe, my father 
 must have no secrets hid from you." 
 
 "I do not know that he has. He speaks to me frankly of his 
 hopes; of the share he has in the discovery of the plot against 
 the First Consul; of his interviews with Pierre Guillot, the 
 Breton." 
 
 "Ah, because there your courage supports him, and your 
 acuteness assists his own. Such secrets belong to his public 
 life his political schemes; with those he will trust you. It is 
 his private life his private projects you must know." 
 
 "But what does he conceal from me? Apart from politics, 
 his whole mind seems bent on the very natural object of secur- 
 ing the intimacy with his rich cousin, Monsieur Bellanger, from 
 whom he has a right to expect so large an inheritance." 
 
 "Bellanger is rich, but he is not much older than my father."
 
 148 LUCRETIA. 
 
 "He has bad health." 
 
 "No," said Gabriel, with a downcast eye and a strange 
 smile, "he has not bad health, but he may not be long lived." 
 
 "How do you mean?" asked Lucretia, sinking her voice into 
 a still lower whisper, while a shudder, she scarce knew why, 
 passed over her frame. 
 
 "What does my father do," resumed Gabriel, "in that room 
 at the top of the house? Does he tell you that secret?" 
 
 "He makes experiments in chemistry. You know that that 
 was always his favorite study. You smile again ! Gabriel, do 
 not smile so; it appals me. Do you think there is some mys- 
 tery in that chamber?" 
 
 "It matters not what we think, belle mere, it matters much 
 what we know. If I were you, I would know what is in that 
 chamber. I repeat, to be safe, you must have all his secrets 
 or none. Hush, that is his step!" 
 
 The door handle turned noiselessly, and Olivier entered. 
 His look fell on his son's face, which betrayed only apparent 
 surprise at his unexpected return. He then glanced at Lucre- 
 tia' s, which was, as usual, cold and impenetrable. 
 
 "Gabriel," said Dalibard gently, "I have come in for you. 
 I have promised to take you to spend the day at Monsieur 
 Bellanger's; you are a great favorite with Madame. Come, 
 my boy. I shall be back soon, Lucretia. I shall but drop in 
 to leave Gabriel at my cousin's." 
 
 Gabriel rose cheerfully, as if only alive to the expectation of 
 the bonbons and compliments he received habitually from Mad- 
 ame Bellanger. 
 
 "And you can take your drawing implements with you," 
 continued Dalibard. "This good Monsieur Bellanger has 
 given you permission to copy his Poussin." 
 
 "His Poussin! Ah, that is placed in his bedroom,* is it 
 not?" 
 
 "Yes," answered Dalibard briefly. Gabriel lifted his sharp 
 bright eyes to his father's face. Dalibard turned away. 
 
 "Come!" he said, with some impatience; and the boy took 
 up his hat. 
 
 In another minute, Lucretia was alone. 
 
 Alone, in an English home, is a word implying no dreary 
 solitude to an accomplished woman; but alone in that foreign 
 land; alone in those half-furnished, desolate apartments few 
 books, no musical instruments, no companions during the day 
 
 * It is scarcely necessary to observe that bed-chambers in Paris, when forming part of the 
 suite of reception room? are often decorated no less elaborately than the other apartments.
 
 LUCRETIA. 149 
 
 to drop in that loneliness was wearing. And that mind so 
 morbidly active! In the old Scottish legend the Spirit that 
 serves the wizard must be kept constantly employed; suspend 
 its work for a moment, and it rends the enchanter. It is so 
 with minds that crave for excitement, and live without relief 
 of heart and affection, on the hard tasks of the intellect. 
 
 Lucretia mused over Gabriel's words and warning: "To be 
 safe, you must know all his secrets or none." What was the 
 secret which Dalibard had not communicated to her;? 
 
 She rose, stole up the cold, cheerless stairs, and ascended to 
 the attic which Dalibard had lately hired. It was locked; and 
 she observed that the lock was small so small, that the key 
 might be worn in a ring. She descended and entered her hus- 
 band's usual cabinet, which adjoined the sitting-room. All the 
 books which the house contained were there; a few works on 
 metaphysics Spinosa in especial the great Italian histories, 
 some of statistics, many on physical and mechanical philosophy, 
 and one or two works of biography and memoirs; no light litera- 
 ture, that grace and flower of human culture, that best philos- 
 ophy of all, humanizing us with gentle art, making us wise 
 through the humors, elevated through the passions, tender in 
 the affections of our kind! She took out one of the volumes 
 that seemed less arid than the rest, for she was weary of her 
 own thoughts, and began to read. To her surprise, the first 
 passage she opened was singularly interesting, though the title 
 was nothing more seductive than the "Life of a Physician of 
 Padua, in the Sixteenth Century." It related to that singular 
 epoch of terror in Italy, when some mysterious disease, vary- 
 ing in a thousand symptoms, baffled all remedy, and long de- 
 fied all conjecture a disease attacking chiefly the heads of 
 families, father and husband, rarely women. In one city seven 
 hundred husbands perished, but not one wife ! The disease was 
 poison. The hero of the memoir was one of the earlier dis- 
 coverers of the true cause of this household epidemic. He had 
 been a chief authority in a commission of inquiry. Startling 
 were the details given in the work; the anecdotes, the histories, 
 the astonishing craft, brought daily to bear on the victim, the 
 wondrous perfidy of the subtle means, the variation of the cer- 
 tain murder here swift as epilepsy, there slow and wasting as 
 long decline the lecture was absorbing; and absorbed in the 
 book Lucretia still was, when she heard Dalibard's voice be- 
 hind; he was looking over her shoulder. 
 
 "A strange selection for so fair a student! Enfant, play not 
 with such weapons!"
 
 150 LUCRETIA. 
 
 "But is this all true?" 
 
 "True, though scarce a fragment of the truth. The physi- 
 cian was a sorry chemist, and a worse philosopher. He blun- 
 dered in his analysis of the means; and, if I remember rightly, 
 he whines like a priest at the motives; for see you not what was 
 really the cause of this spreading pestilence. It was the Satur- 
 nalia of the Weak; a burst of mocking license against the 
 Strong; it was more; it was the innate force of the individual 
 waging war against the many." 
 
 "I do not understand you." 
 
 "No! In that age, husbands were, indeed, lords of the 
 household: they married mere children for their lands; they 
 neglected and betrayed them; they were inexorable if the wife 
 committed the faults set before her example. Suddenly the 
 wife found herself armed against her tyrant. His life was in 
 her hands. So the weak had no mercy on the strong! But 
 man, too, was then, even more than now, a lonely wrestler in 
 a crowded arena. Brute force alone gave him distinction in 
 courts; wealth alone brought him justice in the halls, or gave 
 him safety in his home. Suddenly, the frail, puny man saw 
 that he could reach the mortal part of his giant foe. The noise- 
 less sling was in his hand it smote Goliath from afar. Sud- 
 denly, the poor man, ground to the dust, spat upon by con- 
 tempt, saw through the crowd of richer kinsmen, who shunned 
 and bade him rot saw those whose death made him heir to 
 lordship, and gold, and palaces, and power, and esteem ! As 
 a worm through a wardrobe, that man ate through velvet and 
 ermine, and gnawed out the hearts that beat in his way. No! 
 A great intellect can comprehend these criminals, and account 
 for the crime. It is a mighty thing to feel in one's self that 
 one is an army more than an army! What thousands and 
 millions of men, with trumpet and banner, and under the sanc- 
 tion of glory, strive to do destroy a foe, that, with little more 
 than an effort of the will with a drop, a grain, for all his arse- 
 nal one man can do!" 
 
 There was a horrible enthusiasm about this reasoning devil 
 as he spoke thus; his crest rose, his breast expanded. That 
 animation which a noble thought gives to generous hearts kin- 
 dled in the face of the apologist for the darkest and basest of 
 human crimes. Lucretia shuddered; but her gloomy imagina- 
 tion was spelled; there was an interest mingled with her terror. 
 
 "Hush, you appal me," she said at last, timidly. "But, 
 happily, this fearful art exists no more to tempt and destroy?" 
 
 "As a mere philosophical discovery, it might be amusing to
 
 LtfCRETlA. 15t 
 
 a chemist to learn exactly what were the compounds of those 
 ancient poisons," said Dalibard, not directly answering the im- 
 plied question. "Portions of the art are indeed lost, unless, 
 as I suspect, there is much credulous exaggeration in the ac- 
 counts transmitted to us. To kill by a flower, a pair of gloves, a 
 soap ball kill by means which elude all possible suspicion is 
 it credible? What say you? An amusing research, indeed, 
 if one had leisure! But enough of this now; it grows late. 
 
 We dine with Monsieur de . He wishes to let his hotel. 
 
 Why, Lucretia, if we knew a little of this old art, Par Dieu ! 
 we could soon hire the hotel ! Well, well, perhaps we may 
 survive my cousin, Jean Bellanger!" 
 
 Three days afterwards Lucretia stood by her husband's side 
 in the secret chamber. From the hour when she left it, a 
 change was perceptible in her countenance, which gradually re- 
 moved from it the character of youth. Paler the cheek could 
 scarce become, nor more cold the discontented, restless eye. 
 But it was as if some great care had settled on her brow, and 
 contracted yet more the stern outline of the lips. Gabriel 
 noted the alternation; but he did not attempt to win her confi- 
 dence. He was occupied rather in considering, first, if it were 
 well for him to sound deeper into the mystery he suspected; 
 and, secondly, to what extent, and on what terms, it became 
 his interest to aid the designs in which, by Dalibard's hints 
 and kindly treatment, he foresaw that he was meant to partici- 
 pate. 
 
 A word now on the rich kinsman of the Dalibards: Jean 
 Bellanger had been one of those prudent republicans- who had 
 put the Revolution to profit. By birth a Marseillais, he had 
 settled in Paris, as an tpicier, about the year 1785, and had 
 distinguished himself by the adaptability and finesse which be- 
 come those who fish in such troubled waters. He had sided 
 with Mirabeau, next with Vergniaud, and the Girondins. These 
 he forsook in time for Danton, whose facile corruptibility made 
 him a seductive patron. He was a large purchaser in the sale 
 of the emigrant property; he obtained a contract for the supply 
 of the army in the Netherlands; he abandoned Danton as he 
 had abandoned the Girondins, but without taking any active 
 part in the after proceedings of the Jacobins. His next con- 
 nection was with Tallien and Barras, and he enriched himself 
 yet more under the Directory than he had done in the earlier 
 stages of the Revolution. Under cover of an appearance of 
 bonhomie and good humor, a frank laugh and open counte- 
 nance. Jean Bellanger had always retained general popularity
 
 152 LUCREtiA. 
 
 and good-will; and was one of those whom the policy of the 
 First Consul led him to conciliate. He had long since retired 
 from the more vulgar departments of trade, but continued to 
 flourish as an army contractor. He had a large hotel and a 
 splendid establishment. He was one of the great capitalists of 
 Paris. The relaionship .between Dalibard and Bellanger was 
 not very close, it was that of cousins twice removed; and dur- 
 ing Dalibard's previous residence at Paris, each embracing dif- 
 ferent parties, and each eager in his career, the blood-tie between 
 them had not been much thought of, though they were good 
 friends, and each respected the other for the discretion with 
 which he had kept aloof from the more sanguinary excesses of 
 the time. As Bellanger was not many years older than Dali- 
 bard; as the former had just married in the year 1791, and had 
 naturally before him the prospect of a family; as his fortunes 
 at that time, though rising, were unconfirmed, and as some 
 nearer relations stood between them, in the shape of two prom- 
 ising sturdy nephews, Dalibard had not then calculated on any 
 inheritance from his cousin. On his return, circumstances 
 were widely altered: Bellanger had been married some years, 
 and no issue had blessed his nuptials. His nephews, draughted 
 into the conscription, had perished in Egypt. Dalibard ap- 
 parently became his nearest relative. 
 
 To avarice or to worldly ambition, there was, undoubtedly, 
 something very dazzling in the prospect thus opened to the eyes 
 of Olivier Dalibard. The contractor's splendid mode of living, 
 vying with that of the fermier general of old; the colossal masses 
 of capital, by which he backed and supported speculations that 
 varied with an ingenuity rendered practical and profound by 
 experience, inflamed into fever the morbid restlessness of fancy 
 and intellect which characterized the evil scholar. For that 
 restlessness seemed to supply to his nature vices not constitu- 
 tional to it. Dalibard had not the avarice that belongs either 
 to a miser or a spendthrift. In his youth, his books and the 
 simple desires of an abstract student sufficed to his wants, and 
 a habit of method and order, a mechanical calculation which 
 accompanied all his acts from the least to the greatest, preserved 
 him, even when most poor, from neediness and want. Nor was 
 he by nature vain and ostentatious; those infirmities accompany 
 a larger and more luxuriant nature. His philosophy rather 
 despised, than inclined to, show. Yet since to plot and to 
 scheme made his sole amusement, his absorbing excitement, so 
 a man wrapped in himself, and with no generous ends in view, 
 has little to plot or to scheme for, but objects of worldly ag-.
 
 LXJCRETIA. 153 
 
 grandizement. In this, Dalibard resembled one whom the in- 
 toxication of gambling has mastered, who neither wants, nor 
 greatly prizes, the stake, but who has grown wedded to the 
 venture for it. It was a madness like that of a certain rich 
 nobleman in our country, who, with more money than he could 
 spend, and with a skill, in all games where skill enters, that 
 would have secured him success of itself, having learned the 
 art of cheating could not resist its indulgence. No hazard, no 
 warning, could restrain him; cheat he must; the propensity 
 became iron-strong as a Greek destiny. 
 
 That the possible chance of an inheritance so magnificent 
 should dazzle Lucretia and Gabriel was yet more natural; for 
 in them it appealed to more direct and eloquent, though not 
 more powerful, propensities. Gabriel had every vice which 
 the greed of gain most irritates and excites. Intense covetous- 
 ness lay at the core of his heart; he had the sensual temper- 
 ament which yearns for every enjoyment, and takes pleasure in 
 every pomp and show of life. Lucretia, with a hardness of mind 
 that disdained luxury; and a certain grandeur (if such a word 
 may be applied to one so perverted) that was incompatible 
 with the sordid infirmities of the miser, had a determined and 
 insatible ambition to which gold was a necessary instrument. 
 Wedded to one she loved, like Mainwaring, the ambition, as 
 we have said in a former chapter, could have lived in another, 
 and become devoted to intellectual efforts, in the nobler desire 
 for power based on fame and genius. But now she had the 
 gloomy cravings of one fallen, and the uneasy desire to restore 
 herself to a lost position; she fed as an aliment upon scorn to 
 bitterness of all beings and all things around her. She was 
 gnawed by that false fever which riots in those who seek by 
 outward seemings and distinctions to console themselves for 
 the want of their own self-esteem; of who, despising the world 
 with which they are brought in contact, sigh for those worldly 
 advantages which alone justify to the world itself their contempt. 
 
 To these diseased infirmities of vanity or pride, whether ex- 
 hibited in Gabriel or Lucretia, Dalibard administered without 
 apparent effort, not only by his conversation, but his habits of 
 life. He mixed with those much wealthier than himself, but 
 not better born; those who, in the hot and fierce ferment of 
 that new society, were rising fast into new aristocracy; fortu- 
 nate soldiers, daring speculators, plunderers of many an argosy 
 that had been wrecked in the Great Storm. Every one about 
 them was actuated by the keen desire "to make a fortune" : the 
 desire was contagious. They were not absolutely poor in the
 
 154 LUCRETIA. 
 
 proper sense of the word poverty, with Dalibard's annuity and 
 the interest of Lucretia's fortune, but they were poor compared 
 to those with whom they associated poor enough for discon- 
 tent. Thus, the image of the mighty wealth from which, per- 
 haps, but a single life divided them, became horribly haunting. 
 To Gabriel's sensual vision the image presented itself in the 
 shape of unlimited pleasure and prodigal riot; to Lucretia it 
 wore the solemn majesty of power; to Dalibard himself it was 
 but the Eureka of a calculation, the palpable reward of wile, 
 and scheme, and dexterous combinations. The devil had 
 temptations suited to each. Meanwhile, the Dalibards were 
 more and more with the Bellangers. Olivier glided in to talk 
 of the chances and changes of the state and the market. Lu- 
 cretia sate for hours, listening mutely to the contractor's boasts 
 of past frauds, or submitting to the martyrdom of his victorious 
 games at tric-trac. Gabriel, a spoiled darling, copied the pic- 
 tures on the walls, complimented Madame, flattered Monsieur, 
 and fawned on both for trinkets and crowns. Like three birds 
 of night and omen, these three evil natures settled on the rich 
 man's roof. 
 
 Was the rich man himself blind to the motives which budded 
 forth into such attentive affection? His penetration was too 
 acute, his ill opinion of mankind too strong, perhaps, for such 
 amiable self-delusions. But he took all in good part, availed 
 himself of Dalibard's hints and suggestions as to the employ- 
 ment of his capital; was polite to Lucretia, and readily con- 
 demned her to be beaten at tric-trac, while he accepted with 
 bonhomie Gabriel's spirited copies of his pictures. But at 
 times there was a gleam of satire and malice in his round 
 gray eyes, and an inward chuckle at the caresses and flat- 
 teries he received, which perplexed Dalibard, and humbled 
 Lucretia. Had his wealth been wholly at his own dis- 
 posal, these signs would have been inauspicious, but the 
 new law was strict, and the bulk of Bellanger's property 
 could not be alienated from his nearest kin. Was not Dalibard 
 the nearest ? 
 
 These hopes and speculations did not, as we have seen, ab- 
 sorb the restless and rank energies of Dalibard's crooked, but 
 capacious and grasping, intellect. Patiently and ingeniously 
 he pursued his main political object: the detection of that au- 
 dacious and complicated conspiracy against the First Consul, 
 which ended in the tragic deaths of Pichegru, the Due d'En- 
 ghien, and the erring but illustrious hero of La Vendee, George 
 Cadoudal. In the midst of these dark plots for personal ag-
 
 LUCRETIA. 155 
 
 grandizement and political fortune, we leave, for the moment, 
 
 the sombre, sullen soul of Olivier Dalibard. 
 
 ******* 
 
 Time has passed on, and Spring is over the world; the 
 seeds, buried in the earth, burst to flower: but man's breast 
 knoweth not the sweet division of the seasons. In winter or 
 summer, autumn or spring alike, his thoughts sow the germs of 
 his actions, and day after day his destiny gathers in her 
 harvests. 
 
 The joy-bells ring clear through the groves of Laughton 
 an heir is born to the old name and fair lands of St. John! 
 And, as usual, the present race welcomes merrily in that which 
 shall succeed and replace it; that which shall thrust the enjoy- 
 ers down into the black graves, and wrest from them the pleas- 
 ant goods of the world. The joy-bell of birth is a note of 
 warning to the knell for the dead ; it wakes the worms beneath 
 the mould ; the newborn, every year that it grows and flour- 
 ishes, speeds the parent to their feast. Yet who can predict 
 that the infant shall become the heir? Who can tell that Death 
 sits not side by side with the nurse at the cradle? Can the 
 mother's hand measure out the woof of the Parcae, or the fa- 
 ther's eye detect, through the darkness of the morrow, the 
 gleam of the fatal shears? 
 
 It is market-day at a town in the midland districts of Eng- 
 land. There, trade takes its healthiest and most animated 
 form. You see not the stunted form and hollow eye of the 
 mechanic, poor slave of the capitalist, poor agent and victim 
 of the arch disequalizer, Civilization. There, strides the burly 
 form of the farmer; there, waits the ruddy hind with his flock; 
 there, patient, sits the miller with his samples of corn ; there, 
 in the booths, gleam the humble wares which form the luxuries 
 of cottage and farm. The thronging of men, and the clacking of 
 whips, and the dull sound of wagon or dray, that parts the 
 crowd as it passes, and the lowing of herds and the bleating of 
 sheep, all are sounds of movement and bustle, yet blend with 
 the pastoral associations of the Primitive Commerce, when the 
 link between market and farm was visible and direct. 
 
 Towards one large house in the centre of the brisk life ebb- 
 ing on, you might see stream after stream pour its way. The 
 large doors swinging light on their hinges, the gilt letters that 
 shine above the threshold, the windows, with their shutters out- 
 side cased in iron and studded with nails, announce that that 
 house is the bank of the town. Come in with that yeoman, 
 whose broad face tells its tale, sheepish and down-eyed ; he
 
 156 LUCRETIA. 
 
 has come not to invest, but to borrow. What matters, war is 
 breaking out anew, to bring the time of high prices, and paper 
 money and credit. Honest yeoman, you will not be refused. 
 He scratches his rough head, pulls a leg, as he calls it, when 
 the clerk leans over the counter, and asks to see "Muster 
 Mawnering hisself. " The clerk points to the little office-room 
 of the new junior partner, who has brought ten thousand 
 pounds and a clear head to the firm. And the yeoman's great 
 boots creak heavily in. I told you so, honest yeoman ; you 
 come out with a smile on your brown face, and your hand, that 
 might fell an ox, buttons up your huge breeches-pocket. You 
 will ride home with a light heart ; go and dine, and be merry. 
 
 The yeoman tramps to the Ordinary ; plates clatter, tongues 
 wag; and the borrower's full heart finds vent in a good word 
 for that kind "Muster Mawnering." For a wonder, all join in 
 the praise. "He's an honor to the town; he's a pride to the 
 country; thof he's such a friend at a pinch, he's a rale mon of 
 business! He'll make the baunk worth a million! And how 
 well he spoke at the great county meeting about the war, and 
 the laund, and them bloodthirsty Mounseers! If their mem- 
 bers were loike him, Muster Fox would look small!" 
 
 The day declines; the town empties whiskies, horses, and 
 carts are giving life to the roads and the lanes and the market 
 is deserted, and the bank is shut up, and William Mainwaring 
 walks back to his home at the skirts of the town not villa nor 
 cottage that plain English house with its cheerful face of red 
 brick, and its solid squareness of shape, a symbol of substance 
 in the fortunes of the owner! Yet, as he passes, he sees 
 through the distant trees the hall of the member for the town. 
 He pauses a moment, and sighs unquietly. That pause and 
 that sigh betray the germ of ambition and discontent. Why 
 should not he, who can speak so well, be member for the town, 
 instead of that stammering squire? But his reason has soon 
 silenced the querulous murmur. He hastens his step he is 
 at home! And there, in the neat furnished drawing-room, 
 which looks on the garden behind, hisses the welcoming tea- 
 urn; and the piano is open, and there is a packet of new 
 books on the table; and, best of all, there is the glad face of 
 the sweet English wife. The happy scene was characteristic of 
 the time, just when the simpler and more innocent luxuries of 
 the higher class spread, not to spoil, but refine, the middle. 
 The dress, air, mien, movements of the young couple; the un- 
 assuming, suppressed, sober elegance of the house; the 
 flower-garden, the books, and the music, evidences of cultiva-
 
 LUCRETIA. 157 
 
 ted taste, not signals of display all bespoke the gentle fusion 
 of ranks, before rude and uneducated wealth, made in looms 
 and lucky hits, rushed in to separate forever the gentleman 
 from the parvenu. 
 
 Spring smiles over Paris, over the spires of Notre Dame, 
 and the crowded alleys of the Tuileries, over thousands and 
 thousands eager, joyous, aspiring, reckless the New Race of 
 France bound to one man's destiny, children of glory and 
 carnage, whose blood the wolf and the vulture scent, hungry, 
 from afar! 
 
 The conspiracy against the life of the First Consul had been 
 detected and defeated. Pichegru is in prison, George Cadoudal 
 awaits his trial, the Due d'Enghien sleeps in his bloody grave; 
 the imperial crown is prepared for the great soldier, and the great 
 soldier's creatures bask in the noonday sun. Olivier Dalibard 
 is in high and lucrative employment : his rise is ascribed to his 
 talents, his opinions. No service connected with the detection 
 of the conspiracy is traced or traceable by the public eye. If 
 such exist, it is known but to those who have no desire to reveal 
 it. The old apartments are retained; but they are no longer 
 dreary, and comfortless, and deserted. They are gay with 
 draperies, and ormolu, and mirrors, and Madame Dalibard has 
 her nights of reception, and Monsieur Dalibard has already his 
 troops of clients. In that gigantic concentration of egotism 
 which, under Napoleon, is called the State, Dalibard has found 
 his place. He has served to swell the power of the unit, and 
 the cypher gains importance by its position in the sum. 
 
 Jean Bellanger is no more. He died, not suddenly, and yet 
 of some quick disease nervous exhaustion: his schemes, they 
 said, had worn him out. But the state of Dalibard, though 
 prosperous, is not that of the heir to the dead millionnaire. 
 What mistake is this? The bulk of that wealth must go to his 
 nearest kin so runs the law. But the will is read ; and, for 
 the first time, Olivier Dalibard learns that the dead man had a 
 son a son by a former marriage the marriage undeclared, un- 
 known, amidst the riot of the Revolution ; for the wife was the 
 daughter of a proscrit. The son had been reared at a distance, 
 put to school at Lyons, and unavowed to the second wife, who 
 had brought an ample dower, and whom that discovery might 
 have deterred from the altar. Unacknowledged through life, 
 in death, at least, his son's rights are proclaimed: and Olivier 
 Dalibard feels that Jean Bellanger has died. in vain ! For days 
 has the pale Provencal been closeted with lawyers; but there 
 is no hope in litigation. The proofs of the marriage, the birth,
 
 158 LUCRETIA. 
 
 the identity, come out clear and clearer; and the beardless 
 schoolboy at Lyons reaps all the profit of those nameless 
 schemes and that mysterious death. Olivier Dalibard desires 
 the friendship, the intimacy of the heir. But the heir is con- 
 signed to the guardianship of a merchant at Lyons, near of kin 
 to his mother, and the guardian responds but coldly to Oliv- 
 ier's letters. Suddenly the defeated aspirant seems reconciled 
 to his loss. The widow Bellanger has her own separate for- 
 tune ; and it is large, beyond expectation. In addition to the 
 wealth she brought the deceased, his affection had led him to 
 invest vast sums in her name. The widow, then, is rich rich 
 as the heir himself. She is still fair. Poor woman, she needs 
 consolation ! But meanwhile, the nights of Olivier Dalibard are 
 disturbed and broken. His eye, in the daytime, is haggard and 
 anxious; he is seldom seen on foot in the streets. Fear is his 
 companion by day, and sits at night on his pillow. The 
 Chouan, Pierre Guiilot, who looked to George Cadoudal as a 
 god, knows that George Cadoudal has been betrayed, and sus- 
 pects Olivier Dalibard ; and the Chouan has an arm of iron 
 and a heart steeled against all mercy. Oh, how the pale 
 scholar thirsted for that Chouan 's blood! With what relent- 
 less pertinacity, with what ingenious research, he has set all the 
 hounds of the police upon the track of that single man ! How 
 notably he had failed ! An avenger lived ; and Olivier Dali- 
 bard started at his own shadow on the wall. But he did not 
 the less continue to plot and to intrigue ; nay, such occupation 
 became more necessary, as an escape from himself. 
 
 And, in the mean while, Olivier Dalibard sought to take cour- 
 age from the recollection that the Chouan had taken an oath 
 (and he knew that oaths are held sacred with the Bretons) that 
 he would keep his hand from his knife, unless he had clear 
 evidence of treachery; such evidence existed, but only in 
 Dalibard's desk, or the archives of Fouche. Tush, he was 
 safe! And so, when from dreams of fear he started at the 
 depth of night, so his bolder wife would whisper to him with 
 firm, uncaressing lips, Olivier Dalibard, thou fearest the liv- 
 ing, dost thou never fear the dead? Thy dreams are haunted 
 with a spectre. Why takes it not the accusing shape of thy 
 mouldering kinsman? Dalibard would have answered, for he 
 was a philosopher in his cowardice, "// n"y a que les morts , qui 
 tie rcviennent pas." 
 
 It is the notable convenience of us narrators, to represent by 
 what is called soliloquy, the thoughts, the interior of the per- 
 sonages we describe. And this is almost the master-work of
 
 LUCRETIA. 159 
 
 the tale-teller ; that is, if the soliloquy be really in words, what 
 self-commune is in the dim and tangled recesses of the human 
 heart ! But to this privilege we are rarely admitted in the case 
 of Olivier Dalibard j for he rarely communed with himself; a 
 sort of mental calculation, it is true, eternally went on within 
 him, like the wheels of a destiny; but it had become a me- 
 chanical operation, seldom disturbed by that consciousness of 
 thought, with its struggles of fear and doubt, conscience and 
 crime, which gives its appalling interest to the soliloquy of trag- 
 edy. Amidst the tremendous secrecy of that profound intel- 
 lect, as at the bottom of a sea, only monstrous images of terror, 
 things of prey, stirred in cold-blooded and devouring life ; but 
 into these deeps Olivier himself did not dive. He did not 
 face his own soul ; his outer life and his inner life seemed sep- 
 arate individualities, just as, in some complicated State, the 
 social machine goes on through all its numberless cycles of 
 vice and dread, whatever the acts of the governments, which 
 is the representative of the State, and stands for the State in 
 the shallow judgment of history. 
 
 Before this time Olivier Dalibard's manner to his son had 
 greatly changed from the indifference it betrayed in England ; 
 it was kind and affectionate, almost caressing; while on the 
 other hand, Gabriel, as if in possession of some secret which 
 gave him power over his father, took a more careless and inde- 
 pendent tone, often absented himself from the house for days 
 together, joined the revels of young profligates older than 
 himself, with whom he had formed acqauintance, indulged in 
 spendthrift expenses, and plunged prematurely into the stream 
 of vicious pleasure that oozed through the mud of Paris. 
 
 One morning Dalibard, returning from a visit to Madame 
 Bellanger, found Gabriel alone in the salon, contemplating his 
 fair face and gay dress in one of the mirrors, and smoothing 
 down the hair, which he wore long and sleek, as in the por- 
 traits of Raffaelle. Dalibard's lip curled at the boy's cox- 
 combry, though such tastes he himself had fostered, accord- 
 ing to his ruling principles, that to govern, you must find a 
 foible, or instil it ; but the sneer changed into a smile. 
 
 "Are you satisfied with yourself, joligarfon? " he said, with 
 saturnine playfulness. 
 
 "At least, sir, I hope that you will not be ashamed of me 
 when you formally legitimatize me as your son. The time has 
 come, you know, to keep your promise." 
 
 "And it shall be kept, do not fear. But first, I have an 
 employment for you a mission your first embassy, Gabriel."
 
 l6o LUCRETIA. 
 
 "I listen, sir." 
 
 "I have to send to England a communication of the utmost 
 importance public importance to the secret agent of the 
 French government. We are on the eve of a descent on 
 England. We are in correspondence with some in London on 
 whom we count for support. A man might be suspected, and 
 searched mind, searched. You, a boy, with English name 
 and speech, will be my safest envoy. Buonaparte approves my 
 selection. On your return, he permits me to present you to 
 him. He loves the rising generation. In a few days you will 
 be prepared to start." 
 
 Despite the calm tone of the father, so had the son, from the 
 instinct of fear and self-preservation, studied every accent, 
 every glance of Olivier; so had he constituted himself a spy 
 upon the heart whose perfidy was ever armed, that he detected 
 at once in the proposal some scheme hostile to his interests. 
 He made, however, no opposition to the plan suggested ; and, 
 seemingly satisfied with his obedience, the father dismissed him. 
 
 As soon as he was in the streets, Gabriel went straight to the 
 house of Madame Bellanger. The hotel had been purchased 
 in her name, and she therefore retained it. Since her hus- 
 band's death, he had avoided that house, before so familiar to 
 him ; and now he grew pale, and breathed hard, as he passed 
 by the porter's lodge up the lofty stairs. 
 
 He knew of his father's recent and constant visits at the 
 house; and, without conjecturing precisely what were Oli- 
 vier's designs, he connected them, in the natural and acquired 
 shrewdness he possessed, with the wealthy widow. He re- 
 solved to watch, observe, and draw his own conclusions. As 
 he entered Madame Bellanger's room rather abruptly he ob- 
 served her push aside amongst her papers something she had 
 been gazing on ; something which sparkled to his eyes. He 
 sate himself down close to her with the caressing manner he 
 usually adopted towards women ; and in the midst of the bab- 
 bling talk with which ladies generally honor boys, he suddenly, 
 as if by accident, displaced the papers, and saw his father's 
 miniature set in brilliants. The start of the widow, her blush, 
 and her exclamation, strengthened the light that flashed upon 
 his mind. "Oho, I see now," he said, laughing, "why my 
 father is always praising black hair; and nay, nay gentle- 
 men may admire ladies in Paris, surely!" 
 
 "Pooh, my dear child, your father is an old friend of my 
 poor husband's, and a near relation too! But Gabriel, mon 
 petit ange ; you had better not say at home that you have seen
 
 LUCREtlA. l6l 
 
 this picture ; Madame Dalibard might be foolish enough to be 
 angry." 
 
 "To be sure not. I have kept a secret before now!" and 
 again the boy's cheek grew pale, and he looked hurriedly 
 round. 
 
 "And you are very fond of Madame Dalibard, too, so you 
 must not vex her." 
 
 "Who says I'm fond of Madame Dalibard? A stepmother!" 
 
 "Why, your father, of course il est si bonce pauvre Dali- 
 bard ; and all men like cheerful faces, but then, poor lady an 
 English woman so strange here very natural she should fret, 
 and with bad health, too." 
 
 "Bad health! Ah! I remember! She also does not seem 
 likely to live long!" 
 
 "So your poor father apprehends. Well, well, how uncer- 
 tain life is ! Who would have thought dear Bellanger would 
 have " 
 
 Gabriel rose hastily, and interrupted the widow's pathetic 
 reflections. "I only ran in to say, Bon jour. I must leave 
 you now." 
 
 "Adieu, my dear boy not a word on the miniature! By 
 the by, here's a shirt-pin for you tu es joli comme un amour" 
 
 All was now clear to Gabriel ; it was necessary to get rid of 
 him, and forever! Dalibard might dread his attachment to 
 Lucretia; he would dread still more his closer intimacy with 
 the widow of Bellanger, should that widow wed again, and 
 Dalibard, freed like her (by what means?) be her choice! 
 Into that abyss of wickedness, fathomless to the innocent, the 
 young villanous eye plunged, and surveyed the ground; a 
 terror seized on him a terror of life and death. Would Dali- 
 bard spare even his own son, if that son had the power to in- 
 jure? This mission was it exile only? Only a fall back to 
 the old squalor of his uncle's studio? Only the laying aside of 
 a useless tool? Or was it a snare to the grave? Demon as 
 Dalibard was, doubtless the boy wronged him. But guilt con- 
 strues guilt for the worst. 
 
 Gabriel had formerly enjoyed the thought to match himself, 
 should danger come, with Dalibard; the hour //a^/come, and 
 he felt his impotence. Brave his father, and refuse to leave 
 France ! From that even his reckless hardihood shrank, as 
 from inevitable destruction. But to depart ; be the poor vic- 
 tim and dupe ; after having been let loose amongst the riot of 
 pleasure, to return to labor and privation from that option his 
 vanity and his senses vindictively revolted. And Lucretia!
 
 162 LUCRETIA. 
 
 The only being who seemed to have a human kindness to him! 
 Through all the vicious egotism of his nature, he had some 
 grateful sentiments for her! And even the egotism assisted 
 that unwonted amiability, for he felt that, Lucretia gone, he 
 had no hold on his father's house that the home of her suc- 
 cessor never would be his. While thus brooding he lifted 
 his eyes, and saw Dalibard pass in his carriage towards the 
 Tuileries. The house, then, was clear; he could see Lucretia 
 alone. He formed his resolution at once, and turned home- 
 wards. As he did so he observed a man at the angle of the 
 street, whose eyes followed Dalibard's carriage with an expres- 
 sion of unmistakable hate and revenge; but scarcely had he 
 marked the countenance, before the man, looking hurriedly 
 round, darted away and was lost amongst the crowd. 
 
 Now, that countenance was not quite unfamiliar to Gabriel. 
 He had seen it before, as he saw it now, hastily, and, as it 
 were, by fearful snatches. Once he had marked, on returning 
 home at twilight, a figure lurking by the house; and something 
 in the quickness with which it turned from his gaze, joined to 
 his knowledge of Dalibard's apprehensions, made him mention 
 the circumstance to his father, when he entered. Dalibard 
 bade him hasten with a note, written hurriedly, to an agent of 
 the police, whom he kept lodged near at hand. The man 
 was still on the threshold when the boy went out on his errand, 
 and he caught a glimpse of his face; but before the police-agent 
 reached the spot, the ill-omened apparition had vanished. 
 Gabriel now, as his eye rested full upon that threatening 
 brow, and those burning eyes, was convinced that he saw 
 before him the terrible Pierre Guillot, whose very name 
 blanched his father's cheek. When the figure retreated, he 
 resolved at once to pursue. He hurried through the crowd 
 amidst which the man had disappeared, and looked eagerly 
 into the faces of those he jostled; sometimes, at the dis- 
 tance, he caught sight of a figure which appeared to resemble 
 the one which he pursued, but the likeness faded on approach. 
 The chase, however, vague and desultory as it was, led him on 
 till his way was lost amongst labyrinths of narrow and unfa- 
 miliar streets. Heated and thirsty, he paused at last before a 
 small cafe, entered to ask for a draught of lemonade, and be- 
 hold, chance had favored him ! The man he sought was 
 seated there, before a bottle of wine, and intently reading the 
 newspaper. Gabriel sat himself down at the adjoining table. 
 In a few moments the man was joined by a new comer; the 
 two conversed, but in whispers so low, that Gabriel was unable
 
 LUCRETIA. 163 
 
 to hear their conversation, though he caught more than once 
 the name of "George." Both the men were violently excited, 
 and the expression of their countenances was menacing and 
 sinister. The first-comer pointed often to the newspaper, and 
 read passages from it to his companion. This suggested to 
 Gabriel the demand for another journal. When the waiter 
 brought it to him, his eye rested upon a long paragraph, in 
 which the name of George Cadoudal frequently occurred. In 
 fact, all the journals of the day were filled with speculations on 
 the conspiracy and trial of that fiery martyr to an erring 
 adaptation of a noble principle. Gabriel knew that his father 
 had had a principal share in the detection of the defeated en- 
 terprise ; and his previous persuasions were confirmed. 
 
 His sense of hearing grew sharper by continued effort, and 
 at length he heard the first-comer say distinctly; "If I were 
 but sure that I had brought this fate upon George, by introduc- 
 ing to him that accursed Dalibard ; if my oath did but justify 
 me, I would " The concluding sentence was lost. A few 
 moments after the two men rose, and from the familiar words 
 that passed between them and the master of the cafe, who 
 approached, himself, to receive the reckoning, the shrewd boy 
 perceived that the place was no unaccustomed haunt. He 
 crept nearer and nearer; and as the landlord shook hands with 
 his customer, he heard distinctly the former address him by 
 the name of "Guillot." When the men withdrew, Gabriel fol- 
 lowed them at a distance (taking care first to impress on his 
 memory the name of the caft, and the street in which it was 
 placed) and, as he thought, unobserved ; he was mistaken. 
 Suddenly, in one street, more solitary than the rest, the man whom 
 he was mainly bent on tracking turned round, advanced to Ga- 
 briel, who was on the other side of the street, and laid his hand 
 upon him so abruptly that the boy was fairly taken by surprise. 
 
 "Who bade you follow us?" said he, with so dark and fell 
 an expression of countenance that even Gabriel's courage failed 
 him; "no evasion, no lies speak out, and at once" ; and the 
 grasp tightened on the boy's throat. 
 
 Gabriel's readiness-of resource and presence of mind did not 
 long forsake him. 
 
 "Loose your hold, and I will tell you you stifle me." The 
 man slightly relaxed his grasp, and Gabriel said, quickly: "My 
 mother perished on the guillotine in the Reign of Terror; I 
 am for the Bourbons. I thought I overheard words which 
 showed sympathy for poor George, the brave Chouan. I 
 followed you; for I thought I was following friends."
 
 164 LUCRETIA. 
 
 The man smiled as he fixed his steady eye upon the unflinch- 
 ing child: "My poor lad," he said gently, "I believe you 
 pardon me; but follow us no more, we are dangerous!" Ke 
 waved his hand, and strode away, rejoined his companion, and 
 Gabriel reluctantly abandoned the pursuit, and went home- 
 ward. It was long before he reached his father's house, for he 
 had strayed into a strange quarter of Paris, and had frequently 
 to inquire the way. At length he reached home, and ascended 
 the stairs to a small room, in which Lucretia usually sate, and 
 which was divided by a narrow corridor from the, sleeping 
 chamber of herself and Dalibard. His stepmother, leaning her 
 cheek upon her hand, was seated by the window, so absorbed 
 in some gloomy thoughts, which cast over her rigid face a 
 shade intense and solemn as despair, that she did not perceive 
 the approach of the boy till he threw his arm round her neck, 
 and then she started as in alarm: 
 
 "You! Only you," she said, with a constrained smile; 
 "See, my nerves are not so strong as they were!" 
 
 "You are disturbed, belle mere ; has tie been vexing you?" 
 
 "He Dalibard no, indeed; we were only, this morning, 
 discussing matters of business." 
 
 "Business! That means money!" 
 
 "Truly," said Lucretia, "money does make the staple of 
 life's business. In spite of his new appointment, your father 
 needs some sums in hand favors are to be bought, opportu- 
 nities for speculation occur, and " 
 
 "And my father," interrupted Gabriel, "wishes your con- 
 sent to raise the rest of your portion." 
 
 Lucretia looked surprised, but answered quietly: "He had 
 my consent long since, but the trustees to the marriage settle- 
 ment mere men of business, my uncle's bankers, for I had 
 lost all claim on my kindred refuse, or at least interpose such 
 difficulties as amount to refusal." 
 
 ' ' But that reply came some days since, ' ' said Gabriel musingly. 
 
 "How did you know; did your father tell you?" 
 
 "Poor belle mere!" said Gabriel, almost with pity, "can 
 you live in this house, and not watch afl that passes every 
 stranger, every message, every letter? But what, then, does 
 he wish with you?" 
 
 "He has suggested my returning to England, and seeing the 
 trustees myself. His interest can obtain my passport." 
 
 "And you have refused?" 
 
 "I have not consented." 
 
 "Consent! Hush! Your maid Marie is not waiting with-
 
 LUCRETIA. 165 
 
 out," and Gabriel rose and looked forth; "No, confound 
 these doors ! None close as they ought in this house. Is it 
 not a clause in your settlement that the half of your fortune 
 now invested goes to the survivor?" 
 
 "It is," replied Lucretia, struck and thrilled at the question. 
 "How, again, did you know this?" 
 
 "I saw my father reading the copy. If you die first, then, 
 he has all! If he merely wanted the money, he would not 
 send you away!" 
 
 There was a terrible pause. Gabriel resumed: "I trust you, 
 it may be, with my life ; but I will speak out. My father goes 
 much to Bellanger's widow; she is rich and weak. Come to 
 England ! Yes, come for he is about to dismiss me. He 
 fears that I shall be in the way, to warn you, perhaps, or to 
 to in short, both of us are in his way. He gives you an es- 
 cape. Once in England, the war which is breaking out will 
 prevent your return. He will twist the laws of divorce to- his 
 favor; he will marry again! What then? He spares you 
 what remains of your fortune ; he spares your life. Remain 
 here, cross his schemes, and no, no; come to England safer 
 anywhere than here!" 
 
 As he spoke great changes had passed over Lucretia's coun- 
 tenance. At first it was the flash of conviction, then the 
 stunned shock of horror ; now she rose rose to her full height 
 and there was a livid and deadly light in her eyes the light of 
 conscious courage, and power, and revenge. "Fool," she mut- 
 tered, "with all his craft! Fool, fool! As if, in the war of 
 household perfidy, the woman did not always conquer! Man's 
 only chance is to be mailed in honor!" 
 
 "But, "said Gabriel, overhearing her; "but you do not re- 
 member what it is. There is nothing you can see, and guard 
 against. It is not like an enemy face to face; it is death in 
 the food, in the air, in the touch. You stretch out your arms 
 in the dark, you feel nothing, and you die ! Oh, do not fancy 
 that I have not thought well (for I am almost a man now) if 
 there were no means to resist ; there are none ! As well make 
 head against the plague it is in the atmosphere." Come to 
 England, and return. Live poorly, if you must, but live ! but 
 live!" 
 
 "Return to England poor and despised, and bound still to 
 him, or a disgraced and divorced wife disgraced by the low- 
 born dependent on my kinsman's house and fawn perhaps 
 upon my sister and her husband for bread! Never! I am at 
 my post, and I will not fly!"
 
 166 LUCRETIA. 
 
 "Brave! Brave!" said the boy, clapping his hands, and 
 sincerely moved by a daring superior to his own; "I wish I 
 could help you!" 
 
 Lucretia's eye rested on him with the full gaze, so rare in its 
 looks. She drew him to her, and kissed his brow; "Boy, through 
 life, whatever our guilt and its doom, we are bound to each 
 other. I may yet live to have wealth; if so, it is yours as a 
 son's. I may be iron to others, never to you. Enough of 
 this I must reflect!" She passed her hands over her eyes a 
 moment, and resumed: "You would help me in my self- 
 defence; I think you can. You have been more alert in your 
 watch than I have. You must have means I have not secured. 
 Your father guards well all his papers!" 
 
 "I have keys to every desk. My foot passed the threshold 
 of that room under the roof before yours. But no ; his powers 
 can never be yours! He has never confided to you half his 
 secrets! He has antidotes for every every " 
 
 "Hist! What noise is that? Only the shower on the case- 
 ments! No, no, child, that is not my object. CadoudaFs con- 
 spiracy! Your father has letters from Fouche" which show 
 how he has betrayed others who are stronger to avenge than a 
 woman and a boy." 
 
 "Well!" 
 
 "I would have those letters! Give me the keys! But hold! 
 Gabriel Gabriel, you may yet misjudge him. This woman 
 wife to the dead man ///Vwife! Horror! Have you no proofs 
 of what you imply?" 
 
 "Proofs!" echoed Gabriel, in a tone of wonder, "I can but 
 see and conjecture. You are warned, watch and decide for 
 yourself. But again I say, come to England; 1 shall go!" 
 
 Without reply, Lucretia took the keys from Gabriel's half- 
 reluctant hand, and passed into her husband's writing-room. 
 When she had entered, she locked the door. She passed at 
 once to a huge secretary, of which the key was small as a fairy's 
 work. She opened it with ease by one of the counterfeits. 
 No love correspondence the first object of her search, for she 
 was woman met her eye. What need of letters, when inter- 
 views were so facile! But she soon found a document that 
 told all which love-letters could tell; it was an account of the 
 money and possessions of Madame Bellanger, and there were 
 pencil notes on the margin: "Vautran will give 400,000 
 francs for the lands in Auvergne to be accepted. Consult on 
 the power of sale granted to a second husband. Query, if 
 there is no chance of the heir-at-law disputing the money in
 
 LUCRLTIA. 167 
 
 vested in Madame B 's name," and such memoranda as a 
 
 man notes down in the schedule of properties about to be his 
 own. In these inscriptions there was a hideous mockery of all 
 love; like the blue lights of corruption, they showed the black 
 vault of the heart. The pale reader saw what her own attrac- 
 tions had been, and, fallen as she was, she smiled superior in 
 her bitterness of scorn. Arranged methodically with the preci- 
 sion of business, she found the letters she next looked for; one 
 recognizing Dalibard's service in the detection of the con- 
 spiracy, and authorizing him to employ the police in the search 
 of Pierre Guillot, sufficed for her purpose. She withdrew, and 
 secreted it. She was about to lock up the secretary, when her 
 eye fell on the title of a small MS. volume in a corner; and as 
 she read, she pressed one hand convulsively to her heart, while, 
 twice with the other, she grasped the volume, and twice with- 
 drew the grasp. The title ran harmlessly thus : ' ' Philosophical 
 and Chemical Inquiries into the Nature and Materials of the 
 Poisons in Use between the 1 4th and i6th Centuries." Hur- 
 riedly, and at last, as if doubtful of herself, she left the MS., 
 closed the secretary, and returned to Gabriel. 
 
 "You have got the paper you seek?" he said. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Then whatever you do, you must be quick; he will soon 
 discover the loss." 
 
 "I will be quick." 
 
 "It is I whom he will suspect," said Gabriel, in alarm, as 
 that thought struck him. "No, for my sake, do not take the 
 letter till I am gone. Do not fear, in the mean time; he will 
 do nothing against you, while I am here." 
 
 "I will replace the letter till then," said Lucretia meekly. 
 "You have a right to my first thoughts." So she went back, 
 and Gabriel (suspicious, perhaps) crept after her. 
 
 As she replaced the document, he pointed to the MS. 
 which had tempted her: " I have seen that before, how I 
 longed for it! If anything ever happens to him, I claim that 
 as my legacy." 
 
 Their hands met as he said this, and grasped each other con- 
 vulsively; Lucretia relocked the secretary, and when she 
 gained the next room, she tottered to a chair. Her strong 
 nerves gave way for the moment; she uttered no cry, but, by 
 the whiteness of her face, Gabriel saw that she was senseless; 
 senseless for a minute or so, scarcely more. But the return to 
 consciousness- with a clenched hand, and a brow of defiance, 
 and a stare of mingled desperation and dismay, seemed rather
 
 l68 LUCRETIA. 
 
 the awakening from some frightful dream of violence and 
 struggle than the slow, languid recovery from the faintness of a 
 swoon. Yes, henceforth, to sleep, was to couch by a serpent; 
 to breathe was to listen for the avalanche ! Thou who didst 
 trifle so wantonly with Treason, now gravely front the grim 
 comrade thou hast won; thou scheming desecrator of the House- 
 hold Gods, now learn, to the last page of dark knowledge, what 
 the hearth is without them ! 
 
 Gabriel was strangely moved as he beheld that proud and 
 solitary despair. An instinct of nature had hitherto checked 
 him from actively aiding Lucretia in that struggle with his 
 father, which could but end in the destruction of one or the 
 other. He had contented himself with forewarnings, with 
 hints, with indirect suggestions; but now, all his sympathy 
 was so strongly roused on her behalf, that the last faint scruple 
 of filial conscience vanished into the abyss of blood, over which 
 stood that lonely Titaness. He drew near, and, clasping her 
 hand, said, in a quick and broken voice: 
 
 "Listen! You know where to find proof of my fa that is, 
 of Dalibard's treason to the conspirators; you know the name 
 of the man he dreads as an avenger, and you know that he waits 
 but the proof to strike; but you do not know where to find 
 that man, if his revenge is wanting for yourself. The police 
 has not hunted him out; how can you? Accident has made 
 me acquainted with one of his haunts. Give me a single 
 promise, and I will put you at least upon that clue weak, per- 
 haps, but as yet the sole one to be followed. Promise me that, 
 only in defence of your own life, not for mere jealousy, you 
 will avail yourself of the knowledge, and you shall know all 
 I do!" 
 
 "Do you think," said Lucretia, in a calm, cold voice, "that 
 it is for jealousy, which is love, that I would murder all hope, 
 all peace? For we have here (and she smote her breast) 
 here, if not elsewhere, a heaven and a hell! Son, I will not 
 harm your father, except in self-defence! But tell me noth- 
 ing that may make the son a party in the father's doom." 
 
 "The father slew the mother," muttered Gabriel, between 
 his clenched teeth; "and to me, you have well-nigh supplied 
 her place. Strike, if need be, in her name! If you are driven 
 to want the arm of Pierre Guillot, seek news of him at the 
 
 Cafe Dufour, Rue S , Boulevard du Temple. Be calm 
 
 now, I hear your husband's step." 
 
 A few days more, and Gabriel is gone! Wife and husband 
 are alone with each other, Lucretia has refused to depart,
 
 tUCREtiA. 169 
 
 Then that mute coma of horror! That suspense of two foes 
 in the conflict of death for the subtle prying eye of Olivier 
 Dalibard sees that he himself is suspected farther he shuns 
 from sifting! Glance fastens on glance, and then hurries 
 smilingly away. From the cup grins a skeleton ; at the board, 
 warns a spectre. But how kind still the words, and how gentle 
 the tone; and they lie down side by side in the marriage bed. 
 brain plotting against brain, heart loathing heart. It is a duel 
 of life and death between those sworn through life and beyond 
 death at the altar. But it is carried on with all the forms and 
 courtesies of duel in the age of chivalry. No conjugal wrangl- 
 ing; no slip of the tongue; the oil is on the surface of the 
 wave, the monsters in the hell of the abyss war invisibly below. 
 At length a dull torpor creeps over the woman; she feels the 
 taint in her veins; the slow victory is begun. What mattered 
 all her vigilance and caution? Vainly glide from the pangs of 
 the serpent, his very breath suffices to destroy ! Pure seems the 
 draught and wholesome the viand that master of the science 
 of murder needs not the means of the bungler! Then, keen 
 and strong from the creeping lethargy started the fierce instinct 
 of self and the ruthless impulse of revenge. Not too late yet 
 to escape; for those subtle banes, that are to defy all detection, 
 work but slowly to their end. 
 
 One evening a woman, closely mantled, stood at watch by 
 the angle of a wall. The light came dim and muffled from the 
 window of a caft hard at hand; the reflection slept amidst the 
 shadows on the dark pavement, and, save a solitary lamp, 
 swung at a distance in the vista over the centre of the narrow 
 street, no ray broke the gloom. The night was clouded and 
 starless, the wind moaned in gusts, and the rain fell heavily; 
 but the gloom and the loneliness did not appall the eye, and 
 the wind did not chill the heart, and the rain fell unheeded on 
 the head of the woman at her post. At times she paused in 
 her slow, sentry-like pace to and fro, to look through the win- 
 dow of the cafe, and her gaze fell always on one figure seated 
 apart from the rest. At length, her pulse beat more quickly, 
 and the patient lips smiled sternly. The figure had risen to 
 depart. A man came out, and walked quickly up the street; 
 the woman approached and when the man was under the single 
 lamp swung aloft, he felt his arm touched; the woman was at 
 his side, and looking steadily into his face: 
 
 "You are Pierre Guillot, the Breton, the friend of George 
 Cadoudal. Will you be his avenger?" 
 
 The Chouan's first impulse had been to place his hand in
 
 176 LUCRETIA. 
 
 his vest, and something shone bright in the lamplight, clasped 
 in those iron fingers. The voice and the manner reassured 
 him. and he answered readily: 
 
 "I am he whom you seek, and I only live to avenge." 
 "Read, then, and act," answered the woman, and she placed 
 
 a paper in his hands. 
 
 ******* 
 
 At Laughton the babe is on the breast of the fair mother; 
 and the father sits beside the bed; and mother and father dis- 
 pute almost angrily whether mother or father, those soft rounded 
 features of slumbering infancy resemble most. At the red 
 house, near the market town, there is a hospitable bustle. 
 William is home, earlier than usual. Within the last hour Su- 
 san has been thrice into every room. Husband and wife are 
 now watching at the window. The good Fieldens, with a coach 
 full of children, are expected, every moment, on a week's visit, 
 at least. 
 
 In the caft, in the Boulevard du Temple, sit Pierre Guillot, 
 the Chouan, and another of the old band of brigands, whom 
 George Cadoudal had mustered in Paris. There is an expression 
 of content on Guillot' s countenance; it seems more open than 
 usual, and there is a complacent smile on his lips. He is 
 whispering low to his friend, in the intervals of eating, an em- 
 ployment pursued with the hearty gusto of a hungry man. 
 But his friend does not seem to sympathize with the cheerful 
 feelings of his comrade; he is pale, and there is terror on his 
 face; and you may see that the journal in his hand trembles 
 like a leaf. 
 
 In the gardens of the Tuileries some score or so of gossips 
 group together. 
 
 "And no news of the murderer?" asked one. 
 
 "No; but a man who had been friend to Robespierre must 
 have made secret enemies enough." 
 
 "Ce pauvre Dalibard ! He was not mixed up with the 
 Terrorists, nevertheless." 
 
 "Ah, but the more deadly for that, perhaps a sly man was 
 Olivier Dalibard!" 
 
 "What's the matter?" said an employe, lounging up to the 
 group. "Are you talking of Olivier Dalibard? It is but the 
 other day he had Marsan's appointment. He is now to have 
 Pleyel's. I heard it two days ago a capital thing! Peste, il 
 ira loin ! We shall see him a senator soon." 
 
 "Speak for yourself," quoth a ci-devant Abbe, with a laugh. 
 "I should be sorry to see him again, soon, wherever he be."
 
 LtlCRETiA. Iff 
 
 ! I don't understand you!" 
 
 "Don't you know that Olivier Dalibard is murdered found 
 stabbed in his own house, too!" 
 
 "del! Pray tell me all you know. His place, then, is va- 
 cant!" 
 
 "Why, it seems that Dalibard, who had been brought up to 
 medicine, was still fond of chemical experiments. He hired 
 a room at the top of the house for such scientific amusements. 
 He was accustomed to spend part of his nights there. They 
 found him at morning, bathed in his blood, with three ghast- 
 ly wounds in his side, and his fingers cut to the bone. He had 
 struggled hard with the knife that butchered him." 
 
 "In his own house!" said a lawyer; "Some servant or 
 spendthrift heir!" 
 
 "He has no heir but young Bellanger, who will be riche it 
 millions, and is now but a schoolboy at Lyons. No ; it seems 
 that the window was left open, and that it communicates with 
 the roof-tops. There the murderer had entered, and by that 
 way escaped, for they found the leads of the gutter dabbled 
 with blood. The next house was uninhabited easy enough to 
 get in there, and \\Qperdu till night." 
 
 "Hum, "said the lawyer; "but the assassin could only have 
 learned Dalibard's habits from some one in the house. Was 
 the deceased married!" 
 
 "Oh, yes; to an Englishwoman." 
 
 "She had lovers, perhaps?" 
 
 "Pooh! Lovers! The happiest couple ever known ! You 
 should have seen them together. I dined there last week." 
 
 "It is strange!" said the lawyer. 
 
 "And he was getting on so well," muttered a hungry look- 
 ing man. 
 
 "And his place is vacant!" repeated the employe", as he 
 quitted the crowd, abstractedly. 
 
 In the house of Olivier Dalibard sits Lucretia, alone, and in 
 her own usual morning-room. The officer appointed to such 
 tasks by the French law has performed his visit, and made his 
 notes, and expressed condolence with the widow, and promised 
 justice and retribution, and placed his seal on the locks till the 
 representatives of the heir-at-law shall arrive; and the heir-at- 
 law is the very boy who had succeeded so unexpectedly 
 to the wealth of Jean Bellanger, the contractor ! But Lucre- 
 tia has obtained beforehand all she wishes to save from the 
 rest. An open box is on the floor, into which her hand 
 drops noiselessly a volume in manuscript. On the forefinger
 
 172 
 
 LUCRETlA. 
 
 of that hand is a ring, larger and more massive than those usual- 
 ly worn by women; by Lucretia never worn before. Why 
 should that ring have been selected with such care from the 
 dead man's hoards? Why so precious the dull opal in that 
 cumbrous setting? From the hand the volume drops without 
 sound into the box, as those whom the secrets of the volume 
 instruct you to destroy may drop without noise into the grave. 
 The trace of some illness, recent and deep, nor conquered yet, 
 has ploughed lines in that young countenance, and dimmed the 
 light of those searching eyes. Yet, courage ! The poison is ar- 
 rested, the poisoner is no more ; minds like thine, stern woman, 
 are cased in coffers of steel, and the rust as yet has gnawed no 
 deeper than the surface. So, over that face stamped with 
 bodily suffering, plays a calm smile of triumph. The schemer 
 has baffled the schemer ! Turn now to the right, pass by that 
 narrow corridor, you are in the marriage chamber; the win- 
 dows are closed. Tall tapers burn at the foot of the bed. 
 Now go back to that narrow corridor; disregarded, thrown 
 aside, are a cloth and a besom; the cloth is wet still; but here, 
 and there the red stains are dry, and clotted as with bloody 
 glue; and the hairs of the besom start up, torn and ragged, as 
 if the bristles had a sense of some horror; as if things inani- 
 mate still partook of men's dread at men's deeds. If you 
 passed through the corridor, and saw in the shadow of the wall 
 that homeliest of instruments cast away and forgotten, you would 
 smile at the slatternly housework. But if you knew that a 
 corpse had been borne down those stairs to the left borne along 
 those floors to that marriage bed, with the blood oozing, and 
 gushing, and splashing below, as the bearers passed with their 
 burthen, then, straight that dead thing would take the awe of 
 the dead being; it told its own tale of violence and murder; it 
 had dabbled in the gore of the violated clay; it had become a 
 an evidence of the crime. No wonder that its hairs bristled 
 up, sharp and ragged, in the shadow of the wall! 
 
 The first part of the tragedy ends. Let fall the curtain. 
 When next it rises, years will have passed away, graves un- 
 counted will have wrought fresh hollows in our merry sepulchre, 
 sweet earth ! Take a sand from the shore, take a drop from 
 the ocean, less than sand-grain and drop in man's planet one 
 Death and one Crime! On the map, trace all oceans, and 
 search out every shore, more than seas, more than lands, in 
 God's balance shall weigh one Death and one Crime!
 
 LUCREtlA. t;3 
 
 PART THE SECOND. 
 
 PROLOGUE TO PART THE SECOND. 
 
 THE century has advanced: the rush of the deluge has 
 ebbed back, the old landmarks have reappeared ; the dynasties 
 Napoleon willed into life have crumbled to the dust; the 
 plough has passed over Waterloo; autumn after autumn the 
 harvests have glittered on that grave of an empire. Through 
 the immense ocean of universal change, we look back on the 
 single track which our frail boat has cut through the waste. 
 As a star shines impartially over the measureless expanse, 
 though it seems to gild but one broken line to each eye ; so, 
 as our memory gazes on the past, the light spreads not over all 
 the breadth of the waste, where nations have battled, and argo- 
 sies gone down ; it falls narrow, and confined, along the single 
 course we have taken: we lean over the small raft on which we 
 float, and see the sparkles but reflected from the waves that 
 it divides. 
 
 On the terrace at Laughton, but one step paces slowly. The 
 bride clings not now to the bridegroom's arm. Though pale 
 and worn, it is still the same gentle face; but the blush of 
 woman's love has gone from it evermore. 
 
 Charles Vernon (we call him still by the name in which he 
 is best known to us), sleeps in the vault of the St. Johns. He 
 had lived longer than he himself had expected, than his physi- 
 cian had hoped; lived, cheerful and happy, amidst quiet pur- 
 suits and innocent excitements. Three sons had blessed his 
 hearth, to mourn over his grave. But the two elder were deli- 
 cate and sickly. They- did not long survive him, and died 
 within a few months of each other. The third seemed formed 
 of a different mould and constitution from his brethren. To 
 him descended the ancient heritage of Laughton, and he 
 promised to enjoy it long. 
 
 It is Vernon's widow who walks alone in the stately terrace; 
 sad still, for she loved well the choice of her youth, and she 
 misses yet the children in the grave ; from the date of Ver- 
 non's death, she wore mourning without and within ; and the 
 sorrows that came later, broke more the bruised reed ; sad 
 still, but resigned. One son survives; and earth yet has the 
 troubled hopes and holy fears of affection. Though that son
 
 174 LTJCRETlA. 
 
 be afar, in sport or in earnest, in pleasure or in toil, working 
 out his destiny as man, still that step is less solitary than it 
 seems. When does the son's image not walk beside the moth- 
 er? Though she lives in seclusion, though the gay world tempts 
 no more, the gay world is yet linked to her thoughts. From 
 the distance she hears its murmurs in music. Her fancy still 
 mingles with the crowd, and follows one, to her eye, outshin- 
 ing all the rest. Never vain herself, she is vain now of an- 
 other; and the small triumphs of the young and well-born 
 seem trophies of renown to the eyes so tenderly deceived. 
 
 In the old-fashioned market town still the business goes on, 
 still the doors of the bank open and close every moment on the 
 great day of the week, but the names over the threshold are 
 partially changed. The junior partner is busy no more at the 
 desk, not wholly forgotten if his name still is spoken, it is not 
 with thankfulness and praise. A something rests on the name ; 
 that something which dims and attaints not proven, not cer- 
 tain, but suspected and dubious. The head shakes, the voice 
 whispers, and the attorney now lives in the solid red house at 
 the verge of the town. 
 
 In the vicarage, Time, the old scythe-bearer, has not paused 
 from his work. Still employed on Greek texts, little changed, 
 save that his hair is gray, and that some lines in his kindly face 
 tell of sorrows as of years, the Vicar sits in his parlor, but the 
 children no longer, blithe-voiced and rose-cheeked, dart through 
 the rustling espaliers. Those children, grave men, or staid 
 matrons (save one whom Death chose, and therefore now of all 
 best beloved ! ) are at their posts in the world. The young 
 ones are flown from the nest, and, with anxious wings, here and 
 there, search food in their turn for their young. But the blithe 
 voice and rose-cheek of the child make not that loss which the 
 hearth misses the most. From childhood to manhood, and 
 from manhood to departure, the natural changes are gradual 
 and prepared. The absence most missed is that household life 
 which presided, which kept things in order, and must be 
 coaxed if a chair were displaced. That providence in trifles, 
 that clasp of small links, that dear, bustling agency, now 
 pleased, now complaining, dear alike in each change of its 
 humor ; that active life which has no self of its own ; like the 
 mind of a poet, though its prose be the humblest, transferring 
 self into others, with its right to be cross, and its charter to 
 scold for the motive is clear, it takes what it loves too anx- 
 iously to heart. The door of the parlor is open, the garden 
 path still passes before the threshold ; but no step now has full
 
 LUCRETIA. 17$ 
 
 right to halt at the door, and interrupt the grave thought on 
 Greek texts ; no small talk on details and wise savings chimes 
 in with the wrath of Medea. The Prudent Genius is gone 
 from the household; and perhaps as the good scholar now 
 wearily pauses, and looks out on the silent garden, he would 
 have given with joy all that Athens produced, from ^Eschylus 
 to Plato, to hear again from the old familiar lips the lament on 
 torn jackets, or the statistical economy of eggs ! 
 
 But see, though the wife is no more, though the children 
 have departed, the Vicar's home is not utterly desolate. See, 
 along the same walk on which William soothed Susan's fears, 
 and won her consent see, what fairy advances? Is it Susan 
 returned to youth? How like! Yet, look again, and how un- 
 like ! The same, the pure, candid regard ; the same, the clear, 
 limpid blue of the eye ; the same, that fair hue of the hair 
 light, but not auburn more subdued, more harmonious than 
 that equivocal color which too nearly approaches to red. But 
 how much more blooming and joyous than Susan's is that ex- 
 quisite face in which all Hebe smiles forth; how much airier the 
 tread, light with health ; how much rounder, if slighter still, the 
 wave of that undulating form ! She smiles ; her lips move she 
 is conversing with herself ; she cannot be all silent, even when 
 alone ; for the sunny gladness of her nature must have vent 
 like a bird's. But do not fancy that that gladness speaks the 
 levity which comes from the absence of thought ; it is rather 
 from the depth of thought, that it springs, as from the depth of 
 a sea comes its music. See, while she pauses and listens, with 
 her finger half raised to her lip, as amidst that careless jubilee 
 of birds she hears a note more grave and sustained, the night- 
 ingale singing, by day (as sometimes, though rarely, he is 
 heard perhaps, because he misses his mate ; perhaps, because 
 he sees from his bower the creeping form of some foe to his 
 his race) ; see, as she listens now to that plaintive, low-chanted 
 warble, how quickly the smile is sobered, how the shade, soft 
 and pensive, steals over the brow. It is but the mystic sym- 
 pathy with Nature that bestows the smile or the shade. In 
 that heart lightly moved beats the fine sense of the poet. It is 
 the exquisite sensibility of the nerves that sends its blithe play 
 to those spirits, and from the clearness of the atmosphere 
 comes, warm and ethereal, the ray of that light. 
 
 And does the roof of the pastor give shelter to Helen Main- 
 waring's youth? Has Death taken from her the natural pro- 
 tectors? Those forms which we saw so full of youth and 
 youth's heart, in that very spot, has the grave closed on them
 
 1^0 LlJCREftA. 
 
 yet? Yet! How few attain to the age of the Psalmist! 
 Twenty-seven years have passed since that date, how often, 
 in those years, have the dark doors opened for the young as 
 for the old! William Mainwaring died first, careworn and 
 shame-bowed: the blot on his name had cankered into his 
 heart. Susan's life, always precarious, had struggled on, while 
 he lived, by the strong power of affection and will ; she would 
 not die, for who then could console him? But at his death 
 the power gave way. She lingered, but lingered dyingly for 
 three years ; and then, for the first time since William's death, 
 she smiled that smile remained on the lips of the corpse. 
 They had had many trials, that young couple whom we left so 
 prosperous and happy ! Not till many years after their mar- 
 riage had one sweet consoler been born to them. In the sea- 
 son of poverty, and shame, and grief, it came ; and there was 
 no pride on Mainwaring's brow when they placed his first-born 
 in his arms. By her will the widow consigned Helen to the 
 joint guardianship of Mr. Fielden and her sister: but the latter 
 was abroad, her address unknown, so the Vicar for two years 
 had had sole charge of the orphan. She was not unprovided 
 for. The sum that Susan brought to her husband had been 
 long since gone, it is true; lost in the calamity which had 
 wrecked William Mainwaring's name and blighted his pros- 
 pects; but Helen's grandfather, the land-agent, had died some 
 time subsequent to that event, and indeed, just before Will- 
 iam's death. He had never forgiven his son the stain on his 
 name ; never assisted, never even seen him since that fatal day ; 
 but he left to Helen a sum of about 8000, for she, at least, 
 was innocent. In Mr. Fielden's eyes, Helen was therefore an 
 heiress. And who amongst his small range of acquaintance 
 was good enough for her, not only so richly portioned, but so 
 lovely; accomplished too, for her parents had of late years 
 lived chiefly in France, and languages there are easily learned, 
 and masters cheap? Mr. Fielden knew but one, whom Provi- 
 dence had also consigned to his charge the supposed son of 
 his old pupil Ardworth ; but though a tender affection existed 
 between the two young persons, it seemed too like that of 
 brother and sister to afford much ground for Mr. Fielden's 
 anxiety or hope. 
 
 From his window the Vicar observed the still attitude of the 
 young orphan for a few moments, then he pushed aside his 
 books, rose, and approached her. At the sound of his tread she 
 awoke from her revery, and bounded lightly towards him. 
 
 "Ah, you would not see me before!" she said, in a voice in
 
 LUCRETIA. 177 
 
 which there was the slightest possible foreign accent, which 
 betrayed the country in which her childhood had been passed ; 
 "I peeped in twice at the window. I wanted you so much, to 
 walk to the village. But you will come now, will you not?" 
 added the girl coaxingly, as she looked up at him under the 
 shade of her straw hat. 
 
 "And what do you want in the village, my pretty Helen?" 
 
 "Why you know it is Fair day, and you promised Bessie 
 that you would buy her a fairing to say nothing of me." 
 
 "Very true, and I ought to look in; it will help to keep the 
 poor people from drinking. A clergyman should mix with his 
 parishioners in their holidays. We must not associate our office 
 only with grief, and sickness, and preaching. We will go. 
 And what fairing are you to have?" 
 
 "Oh, something very brilliant, I promise you! I have 
 formed grand notions of a fair. I am sure it must be like the 
 bazaars we read of last night, in that charming 'Tour in the 
 East." 
 
 The Vicar smiled, half-benignly, half-anxiously. "My dear 
 child, it is so like you to suppose a village fair must be an east- 
 ern bazaar. If you always thus judge of things by your fancy, 
 how this sober world will deceive you, poor Helen !" 
 
 "It is not my fault ne me grondez pas, mtchant" ans- 
 wered Helen, hanging her head. "But come, sir, allow at 
 least, that if I let my romance, as you call it, run away with me 
 now and then, I can still content myself with the reality. 
 What, you shake your head still! Don't you remember the 
 sparrow?" 
 
 "Ha! hc.. ? yes the sparrow that the peddler sold you for 
 a goldfinch ; and you were so proud of your purchase, and 
 wondered so much why you could not coax the goldfinch to 
 sing, till at last the paint wore away, and it was only a poor 
 little sparrow!" 
 
 "Go on! Confess; did I fret, then? Was I not as pleased 
 with my dear sparrow as I should have been with the prettiest 
 goldfinch that ever sang? Does not the sparrow follow me 
 about, and nestle on my shoulder, dear little thing! And I 
 was right after all ; for if I had not fancied it a goldfinch, I 
 should not have bought it, perhaps. But now I would not 
 change it for a goldfinch ; no, not even for that nightingale I 
 heard just now. So let me still fancy the poor fair a bazaar; it 
 is a double pleasure, first to fancy the bazaar and then to be 
 surprised at the fair." 
 
 "You. argue well," said the Vicar, as they now entered the
 
 178 LUCRETIA. 
 
 village. "I really think, in spite of all your turn for poetry, 
 and Goldsmith, and Cowper, that you would take as kindly to 
 mathematics as your cousin John Ard worth, poor lad!" 
 
 "Not if mathematics have made him so grave, and so churl- 
 ish, I was going to say but that word does him wrong. Dear 
 cousin, so kind and so rough!" 
 
 "It is not mathematics that are to blame if he is grave and 
 absorbed," said the Vicar, with a sigh; "it is the two cares 
 that gnaw most, poverty and ambition." 
 
 "Nay do not sigh: it must be such a pleasure to feel as he 
 does, that one must triumph at last!" 
 
 "Umph! John must have nearly reached London by this 
 time," said Mr. Fielden, "for he is a stout walker, and this is 
 the third day since he left us. Well, now that he is about 
 fairly to be called to the bar, I hope that his fever will cool, 
 and he will settle calmly to work. I have felt great pain for 
 him during this last visit." 
 
 "Pain! But why?" 
 
 "My dear, do you remember what I read out to you both 
 from Sir William Temple, the night before John left us?" 
 
 Helen put her hand to her brow, and with a readiness which 
 showed a memory equally quick and retentive, replied: "Yes; 
 was it not to this effect : I am not sure of the exact words : 
 'To have something we have not, and be something we are 
 not, is the root of all evil.' ' 
 
 "Well remembered, my darling! " 
 
 "Ah, but," said Helen archly, "I remember too what my 
 cousin replied: 'If Sir William Temple had practised his the- 
 ory, he would not have been ambassador at the Hague, or ' ' 
 
 "Pshaw! The boy's always ready enough with his an- 
 swers," interrupted Mr. Fielden, rather petulantly. "There's 
 the fair, my dear ; more in your way, I see, than Sir William 
 Temple's philosophy." 
 
 And Helen was right: the fair was no eastern bazaar; but 
 how delighted that young, impressionable mind was, notwith- 
 standing! delighted with the swings and the roundabouts, the 
 shows, the booths, even down to the gilt gingerbread kings and 
 queens. All minds genuinely poetical are peculiarly suscepti- 
 ble to movement ; that is, to the excitement of numbers. If 
 the movement is sincerely joyous, as in the mirth of a village 
 holiday, such a nature shares insensibly in the joy. But if the 
 movement is a false and spurious gayety, as in a state ball, 
 where the impassive face and languid step are out of harmony 
 with the evident object of the scene, then the nature we speak
 
 LUCRETIA. 179 
 
 of feels chilled and dejected. Hence it really is, that the 
 more delicate and ideal order of minds soon grow inexpressibly 
 weary of the hack routine of what are called fashionable pleas- 
 ures. Hence the same person most alive to a dance on the 
 green, would be without enjoyment at Almack's. It is not 
 because one scene is a village green, and the other a room in 
 King Street ; nor is it because the actors in the one are of the 
 humble, in the others of the noble class, but simply because 
 the enjoyment in the first is visible and hearty, because 
 in the other it is a listless and melancholy pretence. Helen 
 fancied it was the swings and the booths that gave her that in- 
 nocent exhilaration it was not so ; it was the unconscious 
 sympathy with the crowd around her. When the poetical 
 nature quits its own dreams for the actual world, it enters and 
 transfuses itself into the hearts and humors of others. The 
 two wings of that spirit which we call Genius are revery and 
 sympathy. But poor little Helen had no idea that she had 
 genius. Whether chasing the butterfly or talking fond fan- 
 cies to her birds, or whether, with earnest, musing eyes, watch- 
 ing the stars come forth, and the dark pine trees gleam into 
 silver; whether with airy day-dreams and credulous wonder 
 pouring over the magic tales of Mirglip or Aladdin, or whether 
 spellbound to awe by the solemn woes of Lear, or following 
 the blind great bard into "the heaven of heavens, an earthly 
 guest, to draw empyreal air," she obeyed but the honest and 
 varying impulse in each change of her pliant mood ; and would 
 have ascribed with genuine humility to the vagaries of child- 
 hood, that prompt gathering of pleasure, that quick shifting 
 sport of the fancy by which Nature binds to itself, in chains 
 undulating as melody, the lively senses of genius. 
 
 While Helen, leaning on the Vicar's arm, thus surrendered 
 herself to the innocent excitement of the moment, the Vicar 
 himself smiled and nodded to his parishioners, or paused to 
 exchange a friendly word or two with the youngest or the eld- 
 est loiterers (those two extremes of mortality which the Church 
 so tenderly unites), whom the scene drew to its tempting vor- 
 tex, when a rough-haired lad, with a leather bag strapped 
 across his waist, turned from one of the gingerbread booths, 
 and touching his hat, said: "Please you, sir, I was a-com- 
 ing to your house with a letter." 
 
 The Vicar's correspondence was confined and rare, despite 
 his distant children, for letters but a few years ago were costly 
 luxuries to persons of narrow income, and therefore the juve- 
 nile letter-carrier who plied between the post town and the vi*
 
 I So LUCRETIA. 
 
 lage failed to excite in his breast that indignation for being an 
 hour or more behind his time, which would have animated one 
 to whom the post brings the usual event of the day. He took 
 the letter from the boy's hand, and paid for it with a thrifty 
 sigh, as he glanced at a handwriting unfamiliar to him per- 
 haps from some clergyman poorer than himself. However, 
 that was not the place to read letters, so he put the epistle in 
 his pocket, until Helen, who watched his countenance to see 
 when he grew tired of the scene, kindly proposed to return 
 home. As they gained a stile half-way, Mr. Fielden remem- 
 bered his letter, took it forth, and put on his spectacles. 
 Helen stooped over the bank to gather violets; the Vicar 
 seated himself on the stile. As he again looked at the address, 
 the handwriting, before unfamiliar, seemed to grow indis- 
 tinctly on his recollection. That bold, firm hand thin and 
 fine as woman's, but large and regular as man's was too pecu- 
 liar to be forgotten. He uttered a brief exclamation of sur- 
 prise and recognition, and hastily broke the seal. The con- 
 tents ran thus : 
 "DEAR SIR: 
 
 So many years have passed since any communication has 
 taken place between us, that the name of Lucretia Dalibard 
 will seem more strange to you than that of Lucretia Clavering. 
 I have recently returned to England after long residence 
 abroad. I perceive by my deceased sister's will that she has 
 confided her only daughter to my guardianship, conjointly with 
 yourself. I am anxious to participate in that tender charge. 
 I am alone in the world, an habitual sufferer, afflicted with a 
 partial paralysis that deprives me of the use of my limbs. In 
 such circumstances, it is the more natural that I should turn to 
 the only relative left me. My journey to England has so ex- 
 hausted my strength, and all movement is so painful, that I 
 must request you to excuse me for not coming in person for my 
 niece. Your benevolence, however, will, I am sure, prompt 
 you to afford me the comfort of her society, as soon as you can 
 contrive some suitable arrangement for her journey. Begging 
 you to express to Helen, in my name, the assurance of such a 
 welcome as is due from me to my sister's child, and waiting 
 with great anxiety your reply, I am, dear sir, your very faith- 
 ful servant, LUCRETIA DALIBARD. 
 
 "P. S, I can scarcely venture to ask you to bring Helen 
 yourself to town, but I should be glad if other inducements to 
 take the journey afforded me the pleasure of seeing you once 
 again. I am anxious, in addition to such details of my late
 
 LUCRET1A. l8l 
 
 sister as you may be enabled to give me, to learn something of 
 the history of her connection, Mr. Ardworth, in whom I felt 
 much interested years ago, and who, I am recently informed, 
 left an infant, his supposed son, under your care. So long 
 absent from England, how much have I to learn, and how little 
 the mere gravestones tell us of the dead!" 
 
 While the Vicar is absorbed in this letter, equally unwelcome 
 and unexpected; while, unconscious as the daughter of Ceres 
 gathering flowers when the Hell King drew near, of the change 
 that awaited her and the grim presence that approached on her 
 fate, Helen bends still over the bank odorous with shrinking 
 violets, we turn where the new generation equally invites our 
 gaze, and make our first acquaintance with two persons con- 
 nected with the progress of our tale. 
 
 ******* 
 
 The britska stopped. The servant, who had been gradually 
 accumalating present dust and future rheumatisms on the "bad 
 eminence" of a rumble-tumble, exposed to the nipping airs of 
 an English sky, leapt to the ground, and opened the carriage 
 door. 
 
 "This is the best place for the view, sir a little to the right." 
 
 Percival St. John threw aside his book (a volume of Voy- 
 ages), whistled to a spaniel dozing by his side and descended 
 lightly. Light was the step of the young man, and merry was 
 the bark of the dog, as it chased from the road the startled spar- 
 row, rising high into the clear air iavorites of Nature both, 
 man and dog! 
 
 You had but to glance at Percival v$t. John to know at once 
 that he was of the race that toils not the assured step spoke 
 confidence in the world's fair smile. No care for the morrow 
 dimmed the bold eye and the radiant bloom. 
 
 About the middle height, his slight figure, yet undeveloped, 
 seemed not to have attained to its full growth; the darkening 
 down only just shaded a cheek somewhat sunburned, though 
 naturally fair, round which locks black as jet played sportively 
 in the fresh air; about him altogether there was the inexpress- 
 ible charm of happy youth. He scarcely looked sixteen, 
 though above four years older; but for his firm though careless 
 step, and the open fearlessness of his frank eye, you might 
 have almost taken him for a girl in men's clothes, not from 
 effeminacy of feature, but from the sparkling bloom of his 
 youth, and from his unmistakable newness to the cares and 
 ins of man. A more delightful vision of ingenuous boyhood
 
 182 LtJCRETlA. 
 
 opening into life, under happy auspices, never inspired with 
 pleased yet melancholy interest the eye of half-envious, half- 
 pitying age. 
 
 "And that," mused Percival St. John, "that is London! 
 Oh, for the Diable Boiteux to unroof me those distant houses, 
 and show me the pleasures that lurk within ! Ah, what long 
 letters I shall have to write home ! How the dear old Captain 
 will laugh over them, and how my dear good mother will put 
 down her work and sigh! Home! Urn, I miss it already. 
 How strange and grim, after all, the huge city seems!" 
 
 His glove fell to the ground, and his spaniel mumbled it into 
 shreds. The young man laughed, and, throwing himself on 
 the grass, played gayly with the dog. 
 
 "Fie, Beau, sir, fie; gloves are indigestible. Restrain your 
 appetite, and we'll lunch together at the Clarendon." 
 
 At this moment there arrived at the same patch of green- 
 sward a pedestrian some years older than Percival St. John: 
 a tall, muscular, raw-boned, dust-covered, travel-stained pedes- 
 trian; one of your pedestrians in good earnest; no amateur in 
 neat gambroon, manufactured by Inkson, who leaves his car- 
 riage behind him, and walks on with his fishing-rod by choice, 
 but a sturdy wanderer, with thick shoes and strapless trousers, 
 a threadbare coat and a knapsack at his back. Yet withal, the 
 young man had the air of a gentleman; not gentleman as the 
 word is understood in St. James's, the gentleman of the noble 
 and idle class, but the gentleman as the title is accorded, by 
 courtesy, to all to whom both education and the habit of mixing 
 with educated persons gives a claim to the distinction and im- 
 parts an air of refinement. The new-comer was strongly built, 
 at once lean and large; far more strongly built than Percival 
 St. John, but without his look of cheerful and comely health. 
 His complexion had not the florid hue that should have ac- 
 companied that strength of body; it was pale, though not sick- 
 ly; the expression grave, the lines deep, the face strongly 
 marked. By his side trotted painfully a wiry, yellowish, footsore 
 Scotch terrier. Beau sprang from his master's caress, cocked 
 his handsome head on one side, and suspended in silent halt 
 his right forepaw. Percival cast over his left shoulder a care- 
 less glance at the intruder. The last heeded neither Beau nor 
 Percival. He slipped his knapsack to the ground, and the 
 Scotch terrier sank upon it, and curled himself up into a ball. 
 The wayfarer folded his arms tightly upon his breast, heaved a 
 short, unquiet sigh, and cast over the giant city, from under 
 deep-pent, lowering brows, a look so earnest, so searching, so
 
 LUCRET1A. 183 
 
 full of inexpressible, dogged, determined power, that Percival, 
 roused out of his gay indifference, rose and regarded him with 
 curious interest. 
 
 In the mean while Beau had very leisurely approached the 
 bilious-looking terrier; and after walking three times round 
 him, with a stare and a small sniff of superb impertinence, halted 
 with great composure, and lifting his hind leg O Beau, Beau, 
 Beau ! your historian blushes for your breeding, and, like 
 Sterne's recording angel, drops a tear upon the stain which 
 washes it from the register but not, alas ! from the back of the 
 bilious terrier! The space around was wide, Beau. You had 
 all the world to choose; why select so specially for insult the sin- 
 gle spot on which reposed the worn-out and unoffending? O 
 dainty Beau ! O dainty world ! Own the truth, both of ye. 
 There is something irresistibly provocative of insult in the 
 back of a shabby-looking dog! 
 
 The poor terrier, used to affronts, raised its heavy eyelids, 
 and shot the gleam of just indignation from its dark eyes. But 
 it neither stirred nor growled, and Beau, extremely pleased 
 with his achievement, wagged his tail in triumph, and returned 
 to his master perhaps, in parliamentary phrase, to "report 
 proceedings, and ask leave to sit again." 
 
 "I wonder," soliloquized Percival St. John, "what that poor 
 fellow is thinking of; perhaps he is poor, indeed ! No doubt 
 of it, now I look again. And I so rich! I should like' to 
 hem let's see what he's made of." 
 
 Herewith Percival approached, and with all a boy's half-bash- 
 ful, half-saucy frankness, said: "A fine prospect, sir." 
 
 The pedestrian started, and threw a rapid glance over the 
 brilliant figure that accosted him. Percival St. John was not 
 to be abashed by stern looks; but that glance might have 
 abashed many a more experienced man. The glance of a 
 squire upon a corn-law missionary, of a Crockford dandy upon 
 a Regent Street tiger, could not have been more disdainful. 
 
 "Tush!" said the pedestrian rudely, and turned upon his 
 heel. 
 
 Percival colored, and, shall we own it? was boy enough to 
 double his fist. Little would he have been deterred by the 
 brawn of those great arms and the girth of that Herculean chest, 
 if he had been quite sure that it was a proper thing to resent 
 pugilistically so discourteous a monosyllable. The "tush!" 
 stuck greatly in his throat. But the man, now removed to the 
 farther verge of the hill, looked so tranquil and so lost in 
 thought, that the short lived anger died.
 
 I4 LtiCRETiA. 
 
 "And after all, if I was as poor as he looks, I dare say I 
 should be just as proud," muttered Percival. "However, it's 
 his own fault if he goes to London on foot, when I might, at 
 least, have given him a lift. Come, Beau, sir." 
 
 With his face still a little flushed, and his hat, unconsciously, 
 cocked fiercely on one side, Percy sauntered back to his britska. 
 
 As in a whirl of dust the light carriage was borne by the four 
 posters down the hill, the pedestrian turned for an instant from 
 the view before to the cloud behind, and muttered: "Ay, a 
 fine prospect for the rich a noble field for the poor!" The 
 tone in which those words were said told volumes; there, spoke 
 the pride, the hope, the energy, the ambition, which make youth 
 laborious, manhood prosperous, age renowned. 
 
 The stranger then threw himself on the sward, and continued 
 his silent and intent contemplation till the clouds grew red in 
 the west. When then he rose, his eye was bright, his mien 
 erect, and a smile, playing round his firm, full lips, stole the 
 moody sternness from his hard face. Throwing his knapsack 
 once more on his back, John Ardworth went resolutely on to 
 the great vortex. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE CORONATION. 
 
 THE eighth of September, 1831, was a holiday in London. 
 William the Fourth received the crown of his ancestors in that 
 mighty church in which the most impressive monitors to human 
 pomp are the monuments of the dead: the dust of conquerors 
 and statesmen, of the wise heads and the bold hands that had 
 guarded the thrones of departed kings, slept around; and the 
 great men of the modern time were assembled in homage to the 
 monarch to whom the powers and the liberty of generations 
 had bequeathed an empire in which the sun never sets. In the 
 Abbey, thinking little of the past, caring little for the future, 
 the immense audience gazed eagerly on the pageant that occurs 
 but once in that division of history, the lifetime of a king. The 
 assemblage was brilliant and imposing. The galleries sparkled 
 with the gems of women who still upheld the celebrity for form 
 and feature which, from the remotest times, has been awarded 
 to the great English race. Below, in their robes and coronets, 
 were men who neither in the senate nor the field have shamed 
 their fathers. Conspicuous amongst all, for grandeur of mien 
 and stature, towered the brothers of the king; while command- 
 ing yet more the universal gaze, were seen, here the eagle fea'
 
 LUCRETIA. 185 
 
 tures of the old hero of Waterloo, and there the majestic brow 
 of the haughty statesman who was leading the people (while 
 the last of the Bourbons, whom Waterloo had restored to the 
 Tuileries, had left the orb and purple to the kindred house, so 
 fatal to his name) through a stormy and perilous transition to 
 a bloodless revolution and a new charter. 
 
 Tier upon tier in the division set apart for them the mem- 
 bers of the Lower House moved and murmured above the 
 pageant; and the coronation of the new sovereign was con- 
 nected in their minds with the great measure, which, still un- 
 decided, made at that time a link between the People and the 
 King; and arrayed against both, if not, indeed, the real Aris- 
 tocracy, at least the Chamber recognized by the Constitution 
 as its representative. Without the space was one dense mass. 
 Houses, from balcony to balcony, window to window, were 
 filled as some immense theatre. Up, through the long thorough- 
 fare to Whitehall, the eye saw that audience A PEOPLE; and 
 the gaze was bounded at the spot where Charles the First had 
 passed from the banquet-house to the scaffold. 
 
 The ceremony was over; the procession had swept slowly 
 by; the last huzza had died away. And, after staring awhile 
 upon Orator Hunt, who had clambered up the iron palisade 
 near Westminster Hall, to exhibit his goodly person in his 
 court attire, the serried crowds, hurrying from the shower 
 which then unseasonably descended, broke into large masses or 
 lengthening columns. 
 
 In that part of London which may be said to form a boundary 
 between its old and its new world, by which, on the one hand, 
 you pass to Westminster, or through that gorge of the Strand 
 which leads along endless rows of shops that have grown up on 
 the sites of the ancient halls of the Salisburys and the Ex:ters, 
 the Buckinghams and Southamptons, to the heart of the City, 
 built around the primeval palace of the "Tower," while, on 
 the other hand, you pass into the new city of aristocracy and 
 letters, of art and fashion, embracing the whilom chase of 
 Marylebone, and the once sedge-grown waters of Pimlico; by 
 this ignoble boundary (the crossing from the Opera House, 
 at the bottom of the Haymarket to the commencement of Char- 
 ing Cross), stood a person whose discontented countenance was 
 in singular contrast with the general gayety and animation of 
 the day. This person, O gentle reader this sour, querulous, 
 discontented person was a king, loo, in his own walk ! None 
 might dispute it. He feared no rebel; he was harassed by no 
 reform; he ruled without ministers; tools he had ; but, when
 
 l86 LUCRETIA. 
 
 worn out, he replaced them without a pension or a sigh. He 
 lived by taxes, but they were voluntary; and his Civil List 
 was supplied, without demand for the redress of grievances. 
 This person, nevertheless, not deposed, was suspended from his 
 empire for the day. He was pushed aside; he was forgotten. 
 He was not distinct from the crowd. Like Titus, he had lost 
 a day his vocation was gone. This person was the Sweeper 
 of the Crossing! 
 
 He was a character! He was young, in the fairest prime of 
 youth; but it was the face of an old man on young shoulders. 
 His hair was long, thin, and prematurely streaked with gray; 
 his face was pale, and deeply furrowed; his eyes hollow, and 
 their stare gleamed, cold and stolid, under his bent and shaggy 
 brows. The figure was at once fragile and ungainly, and the 
 narrow shoulders curved in a perpetual stoop. It was a person 
 once noticed that you would easily remember, and associate 
 with some undefined, painful impression. The manner was 
 humble, but not meek; the voice was whining, but without pathos. 
 There was a meagre, passionless dullness about the aspect, 
 though, at times, it quickened into a kind of avid acuteness. No 
 one knew by what human parentage this personage came into 
 the world. He had been reared by the charity of a stranger, 
 crept through childhood, and misery, and rags mysteriously; 
 and suddenly succeeded an old defunct negro in the profitable 
 crossing whereat he is now standing. All education was un- 
 known to him, so was all love. In those festive haunts at 
 St. Giles's, where he who would see "Life in London" may 
 often discover the boy who has held his horse in the morning, 
 dancing merrily with his chosen damsel at night, our sweeper's 
 character was austere as Charles the Twelfth's! And the 
 poor creature had his good qualities! He was sensitively 
 alive to kindness little enough had been shown him to make 
 the luxury the more prized from its rarity! Though fond of 
 money he would part with it (we do not say cheerfully, but 
 part with it still) not to mere want, indeed (for he had been 
 too pinched and starved himself, and had grown too obtuse to 
 pinching and to starving, for the sensitiveness that prompts to 
 charity), but to any of his companions who had done him a 
 good service, or who had even warmed his dull heart by a 
 friendly smile ; he was honest, too honest to the backbone. 
 You might have trusted him with gold untold. Through the 
 heavy clod which man's care had not moulded, nor books en- 
 lightened, nor the priest's solemn lore informed, still natural 
 rays from the great parent source of Deity struggled, fitful and
 
 LUCRETIA. 187 
 
 dim. He had no lawful name; none knew if sponsors had 
 ever stood security for his sins at the sacred font. But he had 
 christened himself by the strange, unchristianlike name of 
 "Beck." There he was then, seemingly without origin, pa- 
 rentage, or kindred tie, a lonesome, squalid, bloodless thing, 
 which the great monster, London, seemed to have spawned 
 forth of its own self; one of its sickly, miserable, rickety off- 
 spring, whom it puts out at nurse to Penury, at school to Star- 
 vation, and, finally, and literally, gives them stones for bread, 
 with the option of the gallows or the dunghill, when the des- 
 perate offspring calls on the giant mother for return and home! 
 
 And this creature did love something; loved, perhaps, some 
 fellow-being of that hereafter, when we dive into the secrets 
 of his privacy. Meanwhile, openly and frankly, he loved his 
 crossing ; he was proud of his crossing ; he was grateful to his 
 crossing. God help thee, son of the street, why not! He had 
 in it a double affection ; that of serving and being served. He 
 kept the crossing if the crossing kept him. He smiled at 
 times to himself when he saw it lie fair and brilliant amidst the 
 mire around; it bestowed on him a sense of property! What a 
 man may feel for a fine estate in a ring fence, Beck felt for that 
 isthmus of the kennel which was subject to his broom ! The 
 Coronation had made one rebellious spirit when it swept the 
 sweeper from his crossing. 
 
 He stood then half under the colonnade of the Opera House, 
 as the crowd now rapidly grew thinner and more scattered: 
 and when the last carriage of a long string of vehicles had 
 passed by, he muttered audibly: 
 
 "It'll take a deal of pains to make she right agin!" 
 
 "So you be's ere to-day, Beck! "said a ragamuffin boy, who, 
 pushing and scrambling through his betters, now halted and 
 wiped his forehead as he looked at the sweeper. "Vy, ve are 
 all out pleasuring. Vy vont you come with ve? Lots of fun !" 
 
 The sweeper scowled at the urchin, and made no answer, but 
 began sedulously to apply himself to the crossing. 
 
 "Vy, there isn't another sweep in the streets, Beck. His 
 Majesty King Bill's Currynation makes all on us so appy!" 
 
 "It has made she unkimmon dirty!" returned Beck pointing 
 to the dingy crossing, scarce distinguished from the rest of the 
 road. 
 
 The ragamuffin laughed. 
 
 "But ve be's goin' toave Reform now, Beck. The peopul's 
 to have their rights and libties, and the luds is to be put down, 
 hand beefsteaks is to be a penny a pound, and "
 
 l88 LUCRETIA. 
 
 "What good will that do to she?" 
 
 "Vy, man, ve shall take turn about, and sum vun helse will 
 sveep the crossings, and ve shall ride in sum vun helse's coach 
 and four prads cos vy? Ve shall hall be hequals!" 
 
 "Hequals! I tells you vot, if you keeps jawing there, atween 
 me and she, I shall vop you, Joe cos vy; I be'sthe biggest!" 
 was the answer of Beck the sweeper to Joe the ragamuffin. 
 
 The jovial Joe laughed aloud, snapped his fingers, threw up 
 his ragged cap with a shout for King Bill, and set off scamper- 
 ing and whooping to join those festivities which Beck had so 
 churlishly disdained. 
 
 Time crept on ; evening began to close in, and Beck was still 
 at his crossing, when a young gentleman on horseback, who, 
 after seeing the procession, had stolen away for a quiet ride in 
 the suburbs, reined in close by the crossing, and, looking 
 round, as for some one to hold his horse, could discover no 
 loiterer worthy that honor except the solitary Beck. So young 
 was the rider that he seemed still a boy. On his smooth 
 countenance all that most prepossesses in early youth left its 
 witching stamp. A smile at once gay and sweet, played on his 
 lips. There was a charm, even in a certain impatient petu- 
 lance in his quick eye, and the slight contraction of his delicate 
 brows. Almaviva might well have been jealous of such a page! 
 He was the beau ideal of Cherubino. He held up his whip, 
 with an arch sign, to the sweeper. "Follow, my man," he 
 said, in a tone the very command of which sounded gentle, 
 so blithe was the movement of the lips, and so silvery the easy 
 accent ; and, without waiting, he cantered carelessly down 
 Pall Mall. 
 
 The sweeper cast a rueful glance at his melancholy domain. 
 But he had gained but little that day, and the offer was too 
 tempting to be rejected. He heaved a sigh, shouldered his 
 broom, and murmuring to himself that he would give her a last 
 brush before he retired for the night, he put his long limbs into 
 that swinging, shambling trot which characterizes the motion of 
 those professional jackals, who, having once caught sight of a 
 groomless rider, fairly hunt him down, and appear when he 
 least expects it, the instant he dismounts. 
 
 The young rider lightly swung himself from his sleek, high- 
 bred gray, at the door of one of the clubs in St. James's Street, 
 patted his horse's neck, chucked the rein to the sweeper, and 
 sauntered into the house, whistling musically, if not from want 
 of thought, certainly from want of care. 
 
 ^.s he entered the club, two or three men, young, indeed,
 
 LUCRETIA. 189 
 
 but much older, to appearance, at least, than himself, who 
 were dining together at the same table, nodded to him their 
 friendly greeting. 
 
 "Ah, Perce," said one, "we have only just sat down; here 
 is a seat for you." 
 
 The boy blushed shyly, as he accepted the proposal, and the 
 young men made room for him at the table, with a smiling 
 alacrity which showed that his shyness was no hinderance to 
 his popularity. 
 
 "Who," said an elderly dandy, dining apart with one of his 
 contemporaries; "Who is that lad? One ought not to admit 
 such mere boys into the club." 
 
 "He is the only surviving son of an old friend of ours," ans- 
 wered the other, dropping his eye-glass. "Young Percival St. 
 John." 
 
 "St. John! What! Vernon St. John's son?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "He has not his father's good air. These young fellows 
 have a tone a something a want of self-possession, eh?" 
 
 "Very true. The fact is, that Percival was meant for the 
 navy, and even served as a mid, for a year or so. He was a 
 younger son, then third, I think. The two elder ones died, 
 and Master Percival walked into the inheritance. I don't 
 think he is quite of age yet." 
 
 "Of age! He does not look seventeen!" 
 
 "Oh, he is more than that! I remember him in his jacket 
 at Laughton. A fine property!" 
 
 "Ay, I don't wonder those fellows are so civil to him. This 
 claret is corked! Everything is so bad at this d d club! No 
 wonder, when a troop of boys are let in ! Enough to spoil any 
 club! Don't know Larose from Lafitte. Waiter!" 
 
 Meanwhile the talk round the table at which sate Percival 
 St. John was animated, lively, and various the talk common 
 with young idlers ; of horses, and steeplechases, and opera- 
 dancers, and reigning beauties, and good-humored jests at each 
 other. In all this babble there was a freshness about Percival 
 St. John's conversation, which showed that, as yet, for him life 
 had the zest of novelty. He was more at home about horses 
 and steeplechases, than about opera-dancers, and beauties, and 
 the small scandals of town. Talk on these latter topics did not 
 seem to interest him; on the contrary, almost to pain. Shy 
 and modest as a girl, he colored or looked aside when his more 
 hardened friends boasted of assignations and love affairs. 
 Spirited, gay, and manly enough in all really manly points, the
 
 1 90 LUCRETIA. 
 
 virgin bloom of innocence was yet visible in his frank charming 
 manner.. And often, out of respect for his delicacy, some 
 hearty son of pleasure stopped short in his narrative, or lost 
 the point of his anecdote ; and yet so lovable was Percival in 
 his good-humor, his naivete, his joyous entrance into innocent 
 joy, that his companions were scarcely conscious of the gene 
 and restraint he imposed on them. Those merry, dark eyes, 
 and that flashing smile, were conviviality of themselves. They 
 brought with them a contagious cheerfulness, which compen- 
 sated for the want of corruption. 
 
 Night had set in. St. John's companions had departed to 
 their several haunts, and Percival himself stood on the steps of 
 the club, resolving that he would join the crowds that swept 
 through the streets to gaze on the illuminations, when he per- 
 ceived Beck (still at the rein of his dozing horse) whom he had 
 quite forgot till that moment. Laughing at his own want of 
 memory, Percival put some silver into Beck's hand more sil- 
 ver than Beck had ever before received for similar service 
 and said : 
 
 "Well, my man, I suppose I can trust you to take my horse 
 to his stables, No. , the Mews, behind Curzon Street. Poor 
 fellow, he wants his supper, and you, too, I suppose!" 
 
 Beck smiled a pale, hungry smile, and pulled his forelock 
 politely: "I can take the oss werry safely, your onor." 
 
 "Take him, then, and good-evening; but don't get on, for 
 your life." 
 
 "Oh, no, sir; I never gets on; 'taint in my vays." 
 
 And Beck slowly led the horse through the crowd, till he 
 vanished from Percival's eyes. 
 
 Just then a man passing through the street paused as he saw 
 the young gentleman on the steps of the club, and said, gayly: 
 "Ah, how do you do? Pretty faces in plenty out to-night! 
 Which way are you going?" 
 
 "That is more than I can tell you, Mr. Varney. I was just 
 thinking which turn to take the right or the left." 
 
 "Then let me be your guide," and Varney offered his arm. 
 
 Percival accepted the courtesy ; and the two walked on 
 towards Piccadilly. Many a kind glance from the milliners 
 and maid-servants, whom the illumination drew abroad, roved, 
 somewhat impartially, towards St. John and his companion ; 
 but they dwelt longer on the last, for t/iere y at least, they were 
 sure of a return. Varney, if not in his first youth, was still in 
 the prime of life ; and Time had dealt with him so leniently 
 that he retained all the personal advantages of youth itself.
 
 LUCRETIA. 191 
 
 His complexion still was clear; and as only his upper lip, 
 decorated with a slight, silken, and well-trimmed moustache, 
 was unshaven, the contour of the face added to the juvenility 
 of his appearance by the rounded symmetry it betrayed. His 
 hair escaped from his hat in fair unchanged luxuriance. And 
 the nervous figure, agile as a panther's, though broad-shoul- 
 dered and deep-chested, denoted all the slightness and elastic- 
 ity of twenty-five, combined with the muscular power of forty. 
 His dress was rather fantastic too showy for the good taste 
 which is habitual to the English gentleman and there was a 
 peculiarity in his gait almost approaching to a strut, which be- 
 spoke a desire of effect, a consciousness of personal advan- 
 tages, equally opposed to the mien and manner of Percival's 
 usual companions ; yet withal, even the most fastidious would 
 have hesitated to apply to Gabriel Varney the epithet of ' 'vul- 
 gar. " Many turned to look again; but it was not to remark 
 the dress, or the slight swagger : an expression of reckless, 
 sinister power in the countenance, something of vigor and 
 determination even in that very walk, foppish as it would have 
 been in most, made you sink all observation of the mere exter- 
 nals, in a sentiment of curiosity towards the man himself. He 
 seemed a somebody, not a somebody of conventional rank, but 
 a somebody of personal individuality ; . an artist perhaps, a poet, 
 or a soldier in some foreign service, but certainly a man whose 
 name you would expect to have heard of. Amongst the com- 
 mon mob of passengers he stood out in marked and distinct 
 relief. 
 
 "I feel at home in a crowd," said Varney. "Do you 
 understand me?" 
 
 "I think so," answered Percival. "If ever I could become 
 distinguished, I, too, should feel at home in a crowd." 
 
 "You have ambition, then? You mean to become distin- 
 guished?" asked Varney, with a sharp, searching look. 
 
 There was a deeper and steadier flash than usual from Per- 
 cival's dark eyes, and a manlier glow over his cheek, at Varney's 
 question. But he was slow in answering ; and when he did so, 
 his manner had all its wonted mixture of graceful bashfulness 
 and gay candor. 
 
 "Our rise does not always depend on ourselves. We 
 are not all born great, nor do we all have greatness thrust 
 on us." 
 
 "One can be what one likes, with your fortune," said Var- 
 ney ; and there was a growl of envy in his voice, 
 
 "What, be a painter like you! Ha, ha!"
 
 192 LUCRETIA. 
 
 "Faith," said Varney, "at least, if you could paint at all, 
 you would have what I have not, praise and fame." 
 
 Percival pressed kindly on Varney's arm. "Courage! You 
 will get justice some day!" 
 
 Varney shook his head. "Bah! There is no such thing as 
 justice; all are underrated or overrated. Can you name one 
 man whom you think is estimated by the public at his precise 
 value? As for present popularity, it depends on two qualities 
 each singly, or both united cowardice and charlatanism ; that 
 is, servile compliance with the taste and opinion of the mo- 
 ment, or a quack's spasmodic efforts at originality. But why 
 bore you on such matters! There are things more attractive 
 round us. A good ankle that, eh? Why, pardon me, it is 
 strange; but you don't seem to care much for women?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, I do," said Percival, with a sly demureness. "I 
 am very fond of my mother!" 
 
 "Very proper and filial," said Varney, laughing; "And 
 does your love for the sex stop there?" 
 
 "Well, and in truth I fancy so pretty nearly. You know 
 my grandmother is not alive! But that is something really 
 worth looking at!" And Percival pointed, almost with a 
 child's delight, at an illumination more brilliant than the rest. 
 
 "I suppose, when you come of age, you will have all the 
 cedars at Laughton hung with colored lamps. Ah, you must 
 ask me there, some day. I should so like to see the old place 
 again." 
 
 "You never saw it, I think you say, in my poor father's 
 time?" 
 
 "Never." 
 
 "Yet you knew him." 
 
 "But slightly." 
 
 "And you never saw my mother?" 
 
 "No; but she seems to have such influence over you, that I 
 am sure she must be a very superior person; rather proud, I 
 suppose." 
 
 "Proud no; that is, not exactly proud, for she is very 
 meek and very affable. But yet " 
 
 "But yet you hesitate; she would not like you to be seen, 
 perhaps, walking in Piccadilly with Gabriel Varney, the nat- 
 ural son of old Sir Miles's librarian; Gabriel Varney the 
 painter, Gabriel Varney the adventurer!" 
 
 M As long as Gabriel Varney is a man without stain on his 
 character and honor, my mother would only be pleased that I 
 should know an able and accomplished person, whatever his
 
 LUC,ETlA. 193 
 
 origin or parentage. But my mother would be sad if she knew 
 me intimate with a Bourbon or a Raffaelle, the first in rank or 
 the first in genius, if either prince or artist had lost or even 
 sullied his 'scutcheon of gentleman. In a word, she is most 
 sensitive as to honor and conscience; all else she disregards." 
 
 "Hem!" Varney stooped down, as if examining the polish 
 of his boot, while he continued, carelessly: "Impossible to 
 walk the streets and keep one's boots out of the mire ! Well 
 and you agree with your mother?" 
 
 "It would be strange if I did not. When I was scarcely four 
 years old, my poor father used to lead me through the long 
 picture-gallery at Laughton, and say, 'Walk through life as if 
 those brave gentlemen looked down on you.' And," added 
 St. John, with his ingenuous smile "my mother would put in her 
 word 'And those unstained women, too, my Percival!' ' 
 
 There was something noble and touching in the boy's low 
 accents as he said this; it gave the key to his unusual modesty, 
 and his frank, healthful innocence of character. 
 
 The devil in Varney 's lip sneered mockingly. 
 
 "My young friend, you have never loved yet. Do you 
 think you ever shall?" 
 
 "I have dreamed that I could love one day. But I can 
 wait." 
 
 Varney was about to reply, when he was accosted abruptly 
 by three men of that exaggerated style of dress and manner, 
 which is implied by the vulgar appellation of "Tigrish." Each 
 of the three men had a cigar in his mouth, each seemed flushed 
 with wine. One wore long brass spurs, and immense mous- 
 taches; another was distinguished by an enormous surface of 
 black satin cravat, across which meandered a Pactolus of gold 
 chain ; a third had his coat laced and braided, & la Polonaise, 
 and pinched and padded d la Russe, with trousers shaped to 
 the calf of a sinewy leg, and a glass screwed into his right eye. 
 
 "Ah, Gabriel! . Ah, Varney! Ah, prince of good fellows, 
 well met! You sup with us to-night at little Celeste's; we 
 were just going in search of you." 
 
 "Who's your friend one of us?" whispered a second. 
 
 And the third screwed his arm tight and lovingly into 
 Varney 's. 
 
 Gabriel, despite his habitual assurance, looked abashed for 
 the moment, and would have extricated himself from cordiali- 
 ties not at that moment welcome; but he saw that his friends 
 were too far gone in their cups to be easily shaken off, and he 
 felt relieved when Percival, after a dissatisfied glance at the
 
 194 LUCRETIA. 
 
 three, said quietly: "I must detain you no longer; I shall 
 soon look in at your studio" ; and without waiting for answer, 
 slid off and was lost among the crowd. 
 
 Varney walked on with his new-found friends, unheeding 
 for some moments their loose remarks and familiar banter. At 
 length he shook off his abstraction, and surrendering himself 
 to the coarse humors of his companions, soon eclipsed them all 
 by the gusto of his slang and the mocking profligacy of his sen- 
 timents; for here he no longer played a part, or suppressed his 
 grosser instincts. That uncurbed dominion of the senses, to 
 which his very boyhood had abandoned itself, found a willing 
 slave in the man. Even the talents themselves that he dis- 
 played came from the cultivation of the sensual. His eye, 
 studying externals, made him a painter ; his ear, quick, and 
 practised, a musician. His wild, prodigal fancy rioted on 
 every excitement, and brought him in a vast harvest of experi- 
 ence in knowledge of the frailties and the vices on which it 
 indulged its vagrant experiments. Men who over-cultivate the 
 art that connects itself with the senses, with little counterpoise 
 from the reason and pure intellect, are apt to be dissipated and 
 irregular in their lives. This is frequently noticeable in the 
 biographies of musicians, singers, and painters, less so in poets, 
 because he who deals with words, not signs and tones, must 
 perpetually compare his senses with the pure images of which 
 the senses only see the appearances ; in a word, he must em- 
 ploy his intellect, and his self-education must be large and com- 
 prehensive. But with most real genius, however fed merely by 
 the senses ; most really great painters, singers, and musicians, 
 however easily led astray into temptation, the richness of the 
 soil throws up abundant good qualities to countervail or redeem 
 the evil ; they are usually compassionate, generous, sympathiz- 
 ing. That Varney had not such beauties of soul and tempera- 
 ment it is unnecessary to add, principally, it is true, because 
 of his nurture, education, parental example, the utter corrup- 
 tion in which his childhood and youth had passed, partly 
 because he had no real genius ; it was a false apparition of the 
 divine spirit, reflected from the exquisite perfection of his 
 frame (which rendered all his senses so vigorous and acute), 
 and his riotous fancy, and his fitful energy, which was capable 
 at times of great application, but not of definite purpose or 
 earnest study. All about him was flashy and hollow. He had 
 not the natural subtlety and depth of mind that had character- 
 ized his terrible father. The graft of the opera dancer was 
 visible on the stock of the scholar; wholly without the habits
 
 LUCRETIA. 195 
 
 / 
 
 of method and order, without the patience, without the math- 
 ematical, calculating brain of Dalibard, he played wantonly 
 with the horrible and loathsome wickedness of which Olivier 
 had made dark, and solemn study. Extravagant and lavish, 
 he spent money as fast as he gained it ; he threw away all 
 chances of eminence and career. In the midst of the direst 
 plots o f his villany, or the most energetic pursuit of his art, 
 the poorest excitement, the veriest bauble would draw him 
 aside. His heart was with Falri in the sty, his fancy with 
 Aladdin in the palace. To make a show was his darling object ; 
 he loved to create effect by his person, his talk, his dress, as 
 well as by his talents. Living from hand to mouth, crimes 
 through which it is not our intention to follow him, had at times 
 made him rich to-day, for vices to make him poor again to- 
 morrow. What he called "luck," or "his star," had favored 
 him, \\zwasnothanged! he lived; and, as the greater part 
 of his unscrupulous career had been conducted in foreign 
 lands, and under other names in his own name, and in his 
 own country, though something scarcely to be defined, but 
 equivocal and provocative of suspicion, made him displeasing 
 to the prudent, and vaguely alarmed the experience of the 
 sober still no positive accusation was attached to the general 
 integrity of his character ; and the mere dissipation of his habits 
 was naturally little known out of his familiar circle. Hence, 
 he had the most presumptuous confidence in himself a confi- 
 dence native to his courage, and confirmed by his experience. 
 His conscience was so utterly obtuse, that he might almost be 
 said to present the phenomenon of a man without conscience 
 at all. Unlike Conrad, he did not "know himself a villain," 
 all that he knew of himself was, that he was a remarkably 
 clever fellow, without prejudice or superstition. That, with 
 all his gifts, he had not succeeded better in life, he ascribed 
 carelessly to the surpassing wisdom of his philosophy. He 
 could have done better if he had enjoyed himself less ; but was 
 not enjoyment the be all and end all of this little life? More 
 often, indeed, in the moods of his bitter envy, he would lay 
 the fault upon the world. How great he could have been if 
 he had been rich and high born ! Oh, he was made to spend, 
 not to save; to command, not to fawn! He was not formed 
 to plod through the dull mediocrities of fortune; he must toss 
 up for the All or the Nothing! It was no control over himself 
 that made Varney now turn his thoughts from certain grave 
 designs on Percival St. John, to the brutal debauchery of his 
 three companions; rather he then yielded most to his natuuil
 
 196 LUCRETIA. 
 
 self. And when the morning star rose over the night he passed 
 with low profligates and venal nymphs ; when, over the frag- 
 ments on the board and emptied bottles, and drunken riot, 
 dawn gleamed and saw him in all the pride of his magnificent 
 organization, and the cynicism of his measured vice fair, 
 fresh, and blooming amidst those maudlin eyes, and flushed 
 cheeks, and reeling figures, laughing hideously over the spec- 
 tacle he had provoked, and kicking aside, with a devil's scorn, 
 the prostrate form of the favored partner whose head had 
 rested on his bosom, as alone with a steady step "he passed the 
 threshold, and walked into the fresh, healthful air Gabriel 
 Varney enjoyed the fell triumph of his hell-born vanity, and 
 revelled in his sentiment of superiority and power. 
 
 Meanwhile, on quitting Varney, young Percival strolled on 
 as the whim directed him. Turning down the Haymarket, he 
 gained the colonnade of the Opera House. The crowd there 
 was so dense that his footsteps were arrested, and he leant 
 against one of the columns in admiration of the various galax- 
 ies in view. In front blazed the rival stars of the United Ser- 
 vice Club and the Athenaeum; to the left, the quaint and 
 peculiar device which lighted up Northumberland House; to 
 the right, the anchors, cannons, and bombs, which typified in- 
 geniously the martial attributes of the Ordnance Office. 
 
 At that moment there were three persons connected with this 
 narrative within a few feet of each other, distinguished from 
 the multitude by the feelings with which each regarded the 
 scene and felt the jostle of the crowd. Percival St. John, in 
 whom the harmless sense of pleasure was yet vivid and unsatia- 
 ted, caught from the assemblage only that physical hilarity 
 which heightened his own spirits. If in a character as yet so 
 undeveloped, to which the large passions and stern ends of life 
 were as yet unknown, stirred some deeper and more musing 
 thoughts and speculations, giving gravity to the habitual smile 
 on his rosy lip, and steadying the play of his sparkling eyes, he 
 would have been at a loss himself to explain the dim sentiment, 
 and the vague desire. 
 
 Screened by another column from the pressure of the mob, 
 with his arms folded on his breast, a man some few years older 
 in point of time many years older in point of character 
 gazed (with thoughts how turbulent, with ambition how pro- 
 found!) upon the dense and dark masses that covered space 
 and street far as the eye could reach. He, indeed, could not 
 have said, with Varney, that he was "at home in a crowd." 
 For a crowd did not fill him with the sense of his own individ-
 
 LUCRETIA. 197 
 
 ual being and importance, but grappled him to its mighty 
 breast with the thousand tissues of a common destiny. Who 
 shall explain and disentangle those high, and restless, and in- 
 terwoven emotions with which intellectual ambition, honorable 
 and ardent, gazes upon that solemn thing with which, in which, 
 for which it lives and labors the Human Multitude. To that 
 abstracted, solitary man, the illumination, the festivity, the 
 curiosity, the holiday, were nothing, or but as fleeting phan- 
 toms and vain seemings. In his heart's eye, he saw before him 
 but the PEOPLE, the shadow of an everlasting audience audi- 
 ence at once and judge. 
 
 And literally touching him as he stood, the ragged sweeper, 
 who had returned in vain to devote a last care to his beloved 
 charge, stood arrested with the rest, gazing joylessly on the 
 blazing lamps, dead as the stones he heeded, to the young 
 vivacity of the one man, the solemn visions of the other. So, 
 O London, amidst the universal holiday to monarch and to 
 mob, in those three souls lived the three elements, which, duly 
 mingled and administered, make thy vice and thy virtue, thy 
 glory and thy shame, thy labor and thy luxury ; pervading the 
 palace and the street, the hospital and the prison ; enjoyment, 
 which is pleasure ; energy, which is action ; torpor, which is 
 want ! 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. 
 
 SUDDENLY across the gaze of Percival St. John there flashed 
 a face that woke him from his abstraction, as a light awakes 
 the sleeper. It was as a recognition of something seen dimly 
 before ; a truth coming out from a dream. It was not the 
 mere beauty of that face (and beautiful it was), that arrested 
 his eye and made his heart beat more quickly ; it was rather 
 that nameless and inexplicable sympathy which constitutes love 
 at first sight ; a sort of impulse and instinct common to the 
 dullest as the quickest; the hardest reason as the liveliest 
 fancy. Plain Cobbett, seeing before the cottage door, at her 
 homeliest of housework, the girl of whom he said: "That girl 
 should be my wife," and Dante, first thrilled by the vision of 
 Beatrice, are alike true types of a common experience: 
 Whatever of love sinks the deepest is felt at first sight; it 
 streams on us abrupt from the cloud, a lightning flash, a destiny 
 revealed to us face to face. 
 
 Now, there was nothing poetical in the place or the circum-
 
 198 LUCRETIA. 
 
 stance, still less in the companionship in which this fair crea- 
 ture startled the virgin heart of that careless boy ; she was lean- 
 ing on the arm of a stout, rosy-faced matron in a puce-colored 
 gown, who was flanked on the other side by a very small, very 
 spare man, with a very wee face, the lower part of which was 
 enveloped in an immense belcher. Besides these two incum- 
 brances, the stout lady contrived to carry in her hands an um- 
 brella, a basket, and a pair of pattens. 
 
 In the midst of the strange, unfamiliar emotion which his eye 
 conveyed to his heart, Percival's ear was displeasingly jarred 
 by the loud, bluff, hearty voice of the girl's female companion : 
 
 "Gracious me! If that is not John Ardworth! Who'd 
 have thought it! Why, John! I say, John!" and lifting her 
 umbrella horizontally, she poked aside two city clerks in front 
 of her, wheeled round the little man on her left, upon whom 
 the clerks simultaneously bestowed the appellation of "feller," 
 and driving him as being the sharpest and thinnest wedge at 
 hand, through a dense knot of some half-a-dozen gapers, while 
 following his involuntary progress she looked defiance on the 
 malcontents, she succeeded in clearing her way to the spot 
 where stood the young man she had discovered. The ambi- 
 tious dreamer, for it was he, thus detected and disturbed, 
 looked embarrassed for a moment, as the stout lady, touching 
 him with the umbrella, said : 
 
 "Well, I declare, if this is not too bad ! You sent word that 
 you should not be able to come out with us to see the 'lumina- 
 tions, and here you are as large as life!" 
 
 "I did not think at the moment you wrote to me, that " 
 
 "Oh, stuff!" interrupted the stout woman, with a signifi- 
 cant, good-humored shake of her head; "I know what's what; 
 tell the truth, and shame the gentleman who objects to showing 
 his feet. You are a wild fellow, John Ardworth you are! 
 You like looking after the pretty faces you do you do ha, 
 ha, ha! Very natural! So did you once, did not you, Mr. 
 Mivers did not you, eh? Men must be men; they always are 
 men, and it's my belief that men they always will be!" 
 
 With this sage conjecture into the future, the lady turned to 
 Mr. Mivers, who, thus appealed to, extricated with some diffi- 
 culty his chin from the folds of his belcher, and putting up his 
 small face, said, in a small voice: "Yes, I was a wild fellow 
 once, but you have tamed me ! You have, Mrs. M." 
 
 And therewith the chin sunk again into the belcher, and the 
 small voice died into a small sigh. 
 
 The stout lady glanced benignly at her spouse, and then re*
 
 LUCRETIA. 199 
 
 suming her address, to which Ardworth listened with a half- 
 frown and a half-smile, observed, encouragingly : 
 
 "Yes, there's nothing like a lawful wife to break a man in, 
 as you will find some day. Howsomever, your time's not come 
 for the Altar, so suppose you give Helen your arm, and come 
 with us." 
 
 "Do," said Helen, in a sweet, coaxing voice. 
 
 Ardworth bent down his rough, earnest face to Helen's, and 
 an evident pleasure relaxed its thoughtful lines. "I cannot re- 
 sist you, ' ' he began, and then he paused and frowned. ' ' Pish, ' ' 
 he added, "I was talking folly; but what head would not you 
 turn? Resist you I must, for I am on my way now to my 
 drudgery. Ask me anything, some years hence, when I have 
 time to be happy, and then see if I am the bear you now call 
 me." 
 
 "Well," said Mrs. Mivers emphatically, "are you coming, 
 or are you not? Don't stand there, shilly-shally." 
 
 "Mrs. Mivers," returned Ardworth, with a kind of sly 
 humor, "I am sure you would be very angry with your hus- 
 band's excellent shopmen, if that was the way they spoke to 
 your customers. If some unhappy dropper-in, some lady who 
 came to buy a yard or so of Irish, was suddenly dazzled as I am, 
 by a luxury wholly unforeseen and eagerly coveted a splendid 
 lace veil, or a ravishing cashmere, or whatever else you ladies 
 desiderate and while she was balancing between prudence 
 and temptation, your foreman exclaimed; 'Don't stand shilly- 
 shally,' come, I put it to you." 
 
 "Stuff!" said Mrs. Mivers. 
 
 "Alas! unlike your imaginary customer (I hope so, at least, 
 for the sake of your till), prudence gets the better of me; un- 
 less," added Ardworth irresolutely, and glancing at Helen; 
 "Unless, indeed, you are not sufficiently protected, and " 
 
 "Purtected!" exclaimed Mrs. Mivers, in an indignant tone 
 of astonishment, and agitating the formidable umbrella, "as if I 
 was not enough, with the help of this here domestic commod- 
 ity, to purtect a dozen such. Purtected, indeed!" 
 
 "John is right, Mrs. M. ; business is business," said Mr. 
 Mivers. "Let us move on; we stop the way, and those idle 
 lads are listening to us, and sniggering." 
 
 "Sniggering!" exclaimed the gentle helpmate; "I should 
 like to see those who presume for to snigger" ; and as she spoke 
 she threw a look of defiance around her. Then, having thus 
 satisfied her resentment, she prepared to obey, as no doubt she 
 always did, her lord and master. Suddenly, with a practised
 
 200 LUCRETIA. 
 
 movement, she wheeled round Mr. Mivers, and taking care too 
 protrude before him the sharp point of the umbrella, cut her 
 way through the crowd like the scythe car of the ancient Britons, 
 and was soon lost amidst the throng, although her way might 
 be guessed by a slight ripple of peculiar agitation along the 
 general stream, accompanied by a prolonged murmur of re- 
 proach or expostulation which gradually died in the distance. 
 
 Ardworth gazed after the fair form of Helen with a look of 
 regret ; and, when it vanished, with a slight start and a sup- 
 pressed sigh, he turned away, and with the long, steady stride 
 of a strong man, cleared his path through the Strand, towards 
 the printing-office of a journal on which he was responsibly en- 
 gaged. 
 
 But Percival, who had caught much of the conversation that 
 took place so near him Percival, happy child of idleness and 
 whim, had no motive of labor and occupation to stay the free 
 impulse of his heart, and his heart drew him on, with magnetic 
 attraction, in the track of the first being that had ever touched 
 the sweet instincts of youth. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mrs. Mivers was destined to learn, though, per- 
 haps, the lesson little availed her, that to get smoothly through 
 this world it is necessary to be supple as well as strong; and 
 though, up to a certain point, man or woman may force the 
 way by poking umbrellas into people's ribs, and treading merci- 
 lessly upon people's toes, yet the endurance of ribs and toes 
 has its appointed limits. 
 
 Helen, half-terrified, also half-amused, by her companion's 
 robust resolution of purpose, had in Mrs. Mivers's general cour- 
 age and success that confidence which the weak repose in the 
 strong, and though, whenever she turned her eyes from the 
 illuminations, she besought Mrs. Mivers to be more gentle, yet 
 seeing that they had gone safely from St. Paul's to St. James's, 
 she had no distinct apprehension of any practically ill results 
 from the energies she was unable to mitigate. But now, hav- 
 ing just gained the end of St. James's Street, Mrs. Mivers at 
 last found her match. The crowd here halted, thick and ser- 
 ried, to gaze in peace upon the brilliant vista which the shops 
 and clubs of that street presented. Coaches and carriages had 
 paused in their line, and immediately before Mrs. Mivers 
 stood three very thin, small women; whose dress bespoke them 
 to be of the humblest class. 
 
 "Make way, there make way, my good women, make way!" 
 cried Mrs. Mivers, equally disdainful of the size and the rank 
 of the obstructing partie?
 
 LUCRETIA. $61 
 
 *'Arrah, and what shall we make way for the like of you, you 
 ould busybody?" said one of the dames turning round, and 
 presenting a very formidable squint to the broad optics of Mrs. 
 Mivers. 
 
 Without deigning a reply Mrs. Mivers had recourse to her 
 usual tactics. Umbrella and husband went right between two 
 of the feminine obstructives ; and to the inconceivable astonish- 
 ment and horror of the assailant, husband and umbrella instant- 
 ly vanished. The three small furies had pounced upon both. 
 They were torn from their natural owner they were hurried 
 away ; the stream behind, long fretted at the path so abruptly 
 made amidst it, closed in, joyous with a thousand waves. Mrs. 
 Mivers and Helen were borne forward in one way, the umbrella 
 and the husband in the other: at the distance a small voice was 
 heard: "Don't you! don't! Be quiet! Mrs. Mrs. M. Oh! 
 oh! Mrs. M. !" At that last repetition of the beloved and 
 familiar initial, uttered in a tone of almost superhuman an- 
 guish, the conjugal heart of Mrs. Mivers was afflicted beyond 
 control. 
 
 "Wait here a moment, my dear! I'll just give it them 
 that's all!" And in another moment Mrs. Mivers was heard 
 bustling, scolding, till all trace of her whereabouts was gone 
 from the eyes of Helen. Thus left alone, in exceeding shame 
 and dismay, the poor girl cast a glance around. The glance 
 was caught by two young men, whose station, in those days 
 when dress is an equivocal designator of rank, could not be 
 guessed by their exterior. They might be dandies from the 
 west, they might be clerks from the east. 
 
 "By Jove," exclaimed one, "that's a sweet pretty girl!" 
 and, by a ; sudden movement of the crowd, they both found 
 themselves close to Helen. 
 
 "Are you alone, my dear?" said a voice rudely familiar. 
 
 Helen made no reply, the tone of the voice frightened her. 
 A gap in the mob showed the space towards Cleveland Row, 
 which, leading to no illuminations, was vacant and solitary. 
 She instantly made towards this spot; the two men followed 
 her, the bolder and elder one occasionally trying to catch hold 
 of her arm. At last, as she passed the last house to the left, a 
 house then owned by One who, at once far-sighted and im- 
 petuous, affable and haughty, characterized alike by solid vir- 
 tues and brilliant faults, would, but for hollow friends, have 
 triumphed over countless foes, and enjoyed at last that brief 
 day of stormy power for which statesmen resign the health of 
 manhood and the hope of age as she passed that memorable
 
 202 LUCRETIA. 
 
 mansion, she suddenly perceived that the space before her had 
 no thoroughfare, and, while she paused in dismay, her pursuers 
 blockaded her escape. 
 
 One of them now fairly seized her hand: "Nay, pretty 
 one, why so cruel? But one kiss only one ! " He endeavored 
 to pass his arm round her waist while he spoke. Helen eluded 
 him, and darted forward, to find her way stopped by her perse- 
 cutor's companion, when to her astonishment, a third person 
 gently pushed aside the form that impeded her path, approached, 
 and looking mute defiance at the unchivalric molesters, offered 
 her his arm. Helen gave but one timid hurrying glance to her 
 unexpected protector: something in his face, his air, his youth, 
 appealed at once to her confidence. Mechanically, and scarce 
 knowing what she did, she laid her trembling hand on the arm 
 held out to her. 
 
 The two Lotharios looked foolish. One pulled up his shirt 
 collar, the other turned, with a forced laugh, on his heel. Boy 
 as Percival seemed, and little more than boy as he was, there 
 was a dangerous fire in his eye, and an expression of spirit and 
 ready courage in his whole countenance, which, if it did not 
 awe his tall rivals, made them at least unwilling to have a scene, 
 and provoke the interference of the policemen, one of whom 
 was now seen walking slowly up to the spot. They therefore 
 preserved a discomfited silence; and Percival St. John, with 
 his heart going ten knots a beat, sailed triumphantly off with 
 his prize. 
 
 Scarcely knowing whither he went, certainly forgetful of Mr. 
 Mivers, in his anxiety to escape at least from the crowd, Perci- 
 val walked on till he found himself with his fair charge under 
 the trees of St. James's Park. 
 
 Then Helen, recovering herself, paused, and said, alarmed: 
 "But this is not my way: I must go back to the street!" 
 
 "How foolish I am that is true!" said Percival, looking 
 confused. "I I felt so happy to be with you, feel your hand 
 on my arm, and think that we were all by ourselves, that 
 that but you have dropped your flowers!" 
 
 And as a bouquet Helen wore, dislodged somehow or other, 
 fell to the ground, both stooped to pick it up, and their hands 
 met. At that touch, Percival felt a strange tremble, which per- 
 haps communicated itself (for such things are contagious) to his 
 fair companion. Percival had got the nosegay, and seemed 
 willing to detain it, for he bent his face lingeringly over the 
 flowers. At length, he turned his bright ingenuous eyes to 
 Helen, and singling one rose from the rest, said beseech-
 
 LtJCRETIA. 203 
 
 ingly: "May I keep this? See, it is not so fresh as the 
 others." 
 
 "I am sure, sir," said Helen, coloring, and looking down, 
 "I owe you so much that I should be glad if a poor flower 
 could repay it." 
 
 "A poor flower! You don't know what a prize this is to 
 me!" 
 
 Percival placed the rose reverently in his bosom, and the two 
 moved back slowly, as if reluctant both, through the old palace 
 court into the street. 
 
 "Is that lady related to you?" asked Percival, looking another 
 way, and dreading the reply: "Not your mother, surely!" 
 
 "Oh, no! I have no mother !" 
 
 "Forgive me!" said Percival, for the tone of Helen's voice 
 told him that he had touched the spring of a household sorrow. 
 "And," he added, with a jealousy that he could scarcely re- 
 strain from making itself evident in his accent, "that gentle- 
 man who spoke to you under the Colonnade I have seen him 
 before, but where I cannot remember. In fact, you have put 
 everything but yourself out of my head. Is he related to 
 you?" 
 
 "He is my cousin." 
 
 "Cousin!" repeated Percival, pouting a little; and again 
 there was silence. 
 
 "I don't know how it is," said Percival, at last, and very 
 gravely as, if much perplexed by some abstruse thought, "but 
 I feel as if I had known you all my life. I never felt this for 
 any one before." 
 
 There was something so irresistibly innocent in the boy's seri- 
 ous, wondering tone, as he said these words, that a smile, in 
 spite of herself, broke out amongst the thousand dimples round 
 Helen's charming lips. Perhaps the little witch felt a touch of 
 coquetry for the first time. 
 
 Percival, who was looking sidelong into her face, saw the 
 smile, and said, drawing up his head, and shaking back his 
 jetty curls; "I dare say you are laughing at me as a mere boy; 
 but I am older than I look. I am sure I am much older than 
 you are. Let me see, you are seventeen, I suppose?" 
 
 Helen, getting more and more at her ease, nodded playful 
 assent. 
 
 "And lam not far from twenty-one. Ah! you may well 
 look surprised, but so it is. An hour ago I felt a mere boy; 
 uow I shall never feel a boy again!" 
 
 O*ice more there was a long pause, and before it was broken
 
 204 LUCRET1A. 
 
 they had gained the very spot in which Helen had lost her 
 friend. 
 
 "Why, bless us, and save us!" exclaimed a voice "loud as 
 a trumpet," but not "with a silver sound," "there you are, 
 after all!" and Mrs. Mivers (husband and umbrella both re- 
 gained) planted herself full before them. 
 
 "Oh, a pretty fright I have been in; and now to see you 
 coming along as cool as if nothing had happened; as if the 
 humbrella had not lost its hivory 'andle; it's quite purvoking. 
 Dear, dear ! What we have gone through ! And who is this 
 young gentleman, pray?" 
 
 Helen whispered some hesitating explanation, which Mrs. 
 Mivers did not seem to receive as graciously as Percival, poor 
 fellow, had a right to expect. She stared him full in the face, 
 and shook her head suspiciously when she saw him a little con- 
 fused by the survey. Then, tucking Helen tightly under her 
 arm, she walked back towards the Haymarket. merely saying to 
 Percival : 
 
 "Much obligated, and good-night. I have along journey to 
 take to set down this here young lady, and the best thing we 
 can all do is to get home as fast as we can, and have a refreshing 
 cup of tea that's my mind, sir. Excuse nief 
 
 Thus abruptly dismissed, poor Percival gazed wistfully on his 
 Helen, as she was borne along, and was somewhat comforted at 
 seeing her look back, with (as he thought) a touch of regret in 
 her parting smile. Then suddenly it flashed across him how 
 sadly he had wasted his time. Novice that he was, he had not 
 even learned the name and address of his new acquaintance. 
 At that thought he hurried on through the crowd, but only 
 reached the object of his pursuit just in time to see her 
 placed in a coach, and to catch a full view of the luxuri- 
 ant proportions of Mrs. Mivers as she followed her into the 
 vehicle. 
 
 As the lumbering conveyance (the only coach on the stand) 
 heaved itself into motion, Percival's eye fell on the sweeper, 
 who was still leaning on his broom, and who, in grateful recog- 
 nition of the unwonted generosity that had repaid his service, 
 touched his ragged hat, and smiled drowsily on his young cus- 
 tomer. Love sharpens the wit, and animates the timid; a 
 thought worthy of the most experienced inspired Percival St. 
 John : he hurried to the sweeper, laid his hand on his patch- 
 work coat, and said, breathlessly : 
 
 "You see that coach turning into the square: follow it, find 
 out where it sets down. There's a sovereign for you; another
 
 LUCRETIA. 20$ 
 
 if you succeed. Call and tell me your success. Number 
 Curzon Street! Off, like a shot!" 
 
 The sweeper nodded and grinned ; it was possibly not his 
 first commission of a similar kind. He darted down the street ; 
 and Percival, following him with equal speed, had the satisfac- 
 tion to see him, as the coach traversed St. James's Square, com- 
 fortably seated on the footboard. 
 
 Beck, dull clod, knew nothing, cared nothing, felt nothing 
 as to the motives or purposes of his employer. Honest love or 
 selfish vice, it was the same to him. He saw only the one sove- 
 reign which, with astounded eyes, he still gazed at on his palm, 
 and the vision of the sovereign that was yet to come : 
 
 " Scandit aeratas vitiosa naves 
 Cura : nee turmas equitum relinquit." 
 
 It was the Selfishness of London, calm and stolid, whether 
 i the track of innocence or at the command of guile. 
 
 At half-past ten o'clock Percival St. John was seated in his 
 
 om, and the sweeper stood at the threshold. Wealth and 
 penury seemed brought into visible contact in the persons of 
 the visitor and the host. The dwelling is held by some to give 
 an index to the character of the owner: if so, Percival' s apart- 
 ments differed much from those generally favored by young 
 men of rank and fortune. On the one hand it had none of 
 that affectation of superior taste, evinced in marqueterie and gild- 
 ing, or the more picturesque discomfort of high-backed chairs 
 and mediaeval curiosities which prevails in the daintier abodes 
 of fastidious bachelors. Nor, on the other hand, had it the 
 sporting character which individualizes the ruder juveniles "qui 
 gaiident equis," betrayed by engravings of racers and cele- 
 brated fox-hunts, relieved, perhaps, if the Nimrod condescend 
 to a cross of the Lovelace, with portraits of figurantes, and 
 ideals of French sentiment, entitled, "LeSoir," or "LaRev- 
 eillee" "L's/>flir," or " L' Abandon." But the rooms had a 
 physiognomy of their own, from their exquisite neatness and 
 cheerful simplicity. The chintz draperies were lively with gay 
 flowers ; books filled up the niches ; here and there were small 
 pictures, chiefly sea-pieces, well chosen, well placed. 
 
 There might, indeed, have been something almost effeminate 
 in a certain inexpressible purity of taste, and a cleanliness of 
 detail that seemed actually brilliant, had not the folding doors 
 allowed a glimpse of a plainer apartment, with fencing foils and 
 boxing gloves Ranged on the wall, and a cricket-bat resting care- 
 lessly in the corner. These gave a redeeming air of manliness 
 to the rooms, but it was the manliness of a boy; half-girl, if you
 
 2OS LtiCRETJA. 
 
 please, in the purity of thought that pervaded one room, all 
 boy in the playful pursuits that were made manifest in the 
 other. Simple, however, as this abode really was, poor Beck 
 had never been admitted to the sight of anything half so fine. 
 He stood at the door for a moment, and stared about him, be- 
 wildered and dazzled. But his natural torpor to things that 
 concerned him not soon brought to him the same stoicism that 
 philosophy gives the strong ; and after the first surprise, his eye 
 quietly settled on his employer. St. John rose eagerly from the 
 sofa, on which he had been contemplating the starlit tree-tops 
 of Chesterfield Gardens : 
 
 "Well, well," said Percival. 
 
 "J7o\d Brompton," said Beck, with a brevity of word and 
 clearness of perception worthy a Spartan. 
 
 "Old Brompton?" repeated Percival, thinking the reply the 
 most natural in the world. 
 
 "In a big ous by hisself, " continued Beck, "with a igh vail 
 in front." 
 
 "You would know it again?" 
 
 "In course; he's so wery pecular. " 
 
 "He? Who?" 
 
 "Vy, the ous. The young lady got out, and the hold folks 
 driv back. I did not go arter them ! " and Beck looked sly. 
 
 "So I must find out the name." 
 
 "I axed at the public," said Beck, proud of his diplomacy. 
 "They keeps a sarvant vot takes half a pint at her meals. The 
 young lady's ma be a foriner. " 
 
 "A foreigner! Then she lives there with her mother?' 
 
 "So they 'spose at the public." 
 
 "And the name?" 
 
 Beck shook his head. "Tis a French un, your onor; but 
 the sarvant's is Martha." 
 
 "You must meet me at Brompton, near the turnpike, to-mor- 
 row, and show me the house." 
 
 "Vy, I's in bizness all day, please your onor." 
 
 "In bizness?" 
 
 "I's the place of the crossing," said Beck, with much dig- 
 nity; "but arter eight I goes vhere I likes." 
 
 "To-morrow evening, then, at half-past eight, by the turn- 
 pike." 
 
 Beck pulled his forelock assentingly. 
 
 "There's the sovereign I promised you, my poor fellow : much 
 good may it do you. Perhaps you have some father or mother 
 whose heart it will glad."
 
 LUCRETIA. fio7 
 
 "I never had no such thing," replied Beck, turning the coin 
 in his hand. 
 
 "Well, don't spend it in drink." 
 
 "I never drinks nothing but svipes." 
 
 "Then," said Percival laughingly, "what, my good friend, 
 will you ever do with your money?" 
 
 Beck put his finger to his nose, sunk his voice into a whisper, 
 and replied solemnly: "I 'as a mattris." 
 
 "A mistress," said Percival; "Oh, a sweetheart! well; but 
 if she's a good girl, and loves you, she'll not let you spend your 
 money on her." 
 
 "I haint such a ninny as that," said Beck, with majestic con- 
 tempt. "I 'spises the flat that is done brown by the blowens. 
 I 'as a mattris." 
 
 "A mattress! A mattress! Well, what has that to do with 
 the money?" 
 
 "Vy, I lines it." 
 
 Percival looked puzzled. "Oh," said he, after a thoughtful 
 pause, and in a tone of considerable compassion, "I under- 
 stand; you sew your money in your mattress. My poor, poor 
 lad, you can do better than that ! There are the savings banks. " 
 
 Beck looked frightened: "I 'opes your 'onor vont tell no 
 vun. I 'opes no vun vont go for to put my tin vere I shall 
 know nothing vatsomever about it. Now I knows vere it is ; 
 and I lays on it." 
 
 "Do you sleep more soundly when you lie on your treasure?" 
 
 "No; it's hodd," said Beck musingly, "but the more I lines 
 it, the vorse I sleeps." 
 
 Percival laughed; but there was melancholy in his laughter; 
 something in the forlorn, benighted, fatherless, squalid miser, 
 went to the core of his open, generous heart. 
 
 "Do you ever read your Bible?" said he, after a pause; "Or 
 even the newspaper?" 
 
 "I does not read nothing, cos vy, I haint ben made a scholard, 
 like swell Tim, as was lagged for a forgery." 
 
 "You go to church on a Sunday?" 
 
 "Yes; I 'as a veekly hingagement at the New Road." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "To see arter the gig of a gemman vot comes from 'Ighgate." 
 
 Percival lifted his brilliant eyes, and they were moistened with 
 a heavenly dew, on the dull face of his fellow-creature. Beck 
 made a scrape, looked round, shambled back to the door, and 
 ran home through the lamplit streets of the great mart of the 
 Christian universe, to sew the gold in his mattress.
 
 208 LUCRETtA. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 EARLY TRAINING FOR AN UPRIGHT GENTLEMAN. 
 
 PERCIVAL ST. JOHN had been brought up at home under the 
 eye of his mother and the care of an excellent man, who had 
 been tutor to himself and his brothers. The tutor was not 
 much of a classical scholar, for, in great measure, he had edu- 
 cated himself; and he who does so, usually lacks the polish 
 and brilliancy of one whose footsteps have been led early to 
 the Temple of the Muses. In fact, Captain Greville was a gal- 
 lant soldier, with whom Vernon St. John had been acquainted 
 in his own brief military career, and whom circumstances had 
 so reduced in life as to compel him to sell his commission, and 
 live, as he could. He had always been known in his regiment 
 as a reading man, and his authority looked up to in all the dis- 
 putes as to history and dates, and literary anecdotes, which 
 might occur at the mess-table. Vernon considered him the 
 most learned man of his acquaintance ; and, when accidentally 
 meeting him in London, he learned his fallen fortunes, he con- 
 gratulated himself on a very brilliant idea, when he suggested 
 that Captain Greville should assist him in the education of his 
 boys and the management of his estate. At first, all that Gre- 
 ville modestly undertook, with respect to the former, and in- 
 deed was expected to do, was to prepare the young gentlemen for 
 Eton, to which Vernon, with the natural predilection of an Eton 
 man, destined his sons. But the sickly constitutions of the two 
 elder justified Lady Mary in her opposition to a public school ; 
 and Percival conceived early so strong an affection for a sail- 
 or's life, that the father's intentions were frustrated. The two 
 elder continued their education at home ; and Percival, at an 
 earlier age than usual, went to sea. The last was fortunate 
 enough to have for his captain one of that new race of naval 
 officers who, well educated and accomplished, form a notable 
 contrast to the old heroes of Smollett. Percival, however, had 
 not been long in the service before the deaths of his two elder 
 brothers, preceded by that of his father, made him the head 
 of his ancient house, and the sole prop of his mother's earthly 
 hopes. He conquered with a generous effort the passion for 
 his noble profession, which service had but confirmed, and 
 returned home with his fresh, child-like nature uncorrupted, 
 his constitution strengthened, his lively and impressionable 
 Blind braced by the experience of danger and the habits of
 
 LUCRETIA. 209 
 
 duty, and quietly resumed his reading under Captain Greville, 
 who had moved from the hall to a small house in the village. 
 
 Now, the education he had received, from first to last, was 
 less adapted prematurely to quicken his intellect and excite 
 his imagination than to warm his heart and elevate, while it 
 chastened, his moral qualities; for in Lady Mary there was, 
 amidst singular sweetness of temper, a high cast of character 
 and thought. She was not what is commonly called clever, 
 and her experience of the world was limited, compared to that 
 of most women of similar rank who pass their lives in the vast 
 theatre of London. But she became superior by a certain 
 single-heartedness which made truth so habitual to her, that the 
 light in which she lived rendered all- objects around her clear. 
 One who is always true in the great duties of life, is nearly 
 always wise. And Vernon, when he had fairly buried his 
 faults, had felt a noble shame for the excesses into which they 
 had led him. Gradually more and more wedded to his home, 
 he dropped his old companions. He set brave guard on his 
 talk (his habits now required no guard), lest any of the ancient 
 levity should taint the ears of his children. Nothing is more 
 common in parents than- their desire that their children should 
 escape their faults. We scarcely know ourselves till we have 
 children, and then, if we love them duly, we look narrowly into 
 failings that become vices, when they serve as examples to the 
 young. 
 
 The inborn gentleman with the native courage, and spirit, 
 and horror of trick and falsehood which belong to that chival- 
 rous abstraction, survived almost alone in Vernon St. John ; 
 and his boys sprang up in the atmosphere of generous senti- 
 ments and transparent truth. The tutor was in harmony with 
 the parents a soldier every inch of him not a mere discipli- 
 narian, yet with a profound sense of duty and a knowledge 
 that duty is to be found in attention to details. In calculat- 
 ing the habit of subordination so graceful to the young, he 
 knew how to make himself beloved, and what is harder still, 
 to be understood. The soul of this poor soldier was white 
 and unstained as the arms of a maiden knight; it was full of 
 suppressed, but lofty enthusiasm. He had been ill-used, 
 whether by Fate or the Horse Guards ; his career had been a 
 failure, but he was as loyal as if his hand held the field- 
 marshal's truncheon and the garter bound his knee. He was 
 above all querulous discontent. From him, no less than from 
 his parents, Percival caught not only a spirit of honor worthy 
 the antiqua fides of the poets, but that peculiar cleanliness of
 
 210 LUCRETIA. 
 
 thought, if the expression may be used, which belongs to the 
 ideal of youthful chivalry. In mere book-learning, Percival, 
 as may be supposed, was not very extensively read; but his 
 mind, if not largely stored, had a certain unity of culture which 
 gave it stability and individualized its operations. Travels, 
 voyages, narratives of heroic adventure, biographies of great 
 men, had made the favorite pasture of his enthusiasm. To 
 this was added the more stirring, and, perhaps, the more gen- 
 uine order of poets who make you feel and g!ow, rather than 
 doubt and ponder. He knew, at least, enough of Greek to 
 enjoy old Homer; and if he could have come but ill through 
 a college examination into ^Eschylus and Sophocles, he had 
 dwelt with fresh delight on the rushing storm of spears in the 
 "Seven before Thebes," and wept over the heroic calamities of 
 "Antigone." In science, he was no adept; but his clear good 
 sense, and quick appreciation of positive truths, had led him 
 easily through the elementary mathematics, and his somewhat 
 martial spirit had made him delight in the old captain's lec- 
 tures on military tactics. Had he remained in the navy, Perci- 
 val St. John would, doubtless, have been distinguished. His 
 talents fitted him for straightforward, manly action; and he had 
 a generous desire of distinction, vague, perhaps, the moment 
 he was taken from his profession, and curbed by his diffidence 
 in himself and his sense of deficiencies in the ordinary routine 
 of purely classical education. Still he had in him all the ele- 
 ments of a true man a man to go through life with a firm step 
 and a clear conscience, and a gallant hope. Such a man may 
 not win fame, that is an accident but he must occupy no 
 despicable place in the movement of the world. 
 
 It was at first intended to send Percival to Oxford, but for 
 some reason or other that design was abandoned. Perhaps 
 Lady Mary, over-cautious, as mothers left alone sometimes 
 are, feared the contagion to which a young man of brilliant 
 expectations, and no studious turn, is necessarily exposed in all 
 places of miscellaneous resort. So Percival was sent abroad 
 for two years under the guardianship of Captain Greville. On 
 his return, at the age of nineteen, the great world lay before 
 him, and he longed ardently to enter. For a year Lady Mary's 
 fears and fond anxieties detained him at Laughton ; but, though 
 his great tenderness for his mother withheld Percival from op- 
 posing her wishes by his own, this interval of inaction affected 
 visibly his health and spirits. Captain Greville, a man of the 
 world, saw the cause sooner than Lady Mary, and one morn- 
 ing, earlier than usual, he walked up to the Hall,
 
 LUCRETIA. 211 
 
 The captain, with all his deference to the sex, was a plain 
 man enough, when business was to be done. Like his great 
 commander, he came to the point in a few words. 
 
 "My dear Lady Mary, our boy must go to London; we are 
 killing him here." 
 
 "Mr. Greville!" cried Lady Mary, turning pale and putting 
 aside her embroidery; "Killing him?" 
 
 "Killing the man in him. I don't mean to alarm you; I 
 dare say his lungs are sound enough, and that his heart would 
 bear the sthenoscope to the satisfaction of the College of Sur- 
 geons. But, my dear ma'am, Percival is to be a man it is the 
 man you are killing by keeping him tied to your apron-string." 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Greville! 1 am sure you don't wish to wound 
 me, but " 
 
 "I beg ten thousand pardons. I am rough, but truth is 
 rough sometimes." 
 
 "It is not for my sake," said the mother warmly, and with 
 tears in her eyes, "that I have wished him to be here. If he 
 is dull, can we not fill the house for him?" 
 
 "Fill a thimble, my dear Lady Mary Percival should have 
 a plunge in the ocean." 
 
 "But he is so young yet, that horrid London! Such temp- 
 tations fatherless, too!" 
 
 "I have no fear of the result if Percival goes now while his 
 principles are strong, and his imagination not inflamed; but if 
 we keep him here much longer against his bent, he will learn 
 to brood and to muse, write bad poetry perhaps, and think the 
 world withheld from him a thousand times more delightful than it 
 is. This very dread of temptation will provoke his curiosity, 
 irritate his fancy, make him imagine the temptation must be a 
 very delightful thing. For the first time in my life, ma'am, I 
 have caught him sighing over fashionable novels, and subscrib- 
 ing to the Southampton Circulating Library. Take my word 
 for it, it is time that Percival should begin life, and swim 
 without corks." 
 
 Lady Mary had a profound confidence in Greville's judg- 
 ment and affection for Percival, and like a sensible woman 
 she was aware of her own weakness. She remained silent for 
 a few moments, and then said, with an effort: 
 
 "You know how hateful London is to me now; how unfit I 
 am to return to the hollow forms of its society; still, if you 
 think it right, I will take a house for the season, and Percival 
 can still be under our eye." 
 
 "No, ma'am, pardon me, that will be the surest way to
 
 212 . LUCRETIA. 
 
 make him either discontented or hypocritical. A young man 
 of his prospects and temper can hardly be expected to chime 
 in with all our sober, old-fashioned habits. You will impose 
 on him if he is to conform to our hours, and notions, and 
 quiet set a thousand irksome restraints; and what will be the 
 consequence? In a year, he will be of age, and can throw us 
 off altogether, if he pleases. I know the boy: don't seem to 
 mistrust him he may be trusted. You place the true con- 
 straint on temptation, when you say to him, 'We confide to 
 you our dearest treasure, your honor, your morals, your con- 
 science, yourself!' ' 
 
 "But, at least, you will go with him, if it must be so," said 
 Lady Mary, after a few timid arguments, from which, one by 
 one, she was driven. 
 
 "I ! What for? To be a jest of the young puppies he must 
 know to make him ashamed of himself and me himself as a 
 milksop, and me as a dry nurse." 
 
 "But this was not so abroad!" 
 
 "Abroad, ma'am, I gave him full swing, I promise you; 
 and when we went abroad, he was two years younger." 
 
 "But he is a mere child, still." 
 
 "Child, Lady Mary! At his age, I had gone through two 
 seiges. There are younger faces than his at a mess-room. 
 Come, come ! I know what you fear he may commit some 
 follies; very likely. He may be taken in, and lose some 
 money he can afford it, and he will get experience in return. 
 Vices he has none. I have seen him ay, with the vicious. 
 Send him out against the world, like a saint of old, with his 
 Bible in his hand, and no spot on his robe. Let him see fairly 
 what is, not stay here to dream of what is not. And when 
 he's of age, ma'am, we must get him an object a pursuit; 
 start him for the county, and make him serve the State; he will 
 understand that business pretty well. Tush! tush! what is 
 there to cry at?" 
 
 The Captain prevailed. We don't say that his advice 
 would have been equally judicious for all youths of Percival's 
 age; but he knew well the nature to which he confided; he 
 knew well how strong was that young heart in its healthful 
 simplicity and instinctive rectitude ; and he appreciated its 
 manliness not too highly when he felt that all evident props and 
 aids would be but irritating tokens of distrust. 
 
 And thus, armed only with letters of introduction, his moth- 
 er's tearful admonitions, and Greville's experienced warnings, 
 Percival St. John was launched into London life. After the
 
 LUCRETIA. 213 
 
 first month or so, Greville came up to visit him, do him sundry 
 kind invisible offices amongst his old friends, help him to equip 
 his apartments, and mount his stud ; and, wholly satisfied with 
 the results of his experiment, returned in high spirits with 
 flattering reports to the anxious mother. 
 
 But, indeed, the tone of Percival's letters would have been 
 sufficient to allay even maternal anxiety. He did not write, as 
 sons are apt to do, short excuses, for not writing more at length, 
 unsatisfactory compressions of details (exciting worlds of con- 
 jecture), into a hurried sentence. Frank and overflowing, 
 those delightful epistles gave accounts fresh from the first im- 
 pressions of all he saw and did. There was a racy, wholesome 
 gusto in his enjoyment of novelty and independence. His 
 balls and his dinners, and his cricket at Lord's / his partners, 
 and his companions ; his general gayety, his occasional ennui, 
 furnished ample materials to one who felt he was correspond- 
 ing with another heart, and had nothing to fear or conceal. 
 
 But about two months before this portion of our narrative 
 opens with the coronation, Lady Mary's favorite sister, who had 
 never married, and who, by the death of her parents, was left 
 alone in the worse than widowhood of an old maid, had been 
 ordered to Pisa, for a complaint that betrayed pulmonary symp- 
 toms; and Lady Mary, with her usual unselfishness, conquered 
 both her aversion to movement and her wish to be in reach of 
 her son, to accompany abroad this beloved and solitary rela- 
 tive. Captain Greville was pressed into service as their joint 
 cavalier. And thus Percival's habitual intercourse with his 
 two principal correspondents received a temporary check. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 JOHN ARDWORTH. 
 
 AT noon the next day, Beck, restored to his grandeur, was 
 at the helm of his state ; Percival was vainly trying to be 
 amused by the talk of two or three loungers who did him the 
 honor to smoke a cigar in his rooms; and John Ardworth sat 
 in his dingy cell in Gray's Inn, with a pile of law books on the 
 table, and the daily newspapers carpeting a footstool of "Han- 
 sard's Debates" upon the floor no unusual combination of 
 studies amongst the poorer and more ardent students of the law, 
 who often owe their earliest, nor perhaps their least noble 
 earnings, to employment in the empire of the Press. By the 
 power of a mind habituated to labor, and backed by a frame of
 
 214 LUCRETIA. 
 
 remarkable strength and endurance, Ardworth grappled with 
 his arid studies not the less manfully for a night mainly spent 
 in a printer's office, and stinted to lessthat four hours' actual 
 sleep. But that sleep was profound and refreshing as a peas- 
 ant's. The nights thus devoted to the Press (he was employed 
 in the sub-editing of a daily journal), the mornings to the 
 law, he kept distinct the two separate callings with a stern sub- 
 division of labor, which in itself proved the vigor of his energy 
 and the resolution of his will. Early compelled to shift for 
 himself, and carve out his own way, he had obtained a small 
 fellowship at the small college in which he had passed his 
 academic career. Previous to his arrival in London, by con- 
 tributions to political periodicals, and a. high reputation at that 
 noble debating society in Cambridge which has trained some 
 of the most eminent of living public men,* he had established 
 a name which was immediately useful to him in obtaining em- 
 ployment on the Press. Like most young men of practical 
 ability, he was an eager politician. The popular passion of 
 the day kindled his enthusiasm, and stirred the depths of his 
 soul with magnificent, though exaggerated, hopes in the des- 
 tiny of his race. He identified himself with the people; his 
 stout heart beat loud in their stormy cause. His compositions, 
 if they wanted that knowledge of men, that subtle comprehen- 
 sion of the true state of parties, that happy temperance in 
 which the crowning wisdom of statesmen must consist quali- 
 ties which experience alone can give excited considerable at- 
 tention by their bold eloquence and hardy logic. They were 
 suited to the time. But John Ardworth had that solidity of 
 understanding which betokens more than talent, and which is 
 the usual substratum of genius. He would not depend alone 
 on the precarious and often unhonored toils of polemical liter- 
 ature for that distinction on which he had fixed his steadfast 
 heart. Patiently he plodded on through the formal drudgeries 
 of his new profession, lighting up dullness by his own acute 
 comprehension, weaving complexities into simple system by 
 the grasp of an intellect inured to generalize; and learning 
 to love even what was most distasteful, by the sense of diffi- 
 culty overcome, and the clearer vision which every step 
 through the mists, and up the hill, gave of the land beyond. 
 Of what the superficial are apt to consider genius, John Ard- 
 
 * Amongst those whom the " Union " almost contemporaneously prepared for public 
 life, and whose distinction has kept the promise of their youth, we may mention the emi- 
 nent barristers, Messrs. Austin and Cockburn ; and amongst statesmen, Lord Grey, Mr. C. 
 Buller, Mr. Charles Villiers. and Mr. Macaulay. Nor ought we to forget those brilliant 
 competitors for the prizes of the University, Dr. Kennedy (now head-master of Shrewsbury 
 School) and the late Winthrop M. Praed.
 
 LUCRETIA. Sig 
 
 worth had but little. He had some imagination (for a true 
 thinker is never without that), but he had a very slight share 
 of fancy. He did not flirt with the Muses; on the granite of 
 his mind, few flowers could spring. His style, rushing and 
 earnest, admitted at times of a humor not without delicacy, 
 though less delicate than forcible and deep, but it was little 
 adorned with wit, and still less with poetry. Yet Ardworth 
 had genius, and genius ample and magnificent. There was 
 genius in that industrious energy so patient in the conquest of 
 detail, so triumphant in the perception of results. There was 
 genius in that kindly sympathy with mankind ; genius in that 
 stubborn determination to succeed ; genius in that vivid com- 
 prehension of affairs, and the large interests of the world; 
 genius fed in the labors of the closet, and evinced the instant 
 he was brought in contact with men ; evinced in readiness of 
 thought, grasp of memory, even in a rough imperious man- 
 ner, which showed him born to speak strong truths, and in 
 their name to struggle and command. 
 
 Rough was this man often in his exterior, though really gen- 
 tle and kind-hearted. John Ardworth had sacrificed to no 
 Graces; he would have thrown Lord Chesterfield into a fever. 
 Not that he was ever vulgar, for vulgarity implies affectation 
 of refinement, but he talked loud, and laughed loud if the 
 whim seized him, and rubbed his great hands with a boyish 
 heartiness of glee, if he discomfited an adversary in argument. 
 Or sometimes he would sit abstracted and moody, and answer 
 briefly and boorishly those who interrupted him. Young men 
 were mostly afraid of him, though he wanted but fame to ha.t; 
 a set of admiring disciples. Old men censured his presump- 
 tion, and recoiled from the novelty of his ideas. Women 
 alone liked and appreciated him, as, with their finer insight 
 into character, they generally do what is honest and sterling. 
 Some strange failings, too, had John Ardworth ; some of the 
 usual vagaries and contradictions of clever men. As a system, 
 he was rigidly abstemious. For days together he would drink 
 nothing but water, eat nothing but bread, or hard biscuit, or a 
 couple of eggs: then having wound up some allotted portion 
 of work, Ardworth would indulge what he called a self- 
 saturnalia; would stride off with old college friends to an inn 
 in one of the suburbs, and spend, as he said triumphantly, "a 
 day of blessed debauch" ! Innocent enough, for the most 
 part, the debauch was; consisting in cracking jests, stringing 
 puns, a fish dinner, perhaps, and an extra bottle or two of fiery 
 port. Sometimes this jollity, which was always loud and up-
 
 21 6 LUCRET1A. 
 
 roarious, found its scene in one of the cider cellars or mid- 
 night taverns, but Ardworth's labors on the Press made that 
 latter dissipation extremely rare. These relaxations were 
 always succeeded by a mien more than usually grave, a man- 
 ner more than usually curt and ungracious, an application 
 more than ever rigorous and intense. John Ardworth was not 
 a good-tempered man, but he was the best-natured man that 
 ever breathed. He was, like all ambitious persons, very much 
 occupied with self, and yet it would have been a ludicrous mis- 
 application of words to call him selfish. Even the desire of 
 fame which absorbed him was but a part of benevolence a 
 desire to promote justice and to serve his kind. 
 
 John Ardworth's shaggy brows were bent over his open . ol- 
 umes, when his clerk entered noiselessly, and placed on his 
 table a letter which the two-penny postman had just delivered. 
 With an impatient shrug of the shoulders, Ardwroth glanced 
 towards the superscription, but his eye became earnest and his 
 interest roused, as he recognized the hand. "Again!" he 
 muttered; "What mystery is this? Who can feel such inter- 
 est in my fate?" He broke the seal, and read as follows: 
 
 "Do you neglect my advice, or have you begun to act upon 
 it? Are you contented only with the slow process of mechani- 
 cal application, or will you make a triumphant effort to abridge 
 your apprenticeship, and emerge at once into fame and power? 
 I repeat that you fritter away your talents and your opportuni- 
 ties upon this miserable task-work on a journal. I am impa- 
 tient for you. Come forward yourself, put your force and 
 your knowledge into some work of which the world may know 
 the author. Day after day, I am examining into your destiny, 
 and day after day I believe more and more that you are not 
 fated for the tedious drudgery to which you doom your 
 youth. I would have you great, but in the senate, not a 
 wretched casuist at the bar. Appear in public as an individual 
 authority, not one of that nameless troop of shadows, con- 
 temned while dreaded as the Press. Write for renown. Go 
 into the world, and make friends. Soften your rugged bearing. 
 Lift yourself above that herd whom you call the people. What 
 if you are born of the noble class ? What if your career is as Gen- 
 tleman, not Plebeian? Want not for money. Use what I send 
 you, as the young and the well-born should use it; or let it, 
 at least, gain you a respite from toils for bread, and support 
 you in your struggle to emancipate yourself from obscurity 
 into fame. YOUR UNKNOWN FRIEND."
 
 LUCRETIA. 217 
 
 A bank-note for 100 dropped from the envelope, as Ard- 
 worth silently replaced the letter on the table. 
 
 Thrice before had he received communications in the same 
 handwriting, and much to the same effect. Certainly, to a 
 mind of less strength, there would have been something very 
 unsettling in those vague hints of a station higher than he 
 owned of a future at variance with the toilsome lot he had 
 drawn from the urn ; but after a single glance over his lone 
 position in all its bearings, and probable expectations, Ard- 
 worth's steady sense shook off the slight disturbance such 
 misty vaticinations had effected. His mother's family was 
 indeed unknown to him ; he was even ignorant of her maiden 
 name. But that very obscurity seemed unfavorable to much 
 hope from such a quarter. The connections with the rich 
 and well-born are seldom left obscure. From his father's 
 family he had not one expectation. More had he been moved 
 by exhortations now generally repeated, but in a previous letter 
 more precisely detailed, viz., to appeal to the reading public 
 in his acknowledged person, and by some striking and original 
 work. This idea he had often contemplated and revolved; 
 but partly the necessity of keeping pace with the many exigen- 
 cies of the hour, had deterred him, and partly also the convic- 
 tion of his sober judgment, that a man does himself no good at 
 the bar, even by the most brilliant distinction gained in dis- 
 cursive fields. He had the natural yearning of the Restless 
 Genius; and the Patient Genius (higher power of the two) had 
 suppressed the longing. Still, so far, the whispers of his cor- 
 respondent tempted and aroused. But hitherto he had sought 
 to persuade himself that the communications thus strangely 
 forced on him arose, perhaps, from idle motives a jest, it 
 might be, of one of his old college friends, or at best the vain 
 enthusiasm of some more credulous admirer. But the enclos- 
 ure now sent to him forbade either of these suppositions. 
 Who that he knew could afford so costly a jest, or so extrava- 
 gant a tribute? He was perplexed, and with his perplexity was 
 mixed a kind of fear. Plain, earnest, unromantic in the common 
 acceptation of the word, the mystery of this intermeddling with 
 his fate, this arrogation of the license to spy, the right to counsel, 
 and the privilege to bestow, gave him the uneasiness the bravest 
 men may feel at noises in the dark. That day he could apply no 
 more; he could not settle back to his Law-Reports. He took 
 two or three unquiet turns up and down his smoke-dried cell, 
 then locked up the letter and enclosure, seized his hat, and 
 strode, with his usual lusty, swinging strides, into the open air.
 
 2l8 LUCRETIA. 
 
 But still the letter haunted him. "And if," he said, almost 
 audibly; "If I were the heir to some higher station, why then 
 I might have a heart like idle men; and Helen beloved 
 Helen!" he paused, sighed, shook his rough head, shaggy 
 with neglected curls, and added: "As if even then I could 
 steal myself into a girl's good graces! Man's esteem I may 
 command, though poor woman's love could I win, though 
 rich! Pooh! pooh! every wood does not make a Mercury; and 
 faith, the wood I am made of, will scarcely cut up into a lover." 
 
 Nevertheless, though thus soliloquizing, Ardworth mechan- 
 ically bent his way towards Brompton, and halted, half 
 ashamed of himself, at the house where Helen lodged with her 
 aunt. It was a building that stood apart from all the cottages 
 and villas of that charming suburb, half-way down a nar- 
 row lane, and enclosed by high melancholy walls, deep set in 
 which a small door, with the paint blistered and weather- 
 stained, gave unfrequented entrance to the demesne. A 
 woman servant of middle age, and starched, puritanical ap- 
 pearance, answered the loud ring of the bell, and Ardworth 
 seemed a privileged visitor, for she asked him no question, as 
 with a slight nod, and a smileless, stupid expression in a face 
 otherwise comely, she led the way across a paved path, much 
 weed-grown, to the house. That house itself had somewhat of 
 a stern and sad exterior. It was not ancient, yet it looked old 
 from shabbiness and neglect. The vine, loosened from the 
 rusty nails, trailed rankly against the wall, and fell in crawling 
 branches over the ground. The house had once been white- 
 washed, but the color, worn off in great patches, distained with 
 damp, struggled here and there with the dingy chipped bricks 
 beneath. There was no peculiar want of what is called "ten- 
 antable repair" ; the windows were whole, and doubtless the 
 roof sheltered from the rain. But the woodwork that encased 
 the panes was decayed, and house-leek covered the tiles. Al- 
 together there was that forlorn and cheerless aspect about the 
 place which chills the visitor, he defines not why. And Ard- 
 worth steadied his usual careless step, and crept, as if timidly, 
 up the creaking stairs. 
 
 On entering the drawing-room, it seemed at first deserted ; 
 but the eye searching round, perceived something stir in the 
 recess of a huge chair, set by the fireless hearth. And from 
 amidst a mass of coverings a pale face emerged, and a thin 
 hand waved its welcome to the visitor. 
 
 Ardworth approached, pressed the hand, and drew a seat 
 near to the sufferer's.
 
 LUCRETIA. 219 
 
 "You are better, I hope?" he said cordially; and yet in a 
 tone of more respect than was often perceptible in his deep, 
 blunt voice. 
 
 "I am always the same," was the quiet answer; "Come 
 nearer still. Your visits cheer me." 
 
 And as these last words were said, Madame Dalibard raised 
 herself from her recumbent posture, and gazed long upon 
 Ardworth's face of power and front of thought. "You over- 
 fatigue yourself, my poor kinsman," she said, with a certain 
 tenderness: "You look already too old for your young 
 years. ' ' 
 
 "That's no disadvantage at the bar." 
 
 "Is the bar your means, or your end?" 
 
 "My dear Madame Dalibard, it is my profession." 
 
 "No, your profession is to rise. John Ardworth," and the 
 low voice swelled in its volume, "you are bold, able, and aspir- 
 ing ; for this, I love you love you almost almost as a mother. 
 Your fate," she continued hurriedly, "interests me; your 
 energies inspire me with admiration. Often I sit here for 
 hours, musing over your destiny to be so that, at times, I may 
 almost say that in your life I live." 
 
 Ardworth looked embarrassed, and with an awkward attempt 
 at compliment, he began hesitatingly: "I should think too 
 highly of myself, if I could really believe that you " 
 
 "Tell me," interrupted Madame Dalibard: ''we have had 
 many conversations upon grave and subtle matters; we have 
 disputed on the secret mysteries of the human mind ; we have 
 compared our several experiences of outward life and the 
 mechanism of the social world, tell me then, and frankly, what 
 do you think of me? Do you regard me merely as your sex is 
 apt to regard the woman who aspires to equal men a thing of 
 borrowed phrases and unsound ideas, feeble to guide and un- 
 skilled to teach? or do you recognize in this miserable body 
 a mind of force not unworthy yours, ruled by an experience 
 larger than your own?" 
 
 "I think of you," answered Ardworth frankly, "as the most 
 remarkable woman I have ever met. Yet, do not be angry, I 
 do not like to yield to the influence which you gain over me 
 when we meet. It disturbs my convictions, it disquiets my 
 reason; I do not settle back to my life as easily after your breath 
 has passed over it." 
 
 "And yet," said Lucretia, with a solemn sadness in her 
 voice, "that influence is but the natural power which cold 
 maturity exercises on ardent youth. It is my mournful advan-
 
 220 LUCRETIA. 
 
 tage over you that disquiets your happy calm. It is my expe- 
 rience that unsettles the fallacies which you name 'convic- 
 tions.' Let this pass. I asked your opinion of me, because I 
 wished to place at your service all that knowledge of life which 
 I possess. In proportion as you esteem me, you will accept or 
 reject my counsels." 
 
 "I have benefited by them already. It is the tone that you 
 advised me to assume that gave me an importance I had not 
 before with that old formalist whose paper I serve, and whose 
 prejudices I shock; it is to your criticisms that I owe the more 
 practical turn of my writings, and the greater hold they have 
 taken on the public." 
 
 "Trifles indeed, these," said Madame Dalibard, with a half- 
 smile. "Let them at least induce you to listen to me; if I pro- 
 pose to make your path more pleasant, yet your ascent more 
 rapid." 
 
 Ardworth knit his brows, and his countenance assumed an 
 expression of doubt and curiosity. However, he only replied, 
 with a blunt laugh : 
 
 "You must be wise, indeed, if you have discovered a royal 
 road to distinction.' 
 
 'Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb 
 The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar ! ' 
 
 A more sensible exclamation than poets usually preface with 
 their whining 'Ah's' and 'Oh's'!" 
 
 "What we are is nothing," pursued Madame Dalibard; 
 "what we seem is much." 
 
 Ardworth thrust his hands into his pockets, and shook his 
 head. The wise woman continued, unheeding his dissent from 
 her premises: 
 
 "Everything you are taught to value has a likeness, and it is 
 that likeness which the world values. Take a man out of the 
 streets, poor and ragged, what will the world do with him? 
 Send him to the workhouse, if not to the jail. Ask a great 
 painter to take that man's portrait, rags, squalor, and all; and 
 kings will bid for the picture. You would thrust the man from 
 your doors, you would place the portrait in your palaces. It 
 is the same with qualities, the portrait is worth more than the 
 truth. What is virtue without character? But a man without 
 virtue may thrive on a character! What is genius without 
 success? But how often you bow to success without genius ! 
 John Ardworth, possess yourself of the portraits, win the char- 
 acter, seize the success, ' '
 
 LUCRETIA. 221 
 
 "Madame," exclaimed Ardworth rudely, "this is horrible!" 
 
 "Horrible, it may be," said Madame Dalibard gently, and 
 feeling, perhaps, that she had gone too far; "but it is the 
 world's judgment. Seem, then, as well as be. You have vir- 
 tue, as I believe. Well, wrap yourself in it in your closet. 
 Go into the world, and earn character. If you have genius, 
 let it comfort you. Rush into the crowd, and get success." 
 
 "Stop!" cried Ardworth; "I recognize you. How could I 
 be so blind? It is you who have written to me, and in the 
 same strain: you have robbed yourself you, poor sufferer, to 
 throw extravagance into these strong hands. And why? What 
 am I to you ? ' ' 
 
 An expression of actual fondness softened Lucretia's face, 
 as she looked up at him, and replied: "I will tell you here- 
 after what you are to me. First, I confess that it is I whose 
 letters have perplexed, perhaps offended you. The sum that I 
 sent I do not miss. I have more will ever have more at your 
 command never fear. Yes, I wish you to go into the world, 
 not as a dependent, but as an equal to the world's favorites. I 
 wish you to know more of men than mere law-books teach you. 
 I wish you to be in men's mouths, create a circle that shall talk 
 of young Ardworth that talk would travel to those who can 
 advance your career. The very possession of money in certain 
 stages of life gives assurance to the manner, gives attraction to 
 the address." 
 
 "But,"said Ardworth, "all this is very well for some favor- 
 ite of birth and fortune ; but for me yet speak and plainly ; 
 you throw out hints that I am what I know not; but something 
 less dependent on his nerves and his brain, than is plain John 
 Ardworth. What is it you mean?" 
 
 Madame Dalibard bent her face over her breast, And rock- 
 ing herself in her chair, seemed to muse for some moments 
 before she answered : 
 
 "When I first came to England, some months ago, I desired 
 naturally to learn all the particulars of my family and kindred, 
 from which my long residence abroad had estranged me. 
 John Walter Ardworth was related to my half-sister, to me he 
 was but a mere connection. However, I knew something of 
 his history, yet I did not know that he had a son. Shortly be- 
 fore I came to England, I learned that one who passed for his 
 son had been brought up by Mr. Fielden, and from Mr. Fielden 
 I have since learned all the grounds for that belief, from which 
 you take the name of Ardworth." 
 
 Lucretia paused a moment ; and after a glance at the impa-
 
 222 LUCRETIA. 
 
 tient, wondering, and eager countenance that bent intent upon 
 her, she resumed : 
 
 "Your reputed father was, you are doubtless aware, of reck- 
 less and extravagant habits. He had been put into the army 
 by my uncle, and he entered that profession with the careless 
 buoyancy of his sanguine nature. I remember those days 
 that day! Well, to return where was I? Walter Ardworth 
 had the folly to entertain strong notions of politics. He 
 dreamt of being a soldier, and yet persuaded himself to be a 
 republican. His notions, so hateful in his profession, got 
 wind; he disguised nothing, he neglected the portraits of 
 things appearances. He excited the rancor of his command- 
 ing officer for politics then, more even than now, were im- 
 placable ministrants to hate occasion presented itself : during 
 the short Peace of Amiens he had been recalled. He had to 
 head a detachment of soldiers against some mob, in Ireland, I 
 believe ; he did not fire on the mob according to orders, so, at. 
 least, it was said; John Walter Ardworth was tried by a court- 
 martial, and broke! But you know all this, perhaps!" 
 
 "My poor father! Only in part: I knew that he had been 
 dismissed the army I believe unjustly. He was a soldier, 
 and yet he dared to think for himself, and be humane!" 
 
 "But my uncle had left him a legacy; it brought no bless- 
 ing none of that old man's gold did. Where are they all 
 now? Dalibard, Susan, and her fair-faced husband, W'here? 
 Vernon is in his grave ; but one son of many left ! Gabriel 
 Varney lives, it is true! And I! But that gold yea, in our 
 hands, there was a curse on it! Walter Ardworth had his leg- 
 acy; his nature was gay: if disgraced in his profession, he 
 found men to pity and praise him Fools of Party like himself. 
 He lived joyously, drank or gamed, or lent or borrowed what 
 matters the wherefore? He was in debt; he lived at last a 
 wretched, shifting, fugitive life, snatching bread where he 
 could, with the bailiffs at his heels then, for a short time, we 
 met again." 
 
 Lucretia's brow grew black as night, as her voice dropped 
 at that last sentence and it was with a start that she con- 
 tinued. 
 
 "In the midst of this hunted existence Walter Ardworth 
 appeared, late one night, at Mr. Fielden's with an infant. He 
 seemed, so says Mr. Fielden, ill, worn, and haggard. He 
 entered into no explanations with respect to the child that 
 accompanied him, and retired at once to rest. What follows, 
 Mr. Fielden, at my request, has noted down. Read, and see
 
 LUCRETIA. 223 
 
 claim you have to the honorable parentage so vaguely 
 ascribed to you." 
 
 As she spoke, Madame Dalibard opened a box on her table, 
 drew forth a paper in Fielden's writing, and placed it in 
 Ardworth's hand. After some preliminary statement of the 
 writer's intimacy with the elder Ardworth, and the appearance 
 of the latter at his house, as related by Madame Dalibard, 
 etc., the document went on thus: 
 
 "The next day, when my poor guest was still in bed, my 
 servant Hannah came to advise me that two persons were with- 
 out, waiting to see me. As is my wont, I bade them be shown 
 in. On their entrance (two rough farmer-looking men they 
 were, whom I thought might be coming to hire my little pas- 
 ture field), I prayed them to speak low, as a sick gentleman 
 was just overhead. Whereupon, and without saying a word 
 further, the two strangers made a rush from the room, leaving 
 me dumb with amazement ; in a few moments, I heard voices 
 and a scuffle above. I recovered myself, and thinking robbers 
 had entered my peaceful house, I called out lustily, when Han- 
 nah came in, and we both, taking courage, went upstairs, and 
 found that poor Walter was in the hands of these supposed 
 robbers, who in truth were but bailiffs. They would not trust 
 him out of their sight for a moment. However, he took it 
 more pleasantly than I could have supposed possible ; prayed 
 me in a whisper to take care of the child, and I should soon 
 hear from him again. In less than an hour, he was gone. 
 Two days afterwards, I received from him a hurried letcer, 
 without address, of which this is the copy: 
 
 " 'DEAR FRIEND: 
 
 "I slipt from the bailiffs, and here I am in a safe little tavern 
 in sight of the sea! Mother Country is a very bad parent to 
 me ! Mother Brownrigg herself could scarcely be worse. I 
 shall work out my passage to some foreign land, and if I can 
 recover my health (sea-air is bracing!) I don't despair of get- 
 ting my bread honestly, somehow. If ever I can pay my debts 
 I may return. But, meanwhile, my good old tutor, what will 
 you think of me? You to whom my sole return for so much 
 pains taken in vain, is another mouth to feed! And no money 
 to pay for the board! Yet you'll not grudge the child a place 
 at your table, will you? No, nor kind, saving Mrs. Fielden 
 either God bless her tender, economical soul! You know 
 quite enough of me to be sure that I shall very soon either free 
 you of the boy, or send you something to prevent its being an
 
 224 LUCRETIA. 
 
 incumbrance. I would say, love and pity the child for my sake. 
 But I own I feel by Jove, I must be off I hear the first 
 signal from the vessel, that 
 
 " 'Yours in haste, J. W. A.' " 
 
 Young Ardworth stopped from the lecture, and sighed heavily. 
 There seemed to him, in this letter, worse than a mock gayety 
 a certain levity and recklessness which jarred on his own 
 high principles. And the want of affection for the child thus 
 abandoned was evident not one fond word. He resumed 
 the statement with a gloomy and disheartened attention. 
 
 "This was all I heard from poor erring Walter for more 
 than three years, but I knew, in spite of his follies, that his 
 heart was sound at bottom (the son's eye brightened here, and 
 he kissed the paper) and the child was no burthen to us we 
 loved it, not only for Ardworth's sake, but for his own, and for 
 charity's, and Christ's. Ardworth's second letter was as 
 follows: 
 
 ' ' En iterum Crispinus ! I am still alive, and getting on in 
 the world ay, and honestly too I am no longer spending 
 heedlessly; I am saving for my debts, and I shall live, I trust, 
 to pay off every farthing. For my debt to you I send an 
 order not signed in my name, but equally valid, on Messrs. 
 Drummond, for -250. Repay yourself what the boy has cost. 
 Let him be educated to get his own living: if clever, as a 
 scholar or a lawyer ; if dull, as a tradesman. Whatever I may 
 gain, he will have his own \vay to make. I ought to tell you 
 the story connected with his birth, but it is one of pain and 
 shame ; and on reflection, I feel that I have no right to injure 
 him by affixing to his early birth an opprobrium of which he 
 himself is guiltless. If ever I return to England, you shall 
 know all, and by your counsels I will abide. Love to all your 
 happy family Your grateful Friend and Pupil.' 
 
 "From this letter I began to suspect that the poor boy was 
 probably not born in wedlock, and that Ardworth's silence arose 
 from his compunction. I conceived it best never to mention 
 this suspicion to John himself as he grew up. Why should I 
 afflict him by a doubt from which his father shrunk, and which 
 might only exist in my own inexperienced and uncharitable in- 
 terpretation of some vague words? When John was fourteen, 
 I received from Messrs. Drummond a further sum of 500, but 
 without any line from Ardworth, and only to the effect that 
 Messrs. Drummond were directed by a correspondent in Cal-
 
 LUCRETIA. $25 
 
 cutta to pay me the said sum on behalf of expenses incurred 
 for the maintenance of the child left to my charge by John 
 Walter Ardworth. My young pupil had been two years at the 
 university, when I received the letter of which this is a copy: 
 
 " 'How are you? Still well still happy? Letmehopeso! 
 I have not written to you, dear old friend, but I have not been 
 forgetful of you ; I have inquired of you through my corre- 
 spondents, and have learned, from time to time, such accounts 
 as satisfied my grateful affection for you. I find that you have 
 given the boy my name? Well, let him bear it; it is nothing to 
 boast of, such as it became in my person ; but mind, I do not 
 therefore, acknowledge him as my son. I wish him to think, 
 himself without parents, without other aid in the career of life 
 than his own industry and talent, if talent he has. Let him go 
 through the healthful probation of toil ; let him search for and 
 find independence. Till he is of age, 150 per annum will be 
 paid quarterly to your account for him at Messrs. Drummonds'. 
 If then, to set him up in any business or profession, a sum of 
 money be necessary, name the amount by a line, signed A. B., 
 Calcutta, to the care of Messrs. Drummond, and it will reach, 
 and find me disposed to follow your instructions. But after 
 that time all further supply from me will cease. Do not sup- 
 pose, because I send this from India, that I am laden with 
 rupees; all I can hope to attain is a competence. That boy is 
 not the only one who has claims to share it. Even, therefore, 
 if I had the wish to rear him to the extravagant habits that 
 ruined myself, I have not the power. Yes! Let him lean on 
 his own strength. In the letter you send me, write fully of 
 your family, your sons, and write as to a man who can perhaps 
 help them in the world, and will be too happy thus in some 
 slight degree to repay all he owes you. You would smile ap- 
 provingly if you saw me now a steady, money-getting man, 
 but still yours as ever. 
 
 " 'P. S. Do not let the boy write to me, nor give him this 
 clue to my address.' 
 
 "On the receipt of this letter, I wrote fully to Ardworth 
 about the excellent promise and conduct of his poor neglected 
 son. I told him truly he was a son any father might be proud 
 of, and rebuked, even to harshness, Walter's unseemly tone 
 respecting him. One's child, is one's child, however the father 
 may have wronged the mother. To this letter I never received 
 any answer. When John was of age, and had made himself 
 independent of want, by obtaining a college fellowship, I spoke
 
 226 LUCRETIA. 
 
 to him about his prospects. I told him that his father, though 
 residing abroad and for some reasons keeping himself concealed, 
 had munificently paid hitherto for his maintenance, and would 
 lay down what might be necessary to start him in business, or 
 perhaps place him in the army; but that his father might be better 
 pleased if he could show a love of independence, and henceforth 
 maintain himself. I knew the boy I spoke to: John thought 
 as I did; and I never applied for another donation to the elder 
 Ardworth. The allowance ceased: John since then has main- 
 tained himself. I have heard no more from his father, though 
 I have written often to the address he gave me. I begin to fear 
 that he is dead. I once went up to town and saw one of the 
 heads of Messrs. Drummonds' firm a very polite gentleman, 
 but he could give me no information, except that he obeyed in- 
 structions from a correspondent at Calcutta one Mr. Macfar- 
 ren. Whereon I wrote to Mr. Macfarren, and asked him, as I 
 thought very pressingly, to tell me all he knew of poor Ard- 
 worth the elder. He answered shortly, that he knew of no such 
 person at all, and that A.B. was a French merchant, settled in 
 Calcutta, who had been dead for above two years. I now gave 
 up all hopes of any further intelligence, and was more con- 
 vinced than ever that I had acted rightly in withholding from 
 poor John my correspondence with his father. The lad had 
 been curious and inquisitive naturally, but when I told him 
 that I thought it my duty to his father to be so reserved he fore- 
 bore to press me. I have only to add, first, that by all the in- 
 quiries I could make of the surviving members of Walter 
 Ardworth's family, it seemed their full belief that he had 
 never been married, and therefore I fear we must conclude 
 that he had no legitimate children, which may account for, 
 though it cannat excuse, his neglect; and secondly, with 
 respect to the sums received on dear John's account I put 
 them all by, capital and interest, deducting only the expense 
 of his first year at Cambridge (the which I could not defray, 
 without injuring my own children), and it all stands in his name 
 at Messrs. Drummonds', vested in the Three Per Cents. 
 That I have not told him of this was by my poor dear wife's 
 advice ; for she said, very sensibly, and she was a shrewd wom- 
 an on money matters: 'If he knows he has such a large sum 
 all in the lump, who knows but he may grow idle and extrav- 
 agant, and spend it at once, like his father before him ; whereas, 
 some time or other, he will want to marry, or need money for 
 some particular purpose, then what a blessing it will be!' 
 "However, my dear madam, as you know the world better
 
 LUCRETtA. 227 
 
 than I do, you can now do as you please, both as to communicat' 
 ing to John all the information herein contained as to his pa^ 
 rentage, and as to apprising him of the large sum of which he 
 is lawfully possessed. MATTHEW FIELDEN. 
 
 "P. S. In justice to poor John Ardworth, and to show that 
 whatever whim he may have conceived about his own child, he 
 had still a heart kind enough to remember mine, though Heaven 
 knows I said nothing about them in my letters, my eldest boy re- 
 ceived an offer of an excellent place in a West India merchant's 
 house, and has got on to be chief clerk, and my second son was 
 presented to a living of one hundred and seventeen pounds a 
 year, by a gentleman he never heard of. Though I never 
 traced these good acts to Ardworth, from whom else could they 
 come?' 
 
 Ardworth put down the paper without a word ; and Lucretia, 
 who had watched him while he read, was struck with the self- 
 control he evinced when he came to the end of the disclosure. 
 She laid her hand on his, and said: 
 
 "Courage! You have lost nothing!" 
 
 "Nothing!" said Ardworth, with a bitter smile. "A father's 
 love and a father's name nothing!" 
 
 "But," exclaimed Lucretia, "is this man your father? 
 Does a father's heart beat in one line of those hard sentences. 
 No, no ; it seems to me probable it seems to me almost cer- 
 tain, that you are "she stopped, and continued with a calmer 
 accent, "near to my own blood. I am now in England, in 
 London, to prosecute the inquiry built upon that hope. If so 
 if so you shall ' ' Madame Ualibard again stopped abruptly, 
 and there was something terrible in the very exultation of her 
 countenance. She drew a long breath, and resumed, with an 
 evident effort at self-command: "If so, I have a right to the 
 interest I feel for you. Suffer me yet to be silent as to the 
 grounds of my belief, and and love me a little in the mean 
 while!" 
 
 Her voice trembled, as if with rushing tears, at these last 
 words, and there was almost an agony in the tone in which they 
 were said, and in the gesture of the clasped hands she held out 
 to him. 
 
 Much moved (amidst all his mingled emotions at the tale 
 thus made known to him) by the manner and voice of the nar- 
 rator, Ardworth bent down and kissed the extended hands. 
 Then he rose abruptly, walked to and fro the room, muttering 
 to himself, paused opposite the window, threw it open, as for
 
 228 T.UCRETIA. 
 
 air, and, indeed, fairly gasped for breath. When he turned 
 round, however, his face was composed, and folding his arms on 
 his large breast with a sudden action, he said aloud, and yet 
 rather to himself than to his listener: 
 
 "What matter, after all, by what name men call our fathers! 
 We ourselves make our own fate ! Bastard or noble, not a jot 
 care I. Give me ancestors, I will not disgrace them ; raze 
 from my lot even the very name of father, and my sons shall 
 have an ancestor in me!" 
 
 As he thus spoke, there was a rough grandeur in his hard 
 face and the strong ease of his powerful form. And while thus 
 standing and thus looking, the door opened, and Varney walked 
 in abruptly. 
 
 These two men had met occasionally at Madame Dalibard's, 
 but no intimacy had been established between them. Varney 
 was formal and distant to Ardworth, and Ardworth felt a re- 
 pugnance to Varney. With the instinct of sound, sterling, 
 weighty natures, he detected at once, and disliked heartily, 
 that something of gaudy, false, exaggerated, and hollow, which 
 pervaded Gabriel Varney 's talk and manner, even the trick of 
 his walk and the cut of his dress. And Ardworth wanted that 
 boyish and beautiful luxuriance of character which belonged 
 to Percival St. John, easy to please and to be pleased, and ex- 
 panding into the warmth of admiration for all talent and all 
 distinction. For art, if not the highest, Ardworth cared not a 
 straw : it was nothing to him that Vainey painted and composed, 
 and ran showily through the jargon of literary babble, or toyed 
 with the puzzles of unsatisfying metaphysics. He saw but a 
 charlatan, and he had not yet learned from experience what 
 strength and what danger lie hid in the boa parading its colors 
 in the sun, and shifting, in the sensual sportiveness of its being, 
 from bough to bough. 
 
 Varney halted in the middle of the room, as his eye rested 
 first on Ardworth, and then glanced towards Madame Dalibard. 
 But Ardworth, jarred from his revery or resolves by the sound 
 of a voice discordant to his ear at all times, especially in the 
 mood which then possessed him, scarcely returned Varney's 
 salutation, buttoned his coat over his chest, seized his hat, and 
 upsetting two chairs, and very considerably disturbing the grav- 
 ity of a round table, forced his way to Madame Dalibard, pressed 
 her hand, and said in a whisper: "I shall see you again soon," 
 and vanished. 
 
 Varney, smoothing his hair with fingers that shone with rings, 
 slid into the seat next Madame Dalibard, which Ardworth had
 
 LUCRETIA. 229 
 
 lately occupied, and said: "If I were a Clytemnestra, I should 
 dread an Orestes in such a son!" 
 
 Madame Dalibard shot towards the speaker one of the side- 
 long, suspicious glances which of old had characterized Lucre- 
 tia, and said : 
 
 "Clytemnestra was happy! The Furies slept to her crime, 
 and haunted but the avenger. " 
 
 "Hist!" said Varney. 
 
 The door opened, and Ardworth reappeared. 
 
 "I quite forgot, what I half came to know. How is Helen? 
 Did she return home safe?" 
 
 "Safe yes!" 
 
 "Dear girl, I am glad to hear it! Where is she? Not gone 
 to those Mivers's again! I am no aristocrat, but why should 
 one couple together refinement and vulgarity?" 
 
 "Mr. Ardworth," said Madame Dalibard, with haughty cold- 
 ness, "my niece is under my care, and you will permit me to 
 judge for myself how to discharge the trust. Mr. Mivers is 
 her own relation a nearer one than you are." 
 
 Not at all abashed by the rebuke, Ardworth said carelessly : 
 "Well, I shall talk to you again on that subject. Meanwhile, 
 pray give my love to her Helen, I mean." 
 
 Madame Dalibard half rose in her chair, then sunk back 
 again, motioning with her hand to Ardworth to approach. 
 Varney rose and walked to the window, as if sensible that some- 
 thing was about to be said not meant for his ear. 
 
 When Ardworth was close to her chair, Madame Dalibard 
 grasped his hand with a vigor that surprised him, and drawing 
 him nearer still, whispered as he bent down: 
 
 "I will give Helen your love, if it is a cousin's, or, if you will, 
 a brother's love. Do you intend do you feel another, a 
 warmer love? Speak, sir!" and drawing suddenly back, she 
 gazed on his face, with a stern and menacing expression, her 
 teeth set, and the lips firmly pressed together. 
 
 Ardworth, though a little startled, and half-angry, answered 
 with the low, ironical laugh, not uncommon to him: "Pish! 
 you ladies are apt to think us men much greater fools than we 
 are. A briefless lawyer is not very inflammable tinder. Yes, a 
 cousin's love quite enough. Poor little Helen! Time enough 
 to put other notions into her hend; and then she will have a 
 sweetheart, gay and handsome like herself!" 
 
 "Ay," said Madame Dalibard, with a slight smile, "ay, I am 
 satisfied. Come soon." 
 
 Ardworth nodded, and hurried down the stairs. As he gained
 
 230 LUCRETIA. 
 
 the door, he caught sight of Helen at a distance, bending over 
 a flower-bed in the neglected garden. He paused, irresolute, 
 a moment. "No," he muttered to himself ; "no, I am com- 
 pany only for myself! A long walk into the fields, and then 
 away with these mists round the Past and Future ; the Present 
 at least is mine!" 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE WEAVERS AND THE WOOF. 
 
 "AND what," said Varney, "what, while we are pursuing a 
 fancied clue, and seeking to provide first a name, and then a 
 fortune for this young lawyer what steps have you really taken 
 to meet the danger that menaces me : to secure, if our inquiries 
 fail, an independence for yourself? Months have elapsed, and 
 you have still shrunk from advancing the great scheme upon 
 which we built, when the daughter of Susan Mainwaring was 
 admitted to your hearth." 
 
 "Why recall me, in these rare moments when I feel myself 
 human still why recall me back to the nethermost abyss of 
 revenge and crime? Oh! let me be sure that I have still a son ! 
 Even if John Ardworth, with his gifts and energies, be denied 
 to me! a son, though in rags, I will give him wealth! A son, 
 though ignorant as the merest boor, I will pour into his brain 
 my dark wisdom! A son a son! My heart swells at the 
 word. Ah, you sneer! Yes, my heart swells, but not with the 
 mawkish fondness of a feeble mother. In a son, I shall live 
 again transmigrate from this tortured and horrible life of 
 mine drink back my youth. In him I shall rise from my fall, 
 strong in his power, great in his grandeur. It is because I was 
 born a woman, had woman's poor passions and infirm weak- 
 ness, that I am what I am I would transfer myself into the 
 soul of man man who has the strength to act, and the privi- 
 lege to rise. Into the bronze of man's nature I would pour 
 the experience which has broken, with its fierce elements, the 
 puny vessel of clay. Yes, Gabriel, in return for all I have done 
 and sacrificed for you, I ask but co-operation in that one hope 
 of my shattered and storm-beat being. Bear forbear await 
 risk not that hope by some wretched peddling crime, which 
 will bring on us both detection some wanton revelry in guilt, 
 which is not worth the terror that treads upon its heels." 
 
 "You forget," answered Varney, with a kind of submissive 
 sullenness, for whatever had passed between these two persons 
 ^n thejr secret and fearful intimacy, there was still a power in
 
 LUCRETIA. 53* 
 
 Lucretia, surviving her fall amidst the fiends, that impressed 
 Varney with the only respect he felt for man or woman ; "You 
 forget strangely the nature of our elaborate and master project, 
 when you speak of 'peddling crime,' or 'wanton revelry' in 
 guilt ! You forget, too, how every hour that we waste deepens 
 the peril that surrounds me, and may sweep from your side the 
 sole companion that can aid you in your objects; nay, without 
 whom, they must wholly fail. Let me speak first of that most 
 urgent danger, for your memory seems short and troubled, since 
 you have learned only to hope the recovery of your son. If 
 this man, Stubmore, in whom the trust created by my uncle's 
 will is now vested, once comes to town once begins to bustle 
 about his accursed projects of transferring the money from the 
 Bank of England, I tell you again and again that my forgery on 
 the bank will be detected, and that transportation will be the 
 smallest penalty inflicted ; part of the forgery, as you know, was 
 committed on your behalf, to find the moneys necessary for the 
 research for your son committed on the clear understanding, 
 that our project on Helen should repay me; should enable me, 
 perhaps undetected, to restore the sums illegally abstracted, 
 or at the worst to confess to Stubmore, whose character I well 
 know, that oppressed by difficulties I had yielded to tempta- 
 tion; that I had forged his name (as I had forged his father's) 
 as an authority to sell the capital from the bank, and that now, 
 in replacing the money, I repaid my error, and threw myself 
 on his indulgence on his silence. I say, that I know enough 
 of the man to know, that I should be thus cheaply saved, or at 
 the worst I should have but to strengthen his compassion by a 
 bribe to his avarice. But if I cannot replace the money, I am 
 lost." 
 
 "Well, well," said Lucretia, "the money you shall have, let 
 me but find my son, and " 
 
 "Grant me patience!" cried Varney impetuously; "but 
 what can your son do, if found, unless you endow him with the 
 heritage of Laughton? To do that, Helen, who comes next to 
 Percival St. John in the course of the entail, must cease to live! 
 Have I not aided am I not aiding you hourly, in your grand 
 objects? This evening I shall see a man whom I have long 
 lost sight of, but who has acquired in a lawyer's life the true 
 scent after evidence; if that evidence exist, it shall be found. 
 I have just learned his address. By to-morrow he shall be on 
 the track. I have stinted myself to save from the result of the 
 last forgery the gold to whet his zeal. For the rest, as I have 
 said, your design involves the removal of two lives. Already,
 
 232 LUCRETIA. 
 
 over the one more difficult to slay, the shadow creeps and the 
 pall hangs. I have won, as you wished and as was necessary, 
 young St. John's familiar acquaintance ; when the hour comes, 
 he is in my hands." 
 
 Lucretia smiled sternly: "So," she said, between her ground 
 teeth, "the father forbade me the house that was my heritage'! 
 I have but to lift a finger and breathe a word, and, desolate as 
 I am, I thrust from that home the son ! The spoiler left me the 
 world I leave his son the grave!" 
 
 "But," said Varney, doggedly pursuing his dreadful object, 
 "why force me to repeat that his is not the only life between 
 you and your son's inheritance? St. John gone, Helen still 
 remains. And what, if your researches fail, are we to lose the 
 rich harvest which Helen will yield us a harvest you reap with 
 the same sickle which gathers in your revenge? Do you no 
 longer see in Helen's face the features of her mother? Is the 
 perfidy of William Mainwaring forgotten or forgiven?" 
 
 "Gabriel Varney," said Lucretia, in a hollow and tremulous 
 voice, "when in that hour in which my whole being was re- 
 vulsed, and I heard the cord snap from the anchor, and saw 
 the demons of the storm gather round my bark when, in that 
 hour, I stooped calmly down and kissed my rival's brow, I 
 murmured an oath, which seemed not inspired by my own soul, 
 but by an influence henceforth given to my fate I vowed that 
 the perfidy dealt to me should be repaid : I vowed that the ruin 
 of my own existence should fall on the brow which I kissed. 
 I vowed that if shame and disgrace were to supply the inheri- 
 tance I had forfeited, I would not stand alone amidst the scorn 
 of the pitiless world. In the vision of my agony, I saw, afar, 
 the altar dressed, and the bride-chamber prepared, and I 
 breathed my curse strong as prophecy, on the marriage-hearth 
 and the marriage-bed. Why dream, then, that I would rescue 
 the loathed child of that loathed union from your grasp? But 
 is the time come? Yours may be come is mine?" 
 
 Something so awful there was in the look of his accomplice, 
 so intense in the hate of her low voice, that Varney, wretch as 
 he was, and contemplating at that very hour the foulest and 
 most hideous guilt, drew back, appalled. 
 
 Madame Dalibard resumed, and in a somewhat softer tone, 
 but softened only by the anguish of despair: 
 
 "Oh, had it been otherwise, what might I have been! Given 
 over from that hour to the very incarnation of plotting crime 
 none to resist the evil impulse of my own maddening heart; the 
 partner, forced on me by fate, leading me deeper and deeper
 
 LUCRETIA. 233 
 
 into the inextricable hell from that hour, fraud upon fraud, 
 guilt upon guiit, infamy heaped on infamy, till I stand a mar- 
 vel to myself that the thunderbolt falls not ; that Nature thrusts 
 not from her breast a living outrage on all her laws ! Was I 
 not justified in the desire of retribution? Every step that I 
 fell, every glance that I gave to the gulf below, increased but 
 in me the desire for revenge. All my acts had flowed from one 
 fount should the stream roll pollution, and the fount spring 
 pure?" 
 
 "You have had your revenge on your rival and her hus- 
 band." 
 
 "I had it, and I passed on!" said Lucretia, with nostrils di- 
 lated as with haughty triumph; "They were crushed, and I 
 suffered them to live! Nay, when, by chance, I heard of Will- 
 iam Mainwaring's death,! bowed down my head, and I almost 
 think I wept. The old days came back upon me. Yes, I 
 wept! But I had not destroyed their love. No, no; there, I 
 had miserably failed. A pledge of that love lived. I had left 
 their hearth barren ; Fate sent them a comfort which I had not 
 foreseen. And suddenly my heart returned, my wrongs rose 
 again, my vengeance was not sated. The love that had des- 
 troyed more than my life my soul, rose again and cursed me 
 in the face of Helen. The oath which I took when I kissed 
 my rival's brow, demanded another prey when I kissed the 
 child of those nuptials." 
 
 "You are prepared at last, then, to act?" cried Varney, in a 
 tone of savage joy. 
 
 At that moment, close under the window, rose, sudden and 
 sweet, the voice of one singing the young voice of Helen. 
 The words were so distinct that they came to the ears of the 
 dark-plotting and guilty pair. In the song itself there was little 
 to remark, or peculiarly apposite to the consciences of those 
 who heard ; yet in the extreme and touching purity of the voice, 
 and in the innocence of the general spirit of the words, trite as 
 might be the image they conveyed, there was something that 
 contrasted so fearfully their own thoughts and minds, that they 
 sate silent, looking vacantly in each other's faces, and shrink- 
 ing, perhaps, to turn their eyes within themselves. 
 
 HELEN'S HYMN. 
 
 " Ye fade, yet still how sweet, ye Flowers ! 
 
 Your scent outlives the bloom ! 
 So, Father, may my mortal hours 
 Grow sweeter towards the tomb .
 
 234 LUCRET/IA. 
 
 In withered leaves a healing cure 
 
 The simple gleaners find ; 
 So may our withered hopes endure 
 
 In virtues left behind ! 
 
 Oh, not to me be vainly given 
 
 The lessons ye bestow, 
 Of thoughts that rise in sweets to Heaven, 
 
 And turn to use below." 
 
 The song died, but still the listeners remained silent, till at 
 length shaking off the effect, with his laugh of discordant irony, 
 Varney said: 
 
 "Sweet innocence, fresh from the nursery! Would it not 
 be sin to suffer the world to mar it? You hear the prayer 
 why not grant it, and let the flower 'turn to use below' J" 
 
 "Ah, but could it wither first!" muttered Lucretia, with an 
 accent of suppressed rage. "Do you think that her that 
 his daughter is to me but a vulgar life, to be sacrificed merely 
 for gold? Imagine away your sex, man ! Women only know 
 what I such as I, woman still feel in the presence of the 
 pure! Do you fancy that I should not have held death a bless- 
 ing, if death could have found me in youth such as Helen is? 
 Ah, could she but live to suffer ! Die ! Well, since it must 
 be since my son requires the sacrifice do as you will with 
 the victim that death mercifully snatches from my grasp. I 
 could have wished to prolong her life, to load it with some frag- 
 ment of the curse her parents heaped upon me! baffled love, 
 and ruin, and despair! I could have hoped in this division of 
 the spoil, that mine had been the vengeance, if yours the gold. 
 You want the life I the heart ; the heart to torture first, and 
 then why then more willingly than I do now, could I have 
 thrown the carcase to the jackal!" 
 
 "Listen!" began Varney, when the door opened, and Helen 
 herself stood unconsciously smiling at the threshold. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE LAWYER AND THE BODY-SNATCHER. 
 
 THAT same evening, Beck, according to appointment, met 
 Percival, and showed him the dreary-looking house which held 
 the fair stranger who had so attracted his youthful fancy. And 
 Percival looked at the high walls, with the sailor's bold desire for 
 adventure, while confused visions reflected from plays, operas, 
 and novels, in which scaling walls with rope ladders and dark
 
 235 
 
 lanterns was represented as the natural avocation of a lover, 
 flitted across his brain ; and certainly he gave a deep sigh, 
 as his common-sense plucked him back from such romance. 
 However, having now ascertained the house, it would be easy 
 to learn the name of its inmates, and to watch or make his 
 opportunity. As slowly and reluctantly he walked back to the 
 spot where he had left his cabriolet, he entered into some 
 desultory conversation with his strange guide; and the pity 
 he had before conceived for Beck increased upon him, as he 
 talked and listened. This benighted mind, only illumined 
 by a kind of miserable astuteness, and that "cunning of the 
 belly" which is born of want to engender avarice this joyless 
 temperament this age in youth this living reproach, rising 
 up from the stones of London against our social indifference to 
 the souls which wither and rot under the hard eyes of science 
 and the deaf ears of wealth, had a pathos for his lively sympa- 
 thies and his fresh heart. 
 
 "If ever you want a friend, come to me," said St. John 
 abruptly. 
 
 The sweeper stared, and a gleam of diviner nature, a ray of 
 gratitude and unselfish devotion, darted through the fog and 
 darkness of his mind. He stood, with his hat off, watching 
 the wheels of the cabriolet, as it bore away the happy child of 
 fortune, and then shaking his head, as at some puzzle that per- 
 plexed and defied his comprehension, strode back to the town, 
 and bent his way homeward. 
 
 Between two and three hours after Percival thus parted f^rom 
 the sweeper, a man whose dress was little in accordance with 
 the scene in which we present him, threaded his way through a 
 foul labyrinth of alleys in the worst part of St. Giles's: a 
 neighborhood, indeed, carefully shunned at dusk by wealthy 
 passengers ; for here dwelt not only Penury in its grimmest 
 shape, but the desperate and dangerous Guilt, which is not to 
 be lightly encountered in its haunts and domiciles. Here 
 children imbibe vice with their mother's milk. Here Prostitu- 
 tion, commencing with childhood, grows fierce and sanguinary 
 in the teens, and leagues with theft and murder. Here slinks 
 the pickpocket; here emerges the burglar; here skulks the 
 felon. Yet all about and all around, here, too, may be found 
 virtue in its rarest and noblest form virtue outshining circum- 
 stance and defying temptation the virtue of utter poverty, 
 which groans and yet sins not. So interwoven are these webs 
 of penury and fraud, that in one court your life is not safe, 
 but turn to the right hand, and in the other, you might sleep
 
 236 LUCRETIA. 
 
 safely in that worse than Irish shealing, though your pockets 
 were full of gold. Through these haunts, the ragged and pen- 
 niless may walk unfearing, for they have nothing to dread from 
 the lawless more, perhaps, from the law; but the wealthy, 
 the respectable, the spruce, the dainty, let them beware the 
 spot, unless the policeman is in sight, or day is in the skies ! 
 
 As this passenger, whose appearance, as we have implied, 
 was certainly not that of a denizen, turned into one of the 
 alleys, a rough hand seized him by the arm, and suddenly a 
 group of girls and tatterdemalions issued from a house, in 
 which the lower shutters unclosed showed a light burning, and 
 surrounded him with a hoarse whoop. 
 
 The passenger whispered a word in the ear of the grim 
 blackguard who had seized him, and his arm was instantly 
 released. 
 
 "Hist! a pal: he has the catch," said the blackguard, sur- 
 lily. The group gave way, and by the light of the clear starlit 
 skies and a single lamp, hung at the entrance of the alley, 
 gazed upon the stranger. But they made no effort to detain 
 him ; and as he disappeared in the distant shadow, hastened 
 back into the wretched hostelry, where they had been merry- 
 making. Meanwhile, the stranger gained a narrow court, and 
 stopped before a house in one of its angles a house taller than 
 the rest so much taller than the rest, that it had the effect of 
 a tower; you would have supposed it (perhaps, rightly) to be 
 the last remains of some ancient building of importance, around 
 which, as population thickened and fashion changed, the huts 
 below it had insolently sprung up. Quaint and massive pilas- 
 ters, black with the mire and soot of centuries, flanked the 
 deep-set door; the windows were heavy with mullions and 
 transoms, and strongly barred in the lower floor; but few of 
 the panes were whole, and only here and there had any at- 
 tempt been made to keep out the wind and rain by rags, 
 paper, old shoes, old hats, and other ingenious contrivances. 
 Beside the door was conveniently placed a row of some ten or 
 twelve bell-pulls, appertaining no doubt to the various lodg- 
 ments into which the building was subdivided. The stranger 
 did not seem very familiar with the appurtenances of the place. 
 He stood in some suspense as to the proper bell to select, but 
 at last guided by a brass-plate annexed to one of the pulls, 
 which, though it was too dark to decipher the inscription, de- 
 noted a claim to superior gentility than the rest of that name- 
 less class, he hazarded a tug, which brought forth a larum loud 
 enough to startle the whole court from its stillness.
 
 LUCRETIA. 237 
 
 In a minute or less, the casement in one o. the upper stories 
 opened, a head peered forth, and one of those voices peculiar 
 to low debauch raw, cracked, and hoarse called out: "Who 
 waits?" 
 
 "Is it you, Grabman?" asked the stranger dubiously. 
 
 "Yes; Nicholas Grabman, attorney-at-law, sir, at your ser- 
 vice; and your name?" 
 
 "Jason," answered the stranger. 
 
 "Ho! there ho! Beck," cried the cracked voice to somq 
 one within; "go down and open the door." 
 
 In a few moments the heavy portal swung and creaked, 
 and yawned sullenly, and a gaunt form, half-undressed, with 
 an inch of a farthing rushlight, glimmering through a battered 
 lantern, in its hand, presented itself to Jason. The last eyed 
 the ragged porter sharply. 
 
 "Do you live here?" 
 
 "Yes," answered Beck, with the cringe habitual to him. 
 "H-up the ladder, vith the rats, drat "em." 
 
 "Well, lead on hold up the lantern ; a devil of a dark place 
 this!" grumbled Jason, as he nearly stumbled over sundry 
 broken chattels, and gained a flight of rude, black, broken 
 stairs, that creaked under his tread. 
 
 ''StI'st!" said Beck, between his teeth, as the stranger, 
 halting at the second floor, demanded, in no gentle tones, 
 whether Mr. Grabman lived in the chimney-pots. 
 
 ' 'StI'st! don't make such a rumpus, or No. 7 will be at 
 you." 
 
 "What do I care for No. 7? And who the devil is No. 7?" 
 
 "A Body-snatcher!" whispered Beck, with a shudder. 
 "He's a dillicut sleeper, and can't abide having his night's rest 
 sp'ilt. And he's the houtrageoustest great cretur, when he's 
 h-up in his tantrums it makes your 'air stand on ind to ear 
 him ! ' ' 
 
 "I should like very much to hear him, then," said the stran- 
 ger curiously. And while he spoke, the door of No. 7 opened 
 abruptly. A huge head, covered with matted hair, was thrust 
 for a moment through the aperture, and two dull eyes, that 
 seem covered with a film, like that of the birds which feed on 
 the dead, met the stranger's bold sparkling orbs. 
 
 "Hell and fury," bawled out the voice of this ogre, like a 
 clap of near thunder, "if you two keep tramp, tramp there, 
 
 close at my door, I'll make you meat for the surgeons b 
 
 you ! ' ' 
 
 "Stop a moment, my civil friend," said the stranger, ad-
 
 vancing; "just stand where you are; I should like to make a 
 sketch of your head." 
 
 That head protruded farther from the door, and with it an 
 enormous bulk of chest and shoulder. But the adventurous 
 visitor was not to be daunted. He took out, very coolly, a 
 pencil, and the back of a letter, and began his sketch. 
 
 The body-snatcher stared at him an instant, in mute aston- 
 ishment; but that operation and the composure of the artist 
 were so new to him, that they actually inspired him with terror. 
 He slunk back banged to the door. And the stranger, putting 
 up his implements, said with a disdainful laugh, to Beck, who 
 had slunk away into a corner: 
 
 "No. 7 knows well how to take care of No. i. Lead on, 
 and be quick then!" 
 
 As they continued to mount, they heard the body-snatcher 
 growling and blaspheming in his den, and the sound made 
 Beck clamber the quicker, till at the next landing-place, he 
 took breath, threw open a door, and Jason, pushing him aside, 
 entered first. 
 
 The interior of the room bespoke better circumstances than 
 might have been supposed from the approach: the floor was 
 covered with sundry scraps of carpets, formerly of different 
 hues and patterns, but mellowed by time into one threadbare 
 mass of grease and canvas. There was a good fire on the 
 hearth, though the night was warm, there were sundry vol- 
 umes piled round the walls, in the binding peculiar to law 
 books ; in a corner, stood a tall desk, of the fashion used by 
 clerks, perched on tall, slim legs, and companioned by a tall, 
 slim stool. On a table before the fire were scattered the re- 
 mains of the nightly meal ; broiled bones, the skeleton of a 
 herring; and the steam rose from a tumbler, containing a 
 liquid, colorless as water, but poisonous as gin. 
 
 The room was squalid and dirty, and bespoke mean and slov- 
 enly habits, but it did not bespeak penury and want ; it had 
 even an air of filthy comfort of its own the comfort of the 
 swine in its warm sty. The occupant of the chamber was in 
 keeping with the localities. Figure to yourself a man of middle 
 height not thin, but void of all muscular flesh, bloated, puffed, 
 anwholesome. He was dressed in a gray flannel gown and short 
 breeches, the stockings wrinkled and distained, the feet in slip- 
 pers. The stomach was that of a portly man, the legs those 
 of a skeleton ; the cheeks full and swollen, like a plough- 
 boy's, but livid, bespeckled, of a dull lead-color, like a patient 
 in the dropsy. The head, covered in patches with thin, yel-
 
 LUCRETIA. 23$ 
 
 lowish hair, gave some promise of intellect, for the forehead 
 was high, and appeared still more so from partial baldness; the 
 eyes, embedded in fat and wrinkled skin, were small and lus- 
 treless, but they still had that acute look which education and 
 ability communicate to the human orb ; the mouth most showed 
 the animal full-lipped, coarse, and sensual; while behind one 
 of two great ears stuck a pen. 
 
 You see before you, then, this slatternly figure, slip-shod, 
 half-clothed, v/ith a sort of shabby-demi-gentility about it ; 
 half-ragamuffin, half-clerk ; while, in strong contrast, appeared 
 the new-comer, scrupulously neat, new, with bright black satin 
 stock, coat cut jauntily to the waist, varnished boots, kid 
 gloves, and trim moustache. 
 
 Behind this sleek and comely personage, on knock-knees, in 
 torn shirt open at the throat, with apathetic, listless, unlighted 
 face, stood the lean and gawkey Beck. 
 
 "Set a chair for the gentleman," said the inmate of the 
 chamber to Beck, with a dignified wave of the hand. 
 
 "How do you do, Mr. Mr. humph Jason? How do 
 you do? Always smart and blooming the world thrives 
 with you." 
 
 "The world is a farm, that thrives with all who till it prop- 
 erly, Grabman," answered Jason dryly, and with his handker- 
 chief he carefully dusted the chair on which he then daintily 
 deposited his person. 
 
 "But who is your Ganymede your valet, your gentleman 
 usher?" 
 
 "Oh! a lad about town, who lodges above and does odd 
 jobs for me: brushes my coat, cleans my shoes, and, after his 
 day's work, goes an errand now and then. Make yourself 
 scarce, Beck! Anatomy, vanish!" 
 
 Beck grinned, nodded, pulled hard at a flake of his hair, 
 and closed the door. 
 
 "One of your brotherhood, that?" asked Jason carelessly. 
 
 "He, oaf! No," said Grabman, with profound contempt in 
 his sickly visage. "He works for his bread! Instinct! 
 Turnspits, and truffle-dogs, and some silly men have it! What 
 an age since we met shall I mix you a tumbler?" 
 
 "You know I never drink your vile spirits; though in 
 Champagne and Bordeaux I am any man's match." 
 
 "And how the devil do you keep old black thoughts out of 
 your mind by those washy potations?" 
 
 "Old black thoughts! Of what?" 
 
 "Of black actions, Jason. We have not met since you paid
 
 246 LUCREflA. 
 
 me for recommending the nurse who attended your uncle in 
 his last illness?" 
 
 "Well, poor coward?" 
 
 Grabman knit his thin eyebrows, and gnawed his blubber 
 lip: 
 
 "I am no coward, as you know." 
 
 "Not when a thing is to be done, but after it is done. You 
 brave the substance, and tremble at the shadow. I dare say 
 you see ugly goblins in the dark, Grabman." 
 
 "Ay, ay; but it is no use talking to you. You call yourself 
 Jason, because of your yellow hair, or your love for the golden 
 fleece ; but your old comrades called you Rattlesnake, and you 
 have its blood, as its venom." 
 
 "And its charm, man," added Jason, with a strange smile, 
 that, though hypocritical and constrained, had yet a certain 
 softness, and added greatly to the comeliness of features, which 
 many might call beautiful, and all would allow to be regular 
 and symmetrical. "I shall find at least ten love-letters on my 
 table when I go home. But enough of these fopperies: I am 
 here on business." 
 
 "Law, of course: I am your man who's the victim!" And 
 a hideous grin on Grabman 's face contrasted the sleek smile 
 that yet lingered upon his visitor's. 
 
 "No; something less hazardous, but not less lucrative than 
 our old practices. This is a business that may bring you hun- 
 dreds, thousands ; that may take you from this hovel, to spec- 
 ulate at the West End ; that may change your gin into Lafitte 
 and your herring into venison ; that may lift the broken attor- 
 ney again upon the wheel again to roll down, it may be ; but 
 that is your affair." 
 
 '"Fore Gad, open the case," cried Grabman eagerly, and 
 shoving aside the ignoble relics of his supper, he leaned his 
 elbows on the table, and his chin on his damp palms, while 
 eyes, that positively brightened into an expression of greedy 
 and relentless intelligence, were fixed upon his visitor. 
 
 "The case runs thus," said Jason: "Once upon a time there 
 lived, at an old house in Hampshire, called Laughton, a 
 wealthy baronet named St. John. He was a bachelor his 
 estates at his own disposal. He had two nieces and a more 
 distant kinsman. His eldest niece lived with him; she was 
 supposed to be destined for his heiress ; circumstances, need- 
 less to relate, brought upon this girl her uncle's displeasure; 
 she was dismissed his house. Shortly afterwards he died, 
 leaving to his kinsman a Mr. Vernon his estates, with re-
 
 LUCRETIA. 241 
 
 mainder to Vernon's issue, and, in default thereof, first, to the 
 issue of the younger niece, next to that of the elder and disin- 
 herited one. The elder married, and was left a widow, with- 
 out children. She married again, and had a son. Her second 
 husband, for some reason or other, conceived ill opinions of 
 his wife. In his last illness (he did not live long) he resolved 
 to punish the wife by robbing the mother. He sent away the 
 son, nor have we been able to discover him since. It is that 
 son whom you are to find." 
 
 "I see, I see! Go on," said Grabman. "This son is now 
 the remainder-man. How lost? When? What year? What 
 trace?" 
 
 "Patience! You will find in this paper the date of the loss, 
 and the age of the child, then a mere infant. Now for the 
 trace. This husband did I tell you his name? No Alfred 
 Braddell had one friend more intimate than the rest ; John 
 Walter Ardworth, a cashiered officer, a ruined man, pursued by 
 bill-brokers, Jews, and bailiffs. To this man we have lately 
 had reason to believe that the child was given. Ardworth, how- 
 ever, was shortly afterwards obliged to fly his creditors. We 
 know that he went to India, but if residing there, it must have 
 been under some new name, and we fear he is now dead. All 
 our inquiries, at least, after this man, have been fruitless. 
 Before he went abroad, he left with his old tutor a child, cor- 
 responding in age to that of Mrs. Braddell's. In this child she 
 thinks she recognizes her son. All that you have to do is to 
 trace his identity, by good legal evidence don't smile in that 
 foolish way I mean sound, bond fide evidence, that will stand 
 the fire of cross-examination; you know what that is! You 
 will therefore find out first, whether Braddell did consign his 
 child to Ardworth, and, if so, you must then follow Ardworth, 
 with that child in his keeping, to Matthew Fielden's house, 
 whose address you find noted in the paper I gave you, together 
 with many other memoranda as to Ardworth's creditors, and 
 those whom he is likely to have come across." 
 
 "John Ardworth, I see!" 
 
 "John Walter Ardworth, commonly called Walter; he, like 
 me, preferred to be known only by his second baptismal name. 
 He, because of a favorite Radical godfather, I, because Hon- 
 ore is an inconvenient Gallicism, and perhaps when Honore 
 Mirabeau (my godfather) went out of fashion with the sans- 
 culottes, my father thought Gabriel a safer designation. Now 
 I have told you all!" 
 
 "What is the mother's maiden name?"
 
 242 LUCRETIA. 
 
 "Her maiden name was Clavering; she was married under 
 that of Dalibard, her first husband." 
 
 "And," said Grabman, looking over the notes in the paper 
 given to him, "it is at Liverpool that the husband died, and 
 whence the child was sent away?" 
 
 "It is so; to Liverpool you will go first. I tell you fairly, 
 the task is difficult, for hitherto it has foiled me. I knew but 
 one man who, without flattery, could succeed ; and therefore 
 I spared no pains to find out Nicholas Grabman. You have 
 the true ferret's faculty; you, too, are a lawyer, and snuff evi- 
 dence in every breath. Find up a son a legal son a son to 
 be shown in a court of law, and the moment he steps into the 
 lands and the Hall of Laughton, you have 5000." 
 
 "Can I have a bond to that effect? 
 
 "My bond I fear is worth no more than my word. Trust to 
 the last ; if I break it you know enough of my secrets to hang 
 me!" 
 
 "Don't talk of hanging I hate that subject. But stop If 
 found, does this son succeed? Did this Mr. Vernon leave no 
 heir this other sister continue single, or prove barren?" 
 
 "Oh, true! He, Mr. Vernon, who by will took the name of 
 St. John, he left issue but only one son still survives, a minor 
 and unmarried. The sister, too, left a daughter; both are 
 poor, sickly creatures their lives not worth a straw. Never 
 mind them. You find Vincent Braddell, and he will not be 
 long out of his property, nor you out of your 5000. You see, 
 under these circumstances, a bond might become dangerous 
 evidence! " 
 
 Grabman emitted a fearful and tremulous chuckle ; a laugh, 
 like the laugh of a superstitious man when you talk to him of 
 ghosts and churchyards. He chuckled, and his hair bristled'. 
 But, after a pause, in which he seemed to wrestle with his 
 own conscience, he said: "Well, well you are a strange 
 man, Jason, you love your joke I have nothing to do, ex- 
 cept to find out this ultimate remainder-man mind that!" 
 
 "Perfectly; nothing like subdivision of labor." 
 
 "The search will be expensive!" 
 
 "There is oil for your wheels," answered Jason, putting a 
 note-book into his confidant's hands. "But mind, you waste 
 it not ; no tricks, no false play, with me ; you know Jason, or 
 if you like the name better, you know the Rattlesnake!" 
 
 "I will account for every penny," said Grabman eagerly, 
 and clasping his hands, while his pale face grew livid. 
 
 "I do not doubt it, my quill-driver, Look sharp, start to-
 
 LUCRETIA. 243 
 
 morrow! Get thyself decent clothes, be sober, cleanly, and 
 respectable. Act as a man who sees before him five thousand 
 pounds. And, now light me downstairs." 
 
 With the candle in his hand, Grabman stole down the rugged 
 steps, even more timorously than Beck had ascended them 
 and put his finger to his mouth as they came in the dread 
 vicinity of No. 7. But Jason, or rather Gabriel Varney, with 
 that fearless, reckless bravado of temper, which, while causing 
 half his guilt, threw at times a false glitter over its baseness, 
 piqued by the cowardice of his comrade, gave a lusty kick at 
 the closed door, and shouted out: "Old Grave-stealer, come 
 out, and let me finish your picture. Out, out! I say out!" 
 Grabman left the candle on the steps, and made but three 
 bounds to his own room. 
 
 At the third shout of his disturber, the Resurrection-man 
 threw open his door violently, and appeared at the gap, the 
 upward flare of the candle showing the deep lines ploughed in 
 his hideous face, and the immense strength of his gigantic 
 trunk and limbs. Slight, fair, and delicate as he was, Varney 
 eyed him deliberately, and trembled not. 
 
 "What do you want with me?" said the terrible voice, trem- 
 ulous with rage. 
 
 "Only to finish your portrait, as Pluto. He was the god of 
 Hell, you know!" 
 
 The next moment the vast hand of the ogre hung like a 
 great cloud over Gabriel Varney. This last, ever on his guard, 
 sprang aside, and the light gleamed on the steel of a pistol. 
 "Hands off! or " 
 
 The click of the pistol-cock finished the sentence. The 
 ruffian halted. A glare of disappointed fury gave a momen- 
 tary lustre to his dull eyes. "P'raps I shall meet you. agin one 
 o' these days or nights, and I shall know ye in ten thousand." 
 
 "Nothing like the bird in the hand Master Grave-stealer! 
 Where can we ever meet again?" 
 
 "P'raps in the fields p'raps on the road p'raps at the Old 
 Bailey p'raps at the gallows p'raps in the convict-ship I 
 knows what that is! I was chained night and day once to a 
 chap jist like you; didn't I break his spurit didn't I spile his 
 sleep! Ho, ho! You looks a bit less varmently howdacious 
 now, my flash cove!" 
 
 Varney hitherto had not known one pang of fear, one quicker 
 beat of the heart before. But the image presented to his irri- 
 table fancy (always prone to brood over terrors) the image of 
 that companion, chained to him night and day, suddenly
 
 244 LUCRETIA. 
 
 quelled his courage; the image stood before him palpably like 
 the Oulos Oneiros the Evil Dream of the Greeks. 
 
 He breathed loud. The body-stealer's stupid sense saw 
 that he had produced the usual effect of terror, which gratified 
 his brutal self-esteem ; he retreated slowly, inch by inch, to 
 the door, followed by Varney's appalled and staring eye, and 
 closed it with such violence that the candle was extinguished. 
 
 Varney, not daring yes literally, not daring to call aloud to 
 Grabman for another light, crept down the dark stairs with 
 hurried ghost-like steps, and, after groping at the door-handle 
 with one hand, while the other grasped his pistol, with a strain 
 of horror, he succeeded at last in winning access to the street, 
 and stood a moment to collect himself, in the open air; the 
 damps upon his forehead, and his limbs trembling like one who 
 has escaped by a hair-breadth the crash of a falling house. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE RAPE OF THE MATTRESS. 
 
 THAT Mr. Grabman slept calmly that night is probable 
 enough, for his gin-bottle was empty the next morning; and it 
 was with eyes more than usually heavy that he dozily followed 
 the movements of Beck, who, according to custom, opened 
 the shutters of the little den adjoining his sitting-room, brushed 
 his clothes, made his fire, set on the kettle to boil, and laid his 
 breakfast-things, preparatory to his own departure to the duties 
 of the day. Stretching himself, however, and shaking off slum- 
 ber, as the remembrance of the enterprise he had undertaken 
 glanced pleasantly across him, Grabman sat up in his bed, and 
 said in a voice that if not maudlin was affectionate, and if not 
 affectionate was maudlin : 
 
 "Beck, you are a good fellow! You have faults ; you are 
 human ; humanum est errare, which means that you sometimes 
 scorch my muffins. But, take you all in all you are a kind 
 creature. Beck, I am going into the country for some days. 
 I shall leave my key in the hole in the wall you know ; take 
 care of it when you come in. You were out late last night, my 
 poor fellow. Very wrong ! Look well to yourself or who knows 
 you may be clutched by that blackguard Resurrection-man 
 No. 7. Well, well! To think of that Jason's fool-hardiness. 
 But he's the worse devil of the two. Eh ! What was I saying? 
 And always give a look into my room every night before you 
 go to roost. The place swarms with cracksmen, and one can't
 
 LUCRETIA. 245 
 
 be too cautious. Lucky dog, you, to have nothing to be robbed 
 of!" 
 
 Beck winced at that last remark. Grabman did not seem to 
 notice his confusion, and preceded, as he put on his stockings : 
 "And, Beck, you are a good fellow, and have served me faith- 
 fully ; when I come back, I will bring you something hand- 
 some a backey-box, or, who knows, a beautiful silver watch. 
 Meanwhile, I think let me see yes, I can give you this ele- 
 gant pair of small-clothes. Put out my best the black ones. 
 And now, Beck, I'll not keep you any longer." 
 
 The poor sweep, with many pulls at his forelock, acknowl- 
 edged the munificent donation, and having finished all his prep- 
 arations, hastened first to his room, to examine at leisure, and 
 with great admiration, the drab small-clothes. Room, indeed, 
 we can scarcely style the wretched inclosure which Beck called 
 his own. It was at the top of the house, under the roof, and 
 hot oh, so hot, in the summer! It had one small begrimed 
 window, through which the light of heaven never came, for the 
 parapet, beneath which ran the choked gutter, prevented that. 
 But the rain and the wind came in. So, sometimes, through 
 four glassless panes, came a fugitive tom-cat. As for the rats, 
 they held the place as their own. Accustomed to Beck, they 
 cared nothing for him. They were the Mayors of that Palace 
 he only le roi faineant. They ran over his bed at night; he 
 often felt them on his face, and was convinced they would have 
 eaten him if there had been anything worth eating upon his 
 bones ; still, perhaps out of precaution rather than charity, he 
 generally left them a potato or two, or a crust of bread, to take 
 off the edge of their appetites. But Beck was far better off 
 than most who occupied the various settlements in that Alsatia 
 he had his room to himself. That was necessary to his sole 
 luxury the inspection of his treasury, the safety of his mat- 
 tress; for it he paid, without grumbling, what he thought 
 was a very high rent. To this hole in the roof there was no 
 lock ; for a very good reason, there was no door to it. You 
 went up a ladder, as you would go into a loft. Now, it had 
 often been matter of much intense cogitation to Beck whether 
 or not he should have a door to this chamber; and the result of 
 the cogitation was invariably the same he dared not! What 
 should he want with a door a door with a lock to it for one 
 followed as a consequence to the other. Such a novel piece of 
 grandeur would be an ostentatious advertisement that he had 
 something to guard. He could have no pretence for it on the 
 ground that he was intruded on by neighbors; no step but his
 
 546 LtTCREflA. 
 
 own was ever caught by him ascending that ladder ; it led to no 
 other room. All the offices required for the lodgment he per- 
 formed himself. His supposed poverty was a better safeguard 
 than doors of iron. Besides this, a door, if dangerous, would 
 be superfluous; the moment it was suspected that Beck had some- 
 thing worth guarding, that moment all the picklocks and skele- 
 ton keys in the neighborhood would be in a jingle. And a 
 cracksman of high repute lodged already on the ground-floor. 
 So Beck's treasure, like the bird's-nest, was deposited as much 
 out of sight as his instinct could contrive; and the locks and 
 bolts of civilized man were equally dispensed with by bird and 
 Beck. 
 
 On a rusty nail the sweep suspended the drab small-clothes, 
 stroked them down lovingly, and murmured: "They be's too 
 good for I I should like to pop 'em! But vouldn't that be a 
 shame? Beck, ben't you a hungrateful beast to go for to think 
 of nothing but the tin, ven your 'art ought to varm with hemo- 
 tion? I vill vear 'em ven I vaits on him. Ven he sees his own 
 smalls bringing in the muffins, he will say, 'Beck, you becomes 
 'em' !" 
 
 Fraught with this noble resolution, the sweep caught up his 
 broom, crept down the ladder, and, with a furtive glance at the 
 door of the room in which the cracksman lived, let himself out, 
 and shambled his way to his crossing. Grabman, in the mean 
 while, dressed himself with more care than usual, shaved his 
 beard from a four-days' crop, and, while seated at his breakfast, 
 read attentively over the notes which Varney had left to him, 
 pausing at times to make his own pencil memoranda. He then 
 packed up such few articles as so moderate a worshipper of the 
 Graces might require, deposited them in an old blue brief-bag; 
 and this done he opened his door, and creeping to the thresh- 
 old listened carefully. Below, a few sounds might be heard: 
 here, the wail of a child; there, the shrill scold of a woman, 
 in that accent above all others adapted to scold the Irish. 
 Farther down still, the deep bass oath of the choleric Resurrec- 
 tion-man; but above, all was silent. Only one floor intervened 
 between Grabman's apartment and the ladder that led to Beck's 
 loft. And the inmates of that room gave no sound of life. 
 Grabman took courage, and, shuffling off his shoes, ascended 
 the stairs; he passed the closed door of the room above: he 
 seized the ladder with a shaking hand; he mounted, step after 
 step he stood in Beck's room. 
 
 Now, O Nicholas Grabman, some moralists may be harsh 
 enough to condemn thee for what thou art doing: kneeling yon-
 
 LUCRETIA. 247 
 
 der, in the dim light by that curtainless pallet, with greedy fin- 
 gers feeling here and there, and a placid, self-hugging smile upon 
 thy pale lips. That poor vagabond, whom thou art about to de- 
 spoil, has served thee well and faithfully, has borne with thine 
 ill humors, thy sarcasms, thy swearings, thy kicks and buffets; 
 often, when in the bestial sleep of drunkenness, he has found 
 thee stretched helpless on thy floor, with a kindly hand he has 
 moved away the sharp fender, too near that knavish head, now 
 bent on his ruin ; or closed the open window, lest the keen air, 
 that thy breath tainted, should visit thee with rheum and fever. 
 Small has been his guerdon for uncomplaining sacrifice of the 
 few hours spared to the weary drudge from his daily toil small, 
 but gratefully received. And if Beck had been taught to pray, 
 he would have prayed for thee, as for a good man, O miserable 
 sinner! And thou art going now, Nicholas Grabman, upon an 
 enterprise which promises thee large gains, and thy purse is filled 
 and thou wantest nothing for thy wants, or thy swinish luxu- 
 ries. Why should those shaking fingers itch for the poor beg- 
 gar-man's hoards? 
 
 But hadst thou been bound on an errand that would have 
 given thee a million, thou wouldst not have left unrifled that 
 secret store which thy prying eye had discovered, and thy hun- 
 gry heart had coveted. No ; since one night, fatal, alas ! to the 
 owner of loft and treasure, when, needing Beck for some ser- 
 vice, and fearing to call aloud (for the Resurrection-man in the 
 floor below thee, whose oaths even now ascend to thine ear, 
 sleeps ill, and has threatened to make thee mute forever if thou 
 disturbest him in the few nights in which his dismal calling suf- 
 fers him to sleep at all), thou didst creep up the ladder, and 
 didst see the unconscious miser at his nightly work, and after 
 the sight, didst steal down again, smiling no ; since that night, 
 no schoolboy ever more rootedly and ruthlessly set his mind 
 upon nest of linnet, than thine was set upon the stores in Beck's 
 mattress. 
 
 And yet why, O lawyer, should rigid moralists blame thee more 
 than such of thy tribe as live honored and respectable, upon 
 the frail and the poor? Who among them ever left loft or mat- 
 tress while a rap could be wrung from either? Matters it to 
 Astrsea, whether the spoliation be made, thus nakedly and 
 briefly, or by all the acknowledged forms in which item on 
 item, six-and-eightpence on six-and-eightpence, the inexorable 
 hand closes, at length, on the last farthing of duped despair? 
 Not Heaven forbid ! that we make thee, foul Nicholas Grab- 
 man, a type for all the class called attorneys-at-law ! Noble
 
 248 LUCREflA. 
 
 hearts, liberal minds, are there amongst that brotherhood, we 
 know, and have experienced ; but a type art thou of those whom 
 want, and error, and need have proved alas, too well the 
 lawyers of the poor. And even while we write, and even while 
 ye read, many a Grabman steals from helpless toil the savings 
 of a life. 
 
 Ye poor hoards darling delights of your otherwise joyless 
 owner how easily has his very fondness made ye the prey of 
 the spoiler! How gleefully when the pence swelled into a shil- 
 ling have they been exchanged into the new bright piece of 
 silver, the newest and brightest that could be got! Then the 
 shillings into crowns, then the crowns into gold got slyly and 
 at a distance, and contemplated with what rapture! So that, 
 at last, the total lay manageable and light in its radiant com- 
 pass. And what a total ! What a surprise to Grabman ! Had 
 it been but a sixpence, he would have taken it; but to grasp 
 sovereigns by the handful, it was too much for him ; and, as he 
 rose, he positively laughed from a sense of fun. 
 
 But amongst his booty, there was found one thing that spe- 
 cially moved his mirth it was a child's coral, with its little 
 bells. Who could have given Beck such a bauble, or how 
 Beck could have refrained from turning it into money, would 
 have been a fit matter for speculation. But it was not that at 
 which Grabman chuckled; he laughed, first, because it was an 
 emblem of the utter childishness and folly of the creature he 
 was leaving penniless; and, secondly, because it furnished his 
 ready wit with a capital contrivance to shift Beck's indig- 
 nation from his own shoulders to a party more liable to suspi- 
 cion. He left the coral on the floor near the bed, stole down 
 the ladder, reached his own room, took up his brief-bag, locked 
 his door, slipped the key in the rat-hole, where the trusty, 
 plundered Beck alone could find it, and went boldly down- 
 stairs ; passing successively the doors, within which still stormed 
 the Resurrection-man, still wailed the child, still shrieked the 
 Irish shrew ; he paused at the ground-floor occupied by Bill the 
 cracksman, and his long-fingered, slender, quick- eyed imps, 
 trained already to pass through broken window-panes, on their 
 precocious progress to the hulks. 
 
 The door was open, and gave a pleasant sight of the worthy 
 family within. Bill, himself, a stout looking fellow, with a florid, 
 jolly countenance, and a pipe in his mouth, was sitting at his 
 window, with his brawny legs lolling on a table covered with 
 the remains of a very tolerable breakfast. Four small Bills 
 were employed in certain sports, which no doubt, according to
 
 LUCRETIA. ^ 249 
 
 the fashionable mode of education, instilled useful lessons 
 under the artful guise of playful amusement. Against the wall, 
 at one corner of the room, Was affixed a row of bells, from 
 which were suspended exceedingly tempting apples by slender 
 wires. Two of the boys were engaged in the innocent enter- 
 tainment of extricating the apples without occasioning any 
 alarm from the bells ; a third was amusing himself at a table, 
 covered with mock rings and trinkets, in a way that seemed 
 really surprising ; with the end of a finger dipped probably in 
 some glutinous matter, he just touched one of the gew-gaws, 
 and lo, it vanished! vanished so magically, that the quickest 
 eye could scarcely trace whither; sometimes up a cuff, some- 
 times into a shoe here, there, anywhere except back again 
 upon the table. The fourth, an urchin apparently about five 
 years old ; he might be much younger, judging from his stunted 
 size ; somewhat older, judging from the vicious acuteness of his 
 face ; on the floor under his father's chair, was diving his little 
 hand into the paternal pockets in search for a marble, sportively 
 hidden in those capacious recesses. On the rising geniuses 
 around him, Bill the cracksman looked, and his father's heart 
 was proud. 
 
 Pausing at the threshold, Grabman looked in, and said, 
 cheerfully: "Good-day to you good-day to you all, my little 
 dears." 
 
 "Ah, Grabman," said Bill, rising, and making a bow, foi 
 Bill valued himself much on his politeness; "come to blow a 
 cloud, eh? Bob!" (this to the eldest born) "manners, sir; 
 wipe your nose, and set a chair for the gent." 
 
 "Many thanks to you, Bill, but I can't stay now I have a 
 long journey to take. But bless my soul, how stupid I am ; 
 I have forgotten my clothes-brush. I knew there was some- 
 thing on my mind all the way I was coming downstairs. I 
 was saying to myself, 'Grabman, there is something forgotten" !" 
 
 "I know what that ere feelin' is," said Bill thoughtfully; 
 "I had it myself the night afore last; and sure enough when I 
 got to the but that's neither here nor there. Bob, run. up 
 stairs, and fetch down Mr. Grabman's clothes-brush. 'Tis the 
 least you can do for a gent who saved your father from the 
 fate of them ere innocent apples your fist, Grabman. I have 
 a heart in my buzzom ; cut me open, and you will find there 
 ' H alibi and Grabman'! Give Bob your key." 
 
 "The brush is not in my room," answered Grabman; "it is 
 at the top of the house; up the ladder, in Beck's loft Beck, 
 the sweeper. The stupid dog always keeps it there, and forgot
 
 250 LUCRETIA. 
 
 to give it me. Sorry to occasion my friend Bob so much 
 trouble." 
 
 "Bob has a soul above trouble ; his father's heart beats in 
 his buzzom. Bob, track the dancers. Up like a lark and 
 down like a dump." 
 
 Bob grinned, made a bow at Mr. Grabman, and scampered 
 up the stairs. 
 
 "You never attends our free-and-easy," said Bill; "but we 
 toasts you, with three times three, and up standing. 'Tis a 
 hungrateful world! But some men has a heart; and, to those 
 who has a heart, Grabman is a trump!" 
 
 "I am sure, whenever I can do you a service, you may 
 reckon on me. Meanwhile, if you could get that cursed bully- 
 ing fellow who lives under me to be a little more civil, you 
 would oblige me." 
 
 "Under you? No. 7 ! No. 7 is it? Grabman, h-am I a 
 man? Is this a h-arm, and this a bunch of fives? I dares 
 do all that does become a man ; but No. 7 is a body-snatcher ! 
 No. 7 has bullied me and I bore it ! No. 7 might whop me 
 and this h-arm would let him whop! He lives with graves, 
 and churchyards, and stiff 'uns that damnable No. 7! Ask 
 some'at else, Grabman. I dares not touch No. 7 any more 
 than the ghosteses." 
 
 Grabman sneered as he saw that Bill, stout as he was, turned 
 pale while he spoke ; but at that moment Bob reappeared with 
 the clothes-brush, which the ex-attorney thrust into his pocket ; 
 and shaking Bill by the hand and patting Bob on the head, he 
 set out on his journey. 
 
 Bill reseated himself, muttering: "Bully a body-snatcher! 
 'Drot that Grabman, does he want to get rid of poor Bill?" 
 
 Meanwhile Bob exhibited slyly, to his second brother the 
 sight of Beck's stolen coral. The children took care not to 
 show it to their father. They were already inspired by the 
 laudable ambition to set up in business on their own account. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PERCIVAL VISITS LUCRETIA. 
 
 HAVING once ascertained the house in which Helen lived, it 
 was no difficult matter for St. John to learn the name of the 
 guardian whom Beck had supposed to be her mother.. No 
 common delight mingled with Percival's amaze, when in that 
 name he recognized one born by h\s own kinswoman. Very
 
 LUCRETIA. 251 
 
 little, indeed, of the family history was known to him. Neither 
 his father nor his mother ever willingly conversed of the fallen 
 heiress ; it was a subject which the children had felt to be pro- 
 scribed; but in the neighborhood, Percival had, of course, 
 heard some mention of Lucretia, as the haughty and accom- 
 plished Miss Clavering, who had, to the astonishment of all, 
 stooped to a mesalliance with her uncle's French librarian. 
 That her loss of the St. John property, the succession of Per- 
 cival's father, were unexpected by the villagers and squires 
 around, and perhaps set down to the caprice of Sir Miles, or to 
 an intellect impaired by apoplectic attacks, it was not likely 
 that he should have heard. The rich have the polish of their 
 education, and the poor that instinctive tact so wonderful 
 amongst the agricultural peasantry, to prevent such unman- 
 nerly disclosures or unwelcome hints; and both by rich and 
 poor, the Vernon St. Johns were too popular and respected for 
 wanton allusions to subjects calculated to pain them. All, 
 therefore, that Percival knew of his relation, was that she had 
 resided from infancy with Sir Miles ; that after their uncle's 
 death, she had married an inferior in rank, of the name of Dali- 
 bard, and settled abroad; that she was a person of peculiar 
 manners; and, he had heard somewhere, of rare gifts. He 
 had been unable to learn the name of the young lady staying 
 with Madame Dalibard ; he had learned only that she went by 
 some other name, and was not the daughter of the lady who 
 rented the house. Certainly, it was possible that this last 
 might not be his kinswoman, after all. The name, though 
 strange to English ears, and not common in France, was no 
 sufficient warrant for Percival's high spirits at the thought that 
 he had now won legitimate and regular access to the house 
 still it allowed him to call; it furnished a fair excuse for a visit. 
 
 How long he was at his toilet that day, poor boy ! How 
 sedulously, with comb and brush, he sought to smooth into 
 straight precision that luxuriant labyrinth of jetty curls, which 
 had never cost him a thought before. Gil Bias says that the 
 toilet is a pleasure to the young though a labor to the old; 
 Percival St. John's toilet was no pleasure to him that anxious 
 morning. 
 
 At last, he tore himself, dissatisfied and desperate, from the 
 glass, caught his hat and his whip, threw himself on his horse, 
 and rode, at first very fast and at last very slowly, to the old, 
 decayed, shabby, neglected house, that lay hid, like the poverty 
 of fallen pride, amidst the trim villas and smart cottages of 
 fair and flourishing Brompton.
 
 252 LUCRETIA. 
 
 The same servant who had opened the gate to Ardworth ap- 
 peared to his summons, and, after eyeing him for some mo- 
 ments with a listless, stupid stare, said: "You'll be after some 
 mistake!" and turned away. 
 
 "Stop stop!" cried Percival, trying to intrude himself 
 through the gate ; but the servant blocked up the entrance 
 sturdily. "It is no mistake at all, my good lady. I have 
 come to see Madame Dalibard, my my relation!" 
 
 "Your relation!" and again the woman stared at Percival 
 with a look through the dull vacancy of which some distrust 
 was dimly perceptible. "Bide a bit there, and give us your 
 name." 
 
 Percival gave his card to the servant, with his sweetest and 
 most persuasive smile. She took it with one hand, and, with 
 the other, turned the key in the gate, leaving Percival outside. 
 It was five minutes before she returned, and she then, with the 
 same prim, smileless expression of countenance opened the 
 gate, and motioned him to follow. 
 
 The kind-hearted boy sighed as he cast a glance at the deso- 
 late and poverty-stricken appearance of the house, and thought 
 within himself: "Ah, pray Heaven, she may be my relation, 
 and then I shall have the right to find her, and that sweet girl, 
 a very different home!" The old woman threw open the 
 drawing-room door, and Percival was in the presence of his 
 deadliest foe! The arm-chair was turned towards the en- 
 trance, and from amidst the coverings that hid the form, the 
 remarkable countenance of Madame Dalibard emerged, sharp 
 and earnest, directly fronting the intruder. 
 
 "So," she said, slowly, and, as it were, devouring him with 
 her keen, steadfast eyes; "So, you are Percival St. John! 
 Welcome! I did not know that we should ever meet. I 
 have not sought you you seek me ! Strange yes, strange 
 that the young and the rich should seek the suffering and the 
 poor!" 
 
 Surprised and embarassed by this singular greeting, Percival 
 halted abruptly in the middle of the room and there was some- 
 thing inexpressibly winning in his shy, yet graceful, confusion. 
 It seemed, with silent eloquence, to apologize and to depre- 
 cate. And when, in his silvery voice, scarcely yet tuned to 
 the fullness of manhood, he said feelingly: "Forgive me, 
 madam, but my mother is not in England," the excuse 
 evinced such delicacy of idea, so exquisite a sense of high 
 breeding, that the calm assurance of worldly ease could not 
 have more attested the chivalry of the native gentleman,
 
 LUCRETIA. 253 
 
 "I have nothing to forgive, Mr. St. John," said Lucretia, 
 with a softened manner. "Pardon me rather that my in- 
 firmities do not allow me to rise to receive you. This 
 seat here next to me. You have a strong likeness to your 
 father. ' ' 
 
 Percival received this last remark as a compliment, and 
 bowed. Then, as he lifted his ingenuous brow, he took, for the 
 first time, a steady view of his new-found relation. The pecu 
 liarities of Lucretia's countenance in youth had naturally 
 deepened with middle age. The contour, always too sharp 
 and pronounced, was now strong and bony as a man's: the 
 line between the eyebrows was hollowed into a furrow. The 
 eye retained its old uneasy, sinister, sidelong glance; or, at 
 rare moments (as when Percival entered), its searching pene- 
 tration, and assured command ; but the eyelids themselves, red 
 and injected, as with grief or vigil, gave something haggard and 
 wild, whether to glance or gaze. Despite the paralysis of the 
 frame, the face, though pale and thin, showed no bodily decay. 
 A vigor surpassing the strength of woman might still be seen 
 in the play of the bold muscles, the firmness of the contracted 
 lips. What physicians call "vitality" and trace at once (if 
 experienced) on the physiognomy, as the prognostic of long 
 life, undulated restlessly in every aspect of the face, every 
 movement of those thin, nervous hands, which, contrasting the 
 rest of that motionless form, never seemed to be at rest. The 
 teeth were still white and regular, as in youth ; and when they 
 shone out in speaking, gave a strange, unnatural freshness to 
 a face otherwise so worn. 
 
 As Percival gazed, and, while gazing, saw those wandering 
 eyes bent down, and yet/>// they watched him, a thrill, almost 
 of fear, shot through his heart. Nevertheless, so much more 
 impressionable was he to charitable and trustful, than to sus- 
 picious and timid, emotions that, when Madame Dalibard, 
 suddenly looking up, and shaking her head gently, said, "You 
 see but a sad wreck, young kinsman," all those instincts, 
 which nature itself seemed to dictate for self-preservation, van- 
 ished into heavenly tenderness and pity. 
 
 "Ah!" he said, rising and pressing one of those deadly 
 hands in both his own, while tears rose to his eyes. "Ah! 
 sinee you call me kinsman, I have all a kinsman's privileges. 
 You must have the best advice the most skilful surgeons. 
 Oh, you will recover you must not despond." 
 
 Lucretia's lips moved uneasily. This kindness took her by 
 surprise. She turned desperately away from the human gleam
 
 254 LUCRETIA. 
 
 that shot across the sevenfold gloom of her soul: "Do not 
 think of me," she said, with a forced smile: "it is my peculiar- 
 ity not to like allusion to myself, though this time I provoked 
 it. Speak to me of the old cedar trees at Laughton do they 
 stand still? You are the master of Laughton, now: it is a 
 noble heritage!" 
 
 Then St. John, thinking to please her, talked of the old 
 manor-house, described the improvements made by his father, 
 spoke gayly of those which he himself contemplated ; and as he 
 ran on, Lucretia's brow, a moment ruffled, grew smooth and 
 smoother, and the gloom settled back upon her soul. 
 
 All at once, she interrupted him. "How did you discover 
 me was it through Mr. Varney? I bade him not mention 
 me yet how else could you learn?" As she spoke, there was 
 an anxious trouble in her tone, which increased, while she 
 observed that St. John looked confused. 
 
 "Why," he began hesitatingly, and brushing his hat with his 
 hand; "Why perhaps you may have heard from the that 
 is I think there is a young Ah, it is you it is you! I see 
 you once again!" And springing up, he was at the side of 
 Helen, who at that instant had entered the room, and 
 now, her eyes downcast, her cheeks blushing, her breast 
 gently heaving, heard, but answered not, that passionate burst 
 of joy. 
 
 Startled, Madame Dalibard (her hands grasping the sides of 
 her chair) contemplated the two. She had heard nothing, 
 guessed nothing, of their former meeting. All that had passed 
 before between them was unknown to her. Yet, there, was 
 evidence unmistakable, conclusive the son of her despoiler 
 loved the daughter of her rival, and if the virgin heart speaks 
 by the outward sign those downcast eyes, those blushing 
 cheeks, that heaving breast, told that he did not love in 
 vain ! 
 
 Before her lurid and murderous gaze, as if to defy her, the 
 two inheritors of a revenge unglutted by the grave stood, 
 united mysteriously together. Up, from the vast ocean of her 
 hate rose that poor isle of love; there, unconscious of the 
 horror around them, the victims found their footing! How 
 beautiful at that hour their youth, their very ignorance of their 
 own emotions, their innocent gladness, their sweet trouble! 
 The fell gazer drew a long breath of fiend-like complacency 
 and glee, and her hands opened wide, and then slowly closed, 
 as if she felt them in her grasp.
 
 LUCRETIA. 255 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE ROSE BENEATH THE UPAS. 
 
 AND from that day, Percival had his privileged entry into 
 Madame Dalibard's house. The little narrative of the circum- 
 stances connected with his first meeting with Helen, partly 
 drawn from Percival, partly afterwards from Helen (with 
 blushing and faltered excuses from the latter, for not having 
 mentioned before an incident that might, perhaps needlessly, 
 vex or alarm her aunt in so delicate a state of health). *<vas 
 received by Lucretia with rare graciousness. The connec- 
 tion, not only between herself and Percival, but between Per- 
 cival and Helen, was allowed, and even dwelt upon by Ma- 
 dame Dalibard, as a natural reason for permitting the artless 
 intimacy which immediately sprang up between these young 
 persons. She permitted Percival to call daily, to remain for 
 hours, to share in their simple meals, to wander alone with 
 Helen in the garden, assist her to bind up the ragged flowers, 
 and sit by her in the old ivy-grown arbor, when their work 
 was done. She affected to look upon them both as children, 
 and to leave to them that happy familiarity which childhood 
 only sanctions, and compared to which the affection of maturer 
 years seems at once coarse and cold. 
 
 As they grew more familiar, the differences and similarities 
 in their characters came out, and nothing more delightful than 
 the harmony into which even the contrasts blended, ever in- 
 vited the guardian angel to pause and smile. As flowers in 
 some trained parterre relieve each other, now softening, now 
 heightening each several hue, till all unite in one concord of 
 interwoven beauty, so these two blooming natures, brought 
 together, seemed, where varying still, to melt and fuse their 
 affluences into one wealth of innocence and sweetness. Both 
 had a native buoyancy and cheerfulness of spirit, a noble trust- 
 fulness in others, a singular candor and freshness of mind 
 and feeling. But beneath thegayety of Helen, there was a soft 
 and holy under-stream of thoughtful melancholy, a high and 
 religious sentiment that vibrated more exquisitely to the subtle 
 mysteries of creation the solemn unison between the bright 
 world without, and the grave destinies of that world within, 
 (which is an imperishable soul) than the lighter and more 
 vivid youthfulness of Percival had yet conceived. In him 
 lay the germs of the active mortal, who might win distinction 
 in the bold car/^r we run upon the surface of the earth. In
 
 256 LUCRETIA, 
 
 her, there was that finer and more spiritual essence which lifts 
 the poet to the golden atmosphere of dreams, and reveals in 
 glimpses to the saint the choral Populace of Heaven. We do 
 not say that Helen would ever have found the utterance of the 
 poet, that her reveries, undefined and unanalyzed, could have 
 taken the sharp, clear form of words. For to the poet, practi- 
 cally developed and made manifest to the world, many other 
 gifts, besides the mere poetic sense, are needed ; stern study, 
 and logical generalization of scattered truths, and patient ob- 
 servation of the characters of men, and the wisdom that 
 comes from sorrow and passion, and a sage's experience of 
 things actual, embracing the dark secrets of human infirmity 
 and crime. But, despite all that has been said in disparage- 
 ment or disbelief of "mute inglorious Miltons, " we maintain 
 that there are natures in which the divinest element of poetry 
 exists, the purer and more delicate for escaping from bodily 
 form, and evaporating from the coarser vessels into which the 
 poet, so called, must pour the ethereal fluid. There is a cer- 
 tain virtue within us, comprehending our subtlest and noblest 
 emotions, which is poetry while untold, and grows pale and poor 
 in proportion as we strain it into poems. Nay, it may be said 
 of this airy property of our inmost being, that, more or less, 
 it departs from us, according as we give it forth into the world, 
 even as only by the loss of its particles the rose wastes its 
 perfume on the air. So this more spiritual sensibility dwelt in 
 Helen, as the latent mesmerism in water, as the invisible fairy 
 in an enchanted ring. It was an essence of divinity, shrined 
 and shrouded in herself, which gave her more intimate and 
 vital union with all the influences of the universe, a companion 
 to her loneliness, an angel hymning low to her own listening 
 soul. This made her enjoyment of nature, in its merest trifles, 
 exquisite and profound ; this gave to her tenderness of heart 
 all the delicious and sportive variety love borrows from imag- 
 ination ; this lifted her piety above the mere forms of conven- 
 tional religion, and breathed into her prayers the ecstacy of the 
 saint. 
 
 But Helen was not the less filled with the sweet humanities 
 of her age and sex ; her very gravity was tinged with rosy light 
 as a western cloud with the sun. She had sportiveness, and 
 caprice, and even whim, as the butterfly, though the emblem of 
 the soul, still flutters wantonly over every wild flower, and ex- 
 pands its glowing wings on the sides of the beaten road. And 
 with a sense of weakness in the common world (growing out of 
 her very strength in nobler atmospheres), she leaned the more
 
 LUCRETIA. 257 
 
 trustfully on the strong arm of her young adorer; not fancying 
 that the differences between them arose from superiority in 
 her, but rather as a bird once tamed flies at the sight of the 
 hawk to the breast of its owner ; so from each airy flight into 
 the loftier heaven, let but the thought of danger daunt her 
 wing, and, as in a more powerful nature, she took refuge on 
 that fostering heart. 
 
 The love between these children, for so, if not literally in 
 years, in their newness to all that steals the freshness and the 
 dew from maturer life, they may be rightly called, was such as 
 befitted those whose souls have not forfeited the Eden. It was 
 more like the love of fairies than of human beings. They 
 showed it to each other, innocently and frankly ; yet of love, 
 as we of the grosser creation call it, with its impatient pains, 
 and burning hopes, they never spoke nor dreamed. It was an 
 unutterable, ecstatic fondness; a clinging to each other in 
 thought, desire, and heart a joy more than mortal in each 
 other's presence; yet, in parting, not that idle and empty sor- 
 row which unfits the weak for the homelier demands on time 
 and life. And this, because of the wondrous trust in them- 
 selves and in the future, which made a main part of their cred- 
 ulous, happy natures. Neither felt fear nor jealousy; or if 
 jealousy came, it was the pretty child-like jealousies which have 
 no sting; of the bird, if Helen listened to its note too long; of 
 the flower, if Percival left Helen's side too quickly, to tie up 
 its drooping petals, or refresh its dusty leaves. Close by the 
 stir of the great city, with all its fret, and chafe, and storm of 
 life, in the desolate garden of that sombre house, and under 
 the withering eyes of relentless Crime, revived the Arcady of 
 old the scene vocal to the reeds of idyllist and shepherd; 
 and in the midst of the iron Tragedy, harmlessly and uncon- 
 sciously arose the strain of the Pastoral Music. 
 
 It would be a vain effort to describe the state of Lucretia's 
 mind, while she watched the progress of the affection she had 
 favored, and gazed on the spectacle of the fearless happiness 
 she had promoted. The image of a felicity at once so great 
 and so holy, wore to her gloomy sight the aspect of a mocking 
 Fury. It rose in contrast to her own ghastly and crime-stained 
 life; it did not upbraid her conscience with guilt so loudly as it 
 scoffed at her intellect for folly. These children, playing on 
 the verge of life, how much more of life's true secret did they 
 already know, than she, with all her vast native powers and 
 wasted realms of blackened and charred experience? For 
 what had she studied, and schemed, and calculated, and toiled,
 
 258 LUCRETIA. 
 
 and sinned? As a conqueror stricken unto death would render 
 up all the regions vanquished by his sword for one drop of 
 water to his burning lips, how gladly would she have given all 
 the knowledge bought with blood and fire, to feel one moment 
 as those children felt! Then, from out her silent and grim 
 despair stood forth, fierce and prominent, the great fiend, 
 Revenge. 
 
 By a monomania not uncommon to those who have made 
 self the centre of being, Lucretia referred to her own sullen 
 history of wrong and passion, all that bore analogy to it, how- 
 ever distant. She had never been enabled, without an intolera- 
 ble pang of hate and envy, to contemplate courtship and love 
 in others. From the rudest shape to the most refined that 
 master-passion in the existence, at least, of woman reminding 
 her of her own brief episode of human tenderness and devo- 
 tion, opened every wound, and wrung every fibre of a heart 
 that, while crime had indurated it to most emotions, memory 
 still left morbidly sensitive to one. But if tortured by the sight 
 of love in those who had no connection with her fate ; who 
 stood apart from her lurid orbit, and were gazed upon only afar 
 (as a lost soul, from the abyss, sees the gleam of angels' wings 
 within some planet it never has explored), how ineffably more 
 fierce and intolerable was the wrath that seized her, when, in 
 her haunted imagination, she saw all Susan's rapture at the 
 vows of Mainwaring mantling in Helen's face! All that might 
 have disarmed a heart as hard, but less diseased, less preoc- 
 cupied by revenge, only irritated more the consuming hate of 
 that inexorable spirit. Helen's seraphic purity, her exquisite 
 overflowing kindness, ever forgetting self, her airy cheerfulness, 
 even her very moods of melancholy, calm and seemingly cause- 
 less as they were, perpetually galled and blistered that writhing 
 preternatural susceptibility which is formed by the conscious- 
 ness of infamy, the dreary egotism of one cut off from the chari- 
 ties of the world, with whom all mirth is sardonic convulsion, 
 all sadness, rayless, and unresigned despair. 
 
 Of the two, Percival inspired her with feelings the most akin 
 to humanity. For him, despite her bitter memories of his 
 father, she felt something of compassion, and shrunk from the 
 touch of his frank hand in remorse. She had often need to 
 whisper to herself, that his life was an obstacle to the heritage 
 of the son ; of whom, as we have seen, she was in search, and 
 whom, indeed, she believed she had already found in }ohn 
 Ardworth ; that it was not in wrath and in vengeance that this 
 victim was to be swept into the grave, but as an indispensable
 
 LUCRET1A. 259 
 
 sacrifice to a cherished object a determined policy. As in 
 the studies of her youth, she had adopted the Machiavelism of 
 ancient statecraft as a rule admissible in private life, so she 
 seemed scarcely to admit as a crime that which was but the re- 
 moval of a barrier between her aim and her end. Before she 
 had become personally acquainted with Percival, she had re- 
 jected all occasion to know him. She had suffered Varney to 
 call upon him, as the old protege of Sir Miles, and to wind into 
 his intimacy, meaning to leave to her accomplice, when the 
 hour should arrive, the dread task of destruction. This, not 
 from cowardice, for Gabriel had once rightly described her 
 when he said, that "if she lived with shadows she could quell 
 them," but simply because, more intellectually unsparing than 
 constitutionally cruel (save where the old vindictive memories 
 thoroughly unsexed her), this was a victim whose pangs she de- 
 sired not to witness, over whose fate it was no luxury to gloat 
 and revel. She wished not to see, nor to know him living, only 
 to learn that he was no more, and that Helen alone stood be- 
 tween Laughton and her son. Now that he had himself, as if 
 with predestined feet, crossed her threshold, that he, like Helen, 
 had delivered himself into her toils, the hideous guilt, before 
 removed from her hands, became haunting, fronted her face 
 to face, and filled her with a superstitious awe. 
 
 Meanwhile, her outward manner to both her meditated vic- 
 tims, if moody and fitful at times, was not such as would have 
 provoked suspicion even in less credulous hearts. From the 
 first entry of Helen under her roof, she had been formal and 
 measured in her welcome; kept her, as it were, aloof, and af- 
 fected no prodigal superfluity of dissimulation ; but she had 
 never been positively harsh or unkind in word or in deed, and 
 had coldly excused herself for the repulsiveness of her manner. 
 
 "I am irritable," she said, "from long suffering; I am un- 
 social from habitual solitude ; do not expect from me the fond- 
 ness and warmth that should belong to our relationship. Do 
 not harass yourself with vain solicitude for one whom all seem- 
 ing attention but reminds more painfully of infirmity, and who, 
 even thus stricken down, would be independent of all cares not 
 bought and paid for. Be satisfied to live here in all reasonable 
 liberty, to follow your own habits and caprices uncontrolled. 
 Regard me but as a piece of necessary furniture. You can never 
 displease me, but when you notice that I live and suffer." 
 
 If Helen wept bitterly at these hard words when first spoken, 
 it was not with anger that her loving heart was so thrown back 
 upon herself. On the contrary, she became inspired with a com-
 
 26d LUCRETIA. 
 
 passion so great that it took the character of reverence. She 
 regarded this very coldness as a mournful dignity. She felt 
 grateful that one who could thus dispense with, should yet have 
 sought, her. She had heard her mother say that "she had been 
 under great obligations to Lucretia," and now, when she was 
 forbidden to repay them, even by a kiss on those weary eyelids, 
 a daughter's hand to that sleepless pillow ; when she saw that 
 the barrier first imposed was irremovable, that no time dimin- 
 ished the distance her aunt set between them ; that the least ap- 
 proach to the tenderness of service beyond the most casual offices, 
 really seemed but to fret those excitable nerves, and fever the 
 hand, that she ventured timorously to clasp; she retreated into 
 herself with a sad amaze that increased her pity, and heightened 
 her respect. To her, love seemed so necessary a tiling in the 
 helplessness of human life, even when blessed with health and 
 youth, that this rejection of all love in one so bowed and 
 crippled struck her imagination as something sublime in, its 
 dreary grandeur and stoic pride of independence. She regarded 
 it, as of old a tender and pious nun would have regarded the 
 asceticism of some sanctified recluse as Teresa (had she lived 
 in the same age) might have regarded St. Simon Stylites exist- 
 ing aloft from human sympathy on the roofless summit of his 
 column of stone ; and with this feeling she sought to inspire Per- 
 cival. He had the heart to enter into her compassion, but not 
 the imagination to sympathize with her reverence. Even the 
 repugnant awe that he had first conceived for Madame Dali- 
 bard, so bold was he by temperament, he had long since cast 
 off; he recognized only the moroseness and petulance of an 
 habitual invalid, and shook playfully his glossy curls, when 
 Helen, with her sweet seriousness, insisted on his recognizing 
 more. 
 
 To this house few, indeed, were the visitors admitted. The 
 Mivers's, whom the benevolent officiousness of Mr. Fielden 
 had originally sent thither to see their young kinswoman, now 
 and then came to press Helen to join some party to the theatre, 
 or Vauxhall, or a picnic in Richmond Park; but when they 
 found their overtures, which had at first been politely accepted 
 by Madame Dalibard, were rejected, they gradually ceased their 
 visits, wounded and indignant. 
 
 Certain it was, that Lucretia had, at one time, eagerly caught 
 at their well-meant civilities to Helen ; now she as abruptly de- 
 clined them. Why? It would be hard to plumb into all the 
 black secrets of that heart. It would have been but natural to 
 her, who shrank from dooming Helen to no worse calamity than
 
 LUCRETIA. 261 
 
 a. virgin's grave, to have designed to throw her in such uncon- 
 genial guidance, amidst all the manifold temptations of the cor- 
 rupt city ; to have suffered her to be seen and to be ensnared 
 by those gallants ever on the watch for defenceless beauty ; and 
 to contrast with their elegance of mien, and fatal flatteries, the 
 grossness of the companions selected for her, and the unloving 
 discomfort of the home into which she had been thrown. But 
 now that St. John had appeared; that Helen's heart and fancy 
 were steeled alike against more dangerous temptation, the ob- 
 ject to be obtained from the pressing courtesy of Mrs. Mivers ex- 
 isted no more. The vengeance flowed into other channels. 
 
 The only other visitors at the house were John Ardworth and 
 Gabriel Varney. 
 
 Madame Dalibard watched vigilantly the countenance and 
 manner of Ardworth, when, after presenting him to Percival, 
 she whispered: "I am glad you assured me as to your senti- 
 ments for Helen. She has found ther-e the lover you wished for 
 her gay and handsome as herself." 
 
 And, in the sudden paleness that overspread Ardworth's 
 face, in his compressed lips, and convulsive start, she read with 
 unspeakable rage the untold secret of his heart till the rage 
 gave way to complacency at the thought that the last insult to 
 her wrongs was spared her; that her son (as son she believed 
 he was ) could not now, at least, be the successful suitor of her 
 loathed sister's loathed child. Her discovery, perhaps, con- 
 firmed her in her countenance to Percival's progressive wooing, 
 and half reconciled her to the pangs it inflicted on herself. 
 
 At the first introduction, Ardworth had scarcely glanced at 
 Percival. He regarded him but as the sleek flutterer in the 
 sunshine of fortune. And for the idle, the gay, the fair, the 
 well drest, and wealthy, the sturdy workman of his own rough 
 way felt something of the uncharitable disdain which the labori- 
 ous have nots too usually entertain for the prosperous haves, 
 But the moment the unwelcome intelligence of Madame Dali- 
 bard was conveyed to him, the smooth-faced boy swelled into 
 dignity and importance. 
 
 Yet it was not merely as a rival that that strong manly heart, 
 after the first natural agony, regarded Percival. No, he looked 
 upon him less with anger than with interest, as the one in whom 
 Helen's happiness was henceforth to be invested. And to 
 Madame Dalibard's astonishment, for this nature was wholly 
 new to her experience, she saw him, even in that first interview, 
 composing his rough face to smiles, smoothing his bluff imperi- 
 <?us accents into courtesy, listening patiently, watching benign*
 
 262 LUCRETIA. 
 
 Iy, and at last thrusting his large hand frankly forth, griping 
 Percival's slender fingers in his own ; and then, with an indis- 
 tinct chuckle, that seemed half-laugh and half-groan, as if he 
 did not dare to trust himself farther, he made his wonted un- 
 ceremonious nod, and strode hurriedly from the room. 
 
 But he came again, and again, almost daily, for about a fort- 
 night; sometimes, without entering the house, he would join 
 the young people in the garden, assist them with awkward hands 
 in their playful work on the garden, or sit with them in the ivied 
 bower; and, warming more and more each time he came, talk 
 at last with the cordial frankness of an elder brother. There 
 was no disguise in this he began to love Percival; what would 
 seem more strange to the superficial, to admire him. Genius 
 has a quick perception of the moral qualities ; genius which, 
 differing thus from mere talent, is more allied to the heart than 
 to the head, sympathizes genially with goodness. Ardworth 
 respected that young, ingenuous, unpolluted mind: he himself 
 felt better and purer in its atmosphere. Much of the affec- 
 tion he cherished for Helen passed thus beautifully and nobly 
 into his sentiments for the one whom Helen not unworthily pre- 
 ferred. And they grew so fond of him ! As the young and 
 gentle ever will grow fond of genius however rough once 
 admitted to its companionship! 
 
 Percival, by this time, had recalled to his mind where he had 
 first seen that strong-featured, dark-browed countenance, and 
 he gayly reminded Ardworth of his discourtesy, on the brow of 
 the hill which commanded the view of London. That reminis- 
 cence made his new friend writhe ; for then, amidst all his am- 
 bitious visions of the future, he had seen Helen in the dis- 
 tance the reward of every labor, the fairest star in his horizon. 
 But he strove stoutly against the regret of the illusion lost; the 
 vivendi causes were left him still, and for the nymph that had 
 glided from his clasp, he clung at least to the laurel that was 
 left in her place. In the folds of his robust fortitude, Ard- 
 worth thus wrapped his secret. Neither of his young play- 
 mates suspected it. He would have disdained himself if he 
 had so poisoned their pleasure. That he suffered when alone, 
 much and bitterly, is not to be denied ; but in that masculine 
 and complete being, Love took its legitimate rank, amidst the 
 passions and cares of man. It soured no existence, it broke no 
 heart; the wind swept some blossoms from the bough, and 
 tossed wildly the agitated branches from root to summit, but 
 the trunk stood firm. 
 
 In some of these visits to Madame Palibard's, Ardworth re,-
 
 LUCRETIA. 263 
 
 Hewed with her the more private conversation which had so un- 
 settled his past convictions as to his birth, and so disturbed the 
 calm, strong currents of his mind. He was chiefly anxious to 
 learn what conjectures Madame Dalibard had formed as to his 
 parentage, and what ground there was for belief that he was 
 near in blood to herself, or that he was born to a station less 
 dependent on continuous exertion ; but on these points the 
 dark sibyl preserved an obstinate silence. She was satisfied 
 with the hints she had already thrown out and absolutely re- 
 fused to say more till better authorized by the inquiries she had 
 set on foot. Artfully she turned from these topics of closer 
 and more household interest, to those on which she had pre- 
 viously insisted connected with the general knowledge of man- 
 kind, and the complicated science of practical life. To fire his 
 genius, wing his energies, inflame his ambition above that slow, 
 laborious drudgery to which he had linked the chances of his 
 career, and which her fiery and rapid intellect was wholly un- 
 able to comprehend, save as a waste of life for uncertain and 
 distant objects, became her task. And she saw with delight 
 that Ardworth listened to her more assentingly than he had done 
 at first. In truth, the pain shut within his heart, the conflict 
 waged keenly between his reason and his passion, unfitted him, for 
 the time, for mere mechanical employment, in which his genius 
 could afford him no consolation. Now, genius is given toman, 
 not only to enlighten others, but to comfort as well as to elevate 
 himself. Thus, in all the sorrows of actual existence, the man 
 is doubly inclined to turn to his genius for distraction. Har- 
 assed in this world of action, he knocks at the gate of that 
 world of idea or fancy which he is privileged to enter; he es- 
 capes from the clay to the spirit. And rarely, till some great 
 grief comes, does the man in whom the celestial fire is lodged 
 know all the gift of which he is possessed. At last, Ard worth's 
 visits ceased abruptly. He shut himself up once more in his 
 chambers ; but the law books were laid aside. 
 
 Varney, who generally contrived to call when Ardworth was 
 not there, seldom interrupted the lovers in their little paradise 
 of the garden ; but he took occasion to ripen and cement his 
 intimacy with Percival: sometimes walked, or (if St. John had 
 his cabriolet) drove home and dined with him, t$te-&-'tete in 
 Curzon Street; and as he made Helen his chief subject of con- 
 versation, Percival could not but esteem him amongst the most 
 agreeable of men. With Helen, when Percival was not there, 
 Varney held some secret conferences secret even from Percival; 
 two or three times, before the hour in which Percival was ac^
 
 264 LUCRETIA. 
 
 customed to come, they had been out together: and Helen's 
 face looked more cheerful than usual on their return. It was 
 not surprising that Gabriel Varney, so displeasing to a man 
 like Ardworth, should have won little less favor with Helen 
 than with Percival ; for, to say nothing of an ease and suavity 
 of manner which stole into the confidence of those in whom to 
 confide was a natural propensity, his various acquisitions and 
 talents, imposing, from the surface over which they spread, and 
 the glitter which they made, had an inevitable effect upon a 
 mind so susceptible as Helen's to admiration for art and respect 
 for knowledge. But what chiefly conciliated her to Varney, 
 whom she regarded, moreover, as her aunt's most intimate 
 friend, was that she was persuaded he was unhappy, and wronged 
 by the world or fortune. Varney had a habit of so represent- 
 ing himself; of dwelling with a bitter eloquence which his 
 natural malignity made forcible on the injustice of the world 
 to superior intellect. He was a great accuser of Fate. It is 
 the illogical weakness of some evil natures to lay all their 
 crimes, and the consequences of crime, upon Destiny. There 
 was a heat, a vigor, a rush of words, and a readiness of strong, 
 if trite, imagery in what Varney said, that deceived the young 
 into the monstrous error that he was an enthusiast misan- 
 thropical, perhaps, but only so from enthusiasm. How could 
 Helen, whose slightest thought, when a star broke forth from 
 the cloud, or a bird sung suddenly from the copse, had more 
 of wisdom and of poetry than all Varney's gaudy and painted 
 seemings ever could even mimic how could she be so de- 
 ceived? Yet so it was. Here stood a man whose youth she 
 supposed had been devoted to refinement and elevating pursuits, 
 gifted, neglected, disappointed, solitary, and unhappy. She 
 saw little beyond. You had but to touch her pity to win her 
 interest, and to excite her trust. Of anything farther, even had 
 Percival never existed, she could not have dreamed. It was be- 
 cause a secret and undefinable repugnance, in the midst of pity, 
 trust, and friendship, put Varney altogether out of the light of 
 a possible lover, that all those sentiments were so easily kindled. 
 This repugnance arose not from the disparity between their years; 
 it was rather that nameless uncongeniality, which does not for- 
 bid friendship but is irreconcilable with love. To do Varney 
 justice, he never offered to reconcile the two. Not for love 
 did he secretly confer with Helen ; not for love did his heart 
 beat against the hand which reposed so carelessly on his mur- 
 tferous arm,
 
 LtickETiA. 2165 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE RATTLE OF THE SNAKE. 
 
 THE progress of affection between natures like those of Per- 
 cival and Helen, favored by free and constant intercourse, was 
 naturally rapid. It was scarcely five weeks from the day he 
 had first seen Helen, and he already regarded her as his 
 plighted bride. During the earlier days of his courtship, Per- 
 cival, enamoured and absorbed for the first time in his life, did 
 not hasten to make his mother the confidante of his happiness. 
 He had written but twice; and though he said briefly, in the 
 second letter, that he had discovered two relations, both inter- 
 esting, and one charming, he had deferred naming them, or 
 entering into detail. This, not alone from that indescribable 
 coyness which all have experienced in addressing even those 
 with whom they are most intimate, in the early, half unre- 
 vealed, and mystic emotions of first love; but because Lady 
 Mary's letters had been so full of her sister's declining health, 
 of her own anxieties and fears, that he had shrunk from giving 
 her a new subject of anxiety ; and a confidence, full of hope 
 and joy, seemed to him unfeeling and unseasonable. He knew 
 how necessarily uneasy and restless an avowal that his heart 
 was seriously engaged to one she had never seen, would make 
 that tender mother ; and that his confession would rather add 
 to her cares, than produce sympathy with his transports. But 
 now, feeling impatient for his mother's assent to the formal 
 proposals which had become due to Madame Dalibard and 
 Helen, and taking advantage of the letter last received from 
 her, which gave more cheering accounts of her sister, and ex- 
 pressed curiosity for further explanation as to his half-disclos- 
 ure, he wrote at length, and cleared his breast of all its secrets. 
 It was the same day in which he wrote that confession, and 
 pleaded his cause, that we accompany him to the house of his 
 sweet mistress, and leave him by her side, in the accustomed 
 garden. Within, Madame Dalibard, whose chair was set by 
 the window, bent over certain letters, which she took, one by 
 one, from her desk, and read slowly, lifting her eyes from time 
 to time, and glancing towards the young people, as they 
 walked, hand in hand, round the small demesnes, now hid by 
 the fading foliage, now emerging into view. Those letters 
 were the early love-epistles of William Mainwaring, She had 
 not recurred to them for years. Perhaps she now felt that food 
 necessary to the sustainment of her fiendish designs. It was a
 
 ?66 LUCRETIA. 
 
 strange spectacle, to see this being, so full of vital energy, 
 mobile and restless as a serpent ; condemned to that helpless 
 decrepitude, chained to the uneasy seat not as in the resigned 
 and passive imbecility of extreme age, but rather as one whom, 
 in the prime of life, the rack has broken, leaving the limbs 
 inert, the mind active, the form as one dead, the heart with 
 superabundant vigor a cripple's impotence, and a Titan's 
 will! What, in that dreary imprisonment, and amidst the 
 silence she habitually preserved, passed through the caverns of 
 that breast, one can no more conjecture, than one can count the 
 blasts that sweep and rage through the hollows of impenetrable 
 rock, or the elements that conflict in the bosom of the volcano, 
 everlastingly at work. She had read, and replaced the letters, 
 and leaning her cheek on her hand, was gazing vacantly on the 
 wall, when Varney intruded on that dismal solitude. 
 
 He closed the door after him with more than usual care ; 
 and, drawing a seat close to Lucretia, said: "Belle nitre, the 
 time has arrived for you to act my part is well nigh closed." 
 
 "Ay!" said Lucretia wearily ; "What is the news you bring?" 
 
 "First," replied Varney, and, as he spoke, he shut the win- 
 dow, as if his whisper could possibly be heard without ; "First, 
 all this business connected with Helen is at length arranged. 
 You know when, agreeably to your permission, I first suggested 
 to her, as it were casually, that you were so reduced in fortune, 
 that I trembled to regard your future ; that you had years ago 
 sacrificed nearly half your pecuniary resources to maintain her 
 parents ; she of herself reminded me that she was entitled, when 
 of age, to a sum far exceeding all her wants, and " 
 
 "That I might be a pensioner on the child of William Main- 
 waring and Susan Mivers," interrputed Lucretia. "I know 
 that, and thank her not. Pass on." 
 
 "And you know, too, that in the course of my conversation 
 with the girl, I let out also incidentally that, even so, you were 
 dependent on the chances of her life; that if she died (and 
 youth itself is mortal) before she was of age, the sum left her 
 by her grandfather would revert to her father's family ; and so, 
 by hints, I drew her on to ask if there was no mode by which, 
 in case of her death, she might ensure subsistence to you. So 
 that you see the whole scheme was made at her own prompt- 
 ing. I did but, as a man of business, suggest the means 
 an insurance on her life." 
 
 "Varney, these 'details are hateful. I do not doubt that you 
 have done all to forstall inquiry and elude risk. The girl has 
 insured her life to the amount of her fortune?"
 
 LUCRETIA. 267 
 
 "To that amount only! Pooh! Her death will buy more 
 than that! As no one single office will insure for more than 
 5000, and as it was easy to persuade her that such offices 
 were liable to failure, and that it was usual to insure in several, 
 and for a larger amount than the sum desired, I got her to 
 enter herself at three of the principal offices. The amount paid 
 to us on her death will be fifteen thousand pounds. It will be 
 paid (and here. I have followed the best legal advice) in trust 
 to me for your benefit. Hence, therefore, even if our re- 
 searches fail us ; if no son of yours can be found, with suffi- 
 cient evidence to prove, against the keen interests and bought 
 advocates of heirs-at-law, the right to Laughton, this girl will 
 repay us well ; will replace what I have taken, at the risk of my 
 neck, perhaps certainly at the risk of the hulks, from the cap- 
 ital of my uncle's legacy will refund what we have spent on 
 the inquiry, and the residue will secure to you an independence 
 sufficing for your wants almost for life, and to me, what will 
 purchase with economy" (and Varney smiled) "a year or so of 
 a gentleman's idle pleasures. Are you satisfied thus far?" 
 
 "She will die happy and innocent!" muttered Lucretia, 
 with the growl of demoniac disappointment. 
 
 "Will you wait, then, till my forgery is detected, and I have 
 no power to buy the silence of the trustees wait till I am in 
 prison, and on a trial for life and death? Reflect, every day, 
 every hour of delay, is fraught with peril. But if my safety is 
 nothing compared to the refinement of your revenge, will 
 you wait till Helen marries Percival St. John. You start! 
 But can you suppose that this innocent love-play will not pass 
 rapidly to its denouement? It is but yesterday that Percival 
 confided to me that he should write this very day to his mother, 
 and communicate all his feelings and his hopes ; that he waited 
 but her assent to propose formally for Helen. Now one of 
 two things must happen. Either this mother, haughty and 
 vain as lady mothers mostly are, may refuse consent to her 
 son's marriage with the daughter of a disgraced banker, and 
 the niece of that Lucretia Dalibard whom her husband would 
 not admit beneath his roof 
 
 "Hold, sir!" exclaimed Lucretia haughtily, and amidst all 
 the passions that darkened her countenance and degraded her 
 soul, some flash of her ancestral spirit shot across her brow ; 
 but it passed quickly, and she added, with fierce composure: 
 "You are right; go on!" 
 
 "Either and pardon me for an insult that comes not from 
 pae either this will be the case ; Lady Mary St. John will hasten
 
 268 LUCRETIA. 
 
 back in alarm to London ; she exercises extraordinary con- 
 trol over her son ; she may withdraw him from us altogether 
 from me as well as you and the occasion now presented to us 
 may be lost (who knows?) forever; or she may be a weak and 
 fond woman; may be detained in Italy by her sister's illness; 
 may be anxious that the last lineal descendant of the St. Johns 
 should marry betimes; and, moved by her darling's prayers, 
 may consent at once to the union. Or a third course, which 
 Percival thinks the most probable, and which, though most 
 unwelcome to us of all, I had well-nigh forgotten, may be 
 adopted. She may come to England, and, in order to judge 
 her son's choice with her own eyes, may withdraw Helen from 
 your roof to hers. At all events, delays are dangerous dan- 
 gerous, putting aside my personal interest, and regarding only 
 your own object may bring to our acts new and searching 
 eyes ; may cut us off from the habitual presence either of Per- 
 cival, or Helen, or both ; or surround them, at the first breath 
 of illness, with prying friends, and formidable precautions. 
 The birds now are in our hands. Why then open the cage and 
 bid them fly, in order to spread the net? This morning all the 
 final documents with the insurance companies are completed. It 
 remains for me but to pay the first quarterly premiums. For 
 that I think I am prepared without drawing farther on your 
 hoards or my own scanty resources, which Grabman will take 
 care to drain fast enough." 
 
 "And Percival St. John?" said Madame Dalibard. "We 
 want no idle sacrifices. If my son be not found, we need not 
 that boy's ghost amongst those who haunt us." 
 
 "Surely not," said Varney; "and for my part, he may be 
 more useful to me alive than dead. There is no insurance on 
 his life, and a rich friend (credulous greenhorn that he is!) is 
 scarcely of that flock of geese which it were wise to slay from 
 the mere hope of a golden egg. Percival St. John is your vic- 
 tim, not mine; not till you give the order, would I lift a finger 
 to harm him." 
 
 "Yes. let him live, unless my son be found to me," said 
 Madame Dalibard, almost exultingly: "let him live to forget 
 yon fair-faced fool, leaning now, see you, so delightedly on his 
 arm, and fancying eternity in the hollow vows of love ! Let 
 him live to wrong and abandon her by forgetfulness, though 
 even in the grave ; to laugh at his boyish dreams ; to sully her 
 memory in the arms of harlots! Oh, if the dead can suffer, 
 let him live, that she may feel beyond the grave his incon- 
 stancy and his fall! Methinks that that thought will comfort
 
 LUCRETiA. 
 
 me, if Vincent be no more, and I stand childless in the 
 world!" 
 
 "It is so settled, then," said Varney, ever ready to clench 
 the business that promised gold, and relieve his apprehen- 
 sions of the detection of his fraud. "And now to your noise- 
 less hands, as soon as may be, I consign the girl: she has 
 lived long enough!" 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 LOVE AND INNOCENCE. 
 
 WHILE this the conference between these execrable and raven- 
 ing birds of night and prey, Helen and her boy-lover were thus 
 conversing in the garden, while the autumn sun for it was in 
 the second week of October broke pleasantly through the yel- 
 lowing leaves of the tranquil shrubs, and the flowers, which 
 should have died with the gone summer, still fresh by their 
 tender care, despite the lateness of the season, smiled grate- 
 fully as their light footsteps passed. 
 
 "Yes, Helen," said Percival; "yes, you will love my mother, 
 for she is one of those people who seem to attract love, as if it 
 were a property belonging to them. Even my dog Beau (you 
 know how fond Beau is of me /) always nestles at her feet when 
 we are at home. I own she has pride, but it is a pride that 
 never offended any one. You know there are some flowers 
 that we call proud. The pride of the flower is not more harm- 
 less than my mother's. But perhaps pride is not the right 
 word ; it is rather the aversion to anything low or mean, the 
 admiration for everything pure and high. Ah, how that very 
 pride, if pride it be, will make her love you, my Helen!" 
 
 "You need not tell me," said Helen, smiling seriously, 
 "that I shall love your mother, I love her already nay, from 
 the first moment you said you had a mother, my heart leaped 
 to her. Your mother! If ever you are really jealous, it mtist 
 be of her! But that she should love me that is what I doubt 
 and fear. For if you were my brother, Percival, I should be 
 so ambitious for you. A nymph must rise from the stream, a 
 sylphid from the rose, before I could allow another to steal you 
 from my side. And if I think I should feel this only as your 
 sister, what can be precious enough to satisfy a mother?" 
 
 "You, and you only," answered Percival, with his blithe- 
 some laugh: "You, my sweet Helen,, much better than nymph 
 or sylphid, about whom, between ourselves, I never cared 
 three straws, even in a poem. How pleased you will be with
 
 27 6 LUCRfcTiA. 
 
 Laughton! Do you know, I was lying awake all last night, to 
 consider what room you would like best for your own. And at 
 last, I have decided come, listen it opens from the music- 
 gallery that overhangs the hall. From the window, you over- 
 look the southern side of the park, and catch a view of the 
 lake beyond. There are two niches in the wall : one for your 
 piano, one for your favorite books. It is just large enough to 
 hold four persons with ease: our mother and myself, your 
 aunt, whom by that time we shall have petted into good humor, 
 and if we can coax Ardworth there the best good fellow that 
 ever lived I think our party will be complete. By the way, I 
 am uneasy about Ardworth, it is so long since we have seen 
 him ; I have called three times nay, five but his odd- 
 looking clerk always swears he is not at home. Tell me, 
 Helen, now, you who know him so well, tell me, how can I 
 serve him? You know, I am so terribly rich (at least, I shall 
 be in a month or two), I can never get through my money, 
 unless my friends will help me. And is it not shocking that 
 that noble fellow should be so poor, and yet suffer me to call 
 him 'friend,' as if in friendship one man should want every- 
 thing, and the other nothing. Still, I don't know how to ven- 
 ture to propose come, you understand me, Helen let us lay 
 our wise heads together, and make him well off, in spite of 
 himself." 
 
 It was in this loose, ooyish talk of Percival's that he found 
 the way, not only to Helen's heart, but to her soul. For in 
 this, she (grand, undeveloped poetess) recognized a nobler 
 poetry than we chain to rhythm the poetry of generous deeds. 
 She yearned to kiss the warm hand she held, and drew nearer 
 to his side as she answered: "And sometimes, dear, dear Per- 
 cival, you wonder why I would rather listen to you than to all 
 Mr. Varney's bitter eloquence, or even to my dear cousin's 
 aspiring ambition. They talk well, but it is of themselves; 
 while you " 
 
 Percival blushed, and checked her. 
 
 "Well," she said; "Well, to your question. Alas! you 
 know little of my cousin, if you think all our arts could decoy 
 him out of his rugged independence, and, much as I love him, 
 I could not wish it. But do not fear for him ; he is one of 
 those who are born to succeed, and without help." 
 
 "How do you know that, pretty prophetess?" said Percival, 
 with the superior air of manhood. "I have seen more of the 
 world than you have, and I cannot see why Ardworth should suc- 
 ceed as you call it ; or, if so, why he should succeed less if he
 
 LtJCRETIA. 271 
 
 swung his hammock in a better berth than that hole in Gray's 
 Inn, and would just let me keep him a cab and a groom." 
 
 Had Percival talked of keeping John Ardworth an elephant 
 and a palanquin, Helen could not have been more amused. 
 She clapped her little hands in a delight that provoked Perci- 
 val, and laughed out loud. Then seeing her boy-lover's lip 
 pouted petulantly, and his brow was overcast, she said more 
 seriously : 
 
 "Do you not know what it is to feel convinced of something 
 which you cannot explain? Well, I feel this as to my cousin's 
 fame and fortunes. Surely, too, you must feel it, you scarce 
 know why, when he speaks of that future, which seems so dim 
 and so far to me, as of something that belonged to him." 
 
 "Very true, Helen," said Percival; "he lays it out like the 
 map of his estate. One can't laugh when he says so carelessly : 
 'At such an age I shall lead my circuit; at such an age I shall 
 be rich ; at such an age I shall enter Parliament and beyond 
 that I shall look as yet no further.' And, poor fellow, then he 
 will be forty-three! And in the mean while, to suffer such pri- 
 vations!" 
 
 "There are no privations to one who lives in the future," 
 said Helen, with that noble intuition .into lofty natures which at 
 times flashed from her childish simplicity, foreshadowing what, 
 if Heaven spare her life, her maturer intellect may develop : 
 "For Ardworth there is no such thing as poverty. He is as rich 
 in his hopes as we are in " She stopped short, blushed, and 
 continued with downcast looks: "As well might you pity me 
 in these walks, so dreary without you. I do not live in them 
 I live in my thoughts of you." 
 
 Her voice trembled with emotion in those last words. She 
 slid from Percival's arm, and timidly sate down (and he beside 
 her) on a little mound under the single chesnut tree that 
 threw its shade over the garden. 
 
 Both were silent for some moments Percival with grateful 
 ecstacy, Helen with one of those sudden fits of mysterious 
 melancholy, to which her nature was so subjected. 
 
 He was the first to speak. "Helen," he said gravely, 
 "since I have known you, I feel as if life were a more solemn 
 thing than I ever regarded it before. It seems to me as if a 
 new and more arduous duty were added to those for which I was 
 prepared a duty, Helen, to become worthy of you ! Will you 
 smile? No you will not smile, if I say I have had my brief 
 moments of ambition. Sometimes as a boy, with Plutarch in 
 my hand, stretched idly under the old cedar trees at Laugh-
 
 $1* LUCRE?! A. 
 
 ton ; sometimes as a sailor, when, becalmed on the Atlantic, 
 and my ears freshly filled with tales of Collingvvood and Nel- 
 son, I stole from my comrades, and leant, musingly, over the 
 boundless sea. But when this ample heritage passed to me ; 
 when I had no more my own fortunes to make, my own rank 
 to build up such dreams became less and less frequent: Is it 
 not true that wealth makes us contented to be obscure? Yes; 
 I understand, while I speak, why poverty itself befriends, not 
 cripples, Ardworth's energies. But since I have known you, 
 dearest Helen, those dreams return more vividly than ever. 
 He who claims you, should be must be something nobler 
 than the crowd! Helen!" and he rose by an irresistible and 
 restless impulse, "I shall not be contented till you areas proud 
 of your choice as I of mine!" 
 
 It seemed, as Percival spoke and looked, as if boyhood were 
 cast from him forever. The unusual weight and gravity of his 
 words, to which his tone gave even eloquence, the steady flash 
 of his dark eyes, his erect, elastic form all had the dignity of 
 man. Helen gazed on him silently, and with a heart so full 
 that words could not come, and tears overflowed instead. 
 
 That sight sobered him at once ; he knelt down beside her, 
 threw his arms around her it was his first embrace and kissed 
 the tears away. 
 
 "How have I distressed you? Why do you weep?" 
 
 "Let me weep on, Percival, dear Percival! These tears are 
 like prayers they speak to Heaven and of you!" 
 
 A step came noiselessly over the grass, and between the lov- 
 ers and the sunlight stood Gabriel Varney. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 SUDDEN CELEBRITY AND PATIENT HOPE. 
 
 PERCIVAL was unusually gloomy and abstracted in his way 
 to town that day, though Varney was his companion, and in 
 the full play of those animal spirits which he owed to his un- 
 rivalled physical^ organization and the obtuseness of his con- 
 science. Seeing, at length, that his gayety did not communi- 
 cate itself to Percival, he paused and looked at him suspi- 
 ciously. A falling leaf startles the steed, and a shadow the 
 guilty man. 
 
 "You are sad, Percival?" he said inquiringly. "What has 
 disturbed you?" 
 
 "It is nothing or, at least, would seem nothing to you,"
 
 LUCRETIA. 273 
 
 answered Percival, with an effort to smile, "for I have heard 
 you laugh at the doctrine of presentiments. We sailors are 
 more superstitious." 
 
 "What presentiment can yon possibly entertain?" asked 
 Varney, more anxiously than Percival could have anticipated. 
 
 "Presentiments are not so easily defined, Varney. But, in 
 truth, poor Helen has infected me. Have you not remarked, 
 that, gay as she habitually is, some shadow comes over her so 
 suddenly, that one cannot trace the cause?" 
 
 "My dear Percival," said Varney, after a short pause, 
 "what you say does not surprise me. It would be false kind- 
 ness to conceal from you that I heard Madame Dalibard say that 
 her mother was, when about her age, threatened with consump- 
 tive symptoms, but she lived many years afterwards. Nay, 
 nay, rally yourself; Helen's appearance, despite the extreme 
 purity of her complexion, is not that of one threatened by the 
 terrible malady of our climate. The young are often haunted 
 with the idea of early death. As we grow older,; that thought 
 is less cherished ; in youth it is a sort of luxury. To this 
 mournful idea (which you see, you have remarked as well as I), 
 we must attribute not only Helen's occasional melancholy, but 
 a generosity of forethought, which I cannot deny myself the 
 pleasure of communicating to you, though her delicacy would 
 be shocked at my indiscretion. You know how helpless her 
 aunt is. Well, Helen, who is entitled, when of age, to a mod- 
 erate competence, has persuaded me to insure her life, and 
 accept a trust to hold the moneys (if ever unhappily due) for 
 the benefit of my mother-in-law, so that Madame Dalibard may 
 not be left destitute, if her niece die before she is twenty-one. 
 How like Helen! Is it not?" 
 
 Percival was too overcome to answer. 
 
 Varney resumed: "I entreat you not to mention this to 
 Helen ; it would offend her modesty to have the secret of her 
 good deeds thus betrayed by one to whom alone she confided 
 them. I could not resist her entreaties; though, cntre-nous, it 
 cripples me not a little to advance for her the necessary sums 
 for the premiums. Apropos, this brings me to a point on 
 which I feel, as the vulgar idiom goes, 'very awkward,' as I 
 always do in these confounded money matters. But you were 
 good enough to ask me to paint you a couple of pictures for 
 Laughton. Now, if you could let me have some portion of 
 the sum, whatever it be (for I don't price my paintings to 
 you), it would very much oblige me." 
 
 Percival turned away his face as he wrung Varney's hand,
 
 274 LUCRETIA. 
 
 and muttered, with a choked voice: "Let me have my share 
 in Helen's divine forethought. Good Heavens! she, so young, 
 to look thus beyond the grave, always for others for others!" 
 
 Callous as the wretch was, Percival's emotion and his proposal 
 struck Varney with a sentiment like compunction. He had 
 designed to appropriate the lover's gold, as it was now offered; 
 but that Percival himself should propose it, blind to the grave 
 to which that gold paved the way, was a horror not counted in 
 those to which his fell cupidity and his goading apprehensions 
 had familiarized his conscience. 
 
 "No," he said, with one of those wayward scruples to which 
 the blackest criminals are sometimes susceptible ; "no. I have 
 promised Helen to regard this as a loan to her, which she is to 
 repay me when of age. What you may advance me is for the 
 pictures. I have a right to do as I please with what is bought 
 by my own labor. And the subjects of the pictures what 
 shall they be?" 
 
 "For one picture try and recall Helen's aspect and attitude 
 when you came to us in the garden, and entitle your subject, 
 'The Foreboding.' " 
 
 "Hem!" said Varney hesitatingly. "And the other sub- 
 ject?" 
 
 "Wait for that, till the joy-bells at Laughton have welcomed 
 a bride, and then and then, Varney," added Percival, with 
 something of his natural joyous smile, "you must take the ex- 
 pression as you find it. Once under my care, and, please 
 Heaven, the one picture shall laughingly upbraid the other!" 
 
 As this was said, the cabriolet stopped at Percival's door. 
 Varney dined with him that day; and if the conversation 
 flagged, it did not revert to the subject which had so darkened 
 the bright spirits of the host, and so tried the hypocrisy of 
 the guest. When Varney left, which he did as soon as the 
 dinner was concluded, Percival silently put a check into his 
 hands, to a greater amount than Varney had anticipated even 
 from his generosity. 
 
 "This is for four pictures, not two," he said, shaking his 
 head; and then, with his characteristic conceit, he added: 
 "Well, some years hence, the world shall not call them over- 
 paid. Adieu, my Medici; a dozen such men, and Art would 
 revive in England." 
 
 When he was left alone, Percival sate down, and, leaning his 
 face on both hands, gave way to the gloom which his native 
 manliness, and the delicacy that belongs to true affection, had 
 made him struggle not to indulge in the presence of another.
 
 LUCRETIA. 275 
 
 Never had he so loved Helen as in that hour ; never had he so 
 intimately and intensely felt her matchless worth. The image 
 of her unselfish, quiet, melancholy consideration for that au- 
 stere, uncaressing, unsympathizing relation, under whose shade 
 her young heart must have withered, seemed to him filled with 
 a celestial pathos. And he almost hated Varney that the cynic 
 painter could have talked of it with that business-like phlegm. 
 The evening deepened ; the tranquil street grew still ; the air 
 seemed close ; the solitude oppressed him ; he rose abruptly, 
 seized his hat, and went forth, slowly, and still with a heavy 
 heart. 
 
 As he entered Piccadilly, on the broad step of that house 
 successively inhabited by the Duke of Queensbury and Lord 
 Hertford, on the step of that mansion, up which so many 
 footsteps light with wanton pleasure have gayly trod, Percival's 
 eye fell upon a wretched, squalid, ragged object, doubled up, 
 as it were, in that last despondency which has ceased to beg, 
 that has no care to steal, that has no wish to live. Percival 
 halted, and touched the outcast. 
 
 ' ' What is the matter, my poor fellow ? Take care the police- 
 man will not suffer you to rest here. Come, cheer up, I say! 
 There is something to find you a better lodging!" 
 
 The silver fell unheeded on the stones. The thing of rags 
 did not even raise its head, but a low broken voice muttered : 
 
 "It be too late now let 'em take me to prison : let 'em send 
 me 'cross the sea to Buttany; let 'em hang me, if they please. 
 I be's good for nothing now nothing!" 
 
 Altered as the voice was, it struck Percival as familiar. He 
 looked down and caught a view of the drooping face. 
 
 "Up, man, up!" he said, cheerily; "See, Providence sends 
 you an old friend in need, to teach you never to despair again." 
 
 The hearty accent, more than the words, touched and 
 aroused the poor creature. He rose mechanically, and a sickly, 
 grateful smile passed over his wasted features, as he recognized 
 St. John. 
 
 "Come, how is this? I have always understood that to keep 
 a crossing was a flourishing trade nowadays." 
 
 "I 'as no crossin.' I 'as sold her!" groaned Beck. "I be's 
 good for nothin' now, but to cadge about the streets, and steal, 
 and filch, and hang like the rest on us! Thank you, kindly, sir, 
 (and Beck pulled his forelock), but, please your 'onor, I vould 
 rather make an ind on it!" 
 
 "Pooh, pooh! Didn't I tell you when you wanted a friend 
 to come to me? Why did you doubt me, foolish fellow? Pick
 
 276 LUCRETIA. 
 
 up those shillings get a bed and a supper. Come and see me 
 to-morrow at nine o'clock; you know where the same house 
 in Curzon Street; you shall tell me then your whole story, and 
 it shall go hard but I'll buy you another crossing, or get you 
 something just as good." 
 
 Poor Beck swayed a moment or two : on his slender legs, like 
 a drunken man, and then suddenly falling on his knees, he 
 kissed the hem of his benefactor's garment, and fairly wept. 
 Those tears relieved him : they seemed to wash the drought of 
 despair from his heart. 
 
 "Hush, hush! or we shall have a crowd round us. You'll 
 not forget, my poor friend, No. Curzon Street nine to- 
 morrow. Make haste, now, and get food and rest; you look 
 indeed, as if you wanted them. Ah! would to Heaven all the 
 poverty in this huge city stood here in thy person, and we 
 could aid it as easily as I can thee!" 
 
 Percival had moved on as he said those last words, and, look- 
 ing back, he had the satisfaction to see that Beck was slowly 
 crawling after him, and had escaped the grim question of a very 
 portly policeman, who had no doubt expressed a natural in- 
 dignation at the audacity of so ragged a skeleton not keeping 
 itself respectably at home in its churchyard. 
 
 Entering one of the clubs in St. James's Street, Percival 
 found a small knot of politicians in eager conversation respect- 
 ing a new book which had been published but a day or two 
 before, but which had already seized the public attention with 
 that strong grasp which constitutes always an era in an author's 
 life, sometimes an epoch in a nation's literature. The news- 
 papers were full of extracts from the work the gossips of con- 
 jecture as to the authorship. We need scarcely say that a book 
 which makes this kind of sensation must hit some popular feel- 
 ing of the hour, supply some popular want. Ninety-nine times 
 out of a hundred, therefore, its character is political : it was so in 
 the present instance. It may be remembered that that year Par- 
 liament sate during great part of the month of October, that it 
 was the year in which the Reform Bill was rejected by the 
 House of Lords, and that public feeling in our time had never 
 been so keenly excited. This work appeared during the short 
 interval between the rejection of the Bill and the prorogation 
 of Parliament.* And what made it more remarkable, was that 
 while stamped with the passion of the time, there was a weight 
 of calm and stern reasoning embodied in its vigorous periods, 
 which gave to the arguments of the advocate something of the 
 
 * Parliament was prorogued October 20 ; the bill rejected by the Lords, October g,
 
 LUCRETIA. 277 
 
 impartiality of the judge. Unusually abstracted and unsocial, 
 for, despite his youth and that peculiar bashfulness before 
 noticed, he was generally alive enough to all that passed around 
 him, Percival paid little attention to the comments that circu- 
 lated round the easy-chairs in his vicinity, till a subordinate in 
 the administration, with whom he was slightly acquainted, 
 pushed a small volume towards him, and said: 
 
 "You have seen this, of course, St. John? Ten to one you 
 
 do not guess the author. It is certainly not B m, though 
 
 the Lord Chancellor has energy enough for anything. R 
 
 says it has a touch of S r. " 
 
 "Could M y have written it?" asked a young member 
 
 of Parliament timidly. 
 
 "M y! Very like his matchless style, to be sure! 
 
 You can have read little of M y, I should think," said the 
 
 subordinate, with the true sneer of an official and a critic. 
 
 The young member could have slunk into a nutshell. 
 
 Percival, with very languid interest, glanced over the volume. 
 But despite his mood, and his moderate affection for political 
 writings, the passage he opened upon struck and seized him 
 unawares. Though the sneer of the official was just, and the 
 
 style was not comparable to M y's (whose is? ), still the 
 
 steady rush of strong words strong with strong thoughts 
 heaped massively together, showed the ease of genius and the 
 gravity of thought: the absence of all effeminate glitter, the 
 iron grapple with the pith and substance of the argument op- 
 posed, seemed familiar to Percival. He thought he heard the 
 deep bass of John Ardworth's earnest voice, when some truth 
 roused his advocacy, or some falsehood provoked his wrath. 
 He put down the book, bewildered. Could it be the obscure, 
 briefless lawyer in Gray's Inn (that very morning the object 
 of his young pity), who was thus lifted into fame? He smiled 
 at his own credulity. But he listened with more attention to 
 the enthusiastic praises that circled round, and the various 
 guesses which accompanied them. Soon, however, his former 
 gloom returned the Babel began to chafe and weary him. He 
 rose and went forth again into the air. He strolled on without 
 purpose, but mechanically, into the street where he had first 
 seen Helen. He paused a few moments under the colonnade 
 which faced Beck's old deserted crossing. His pause attracted 
 the notice of one of the unhappy beings whom we suffer to 
 pollute our streets and rot in our hospitals. She approached 
 and spoke to him to him whose heart was so full of Helen! 
 He shuddered, and strode on. At length, he paused before
 
 278 LtfCRETIA. 
 
 the twin towers of Westminster Abbey, on which the moon 
 rested in solemn splendor; and in that space, one man only 
 shared his solitude. A figure with folded arms leant against 
 the iron rails, near the statue of Canning, and his gaze compre- 
 hended in one view, the walls of the Parliament, in which all 
 passions wage their war, and the glorious abbey, which gives 
 a Walhalla to the great. The utter stillness of the figure so in 
 unison with the stillness of the scene, had upon Percival more 
 effect than would have been produced by the most clamorous 
 crowd. He looked round curiously, as he passed, and uttered 
 an exclamation, as he recognized John Ardworth. 
 
 "You, Percival!" said Ardworth; "A strange meeting-place 
 at this hour! What can bring you hither?" 
 
 "Only whim, I fear and you?" as Percival linked his 
 arm into Ardworth' s. 
 
 ' ' Twenty years hence I will tell you what brought me hither ! ' ' 
 answered Ardworth, moving slowly back towards Whitehall. 
 
 "If we are alive then!" 
 
 "We live till our destinies below are fulfilled; till our uses 
 have passed from us in this sphere, and rise to benefit another. 
 For the soul is as a sun, but with this noble distinction, the sun 
 is confined in its career; day after day it visits the s^me lands, 
 gilds the same planets, or rather, as the astronomers hold, 
 stands the motionless centre of moving worlds. But the soul, 
 when it sinks into seeming darkness and the deep, rises to 
 new destinies, fresh regions unvisited before. What we call 
 Eternity may be but an endless series of those transitions, which 
 men call deaths, abandonments of home after home, ever to 
 fairer scenes and loftier heights. Age after age, the spirit, 
 that glorious Nomad, may shift its tent, fated not to rest in the 
 dull Elysium of the Heathen, but carrying with it ever more 
 its elements, Activity and Desire. Why should the soul ever 
 repose? God, its Principle, reposes never. While we speak, 
 new worlds are sparkling forth suns are throwing off their 
 nebulae, nebulae are hardening into worlds. The Almighty 
 proves his existence by creating. Think you that Plato is at 
 rest, and Shakspeare only basking on a sun-cloud? Labor is the 
 very essence of spirit as of divinity ; labor is the purgatory of 
 the erring; it may become the hell of the wicked, but labor is 
 not less the heaven of the good!" 
 
 Ardworth spoke with unusual earnestness and passion ; and 
 his idea of the future was emblematic of his own active nature: 
 for each of us is wisely left to shape out, amidst the impenetra- 
 ble mists, his own ideal of the Hereafter. The warrior child
 
 LUCRETIA. 279 
 
 of the biting North placed his Hela amid snows, and his Him- 
 mel in the banquets of victorious war ; the son of the East, 
 parched by relentless summer, his hell amidst fire, and 1m 
 elysium by cooling streams ; the weary peasant sighs through 
 life for rest, and rest awaits his vision beyond the grave ; the 
 workman of genius ever ardent, ever young honors toil as the 
 glorious development of being, and springs refreshed over the 
 abyss of the grave, to follow, from star to star, the progress 
 that seems to him at once the supreme felicity and the neces- 
 sary law. So be it with the fantasy of each! Wisdom that is 
 infallible, and love that never sleeps, watch over the dark- 
 ness and bid darkness be, that we may dream ! 
 
 "Alas!" said the young listener, "what reproof do you not 
 convey to those, like me, who devoid of the power which gives re- 
 sults to every toil, have little left to them in life, but to idle 
 life away. All have not the gift to write, or harangue, or specu- 
 late, or " 
 
 "Friend," interrupted Ardworth bluntly; "do not belie 
 yourself. There lives not a man on earth out of a lunatic 
 asylum who has not in him the power to do good. What can 
 writers, haranguers, or speculators do more than that? Have 
 you ever entered a cottage, ever travelled in a coach, ever talked 
 with a peasant in the field, or loitered with a mechanic at the 
 loom, and not found that each of those men had a talent you 
 had not; knew some things you knew not? The most useless 
 creature that ever yawned at a club, or counted the vermin on 
 his rags under the suns of Calabria, has no excuse for want of 
 intellect. What men want is, not talent, it is purpose; in other 
 words, not the power to achieve, but the will to labor. You, 
 Percival Saint John you affect to despond, lest you should 
 not have your uses; you with that fresh warm heart; you with 
 that pure enthusiasm for what is fresh and good; you, who 
 can even admire a thing like Varney, because, through the 
 tawdry man, you recognize art and skill, even though wasted 
 in spoiling canvas; you, who have only to live as you feel, in 
 order to diffuse blessings all around you. fie, foolish boy! 
 You will own your error when I tell you why I come from my 
 rooms at Gray's Inn to see the walls in which Hampden, a plain 
 country squire like you, shook with plain words the tyranny of 
 eight hundred years." 
 
 "Ardworth, I will not wait your time to tell me what took 
 you yonder. I have penetrated a secret that you, not kindly, 
 kept from me. This morning you rose and found yourself 
 famous ; this evening you have come to gaze upon the scene
 
 280 LUCRET1A. 
 
 of the career to which that fame will more rapidly conduct 
 you " 
 
 "And upon the tomb which the proudest ambition I can form 
 on earth must content itself to win ! A poor conclusion, if all 
 ended here!" 
 
 "I am right, however," said Percival, with boyish pleasure. 
 "It is you whose praises have just filled my ears. You, dear 
 dear Ardworth! How rejoiced I am!" 
 
 Ard worth pressed heartily the hand extended to him: "I 
 should have trusted you with my secret to-morrow, Percival ; 
 as it is, keep it for the present. A craving of my nature has 
 been satisfied, a grief has found distraction ; as for the rest, 
 any child who throws a stone into the water with all his force 
 can make a splash ; but he would be a fool, indeed, if he sup- 
 posed that the splash was a sign that he had turned a stream." 
 
 Here Ardworth ceased abruptly, and Percival, engrossed by 
 a bright idea, which had suddenly occurred to him, exclaimed : 
 
 "Ardworth, your desire, your ambition, is to enter Parlia- 
 ment ; there must be a dissolution shortly the success of your 
 book will render you acceptable to many a popular constitu- 
 ency. All you can want is a sum for the necessary expenses. 
 Borrow that sum from me, repay me when you are in the cabi- 
 net, or attorney-general. It shall be so!" 
 
 A look so bright, that even by that dull lamplight the glow 
 of the cheek, the brilliancy of the eye were visible, flashed over 
 Ardworth's face. He felt at that moment what ambitious man 
 must feel when the object he has seen dimly and afar is placed 
 within his grasp ; but his reason was proof even against that 
 strong temptation. 
 
 He passed his arm round the boy's slender waist, and drew 
 him to his heart, with grateful affection, as he replied: 
 
 "And what, if now in Parliament, giving up my career, with 
 no regular means of subsistence, what could I be, but a venal 
 adventurer? Place would become so vitally necessary tome, 
 that I should feed but a dangerous war between my conscience 
 and my wants. In chasing Fame, the shadow, I should lose 
 the substance, Independence ; why, that very thought would 
 paralyze my tongue. No, no my generous friend. As labor 
 is the arch elevator of man, so patience is the essence of labor. 
 First let me build the foundation, I may then calculate the 
 height of my tower. First let me be independent of the great ; 
 I will then be the champion of the lowly. Hold ! Tempt me 
 no more! Do not lure me to the loss of self-esteem! And 
 now, Percival," resumed Ardworth, in the tone of one who
 
 LUCRETIA. 281 
 
 wishes to plunge into some utterly new current of thought, "let 
 us forget for awhile these solemn aspirations, and be frolicsome 
 and human. ' Nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit.' ' Neque 
 semper arcum tendit Apollo.' What say you to a cigar?" 
 
 Percival stared. He was not yet familiarized to the eccen- 
 tric whims of his friend! 
 
 "Hot negus and a cigar!" repeated Ardworth, while a smile, 
 full of drollery, played round the corners of his lips, and 
 twinkled in his deep-set eyes. 
 
 "Are you serious?" 
 
 "Not serious I have been serious enough (and Ardworth 
 sighed) for the last three weeks. Who goes 'to Corinth to be 
 sage'; or to the Cider Cellar to be serious?" 
 
 "I subscribe, then, to the negus and cigar, " said Percival, 
 smiling; and he had no cause to repent his compliance, as he 
 accompanied Ardworth to one of the resorts favored by that 
 strange person in his rare hours of relaxation. 
 
 For, seated at his favorite table, which happened, luckily, to 
 be vacant, with his head thrown carelessly back, and his negus 
 steaming before him, John Ardworth continued to pour forth, 
 till the clock struck three, jest upon jest, pun upon pun, broad 
 drollery upon broad drollery, without flagging, without inter- 
 mission so varied, so copious, so ready, so irresistible, that 
 Percival was transported out of all his melancholy, in enjoy- 
 ing, for the first time in his life, the exuberant gayety of a 
 grave mind once set free, all its intellect sparkling into wit, all 
 its passion rushing into humor. And this was the man he had 
 pitied! supposed to. have no sunny side to his life! How 
 much greater had been his compassion and his wonder, if he 
 could have known all that had passed, within the last few 
 weeks, through that gloomy yet silent breast, which, by the 
 very breadth of its mirth, showed what must be the depth of its 
 sadness ! 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE LOSS OF THE CROSSING. 
 
 DESPITE the lateness of the hour before he got to rest, Per- 
 cival had already breakfasted, when his valet informed him, 
 with raised, supercilious eyebrows, that "an uncommon ragged 
 sort of a person insisted that he had been told to call." 
 Though Beck had been at the house before, and the valet had 
 admitted him, so much thinner, so much more ragged was he 
 now, that the trim servant no close observer of such folks
 
 282 LUCRETIA. 
 
 did not recognize him. However, at Percival's order, too 
 well-bred to show surprise, he ushered Beck up with much 
 civility; and St. John was painfully struck with the ravages a 
 few weeks had made upon the sweeper's countenance. The 
 lines were so deeply ploughed, the dry hair looked so thin, and 
 was so sown with gray, that Beck might have beat all Farren's 
 skill in the part of an old man. 
 
 The poor Sweeper's tale, extricated from its peculiar phrase- 
 ology, was simple enough, and soon told: He had returned at 
 night to find his hoards stolen, and the labor of his life over- 
 thrown. How he passed that night he did not very well re- 
 member. We may well suppose that the little reason he pos- 
 sessed was well-nigh bereft from him. No suspicion of the 
 exact thief crossed his perturbed mind. Bad as Grabman's 
 character might be, he held a respectable position compared 
 with the other lodgers in the house. Bill, the cracksman, 
 naturally, and by vocation, suggested the hand that had de- 
 spoiled him ; how hope for redress, or extort surrender, from 
 such a quarter? Mechanically, however, when the hour ar- 
 rived to return to his day's task, he stole down the stairs, and 
 lo, at the very door of the house, Bill's children were at play, 
 and in the hand of the eldest he recognized what he called his 
 "curril." 
 
 "Your curril?" interrupted St. John. 
 
 ' ' Yes, curril ; vot the little uns bite, afore they gets their 
 teethin'." 
 
 St. John smiled, and supposing that Beck had some time or 
 other been puerile enough to purchase such a bauble, nodded 
 to him to continue. To seize upon the urchin, and, in spite 
 of kicks, bites, shrieks, or scratches, repossess himself of his 
 treasure, was the feat of a moment. The brat's clamor drew 
 out the father, and to him Beck (pocketing the coral, that its 
 golden bells might not attract the more experienced eye, and 
 influence the more formidable greediness, of the paternal 
 thief), loudly, and at first fearlessly, appealed. Him he 
 charged, and accused, and threatened with all vengeance, 
 human and Divine. Then changing his tone he implored, he 
 wept, he knelt. As soon as the startled cracksman recovered 
 his astonishment at such audacity and comprehended the 
 nature of the charge against himself and his family, he felt the 
 more indignant from a strange and unfamiliar consciousness -of 
 innocence. Seizing Beck by the nape of the neck, with a dex- 
 terous application of hand and foot, he sent him spinning into 
 the kennel
 
 LUCRETIA. 283 
 
 "Go to Jericho, mud-scraper!" cried Bill, in a voice of 
 thunder; "and if ever thou sayest such a vopper agin 'spar- 
 aging the characters of them ere motherless babes I'll seal 
 thee up in a 'tato sack, and sell thee for fiv'pence to No. 7, 
 the great body-snatcher. Take care how I ever sets eyes agin 
 on thy hugly mug!" 
 
 With that Bill clapped-to the door, and Beck, frightened out 
 of his wits, crawled from the kennel, and, bruised and smart- 
 ing, crept to his crossing. But he was unable to discharge his 
 duties that day ; his ill-fed, miserable frame was too weak for 
 the stroke he had received. Long before dusk, he sneaked 
 away, and, dreading to return to his lodging, lest, since noth- 
 ing now was left worth robbing but his carcass, Bill might keep 
 his word, and sell that to the body-snatcher, he took refuge 
 under the only roof where he felt he could sleep in safety. 
 
 And here we must pause to explain. In our first introduc- 
 tion of Beck, we contented ourselves with implying to the in- 
 genious and practised reader, that his heart might still be large 
 enough to hold something besides his crossing. Now, in one 
 of the small alleys that have their vent in the great stream of 
 Fleet Street, there dwelt an old widow-woman, who eked out 
 her existence by charing: an industrious, drudging creature, 
 whose sole occupation since her husband, the journeyman 
 bricklayer, fell from a scaffold, and, breaking his neck, left her 
 happily childless, as well as penniless, had been scrubbing 
 stone-floors, and cleaning out dingy houses when about to be 
 let charing, in a word. And in this vocation had she kept 
 body and soul together, till a bad rheumatism and old age had 
 put an end to her utilities, and entitled her to the receipt of 
 two shillings weekly from parochial munificence. Between 
 this old woman and Beck there was a mysterious tie so mys- 
 terious that he did not well comprehend it himself. Some- 
 times he called her "mammy," sometimes "the old crittur." 
 But certain it is, that to her he was indebted for that name 
 which he bore, to the puzzlement of St. Giles's. 
 
 Becky Carruthers was the name of the old woman ; but 
 Becky was one of those good creatures who are always called 
 by their Christian names, and never rise into the importance of 
 the surname, and the dignity of "Mistress"; lopping off the 
 last syllable of the familiar appellation, the outcast christened 
 himself "Beck." 
 
 "And," said St. John, who in the course of question and 
 answer had got thus far into the marrow of the Sweeper's nar- 
 rative, "is not this good woman really your mother?"
 
 284 LUCRETIA. 
 
 "Mother!" echoed Beck, with disdain; "no, I 'as a gritter 
 mother nor she. Sint Poll's is my mother. But the hold crit- 
 tur tuk care on me." 
 
 "I really don't understand you. Saint Paul's is your moth- 
 er? How?" 
 
 Beck shook his head mysteriously, and without answering 
 the question, resumed the tale, which we must thus paraphrast- 
 ically continue to deliver. 
 
 When he was a little more than six years old Beck began to 
 earn his own livelihood, by running errands, holding horses, 
 scraping together pence and halfpence. Betimes, his passion 
 for saving began ; at first with a good and unselfish motive, 
 that of surprising "mammy" at the week's end. But when 
 "mammy," who then gained enough for herself, patted his 
 head and called him good boy, and bade him save for his own 
 uses, and told him what a great thing it would be if he could 
 lay by a pretty penny against he was a man, he turned miser 
 on his own account; and the miserable luxury grew upon him. 
 At last, by the permission of the police inspector, strengthened 
 by that of the owner of the contiguous house, he made his great 
 step in life, and succeeded a deceased negro in the dignity and 
 emoluments of the memorable crossing. From that hour he felt 
 himself fulfilling his proper destiny ; but poor Becky, alas, had 
 already fallen into the sere and yellow leaf! With her decline, 
 her good qualities were impaired. She took to drinking not to 
 positive intoxication, but to making herself "comfortable" 
 and, to satisfy her craving, Beck, waking betimes one morning, 
 saw her emptying his pockets. Then he resolved, quietly and 
 without upbraiding her, to remove to a safer lodging. To save 
 had become the imperative necessity of his existence. But to do 
 him justice, Beck had a glimmering sense of what was due to 
 the "hold crittur. " Every Saturday evening he called at her 
 house, and deposited with her a certain sum, not large even in 
 proportion to his earnings, but which seemed to the poor ig- 
 norant miser, who grudged every farthing to himself, an enor- 
 mous deduction from his total, and a sum sufficient for every 
 possible want of humankind even to satiety. And now, in re- 
 turning, despoiled of all, save the few pence he had collected 
 that day, it is but fair to him to add that not his least bitter 
 pang was in the remembrance that this was the only Saturday 
 on which, for the first time, the weekly stipend would fail.- 
 
 But so ill and so wretched did he look when he reached her 
 little room, that "mammy" forgot all thought of herself; and 
 when he had told his tale, so kind was her comforting, so un-
 
 LUCRETIA. 285 
 
 selfish hci sympathy, that his heart smote nim for his old par- 
 simony, for his hard resentment at her single act of peculation ; 
 had not she the right to all he made? But remorse and grief 
 alike soon vanished in the fever that now seized him ; for sev- 
 eral days he was insensible; and when he recovered sufficiently 
 to be aware of what was around him, he saw the widow seated 
 beside him, within four bare walls everything, except the bed 
 he slept on, had been sold to support him in his illness. As 
 soon as he could totter forth, Beck hastened to his crossing 
 alas, it was preoccupied! His absence had led to ambitious 
 usurpation. A one-legged, sturdy sailor had mounted his 
 throne, and wielded his sceptre. The decorum of the street 
 forbade altercation to the contending parties; but the sailor 
 referred discussion to a meeting at a flash house in the Rook- 
 ery that evening. There, a jury was appointed, and the case 
 opened. By the conventional laws that regulate this useful 
 community, Beck was still in his rights; his reappearance 
 sufficed to restore his claims, and an appeal to the policeman 
 would no doubt re-establish his authority. But Beck was still 
 so ill and so feeble, that he had a melancholy persuasion that 
 he could not suitably perform the duties of his office; and 
 when the sailor, not a bad fellow on the whole, offered to pay 
 down on the nail what really seemed a very liberal sum for 
 Beck's peaceful surrender of his rights, the poor wretch 
 thought of the bare walls at his "mammy's," of the long dreary 
 interval that must elapse, even if able to work, before the fur- 
 niture pawned could be redeemed by the daily profits of his 
 post, and, with a groan, he held out his hand, and concluded 
 the bargain. 
 
 Creeping home to the "hold crittur," he threw the purchase- 
 money into her lap; then, broken-hearted, and in despair, he 
 slunk forth again in a sort of vague, dreamy hope, that the 
 law, which abhors vagabonds, would seize and finish him. 
 
 When this tale was done, Percival did not neglect the gentle 
 task of admonition, which the poor Sweeper's softened heart 
 and dull remorse made the easier. He pointed out, in soft 
 tones, how the avarice he had indulged had been, perhaps, 
 mercifully chastised ; and drew no ineloquent picture of the 
 vicious miseries of the confirmed miser. Beck listened humbly 
 and respectfully, though so little did he understand of mercy, 
 and Providence, and vice, that the diviner part of the homily 
 was quite lost on him. However, he confessed penitently that 
 "the mattress had made him vorse nor a beast to the hold crit- 
 tur" ; and that "he was cured of saving to the end of his days."
 
 286 LUCRETIA. 
 
 "And now," said Percival, "as you really are not strong 
 enough to bear this out-of-door work (the winter coming on, 
 too), what say you to entering my service? I want some help 
 in my stables. The work is easy enough ; and you are used 
 to horses, you know, in a sort of a way." 
 
 Beck hesitated, and looked a moment undecided. At last, 
 he said, "Please your 'onor, if I beant strong enough for the 
 crossin', I'se afeard I'm too hailing to sarve you. And 
 vouldn't I be vorse nor a wiper, to take your vages, and not 
 vork for 'em has I hought?" 
 
 "Pooh, we'll soon make you strong, my man. Take my 
 advice don't let your head run on the crossing. That kind 
 of industry exposes you to bad company and bad thoughts." 
 
 "That's vot it is, sir," answered Beck assentingly, laying 
 his dexter forefinger on his sinister palm. 
 
 "Well, you are in my service, then! Go downstairs now, 
 and get your breakfast ; by and by, you shall show me your 
 'mammy's' house, and we'll see what can be done for her." 
 
 Beck pressed his hands to his eyes, trying hard not to cry ; 
 but it was too much for him ; and as the valet, who appeared 
 to Percival's summons, led him down the stairs, his sobs were 
 heard from attic to basement. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 NEWS FROM GRABMAN. 
 
 THAT day, opening thus auspiciously to Beck, was memor- 
 able also to other and more prominent persons in this history. 
 
 Early in the forenoon a parcel was brought to Madame Dal- 
 ibard which contained Ardworth's already famous book, a 
 goodly assortment of extracts from the newspapers thereon, 
 and the following letter from the young author : 
 
 "You will see, by the accompanying packet, that your coun- 
 sels have had weight with me. I have turned aside in my slow 
 legitimate career. I have, as you desired, ' made men talk of 
 me.' What solid benefit I may reap from this, I know not. I 
 shall not openly avow the book. Such notoriety cannot help 
 me at the bar. But, liber avi aniinam meant excuse my ped- 
 antry I have left my soul free for a moment; I am now 
 catching it back, to put bit and saddle on again. I will not 
 tell you how you have disturbed me ; how you have stung me 
 into this premature rush amidst the crowd; how, after robbing 
 me of name and father, you have driven me to this experiment
 
 LUCRETIA. 287 
 
 with my own mind, to see if I was deceived, when I groaned 
 to myself, 'The Public shall give you a name, and Fame shall 
 be your mother. ' I am satisfied with the experiment. I know 
 better now what is in me ; and I have regained my peace of 
 mind. If, in the success of this hasty work, there be that 
 which will gratify the interest you so kindly take in me, deem 
 that success your own; I owe it to you to your revelations; 
 to your admonitions. I wait patiently your own time for 
 further disclosures; till then, the wheel must work on, and the 
 grist be ground. Kind and generous friend, till now I would 
 not wound you by returning the sum you sent me; nay, more, 
 I knew I should please you by devoting part of it to the risk of 
 giving this essay to the world, and so making its good fortune 
 doubly your own work. Now, when the publisher smiles, and 
 the shopmen bow, and I am acknowledged to have a bank in 
 my brains now, you cannot be offended to receive it back. 
 Adieu. When my mind is in train again, and I feel my step 
 firm on the old dull road, I will come to see you. Till then, 
 yours by what name? Open the 'Biographical Dictionary,' 
 at hazard, and send me one." 
 "Gray's Inn." 
 
 Not at the noble thoughts, and the deep sympathy with man- 
 kind, that glowed through that work, over which Lucretia now 
 tremulously hurried, did she feel delight. All that she recog- 
 nized or desired to recognize, were those evidences of that 
 kind of intellect which wins its way through the world, and 
 which, strong and unmistakable, rose up in every page of that 
 vigorous logic and commanding style. The book was soon 
 dropped thus read : the newspaper extracts pleased even more. 
 
 "This," she said audibly, in the freedom of her solitude; 
 "This is the son I asked for a son in whom I can rise in 
 whom I can exchange the sense of crushing infamy for the old 
 delicious ecstacy of pride! For this son can I do too much? 
 No; in what I may do for him, methinks there will be no re- 
 morse! And he calls his success mine mine!" Her nostrils 
 dilated, and her front rose erect. 
 
 In the midst of this exultation, Varney found her, and before 
 he could communicate the business which had brought him, he 
 had to listen, which he did with the Secret, gnawing envy that 
 every other man's success occasioned him, to her haughty self- 
 felicitations. 
 
 He could not resist saying, with a sneer, when she paused, 
 as if to ask his sympathy: 
 
 "All this is very fine, belle ntire ; and yet J should hardly
 
 288 LUCRETIA. 
 
 have thought that coarse-featured, uncouth limb of the law, 
 who seldom moves without upsetting a chair, never laughs but 
 the panes rattle in the window I should hardly have thought 
 him the precise person to gratify your pride, or answer the 
 family ideal of a gentleman and a St. John." 
 
 "Gabriel," said Lucretia sternly, "you have a biting tongue, 
 and it is folly in me to resent those privileges which our fear- 
 ful connection gives you.. But this raillery " 
 
 "Come, come, I was wrong forgive it!" interrupted Var- 
 ney, who, dreading nothing else, dreaded much the rebuke of 
 his grim stepmother. 
 
 "It is forgiven," said Lucretia coldly, and with a slight 
 waive of her hand; then she added, with composure: 
 
 "Long since even while heiress of Laughton I parted 
 with mere pride in the hollow seemings of distinction. Had I 
 not, should I have stooped to William Mainwaring? What I 
 then respected, amidst all the degradations I have known, I 
 respect still; talent, ambition, intellect, and will. Do you 
 think I would exchange these in a son of mine, for the mere 
 graces which a dancing-master can sell him? Fear not? Let 
 us but give wealth to that intellect, and the world will see no 
 clumsiness in the movements that march to its high places, and 
 hear no discord in the laugh that triumphs over fools! But 
 you have some news to communicate, or some proposal to 
 suggest." 
 
 "I have both," said Varney. "In the first place , I have a 
 "etter from Grabman!" 
 
 Lucretia' s eyes sparkled, and she snatched eagerly at the 
 letter her scn-in-law drew forth. 
 
 "Liverpool, October, 1831. 
 "JASON: 
 
 "I think I am on the road to success. Having first possessed 
 myself of the fact, commemorated in the parish register, of the 
 birth and baptism of Alfred Braddell's son, for we must pro- 
 ceed regularly in these matters, I next set my wits to work to 
 trace that son's exodus from the paternal mansion. I have 
 hunted up an old woman-servant, Jane Prior, who lived with 
 the Braddells. She now thrives as a laundress ; she is a rank 
 puritan, and starches for the godly. She was at first very wary 
 and reserved in her communications, but by siding with her 
 prejudices and humors, and by the intercession of the Rev. 
 Mr. Graves (of her own persuasion), T have got her to open 
 her lips. It seems that these Braddells lived very unhappily; 
 the husband, a pious dissenter, had married a lady who turned
 
 LUCRETIA. 289 
 
 out of a very different practice and belief. Jane Prior pitied 
 her master, and detested her mistress. Some circumstances in 
 the conduct of Mrs. Braddell made the husband, who was then 
 in his last illness, resolve, from a point of conscience, to save 
 his child from what he deemed the contamination of her pre- 
 cepts and example. Mrs. Braddell was absent from Liverpool, 
 on a visit, which was thought very unfeeling by the husband's 
 friends ; during this time Braddell was visited constantly by a 
 gentleman (Mr. Ardworth), who differed from him greatly in 
 some things, and seemed one of the carnal; but with whom 
 agreement in politics (for they were both great politicians and 
 republicans) seems to have established a link. One evening 
 when Mr. Ardworth was in the house, Jane Prior, who was the 
 only maid-servant (for they kept but two, anoTone had been just 
 discharged), had been sent out to the apothecary's. On her 
 return, Jane Prior, going into the nursery, missed the infant ; 
 she thought it was with her master, but coming into his room, 
 Mr. Braddell told her to shut the door, informed her that he 
 had entrusted the boy to Mr. Ardworth, to be brought up in a 
 righteous and pious manner, and implored and commanded her 
 to keep this a secret from his wife, whom he was resolved, in- 
 deed, if he lived, not to receive back into his house. Braddell, 
 however, did not survive more than two days this event. On 
 his death Mrs. Braddell returned, but circumstances connected 
 with the symptoms of his malady, and a strong impression 
 which haunted himself, and with which he had infected Jane 
 Prior, that he had been poisoned, led to a posthumous exam- 
 ination of his remains. No trace of poison was, however, dis- 
 covered, and suspicions that had been directed against his wife 
 could not be substantiated by law ; still, she was regarded in 
 so unfavorable a light by all who had known them both, she 
 met with such little kindness or sympathy in her widowhood, 
 and had been so openly denounced by Jane Prior, that it is not 
 to be wondered at that she left the place as soon as possible. 
 The house, indeed, was taken from her, for Braddell's affairs 
 were found in such confusion, and his embarrassments so great, 
 that everything was seized, and sold off; nothing left for the 
 widow, nor for the child (if the last were ever discovered). 
 
 "As may be supposed, Mrs. Braddell was at first very clam- 
 orous for the lost child, but Jane Prior kept her promise, and 
 withheld all clue to it. And Mrs. Braddell was forced to quit 
 the place, in ignorance what had become of it ; since then no 
 one had heard of her, but Jane Prior says that she is sure 
 'she had come to no good.' Now, though much of this may
 
 290 LUCRETIA. 
 
 be, no doubt, familiar to you, dear Jason, it is right, when I put 
 the evidence before you, that you should know and guard 
 against what to expect; and in any trial at law to prove the 
 identity of Vincent Braddell, Jane Prior must be a principal 
 witness, and will certainly not spare poor Mrs. Braddell. For 
 the main point, however, viz., the suspicion of poisoning her 
 husband, the inquest and verdict may set aside all alarm. 
 
 "My next researches have been directed on the track of 
 Walter Ard worth, after leaving Liverpool, which (I find by the 
 books at the inn where he lodged and was known) he did in 
 debt to the innkeeper, the very night he received the charge 
 of the child. Here, as yet, I am in fault ; but I have ascer- 
 tained that a woman, one of the sect, of the name of Joplin, liv- 
 ing in a village fifteen miles from the town, had the care of 
 some infant, to replace her own, which she had lost. I am 
 going to this village to-morrow, But I cannot expect much in 
 that quarter, since it would seem at variance with your more 
 probable belief that Walter Ardworth took the child at once to 
 Mr. Fielden's. However, you see I have already gone very far 
 in the evidence; the birth of the child the delivery of the 
 child to Ardworth. I see a very pretty case already before us, 
 and I do not now doubt for a moment of ultimate success. 
 
 "Yours, ,,-v,- ^ ,, 
 
 N. GRABMAN. 
 
 Lucretia read steadily, and with no change of countenance, 
 to the last line of the letter. Then, as she put it down on the 
 table before her, she repeated, with a tone of deep exultation : 
 "No doubt of ultimate success." 
 
 "You do not fear to brave all which the spite of this woman, 
 Jane Prior, may prompt her to say against you?" asked Varney. 
 
 Lucretia's brow fell. "It is another torture," she said, 
 "even to own my marriage with a lowborn hypocrite. But I 
 can endure it for the cause," she added, more haughtily. 
 "Nothing can really hurt me in these obsolete aspersions, and 
 this vague scandal. The inquest acquitted me, and the world 
 will be charitable to the mother of him who has wealth and 
 rank, and that vigorous genius which, if proved in obscurity, 
 shall command opinion in renown." 
 
 "You are now, then, disposed at once to proceed to action. 
 For Helen, all is prepared the insurances settled the trust 
 for which I hold them on your behalf is signed and completed. 
 But for Percival St. John, I await your directions. Will it be 
 best first to prove your son's identity, or when morally satisfied 
 that that proof is forthcoming, to remove betimes both the bar'
 
 LUCRETIA. 291 
 
 riers to his inheritance. If we tarry for the last, the removal 
 of St. John becomes more suspicious than it does at a time 
 when you have no visible interest in his death. Besides, now 
 we have the occasion, or can make it can we tell how long it 
 will last? Again, it will seem more natural that the lover 
 should break his heart in the first shock of " 
 
 "Ay," interrupted Lucretia, "I would have all thought and 
 contemplation of crime at an end ; when, clasping my boy to 
 my heart, I can say: 'Your mother's inheritance is yours.' I 
 would not have a murder before my eyes, when they should 
 look only on the fair prospects beyond. I would cast back all 
 the hideous images of horror into the rear of memory, so that 
 hope may for once visit me again undisturbed. No, Gabriel, 
 were I to speak forever, you would comprehend not what I 
 grasp at in a son! It is at a future! Rolling a stone over the 
 sepulchre of the past it is as a resurrection into a fresh 
 world it is to know again one emotion not impure, one scheme 
 not criminal. It is, in a word, to cease to be as myself, to 
 think in another soul, to hear my heart beat in another form. 
 All this I covet in a son. And when all this should smile be- 
 fore me in his image, shall I be plucked back again into my 
 hell, by the consciousness that a new crime is to be done? 
 No; wade quickly through the passage of blood, that we may 
 dry our garments, and breathe the air upon the bank where 
 sun shines and flowers bloom!" 
 
 "So be it, then!" said Varney. "Before the week is out, I 
 must be under the same roof as St. John. Before this week is 
 out, why not all meet in the old halls of Laughton?" 
 
 "Ay, in the halls of Laughton! On the hearth of our ances- 
 tors the deeds done for our descendents look less dark!" 
 
 "And first, to prepare the way, Helen should sicken in 
 these fogs of London, and want change of air." 
 
 "Place before me that desk. I will read William Mainwar- 
 ing's letters again and again, till from every shadow in the past 
 a voice comes forth: 'The child of your rival, your betrayer, 
 your undoer, stands between the daylight and your son!' " 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 VARIETIES. 
 
 LEAVING the guilty pair to concert their schemes, and in- 
 dulge their atrocious hopes, we accompany Percival to the 
 hovel occupied by Becky Carruthers.
 
 292 LUCRETIA. 
 
 On following Beck into the room she rented, Percival was 
 greatly surprised to find, seated comfortably on the only chair 
 to be seen, no less a person than the worthy Mrs. Mivers. 
 This good lady, in her spinster days, had earned her own bread 
 by hard work. She had captivated Mr. Mivers when but a 
 simple housemaid in the service of one of his relations. And 
 while this humble condition in her earlier life may account for 
 much in her language and manners which is nowadays incon- 
 sonant with the breeding and education that characterize the 
 wives of opulent tradesmen, so perhaps the remembrance of it 
 made her unusually susceptible to the duties of chanty. For 
 there is no class of society more prone to pity and relieve the 
 poor than females in domestic service ; and this virtue Mrs. 
 Mivers had not laid aside, as many do, so soon as she was in a 
 condition to practise it with effect. Mrs. Mivers blushed scar- 
 let on being detected in her visit of kindness, and hastened to 
 excuse herself by the information that she belonged to a society 
 of ladies for "the Bettering the Condition of the Poor," and 
 that having just been informed of Mrs. Becky's destitute state, 
 she had looked in to recommend her a ventilator! 
 
 "It's quite shocking to see how little the poor attends to the 
 proper wentilating their houses. No wonder there's so much 
 typus about!" said Mrs. Mivers. "And for one-and-six- 
 pence, we can introduce a stream of hair that goes up the 
 chimbly, and carries away all that it finds!" 
 
 "I 'umbly thank you, marm," said the poor bundle of rags 
 that went by the name of "Becky," as with some difficulty she 
 contrived to stand in the presence of the benevolent visitor; 
 "but, I'm much afeared, that the hair will make the rheumatiz 
 werry rumpatious!" 
 
 "On the contrary on the contrary," said Mrs. Mivers tri- 
 umphantly, and she proceeded philosophically to explain, 
 that all the fevers, aches, pains, and physical ills that harass 
 the poor arise from the want of an air-trap in the chimney, 
 and a perforated network in the window-pane. Becky listened 
 patiently ; for Mrs. Mivers was only a philosopher in her talk, 
 and she had proved herself anything but a philosopher in ner 
 actions, by the spontaneous present of five shillings, and the 
 promise of a basket of victuals, and some good wine to keep 
 the cold wind she invited to the apartment out of the stomach. 
 
 Percival imitated the silence of Becky, whose spirit was so 
 bowed down by an existence of drudgery, that not even the 
 sight of her foster-son could draw her attention from the 
 respect due to a superior.
 
 LUCRETIA. 293 
 
 "And is this poor cranky-looking cretur your son, Mrs. 
 Becky?' ' said the visitor, struck at last by the appearance of 
 the ex-Sweeper as he stood at the threshold, hat in hand. 
 
 "No, indeed, marm," answered Becky; "I often says, says 
 I, 'Child, you be the son of Sint Poll's.' ' 
 
 Beck smiled proudly. 
 
 "It was agin the grit church, marm but it's a long story. 
 My poor good man had not a long been dead as good a man 
 as ever lived, marm," and Becky dropped a curtsey; "he fell 
 off a scaffold, and pitched right on his 'ead, or I should not 
 have come on the parish, marm, and that's the truth on't!" 
 
 "Very well, I shall call and hear all about it a sad case, I 
 dare say. You see, your husband should have subscribed to 
 our Loan Society, and then they'd have found a 'andsome 
 coffin, and given three pounds to his widder. But the poor 
 are so benighted in these parts. I'm sure, sir, I can't guess 
 what brought you here? but that's no business of mine. And 
 how are all at Old Brompton? ; ' Here Mrs. Mivers bridled 
 indignantly. "There was a time when Miss Main waring was 
 very glad to come and chat with Mr. M. and myself; but now 
 'rum has riz,' as the saying is; not but what I dare say it's not 
 her fault, poor thing ! That stiff aunt of hers she need not 
 look so high pride and poverty, forsooth!" 
 
 While delivering these conciliatory sentences, Mrs. Mivers 
 had gathered up her gown, and was evidently in the bustle of 
 departure. As she now nodded to Becky, Percival stepped 
 up, and, with his irresistible smile, offered her his arm. Much 
 surprised, and much flattered, Mrs. Mivers accepted it. As 
 she did so, he gently detained her, while he said to Becky : 
 
 "My good friend, I have brought you the poor lad to whom 
 you have been a mother, to tell you that good deeds find their 
 reward sooner or later. As for him, make yourself easy; he 
 will inform you of the new step he has taken ; and for you, 
 good, kind-hearted creature, thank the boy you brought up, if 
 your old age shall be made easy and cheerful. Now, Beck, 
 silly lad, go and tell all to your nurse! Take care of this step, 
 Mrs. Mivers." 
 
 As soon as he was in the street, Percival, who, if amused at 
 the ventilator, had seen the five shillings gleam on Becky's 
 palm, and felt that he had found under the puce-colored gown 
 a good woman's heart to understand him, gave Mrs. Mivers a 
 short sketch of poor Beck's history and misfortunes, and so 
 contrived to interest her in behalf of the nurse, that she will- 
 ingly promised to become Percival's almoner, to execute hit
 
 *94 LUCRETIA. 
 
 commission, to improve the interior of Becky's abode, and dis- 
 tribute weekly the liberal stipend he proposed to settle on the 
 old widow. They had grown, indeed, quite friendly and inti- 
 mate, by the time he reached the smart plate-glazed mahogany- 
 colored facade, within which the flourishing business of Mr. 
 Mivers was carried on ; and when, knocking at the private door, 
 promptly opened by a lemon-colored page, she invited him up- 
 stairs, it so chanced that the conversation had slid off to Helen, 
 and Percival was sufficiently interested to bow assent, and to 
 enter. 
 
 Though all the way up the stairs, Mrs. Mivers, turning back 
 at every other step, did her best to impress upon her young 
 visitor's mind the important fact that they kept their house- 
 hold establishment at their "wilier," and that their apartments 
 in Fleet Street were only a "conwenience" the store set by the 
 worthy housewife upon her goods and chattels was sufficiently 
 visible in the drugget that threaded its narrow way up the gay 
 Brussels stair-carpet, and in certain layers of paper, which pro- 
 tected from the profanation of immediate touch the mahogany 
 hand-rail. And nothing could exceed the fostering care ex- 
 hibited in the drawing-room, when the door thrown open 
 admitted a view of its damask moreen curtains, pinned back 
 from such impertinent sunbeams as could force their way 
 through the foggy air of the east into the windows, and the ells 
 of yellow muslin that guarded the frames, at least, of a collec- 
 tion of colored prints, and two kit-kat portraitures of Mr. 
 Mivers and his lady, from the perambulations of the flies. 
 
 But Percival' s view of this interior was somewhat impeded 
 by his portly guide, who, uttering a little exclamation of sur- 
 prise, stood motionless on the threshold, as she perceived Mr. 
 Mivers seated by the hearth in close conference with a gentle- 
 man whom she had never seen before. At that hour it was so 
 rare an event in the life of Mr. Mivers to be found in the 
 drawing-room, and that he should have an acquaintance un- 
 known to his helpmate was a circumstance so much rarer still, 
 that Mrs. Mivers may well be forgiven for keeping St. John 
 standing at the door till she had recovered her amaze. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Mivers rose in some confusion, and was ap- 
 parently about to introduce his guest, when that gentleman 
 coughed and pinched the host's arm significantly. Mr. Mivers 
 coughed also, and stammered out: "A gentleman, Mrs. M. 
 a friend ; stay with us a day or two. Much honored hum!" 
 
 Mrs. Mivers stared and curtseyed, and stared again. But 
 there was an open, good-humored smile in the face of the visi-
 
 LUCRETIA. 295 
 
 tor, as he advanced and took her hand, that attracted a heart 
 very easily conciliated. Seeing that that was no moment for 
 further explanation, she plumped herself into a seat, and said: 
 
 "But bless us and save us, I am keeping you standing, Mr. 
 St. John!" 
 
 "St. John!" repeated the visitor, with a vehemence that 
 startled Mrs. Mivers. 
 
 "Your name is St. John, sir related to the St. Johns of 
 Laughton ! " 
 
 "Yes, indeed," answered Percival, with his shy, arch 
 smile, "Laughton at present has. no worthier owner than 
 myself." 
 
 The gentleman made two strides to- Percival, and shook him 
 heartily by the hand. 
 
 "This is pleasant, indeed!" he exclaimed. "You must ex- 
 cuse my freedom ; but I knew well poor old Sir Miles, and my 
 heart warms at the sight of his representative." 
 
 Percival glanced at his new acquaintance, and on the whole 
 was prepossessed in his favor. He seemed somewhere on the 
 sunnier side of fifty, with that superb yellow bronze of com- 
 plexion which betokens long residence under eastern skies. 
 Deep wrinkles near the eyes, and a dark circle round them, 
 spoke of cares and fatigue, and perhaps dissipation. But he 
 had evidently a vigor of constitution that had borne him passably 
 through all; his frame was wiry and nervous; his eye bright 
 and full of life; and there was that abrupt, unsteady, mercurial 
 restlessness in his movements and manner, which usually ac- 
 companies the man whose sanguine temperament prompts him 
 to concede to the impulse, and who is blessed or cursed with a 
 superabundance of energy, according as circumstance may favor 
 or judgment correct, that equivocal gift of constitution. 
 
 Percival said something appropriate in reply to so much cor- 
 diality paid to the account of the Sir Miles whom he had never 
 seen, and seated himself, coloring slightly under the influence 
 of the fixed, pleased, and earnest look still bent upon him. 
 
 Searching for something else to say, Percival asked Mrs. 
 Mivers if she had lately seen John Ardworth. 
 
 The guest, who had just reseated himself, turned his chair 
 round at that question with such vivacity, that Mrs. Mivers 
 heard it crack. Her chairs were not meant for such usage. A 
 shade fell over her rosy countenance as she replied: 
 
 "No, indeed (please, sir, them chairs is brittle)! No; he 
 is like Madam at Brompton, and seldom condescends to favor 
 us now. It was but last Sunday we asked him to dinner. J
 
 296 LUCRETIA. 
 
 am sure he need not turn up his nose at our roast beef and 
 pudding!" 
 
 Here Mr. Mivers was taken with a violent fit of coughing, 
 which drew off his wife's attention. She was afraid he had 
 taken cold. 
 
 The stranger took out a large snuff-box, inhaled a long pinch 
 of snuff, and said to St. John : 
 
 "This Mr. John Ardworth, a pert enough Jackanapes, I sup- 
 pose a limb of the law, eh?" 
 
 "Sir," said Percival gravely; "John Ardworth is my particu- 
 lar friend. It is clear that you know very little of him." 
 
 "That's true," said the stranger; " 'pon my life, that's very 
 true. But I suppose he's like all lawyers, cunning and tricky, 
 conceited and supercilious, full of prejudice and cant, and a red- 
 hot Tory into the bargain. I know them, sir I know them!" 
 
 "Well," answered St. John, half-gayly, half-angrily, "your 
 general experience serves you very little here; for Ardworth is 
 exactly the opposite of all you have described." 
 
 "Even in politics?" 
 
 "Why, I fear he is half a Radical; certainly more than a 
 Whig," answered St. John, rather mournfully; for his own 
 theories were all the other way, notwithstanding his unpatriotic 
 forgetfulness of them, in his offer to assist Ardworth's entrance 
 into Parliament. 
 
 "I am very glad to hear it," cried th? stranger, again taking 
 snuff. "And this Madame at Brompton perhaps I know her 
 a little better than I do young Mr. Ardworth Mrs. Brad I 
 mean Madame Dalibard!" and the stranger glanced at Mr. 
 Mivers, who was slowly recovering from some vigorous slaps 
 on the back, administered to him by his wife, as a counter- 
 irritant to the cough. "Is it true that she has lost the use of 
 her limbs?" 
 
 Percival shook his head. 
 
 "And takes care of poor Helen Mainwaring, the orphan? 
 Well, well! That looks amiable enough. I must see I must 
 see ! ' ' 
 
 "Who shall I say inquired after her, when I see Madame 
 Dalibard?" asked Percival, with some curiosity. 
 
 "Who? Oh, Mr. Tomkins. She will not recollect him, 
 though," and the stranger laughed, and Mr. Mivers laughed, 
 too ; and Mrs. Mivers, who, indeed, always laughed when other 
 people laughed, laughed also. So Percival thought he ought to 
 laugh for the sake of good company, and all laughed together, 
 as. he arose and took leave,
 
 LtiCkfcfiA. 29^ 
 
 He had not, however, got far from the house, on his way to 
 his cabriolet, which he had left by Temple Bar, when, some- 
 what to his surprise, he found Mr. Tomkins at his elbow. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, Mr. St. John, but I have only just re- 
 turned to England, and on such occasions a man is apt to seem 
 curious. This young lawyer; you see the elder Ardworth (a 
 good-for-nothing scamp!) was a sort of friend of mine not 
 exactly friend, indeed, for, by Jove, I think he was a worse 
 friend to me than he was to anybody else ; still I had a foolish 
 interest for him, and should be glad to hear something more 
 about any one bearing his name, than I can coax out of that 
 droll little linen draper. You are really intimate with young 
 Ardworth, eh?" 
 
 "Intimate! Poor fellow, he will not let anyone be that' 
 He works too hard to be social. But I love him sincerely 
 and I admire him beyond measure." 
 
 "The dog has industry, then that's good. And does he 
 make debts, like that rascal, Ardworth, senior?" 
 
 "Really, sir, I must say, this tone with respect to Mr. Ard- 
 worth 's father " 
 
 "What the devil, sir! Do you take the father's part, as well 
 as the son's?" 
 
 "I don't know anything about Mr. Ardworth, senior," said 
 Percival, pouting; "but I do know that my friend would not 
 allow any one to speak ill of his father in his presence ; and I 
 beg you, sir, to consider, that whatever would offend him must 
 offend me." 
 
 "Gad's my life! He's the luckiest young rogue to have such 
 a friend. Sir, I wish you a very good day." 
 
 Mr. Tomkins took off his hat, bowed, and passing St. John 
 with a rapid step, was soon lost to his eye amongst the crowd 
 hurrying westward. 
 
 But our business being now rather with him than Percival, 
 we leave the latter to mount his cabriolet, and we proceed with 
 Mr. Mivers's mercurial guest on his eccentric way through the 
 throng. 
 
 There was an odd mixture of thoughtful abstraction and 
 quick observation in the soliloquy in which this gentleman in- 
 dulged, as he walked briskly on. 
 
 "A pretty young spark, that St. John! A look of his father, 
 but handsomer, and less affected. I like him. Fine shop 
 that very ! London wonderfully improved. A hookah in 
 that window! God bless me! a real hookah! This is all 
 very good news about that poor boy very. After all, he is
 
 298 LUCRET1A. 
 
 not to biame if his mother was such a damnable I must con- 
 trive to see and judge of him myself as soon as possible. Can't 
 trust to others too sharp for that ! What an ugly dog that 
 is, looking after me ! It is certainly a bailiff. Hang it! What 
 do I care for bailiffs? Hem hem ! " And the gentleman thrust 
 his hands into his pockets, and laughed, as the jingle of coin 
 reached his ear through the din without. "Well, I must make 
 haste to decide ; for, really there is a very troublesome piece 
 of business before me. Plague take her! What can have be- 
 come of the woman? I shall have to hunt out a sharp lawyer. 
 But John's a lawyer himself. No 'attorneys, I suppose, are 
 the men. Gad! They were sharp enough when they had 
 to hunt me! What's that great bill on the wall about? 'Down 
 with the Lords.' Pooh, pooh! Master John Bull, you love 
 Lords a great deal too much for that. A prettyish girl ! Eng- 
 lish women are very good-looking, certainly. That Lucretia . 
 what shall I do, if Ah, time enough to think of her, when I 
 have got over that mighty stiff if/" 
 
 In such cogitations and mental remarks our traveller whiled 
 away the time, till he found himself in Piccadilly. There, a 
 publisher's shop (and he had that keen eye for shops which 
 betrays the stranger in London), with its new publications ex- 
 posed at the window attracted his notice. Conspicuous amongst 
 the rest was the open title-page of a book, at the foot of which 
 was placed a placard, with the enticing words: "FOURTH EDI- 
 TION JUST OUT," in red capitals. The title of the work struck 
 his irritable, curious fancy ; he walked into the shop, asked for 
 the volume, and while looking over the contents, with muttered 
 ejaculations: "Good! Capital! Why this reminds one of 
 HorneTooke! What's the price? Very dear -must have it 
 though must. Ha! ha! home- thrust there!" While thus 
 turning over the leaves, and rending them asunder with his fore- 
 finger, regardless of the paper-cutter extended to him by the 
 shopman, a gentleman pushing by him, asked if the publisher 
 was at home ; and as the shopman, bowing very low, answered ; 
 "Yes," the new-comer darted into a little recess behind the 
 shop. Mr. Tomkins, who had looked up very angrily on being 
 jostled so unceremoniously, started and changed color, when he 
 saw the face of the offender. "Saints in heaven!" he mur- 
 mured almost audibly ; "what a look of that woman! And 
 yet no it is gone!" 
 
 "Who is that gentleman?" he asked abruptly, as he paid 
 for his book. 
 
 The shopman smiled, but answered: "I don't know, sir." .
 
 UiCRETiA. 
 
 "That's a lie! You would never bow so low to a man you 
 did not know! " 
 
 The shopman smiled again. "Why, sir, there are many who 
 come to this house who don't wish us to know them." 
 
 "Ah, I understand! You are political publishers afraid of 
 libels, I dare say. Always the same thing in this cursed coun- 
 try, and then they tell us we are 'free'! So I suppose that 
 gentleman has written something William Pitt does not like. 
 But, William Pitt ha he's dead! very true, so he is! 
 Sir, this little book seems most excellent; but, in my time, a 
 man would have been sent to Newgate for printing it." 
 
 While thus running on, Mr. Tomkins had edged himself 
 pretty close to the recess within which the last comer had dis- 
 appeared ; and there, seated on a high stool, he contrived to 
 read and to talk at the same time, but his eye and his ear were 
 both turned every instant towards the recess. 
 
 The shopman, little suspecting that in so very eccentric, gar- 
 rulous a person, he was permitting a spy to encroach upon the 
 secrets of the house, continued to make up sundry parcels of 
 the new publication which had so enchanted his customer, 
 while he expatiated on the prodigious sensation the book had 
 created; and while the customer himself had already caught 
 enough of the low conversation within the recess to be aware 
 that the author of the book was the very person who had so 
 roused his curiosity. 
 
 Not till that gentleman, followed to the door by the polite 
 publisher, had quitted the shop, did Mr. Tomkins put his 
 volume in his pocket, and, with a familiar nod at the shopman, 
 take himself off. 
 
 He was scarcely in the street when he saw Percival St. John 
 leaning out of his cabriolet, and conversing with the author he 
 had discovered. He halted a moment irresolute, but the young 
 man, in whom our reader recognizes John Ardworth, declin- 
 ing St. John's invitation to accompany him to Brompton, re- 
 sumed his way through the throng; the cabriolet drove on; 
 and Mr. Tomkins, though with a graver mien, and a steadier 
 step, continued his desultory rambles. Meanwhile John Ard- 
 worth strode gloomily back to his lonely chamber. 
 
 There, throwing himself on the well-worn chair before the 
 crowded desk, he buried his face in his hands, and for some 
 minutes he felt all that profound despondency, peculiar to 
 those who have won fame, to add to the dark volume of ex- 
 perience the conviction of fame's nothingness. For some min- 
 utes he felt an illiberal and ungrateful envy of St. John so
 
 LUCRETIA. 
 
 fair, so light-hearted, so favored by fortune, so rich in friends, 
 in a mother's love, and in Helen's half-plighted troth. And 
 he, from his very birth, cut off from the social ties of blood ; no 
 mother's kiss to reward the toils, or gladden the sports, of child- 
 hood; no father's cheering word up the steep hill of man ! And 
 Helen, for whose sake he had so often, when his heart grew 
 weary, nerved himself again to labor, saying: "Let me be rich, 
 let me be great, and then I will dare to tell Helen that I love 
 her!" Helen smiling upon another, unconscious of his pangs! 
 What could fame bestow in compensation? What matter that 
 strangers praised, and the babble of the world's running stream 
 lingered its brief moment round the pebble in its way. In the 
 bitterness of his mood, he was unjust to his rival. All that 
 exquisite, but half-concealed, treasure of imagination and 
 thought, which lay beneath the surface of Helen's childlike 
 smile, he believed that he alone he, soul of power and son of 
 .genius, was worthy to discover and to prize. In the pride not 
 unfrequent with that kingliest of all aristocracies, the Chiefs of 
 Intellect, he forgot the grandeur which invests the attributes 
 of the heart ; forgot that, in the lists of love, the heart is at 
 least the equal of the mind. In the reaction that follows great 
 excitement, Ardworth had morbidly felt, that day, his utter 
 solitude ; felt it in the streets through which he had passed, in 
 the home to which he had returned the burning tears, shed 
 for the first time since childhood, forced themselves through 
 his clasped fingers. At length he rose, with a strong effort at 
 self-mastery, some contempt of his weakness, and much remorse 
 at his ungrateful envy. He gathered together the soiled manu- 
 script and dingy proofs of his book, and thrust them through 
 the grimy bars of his grate ; then, opening his desk, he drew 
 out a small packet, with tremulous fingers, unfolding paper 
 after paper, and gazed, with eyes still moistened, on the relics 
 kept till then, in the devotion of the only sentiment inspired 
 by Eros that had ever, perhaps, softened his iron nature. 
 These were two notes from Helen, some violets she had once 
 given him, and a little purse she had knitted for him (with a 
 playful prophecy of future fortunes), when he had last left the 
 vicarage. Nor blame him, ye who with more habitual romance 
 of temper, and richer fertility of imagination, can reconcile 
 the tenderest memories with the sternest duties, if he, with all 
 his strength, felt that the associations connected with those 
 tokens would but enervate his resolves, and embitter his resig- 
 nation. You can guess not the extent of the sacrifice, the 
 bitterness of the pang, when, averting his head, he dropped
 
 LUCRETiA. 3ot 
 
 those relics on the hearth. The evidence of the desultory am- 
 bition, the tokens of the visionary love the same flame leapt 
 up to devour both ! It was as the funeral pyre of his youth ! 
 
 "So!" he said to himself, "let all that can divert me from 
 the true ends of my life consume! Labor, take back your 
 son." 
 
 An hour afterwards, and his clerk, returning home, found 
 Ardworth employed as calmly as usual on his Law Reports. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE INVITATION TO LAUGHTON. 
 
 THAT day, when he called at Brompton, Percival reported to 
 Madame Dalibard his interview with the eccentric Mr. Tom- 
 kins. Lucretia seemed chafed and disconcerted by the inqui- 
 ries with which that gentleman had honored her, and as soon as 
 Percival had gone, she sent for Varney. He did not come till 
 late ; she repeated to him what St. John had said of the stran- 
 ger. Varney participated in her uneasy alarm. The name, 
 indeed, was unknown to them, nor could they conjecture the 
 bearer of so ordinary a patronymic; but there had been 
 secrets enow in Lucretia' s life to render her apprehensive of 
 encountering those who had known her in earlier years ; and 
 Varney feared lest any rumor reported to St. John might create 
 his mistrust, or lessen the hold obtained upon a victim hereto- 
 fore so unsuspicious. ' They both agreed in the expediency of 
 withdrawing themselves and St. John, as soon as possible, from 
 London, and frustrating Percival's chance of closer intercourse 
 with the stranger, who had evidently aroused his curiosity. 
 
 The next day Helen was much indisposed, and the symptoms 
 grew so grave towards the evening, that Madame Dalibard ex- 
 pressed alarm, and willingly suffered Percival (who had only 
 been permitted to see Helen for a few minutes, when her lassi- 
 tude was so extreme that she was obliged to retire to her room) 
 to go in search of a physician : he returned with one of the 
 most eminent of the faculty. On the way to Brompton, in 
 reply to the questions of Dr. , Percival spoke of the dejec- 
 tion to which Helen was occasionally subject, and this circum- 
 stance confirmed Dr. , after he had seen his patient, in his 
 
 view of the case. In addition to some feverish and inflamma- 
 tory symptoms which he trusted his prescriptions would speed- 
 ily remove, he found great nervous debility, and willingly fell 
 in with the casual suggestion of Varney, who was present, that
 
 302 LUCRETlA. 
 
 a. change of air would greatly improve Miss Mainwaring's gen- 
 eral health, as soon as the temporary acute attack had sub- 
 sided. He did not regard the present complaint very seriously, 
 and reassured poor Percival by his cheerful mien and sanguine 
 predictions. Percival remained at the house the whole day, 
 and had the satisfaction, before he left, of hearing that the 
 remedies had already abated the fever, and that Helen had 
 fallen into a profound sleep. Walking back to town with Var- 
 ney, the last said, hesitatingly: "You were saying to me, the 
 other day, that you feared you should have to go, for a few 
 days, both to Vernon Grange and to Laughton, as your steward 
 wished to point out to you some extensive alterations in the 
 management of your woods, to commence this autumn. As you 
 were so soon coming of age, Lady Mary desired that her direc- 
 tions should yield to your own. Now, since Helen is recom- 
 mended change of air, why not invite Madame Dalibard to 
 visit you at one of these places? I would suggest Laughton. 
 My poor mother-in-law, I know, longs to revisit the scene of 
 her youth, and you could not compliment or conciliate her 
 more than by such an invitation." 
 
 "Oh," said Percival joyfully, "it would realize the fond- 
 est dream of my heart to see Helen under the old roof-tree of 
 Laughton ; but as my mother is abroad, and there is therefore 
 no lady to receive them, perhaps " 
 
 "Why," interrupted Varney, "Madame Dalibard herself is 
 almost the very person whom les frienstfances might induce you 
 to select to do the honors of your house in Lady Mary's ab- 
 sence ; not only as kinswoman to yourself, but as the nearest 
 surviving relative of Sir Miles the most immediate descend- 
 ant of the St. Johns; her mature years and decorum of life, 
 her joint kindred to Helen and yourself, surely remove every 
 appearance of impropriety." 
 
 "If she thinks so, certainly; I am no accurate judge of such 
 formalities. You could not oblige me more, Varney, than in 
 pre-obtaining her consent to the proposal. Helen at Laugh- 
 ton! Oh, blissful thought!" 
 
 "And in what air would she be so likely to revive?" said 
 Varney, but his voice was thick and husky. 
 
 The ideas thus presented to him, almost banished its anxiety 
 from Percival's breast. In a thousand delightful shapes they 
 haunted him during the sleepless night. And when, the next 
 morning, he found that Helen was surprisingly better, he 
 pressed his invitation upon Madame Dalibard, with a warmth 
 that made her cheek yet more pale, and the hand, which the
 
 LUCRETIA. 30;$ 
 
 boy grasped as he pleaded, as cold as the dead. But she 
 briefly consented, and Percival, allowed a brief interview with 
 Helen, had the rapture to see her smile in a delight as child- 
 like as his own at the news he communicated, and listen, with 
 swimming eyes, when he dwelt on the walks they should take 
 together, amidst haunts to become henceforth dear to her as to 
 himself. Fairy land dawned before them. 
 
 The visit of the physician justified Percival's heightened spir- 
 its. All the acuter symptoms had vanished already. He sanc- 
 tioned his patient's departure from town as soon as Madame 
 Dalibard's convenience would permit, and recommended only 
 a course of restorative medicines to strengthen the nervous sys- 
 tem, which was to commence with the following morning, and 
 be persisted in for some weeks. He dwelt much on the effect 
 to be derived from taking these medicines, the first thing in 
 the day, as soon as Helen woke. Varney and Madame Dali- 
 bard exchanged a rapid glance. Charmed with the success 
 that in this instance had attended the skill of the great physi- 
 cian, Percival, in his usual zealous benevolence, now eagerly 
 pressed upon Madame Dalibard the wisdom of consulting 
 
 Dr. for her own malady; and the doctor, putting on his 
 
 spectacles, and drawing his chair nearer to the frowning crip- 
 ple, began to question her of her state; but Madame Dalibard 
 abruptly and discourteously put a stop to all interrogatories: 
 she had already exhausted all remedies art could suggest : she 
 had become reconciled to her deplorable infirmity, and lost all 
 faith in physicians; some day or other she might try the baths 
 at Egra, but, till then, she must be permitted to suffer undis- 
 turbed. 
 
 The doctor, by no means wishing to undertake a case of 
 chronic paralysis, rose smilingly, and with a liberal confession 
 that the German baths were sometimes extremely efficacious in 
 such complaints, pressed Percival's outstretched hand, then 
 slipped his own into his pocket, and bowed his way out of the 
 room. 
 
 Relieved from all apprehension, Percival very good-humored- 
 ly received the hint of Madame Dalibard, that the excitement 
 through which she had gone for the last twenty-four hours ren- 
 dered her unfit for his society; and went home to write to 
 Laughton, and prepare all things for the reception of his guests. 
 Varney accompanied him. Percival found Beck in the hall, 
 already much altered and embellished by a new suit of livery. 
 The ex-sweeper stared hard at Varney, who, without recogni/c- 
 ing, in so smart a shape, the squalid tatterdemalion who had
 
 lighted him up the stairs to Mr. Grabman's apartments, passed 
 him by into Percival's little study, on the ground-floor. 
 
 "Well, Beck," said Percival, ever mindful of others, and 
 attributing his groom's astonished gaze at Varney to his admi- 
 ration of that gentleman's showy exterior; "I shall send you 
 down to the country to-morrow with two of the horses so 
 you may have to-day to yourself, to take leave of your nurse. 
 I flatter myself you will find her rooms a little more comforta- 
 ble than they were yesterday." 
 
 Beck heard with a bursting heart; and his master, giving 
 him a cheering tap on the shoulder, left him to find his way 
 into the streets, and to Becky's abode. 
 
 He found, indeed, that the last had already undergone the 
 magic transformation which is ever at the command of godlike 
 wealth. Mrs. Mivers, who was naturally prompt and active, 
 had had pleasure in executing Percival's commission. Early 
 in the morning, floors had been scrubbed, the windows 
 cleaned, the ventilator fixed; then followed porters with chairs 
 and tables, and a wonderful Dutch clock, and new bedding, 
 and a bright piece of carpet; and then came two servants be- 
 longing to Mrs. Mivers to arrange the chattels; and finally 
 when all was nearly completed, the Avatar of Mrs. Mivers her- 
 self, to give the last finish with her own mittened hands, and 
 in her own housewifely apron. 
 
 The good lady was still employed in ranging a set of tea- 
 cups on the shelves of the dresser, when Beck entered ; and 
 his old nurse, in the overflow of her gratitude, hobbled up to 
 her foundling, and threw her arms round his neck. 
 
 "That's right!" said Mrs. Mivers good-humoredly, turning 
 round and wiping the tear from her eye. "You ought to 
 make much of him, poor lad; he has turned out a God-send, 
 indeed; and, upon my word, he looks very respectable in his 
 new clothes. But what is this a child's coral?" as, opening a 
 drawer in the dresser, she discovered Beck's treasure. "Dear 
 me, it is a very handsome one why, these bells look like 
 gold!" And suspicion of her prottgPs honesty, for a moment, 
 contracted her thoughtful brow ; "How ever on earth did you 
 come by this, Mrs. Becky?" 
 
 "Sure and sartin," answered Becky, dropping her mutilated 
 curtsey, "I be's glad it be found now, instead of sum days 
 afore, or I might have been vicked enough to let it go vith the 
 rest to the pop-shop; and I'm sure the time's out of mind, ven 
 that 'ere boy was a hurchin, that I've risted the timtashung, and 
 gaid, 'No, Becky Carruthers, that maun't go to my huncle's'J"
 
 LUCRETIA. 305 
 
 "And why not, my good woman?" 
 
 "Lor' love you, marm, if that curril could speak, who 
 knows vot it might say eh, lad, who knows? You sees, marm, 
 my good man had not a long been dead I could not a get no 
 vork, no vays 'Becky Carruthers, ' says I, 'you must go out in 
 the streets a-begging!' I niver thought I should a come to 
 that. But my poor husband, you sees, marm, fell Jrom a scaf- 
 fol as good a man as hever " 
 
 "Yes. yes, you told me all that before," said Mrs. Mivers, 
 growing impatient, and already diverted from her interest in 
 the coral by a new cargo, all bright from the tinman, which, 
 indeed, no less instantaneously absorbed the admiration both 
 of Beck and his nurse. And what with the inspection of 
 these articles, and the comments each provoked, the coral 
 rested in peace on the dresser, till Mrs. Mivers, when just 
 about to renew her inquiries, was startled by the sound of the 
 Dutch clock striking four, a voice which reminded her of the 
 lapse of time, and her own dinner hour. So, with many prom- 
 ises to call again, and have a good chat with her humble 
 friend, she took her departure, amidst the blessings of Becky, 
 and the less noisy, but not less grateful, salutations of Beck. 
 
 Very happy was the evening these poor creatures passed 
 together over their first cup of tea from the new bright copper 
 kettle, and the almost-forgotten luxury of crumpets, in which 
 their altered circumstances permitted them, without extrava- 
 gance, to indulge. In the course of conversation, Beck com- 
 municated how much he had been astonished by recognizing 
 the visitor of Grabman, the provoker of the irritable grave- 
 stealer, in the familiar companion of his master; and when 
 Becky told him how often in the domestic experience her avo- 
 cation of charing had accumulated, she had heard of the ruin 
 brought on rich young men by gamblers and sharpers, Beck 
 promised to himself to keep a sharp eye on Grabman 's showy 
 acquaintance. "For master is but a babe like," said he 
 majestically; "and I'd be cut into mincemeat afore I'd let an 
 'air on his 'ead come to 'arm, if so be's has 'ow I could per- 
 went it." 
 
 We need not say that his nurse confirmed him in these good 
 resolutions. 
 
 "And now," said Beck, when the time came for parting, 
 "you'll keep from the gin-shop, old 'oman, and not shame the 
 young master?" 
 
 "Sartin sure," answered Becky; "it is only ven vun is down 
 in the vorld that vun goes to the licker-shop. Now, hin-
 
 306 LUCRETIA. 
 
 deed," and she looked round very proudly "I 'as a 'spec- 
 table stashion, and I vouldn't go for to lower it, and let 'em 
 say that Becky Carruthers does not know how to conduct her- 
 self. The curril will be safe enuff now but praps you had 
 best take it yourself, lad." 
 
 "Vot should I do vith it? I've had enuff of the 'sponsibility. 
 Put it up in a 'ankerchiff, and praps ven master gets married, 
 and 'as a babby vot's teethin,' he vill say, 'Thank ye, Beck, for 
 your curril.' Vould not that make us proud, mammy? " 
 
 Chuckling heartily at that vision, Beck kissed his nurse, and 
 trying hard to keep himself upright, and do credit to the dig- 
 nity of his cloth, returned to his new room over the stables. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE WAKING OF THE SERPENT. 
 
 AND how, O Poet of the sad belief, and eloquence, "like 
 ebony once dark and splendid," * how couldst thou, august 
 Lucretius, deem it but sweet to behold from the steep the strife 
 of the great sea, or, safe from the peril, gaze on the wrath of 
 the battle, or, serene in the temples of the wise, look afar on 
 the wanderings of human error? Is it so sweet to survey the 
 ills from which thou art delivered? Shall not the strong law of 
 SYMPATHY find thee out, and thy heart rebuke thy philoso- 
 phy? Not sweet, indeed, can be man's shelter in self, when 
 he says to the storm: "I have no bark on the sea"; or to the 
 gods of the battle: "I have no son in the slaughter"; when he 
 smiles unmoved upon Woe, and murmurs: "Weep on, for 
 these eyes know no tears"; when unappalled, he beholdeth the 
 black deeds of crime, and cries to his conscience: "Thou art 
 calm." Yet solemn is the sight to him, who lives in all life; 
 seeks for Nature in the storm, and Providence in the battle; 
 loses self in the woe; probes his heart in the crime; and owns no 
 philosophy that sets him free from the fetters of man. Not in 
 vain do we scan all the contrasts in the large framework of civ- 
 ilized earth, if we note, "when the dust groweth into hardness, 
 and the clods cleave fast together." Range, O Art, through all 
 space, clasp together all extremes, shake idle wealth from its 
 lethargy, and bid States look in hovels, where the teacher is 
 dumb, and Reason unweeded runs to rot! Bid haughty Intel- 
 lect pause in its triumph and doubt if intellect alone can de- 
 liver the soul from its tempters ! Only that lives uncorrupt, 
 
 * It was said of Tertullian, that " his style was like ebony, dark and splendid."
 
 LUCRETIA. 307 
 
 which preserves in all seasons the human affections in which 
 the breath of God breathes, and is ! Go forth to the world, O 
 Art! Go forth to the innocent, the guilty; the wise, and the 
 dull! Go forth as the still voice of Fate! Speak of the inse- 
 curity even of Goodness below ! Carry on the rapt vision of 
 suffering Virtue through "the doors of the shadows of death"; 
 Show the dim revelations symbolled forth in the Tragedy of 
 old ! How incomplete is man's destiny, how undeveloped is 
 the justice divine, if Antigone sleep eternally in the ribs of the 
 rock, and (Edipus vanish forever in the Grove of the Furies ! 
 Here, below, "the waters are hid with a stone, and the face of 
 the deep is frozen" ! But above liveth He "who can bind the 
 sweet influences of the Pleiades, and loose the bands of 
 Orion." Go with Fate over the bridge, and she vanishes in 
 the land beyond the gulf ! Behold where the Eternal demands 
 Eternity for the progress of His creatures, and the vindication 
 of His justice! 
 
 It was past midnight, and Lucretia sat alone in her dreary 
 room; her head buried on her bosom, her eyes fixed on the 
 ground, her hands resting on her knees: it was an image of 
 inanimate prostration and decrepitude that might have moved 
 compasssion to its depth. The door opened, and Martha en- 
 tered, to assist Madame Dalibard, as usual, to retire to rest. 
 Her mistress slowly raised her eyes at the noise of the opening 
 door, and those eyes took their searching, penetrating acute- 
 ness, as they fixed upon the florid, nor uncomely countenance 
 of the waiting-woman. 
 
 In her starched cap, her sober-colored stuff gown, in her 
 prim, quiet manner, and a certain sanctified demureness of as- 
 pect, there was something in the first appearance of this woman 
 that impressed you with the notion of respectability, and in- 
 spired confidence in those steady, good qualities which we seek 
 in a trusty servant. But, more closely examined, an habitual 
 observer might have found much to qualify, perhaps to disturb, 
 his first prepossessions. The exceeding lowness of the fore- 
 head, over which that stiff, harsh hair was so puritanically 
 parted ; the severe hardness of those thin, small lips, so pursed 
 up and constrained ; even a certain dull cruelty in those light, 
 cold blue eyes, might have caused an uneasy sentiment, almost 
 approaching to fear. The fat grocer's spoiled child instinctive- 
 ly recoiled from her, when she entered the shop to make her 
 household purchases; the old, gray-whiskered terrier dog, at 
 the public house, slunk into the tap when she crossed the 
 threshold,
 
 308 LUCRETIA. 
 
 Madame Dalibard silently suffered herself to be wheeled into 
 the adjoining bedroom, and the process of disrobing was nearly 
 completed before she said, abruptly : 
 
 "So you attended Mr. Varney's uncle in his last illness. 
 Did he suffer much?" 
 
 "He was a poor creature, at best," answered Martha; "but 
 he gave me a deal of trouble afore he went. He was a scranny 
 corpse when I strecked him out." 
 
 Madame Dalibard shrank from the hands at that moment 
 employed upon herself, and said: 
 
 "It was not, then, the first corpse you have laid out for the 
 grave?" 
 
 "Not by many." 
 
 "And did any of those you so prepared, die of the same 
 complaint?" 
 
 "I can't say, I'm sure, " returned Martha. "I never inquires 
 how folks die ; my bizness was to nurse 'em till all was over, 
 and then to sit up. As they say in my country 'Riving Pike 
 wears a hood, when the weather bodes ill.' " * 
 
 "And when you sat up with Mr. Varney's uncle, did you feel 
 no fear in the dead of the night? That corpse before you no 
 fear?" 
 
 "Young Mr. Varney said I should come to no harm. Oh, 
 he's a clever man. What should I fear, ma'am?" answered Mar- 
 tha, with a horrid simplicity. 
 
 'You have belonged to a very religious sect, I think I have 
 heard you say a sect not unfamiliar to me a sect to which 
 great crime is very rarely known?" 
 
 "Yes, ma'am, some of 'em be tame enough, but others be 
 weel f deep! " 
 
 "You do not believe what they taught you?" 
 
 "I did, when I was young and silly." 
 
 "And what disturbed your belief?" 
 
 "Ma'am, the man what taught me, and my mother afore me, 
 was the first I ever kep company with," answered Martha, 
 without a change in her florid hue, which seemed fixed in her 
 cheek, as the red in an autumn leaf. "After he had ruined me, 
 as the girls say, he told me as how it was all sham!" 
 
 "You loved him, then?" 
 
 "The man was well enough, ma'am, and he behaved hand- 
 some, and got me a husband. I've known better days." 
 
 * " If Riving Pike do wear a hood, 
 
 The day, be sure, will ne'er be good." 
 
 A LANCASHIRE DISTICH. 
 t Wctl, a whirlpool.
 
 LUCRETIA. 309 
 
 "You sleep well at night ?" 
 
 "Yes, ma'am, thank you, I loves my bed." 
 
 "I have done with you," said Madame Dalibard, stifling a 
 groan, as now, placed in her bed, she turned to the wall. Mar- 
 tha extinguished the candle, leaving it on the table by the bed, 
 with a book and a box of matches, for Madame Dalibard was a 
 bad sleeper, and often read in the night. She then drew the 
 curtains, and went her way. 
 
 It might be an hour after Martha had retired to rest, that 
 a hand was stretched from the bed, that the candle was lighted, 
 and Lucretia Dalibard rose ; with a sudden movement she 
 threw aside the coverings, and stood in her long night-gear on 
 the floor. Yes, the helpless, paralyzed cripple rose was on 
 her feet tall, elastic, erect! It was as a resuscitation from the 
 grave. Never was change more startling than that simple ac- 
 tion effected not in the form alone, but the whole character 
 of the face. The solitary light streamed upward on a counte- 
 nance, on every line of which spoke sinister power and strong 
 resolve. If you had ever seen her before, in her false, crippled 
 state, prostrate and helpless, and could have seen her then 
 those eyes, if haggard still, now full of life and vigor; that 
 frame, if spare, towering aloft in commanding stature, perfect 
 in its proportions as a Grecian image of Nemesis your amaze 
 would have merged into terror, so preternatural did the trans- 
 formation appear! So did aspect and bearing contradict the 
 very character of her sex ; uniting the two elements, most for- 
 midable in man or in fiend wickedness and power! 
 
 She stood a moment motionless, breathing loud, as if it were 
 a joy to breathe free from restraint, and then, lifting the light, 
 and gliding to the adjoining room, she unlocked a bureau in 
 the corner, and bent over a small casket, which she opened with 
 A secret spring. 
 
 Reader, cast back your eye to that passage in this history, 
 when Lucretia Clavering took down the volume from the niche 
 in the tapestried chamber at Laughton, and numbered, in 
 thought, the hours left to her uncle's life. Look back on the 
 ungrateful thought ; behold, how it was swelled and ripened 
 into the guilty deed! There, in that box, Death guards his 
 treasure-crypt. There, all the science of Hades numbers its 
 murderous inventions. As she searched for the ingredients her 
 design had pre-selected, something heavier than those small 
 packets she deranged fell to the bottom of the box with a low 
 and hollow sound. She started at the noise, and then smiled, 
 in scorn of her momentary fear, as she took up the ring that
 
 310 
 
 had occasioned the sound a ring plain and solid, like those 
 used as signets in the Middle Ages, with a large dull opal in the 
 centre. What secret could that bauble have in common with 
 its ghastly companions in Death's crypt? This had been found 
 amongst Olivier's papers; a note in that precious manuscript, 
 which had given to the hands of his successors the keys of the 
 grave, had discovered the mystery of its uses. By the pressure 
 of the hand, at the touch of a concealed spring, a barbed point 
 flew forth, steeped in venom, more deadly than the Indian ex- 
 tracts from the bag of the cobra-capella a venom to which no 
 antidote is known, which no test can detect. It corrupts the 
 whole mass of the blood; it mounts in frenzy and fire to the 
 brain ; it rends the soul from the body in spasm and convulsion. 
 But examine the dead, and how divine the effect of the cause? 
 How go back to the records of the Borgias, and amidst all the 
 scepticism of times in which, happily, such arts are unknown, 
 unsuspected, learn from the hero of Machiavel how a clasp of 
 the hand can get rid of a foe? Easier and more natural to 
 point to the living puncture in the skin, and the swollen flesh 
 round it, and dilate on the danger a rusty nail nay a pin can 
 engender when the humors are peccant and the blood is im- 
 pure! The fabrication of that bauble, the discovery of Borgia's 
 device, was the masterpiece in the science of Dalibard; a curi- 
 ous and philosophical triumph of research, hitherto unused by 
 its inventor and his heirs; for that casket is rich in the choice 
 of more gentle materials ; but the use yet may come. As she 
 gazed on the ring, there was a complacent and proud expression 
 on Lucretia's face. 
 
 "Dumb token of Caesar Borgia!" she murmured; "Him of 
 the wisest head and the boldest hand that ever grasped at em- 
 pire ; whom Machiavel the virtuous, rightly praised as the model 
 of accomplished ambition ! Why should I falter in the paths 
 which he trod with his royal step, only because my goal is not 
 a throne? Every circle is as complete in itself, whether round- 
 ing a globule or a star. Why groan in the belief that the mind 
 denies itself by the darkness through which it glides on its object, 
 or the mire through which it ascends to the hill? Murderer as 
 he was, poisoner, and fratricide did blood clog his intellect? 
 Or crime impoverish the luxury of his genius? Was his verse 
 less melodious,* or his love of art less intense, or his eloquence 
 less persuasive, because he sought to remove every barrier, re- 
 venge every wrong, crush every foe?" 
 
 * It is well known that Caesar Borgia was both a munificent patron and an exquisite 
 appreciator of art ; well known also are his powers of persuasion : but the general reader 
 may not perhaps be acquainted with the fact, that this terrible criminal was also a poet.
 
 LtJCRETtA. 311 
 
 In the wondrous corruption to which her mind had de- 
 scended, thus murmured Lucretia. Intellect had been so long 
 made her sole god, that the very monster of history was lifted 
 to her reverence by his ruthless intellect alone ; lifted in that 
 mood of feverish excitement, when conscience, often less 
 silenced, lay crushed under the load of the deed to come, into 
 an example and a guide. 
 
 Though, at times, when looking back, oppressed by the 
 blackest despair, no remorse of the past ever weakened those 
 nerves, when the Hour called up its demon, and the Will ruled 
 the rest of the human being as a machine. 
 
 She replaced the ring, she reclosed the casket, and relocked 
 its depository ; then passed again into the adjoining chamber. 
 
 A few minutes afterwards, and the dim light that stole from 
 the heavens (in which the moon was partially overcast), through 
 the casement on the staircase, rested on a shapeless figure, 
 robed in black from head to foot a figure so obscure and in- 
 definable in outline, so suited to the gloom in its hue, so 
 stealthy and rapid in its movements, that, had you started 
 from sleep, and seen it on your floor, you would, perforce, 
 have deemed that your fancy had befooled you! 
 
 Thus darkly, through the darkness, went the Poisoner to her 
 prey. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 RETROSPECT. 
 
 WE have now arrived at that stage in this history when it is 
 necessary to look back on the interval in Lucretia' s life, be- 
 tween the death of Dalibard, and her re-introduction, in the 
 second portion of our tale. 
 
 One day, without previous notice or warning, Lucretia ar- 
 rived at William Mainwaring's house ; she was in the deep weeds 
 of widowhood, and that garb of mourning sufficed to add Su- 
 san's tenderest commiseration to the warmth of her affection- 
 ate welcome. Lucretia appeared to have forgiven the past, 
 and to have conquered its more painful recollections ; she was 
 gentle to Susan, though she rather suffered than returned her 
 caresses; she was open and frank to William. Both felt inex- 
 pressibly grateful for her visit the forgiveness it betokened, and 
 the confidence it implied. At this time, no condition could be 
 more promising and prosperous than that of the young banker. 
 From the first, the most active partner in the bank, he had now 
 virtually almost monopolized the business. The senior partner
 
 314 LUCkETIA. 
 
 was old and infirm ; the second had a bucolic turn, and was 
 much taken up by the care of a large farm he had recently pur- 
 chased, so that Mainwaring more and more trusted and hon- 
 ored, became the sole managing administrator of the firm. 
 Business throve in his able hands; and with patient and steady 
 perseverance there was little doubt but what, before middle age 
 was attained, his competence would have swelled into a fortune 
 sufficient to justify him in realizing the secret dream of his 
 heart the parliamentary representation of the town in which 
 he had already secured the affection and esteem of the inhabi- 
 tants. 
 
 It was not long before Lucretia detected the ambition Will- 
 iam's industry but partially concealed; it was not long before, 
 with the ascendancy natural to her will and her talents, she be- 
 gan to exercise considerable, though unconscious, influence 
 over a man in whom a thousand good qualities, and some great 
 talents, were unhappily accompanied by infirm purpose and 
 weak resolutions. The ordinary conversation of Lucretia un- 
 settled his mind and inflamed his vanity a conversation able, 
 aspiring, full both of knowledge drawn from books, and of that 
 experience of public men, which her residence in Paris (where- 
 on, with its new and greater Charlemagne, the eyes of the world 
 were turned) had added to her acquisitions in the lore of human 
 life. Nothing more disturbs a mind like William Mainwaring's 
 than that species of eloquence which rebukes its patience in the 
 present, by inflaming all its hopes in the future. Lucretia had 
 none of the charming babble of women; none of that tender 
 interest in household details, in the minutiae of domestic life, 
 which relaxes the intellect while softening the heart. Hard 
 and vigorous, her sentences came forth in eternal appeal to the 
 reason, or address to the sterner passions in which love has no 
 share. Beside this strong thinker, poor Susan's sweet talk 
 seemed frivolous and inane. Her soft hold upon Mainwar- 
 ing loosened; he ceased to consult her upon business; he began 
 to repine that the partner of his lot could have little sympathy 
 with his dreams more often and more bitterly now did his dis- 
 contented glance, in his way homeward, rove to the roof-tops 
 of the rural member for the town; more eagerly did he read 
 the parliamentary debates; more heavily did he sigh at the 
 thought of eloquence denied a vent, and ambition delayed in 
 its career. 
 
 When arrived at this state of mind, Lucretia' s conversation 
 took a more worldly, a more practical turn. Her knowledge 
 of the speculators of Paris instructed her pictures of bold inge-
 
 LUCRETIA. 313 
 
 nuity creating sudden wealth; she spoke of fortunes made in a 
 day, of parvenus bursting into millionnaires, of wealth as the 
 necessary instrument of ambition, as the arch ruler of the civ- 
 ilized world. Never once, be it observed, in these temptations, 
 did Lucretia address herself to the heart; the ordinary chan- 
 nels of vulgar seduction were disdained by her; she would not 
 have stooped so low as Mainwaring's love, could she have com- 
 manded or allured it; she was willing to leave to Susan the 
 husband reft from her own passionate youth, but leave him 
 with the brand on his brow and the worm at his heart a scoff 
 and a wreck. 
 
 At this time, there was in that market town one of those ad- 
 venturous, speculative men, who are the more dagerous impos- 
 tors because imposed upon by their own sanguine chimeras, who 
 have a plausibility in their calculations, an earnestness in their 
 arguments, which account for the dupes they daily make in our 
 most sober and wary of civilized communities. Unscrupulous 
 in their means, yet really honest in the belief that their objects 
 can be attained, they are at once the rogues and fanatics of 
 Mammon ! This person was held to have been fortunate in 
 some adroit speculations in the corn trade, and he was brought 
 too frequently into business with Mainwaring not to be a fre- 
 quent visitor at the house. In him, Lucretia saw the very in- 
 strument of her design; she led him on to talk of business as a 
 game; of money as a realizer of cent, per cent.; she drew him 
 into details; she praised him, she admired. In his presence 
 she seemed only to hear him; in his absence, musingly, she 
 started from silence to exclaim on the acuteness of his genius 
 and the accuracy of his figures. Soon the tempter at Main- 
 waring's heart gave signification to these praises; soon this 
 adventurer became his most intimate friend. Scarcely know- 
 ing why, never ascribing the change to her sister, poor Susan 
 wept, amazed at Mainwaring's transformation. No care now 
 for the new books from London, or the roses in the garden ! 
 The music on the instrument was unheeded ! Books, roses, 
 music! what are those trifles to a man thinking upon cent, 
 per cent.? Mainwaring's very countenance altered; it lost its 
 frank, affectionate beauty; sullen, abstracted, morose, it 
 showed that some great care was at the core. Then Lucretia 
 herself began grievingly to notice the change to Susan; grad- 
 ually she altered her tone with regard to the speculator, and 
 hinted vague fears, and urged Susan to remonstrance and 
 warning. As she anticipated, warning and remonstrance came 
 in vain to the man who, comparing Lucretia's mental power to
 
 314 LUCRETIA. 
 
 Susan's, had learned to despise the unlearned, timid sense 
 of the last. 
 
 It is unnecessary to trace this change in Mainwaring, step 
 by step, or to measure the time which sufficed to dazzle his 
 reason and blind his honor. In the midst of schemes and 
 hopes, which the lust of gold now pervaded, came a thunder- 
 bolt. An anonymous letter to the head partner of the bank 
 provoked suspicions that led to minute examination of the 
 accounts. It seemed that sums had been irregularly advanced 
 (upon bills drawn upon men of straw) to the speculator by 
 Mainwaring; and the destination of these sums could be traced 
 to gambling operations in trade, in which Mainwaring had a pri- 
 vate interest and partnership. So great, as we have said, had 
 been the confidence placed in William's abilities and honor, 
 that the facilities afforded him, in the disposal of the joint 
 stock, far exceeded those usually granted to the partner of a 
 firm, and the breach of trust appeared the more flagrant from 
 the extent of the confidence misplaced. Meanwhile William 
 Mainwaring, though as yet unconscious of the proceedings of his 
 partners, was gnawed by anxiety and remorse, not unmixed 
 with hope. He depended upon the result of a bold specula- 
 tion in the purchase of shares in a Canal Company, a bill for 
 which was then before Parliament, with (as he was led to be- 
 lieve) a certainty of success. The sums he had, on his own 
 responsibility, abstracted from the joint account were devoted 
 to this adventure. But to do him justice, he never dreamed of 
 appropriating the profits anticipated to himself. Though 
 knowing that the bills, on which the moneys had been ad- 
 vanced, were merely nominal deposits, he had confidently cal- 
 culated on the certainty of success for the speculations to which 
 the proceeds so obtained were devoted, and he looked forward 
 to the moment when he might avow what he had done, and 
 justify it by doubling the capital withdrawn. But to his incon- 
 ceivable horror the bill of the Canal Comany was rejected in 
 the Lords ; the shares bought at a premium went down to 
 zero; and, to add to his perplexity, the speculator abruptly 
 disappeared from the town. In this crisis, he was summoned 
 to meet his indignant associates. 
 
 The evidence against him was morally damning, if not 
 legally conclusive. The unhappy man heard all in the silence 
 of despair. Crushed and bewildered, he attempted no de- 
 fence. He asked but an hour to sum up the losses of the 
 bank, and his own; they amounted within a few hundreds to the 
 ten thousand pounds he had brought to the firm, and which, in
 
 LUCRETIA. 315 
 
 the absence of marriage-settlements, was entirely at his own dis- 
 posal. This sum he at once resigned to his associates on con- 
 dition that they should defray from it his personal liabilities. 
 The money thus repaid, his partners naturally relinquished all 
 further inquiry. They were moved by pity for one so gifted 
 and so fallen; they even offered him 'a subordinate, but lucra- 
 tive, situation in the firm in which he had been partner: but 
 Mainwaring wanted the patience and resolution to work back 
 the redemption of his name perhaps, ultimately, of his for- 
 tunes. In the fatal anguish of his shame and despair, he fled 
 from the town ; his flight confirmed forever the rumors against 
 him rumors worse than the reality. It was long before he 
 even admitted Susan to the knowledge of the obscure refuge 
 he had sought; there, at length, she joined him. Meanwhile, 
 what did Lucretia? She sold nearly half of her own fortune, 
 constituted principally of the moiety of her portion, which, at 
 D^libard's death, had passed to herself as survivor, and partly 
 of the share in her deceased husband's effects, which the 
 French law awarded to her; and with the proceeds of this sum 
 she purchased an annuity for her victims? Was this strange 
 generosity the act of mercy, the result of repentance? No; it 
 was one of the not least subtle and delicious refinements of her 
 revenge. To know him who had rejected her the rival who 
 had supplanted the miserable pensioners of her bounty, was 
 dear to her haughty and disdainful hate. The lust of power, 
 ever stronger in her than avarice, more than reconciled her to 
 the sacrifice of gold; yes, here she, the despised, the de- 
 graded, had power still; her wrath had ruined the fortunes of 
 her victim, blasted the repute, embittered and desolated 
 evermore the future; now her contemptuous charity fed the 
 wretched lives that she spared in scorn. She had no small 
 difficulty, it is true, in persuading Susan to accept this sacri- 
 fice, and she did so only by sustaining her sister's belief that 
 the past yet could be retrieved; that Mainwaring's energies 
 could yet rebuild their fortunes; and that as the annuity was 
 at any time redeemable, the aid therefore was only temporary. 
 With this understanding, Susan, overwhelmed with gratitude, 
 weeping, and broken-hearted, departed to join the choice of 
 her youth. As the men deputed by the auctioneer to arrange 
 and ticket the furniture for sale entered the desolate house, 
 Lucretia then, with the step of a conqueror, passed from the 
 threshold. 
 
 "Ah!" she murmured as she paused, and gazed on the 
 walls; "Ah, they were happy when I first entered those doors!
 
 316 LUCRETIA. 
 
 Happy in each other's tranquil love; happier still, when they 
 deemed I had forgiven the wrong, and abjured the past! How 
 honored was then their home! How knew I then, for the first 
 time, what the home of love can be? And who had destroyed 
 for me, upon all the earth, a home like theirs? They on whom 
 that home smiled with its serene and taunting peace ! I I, the 
 guest! I I, the abandoned, the betrayed! What dark mem- 
 ories were on my soul! What a hell boiled within my bosom! 
 Well might those memories take each a voice to accuse them! 
 Well, from that hell, might rise the Alecto! Their lives were 
 in my power! My fatal dowry at my command rapid death, 
 or slow consuming torture ; but to have seen each cheer the 
 other to the grave, lighting every downward step with the eyes 
 of love vengeance, so urged, would have fallen only on my- 
 self! Ha! deceiver, didst thou plume thyself, forsooth, on 
 spotless reputation? Didst thou stand, me by thy side, 
 amongst thy perjured household gods, and talk of honor? Thy 
 home it is reft from thee! Thy reputation, it is a scoff! 
 Thine honor, it is a ghost that shall haunt thee ! Thy love, 
 can it linger yet? Shall the soft eyes of thy wife not burn into 
 thy heart, and shame turn love into loathing? Wrecks of my 
 vengeance, minions of my bounty, I did well to let ye live ! I 
 shake the dust from my feet on your threshold; live on home- 
 less, hopeless, and childless! The curse is fulfilled!" 
 
 From that hour Lucretia never paused from her career to in- 
 quire further of her victims ; she never entered into communi- 
 cation with either. They knew not her address, nor her fate, 
 nor she theirs. As she had reckoned, Mainwaring made no 
 effort to recover himself from his fall. All the high objects 
 that had lured his ambition were gone from him evermore. 
 No place in the State, no authority in the senate, awaits in 
 England the man with a blighted name. For the lesser objects 
 of life, he had no heart, and no care. They lived in obscurity 
 in a small village in Cornwall, till the Peace allowed them to 
 remove to France. The rest of their fate is known. 
 
 Meanwhile, Lucretia removed to one of those smaller Lon- 
 dons resorts of pleasure and idleness, with which rich England 
 abounds, and in which widows of limited income can make 
 poverty seem less plebeian. And now, to all those passions 
 that had hitherto raged within her, a dismal apathy succeeded. 
 It was the great calm in her state of life. The winds fell, and 
 the sails drooped. Her vengeance satisfied, that which she 
 had made so preternaturally the main object of existence, once 
 fulfilled, left her in youth obiectless.
 
 LUCRETIA. 317 
 
 She strove at first to take pleasure in the society of the place, 
 but its frivolities and pettiness of purpose soon wearied that mas- 
 culine and grasping mind, already made insensible to the often 
 healthful, often innocent, excitement of trifles, by the terrible 
 ordeal it had passed. Can the touch of the hand, scorched by the 
 burning iron, feel pleasure in the softness of silk, or the light 
 down of the cygnet's plume? She next sought such relief as 
 study could afford ; and her natural bent of thought, and her de- 
 sire to vindicate her deeds to herself, plunged her into the fath- 
 omless abyss of metaphysical inquiry, with the hope to confirm 
 into positive assurance her earlier scepticism ; with the atheist's 
 hope to annihilate the soul, and banish the presiding God. 
 But no voice that could satisfy her reason came from those 
 dreary deeps: contradiction on contradiction met her in the 
 maze. Only when, wearied with book-lore, she turned her 
 eyes to the visible nature, and beheld everywhere harmony, 
 order, system, contrivance, art, did she start with the amaze 
 and awe of instinctive conviction ; and the natural religion re- 
 volted from her cheerless ethics! Then came one of those 
 sudden reactions common with strong passions and exploring 
 minds : but more common with women, however manlike, than 
 with men. Had she lived in Italy then, she had become a 
 nun! For in this woman, unlike Varney and Dalibard, the 
 conscience could never be utterly silenced. In her choice of 
 evil, she found only torture to her spirit in all the respites 
 afforded to the occupations it indulged. When employed upon 
 ill, remorse gave way to the zest of scheming ; when the ill was 
 done, remorse came with the repose. 
 
 It was in this peculiar period of her life that Lucretia, turn- 
 ing everywhere, and desperately, for escape from the past, be- 
 came acquainted with some members of one of the most rigid 
 of the sects of dissent. At first, she permitted herself to know 
 and commune with these persons from a kind of contemptuous 
 curiosity; she desired to encourage, in contemplating them, 
 her experience of the follies of human nature ; but in that crisis 
 of her mind, in those struggles of her reason, whatever showed 
 that which she yearned most to discover, vi/.., earnest faith, 
 rooted and genuine conviction, whether of annihilation or of 
 immortality a philosophy that might reconcile her to crime by 
 destroying the providence of good, or a creed that could hold 
 out the hope of redeeming the past, and exercising sin by the 
 mystery of a Divine sacrifice had over her a power which she 
 had not imagined or divined. Gradually the intense convic- 
 tions of her new associates disturbed and infected her. The; .'
 
 318 LUCRETIA. 
 
 affirmations, that as we are born in wrath, so sin is our second 
 nature, our mysterious heritage, seemed, to her understanding, 
 willing to be blinded, to imply excuses for her past misdeeds. 
 Their assurances that the worst sinner may become the most 
 earnest saint ; that through but one act of the will, resolute 
 faith, all redemption is to be found ; these affirmations and 
 these assurances, which have so often restored the guilty, and 
 remodelled the human heart, made a salutary, if brief, impres- 
 sion upon her. Nor were the lives of these dissenters (for the 
 most part, austerely moral), nor the peace and self-compla- 
 cency which they evidently found in the satisfaction of con- 
 science and fulfilment of duty, without an influence over her, 
 that, for awhile, both chastened and soothed. 
 
 Hopeful of such a convert, the good teachers strove hard to 
 confirm the seeds, springing up from the granite and amidst 
 the weeds ; and amongst them came one man more eloquent, 
 more seductive than the rest, Alfred Braddell. This person, a 
 trader at Liverpool, was one of those strange living paradoxes 
 that can rarely be found out of a commercial community. He 
 himself had been a convert to the sect, and like most converts, 
 he pushed his enthusiasm into the bigotry of the zealot. He 
 saw no salvation out of the pale into which he had entered; 
 but though his belief was sincere, it did not genially operate 
 on his practical life; with the most scrupulous attention to 
 forms, he had the worldliness and cunning of the carnal. He 
 had abjured the vices of the softer senses, but not that which 
 so seldom wars on the decorums of outer life. He was essen- 
 tially a money-maker close, acute, keen, over-reaching. Good 
 works with him were indeed as nothing; faith, the all in all. 
 He was one of the elect, and could not fall. Still in this man 
 there was all the intensity which often characterizes a mind in 
 proportion to the narrowness of its compass; that intensity gave 
 fire to his gloomy eloquence, and strength to his obstinate will. 
 He saw Lucretia, and his zeal for her conversion soon ex- 
 panded into love for her person ; yet that love was secondary 
 to his covetousness. Though ostensibly in a flourishing busi- 
 ness, he was greatly distressed for money to carry on operations 
 which swelled beyond the reach of his capital; his fingers 
 itched for the sum which Lucretia had still at her disposal : 
 but the seeming sincerity of the man, the persuasion of his 
 goodness, his reputation for sanctity, deceived her ; she be- 
 lieved herself honestly and ardently beloved, and by one who 
 could guide her back, if not to happiness, at least to repose. 
 She herself loved him not; she could love no more. But it
 
 LUCRETIA. 319 
 
 seemed to her a luxury to find some one she could trust, she 
 could honor. If you had probed into the recesses of her mind 
 at that time, you would have found that no religious belief was 
 there settled, only the desperate wish to believe; only the dis- 
 turbance of all previous infidelity; only a restless, gnawing 
 desire to escape from memory, to emerge from the gulf. In 
 this troubled, impatient,, disorder of mind and feeling, she hur- 
 ried into a second marriage as fatal as the first. 
 
 For a while she bore patiently all the privations of that ascetic 
 household; assisted in all those external formalities, centred 
 all her intellect within that iron range of existence. But no 
 grace descended on her soul, no warm ray unlocked the ice of 
 the well. Then, gradually becoming aware of the niggardly 
 meannesses, of the harsh, uncharitable judgments, of the decor- 
 ous frauds, that, with unconscious hypocrisy, her husband 
 concealed beneath the robes of sanctity, a weary disgust stole 
 over her ; it stole, it deepened, it increased ; it became intoler- 
 able, when she discovered that Braddell had knowingly de- 
 ceived her as to his worldly substance. In that mood into 
 which she had rushed into these ominous nuptials, she had 
 had no thought for vulgar advantages; had Braddell been a 
 beggar, she had married him as rashly. But he, with the in- 
 ability to comprehend a nature like hers dim not more to her 
 terrible vices than to the sinister grandeur which made their 
 ordinary atmosphere had descended cunningly to address the 
 avarice he thought as potent in others as himself, to enlarge on 
 the worldly prosperity with which Providence had blessed him'; 
 and now she saw that her dowry alone had saved the crippled 
 trader from the bankrupt list. With this revolting discovery, 
 with the scorn it produced, vanished all Lucretia's unstable 
 visions of reform. She saw this man a saint amongst his tribe, 
 and would not believe in the virtues of his brethren, great and 
 unquestionable as they might have been proved to a more dis- 
 passionate and humble inquirer. The imposture she detected, 
 she deemed universal in the circle in which she dwelt; and 
 Satan once more smiled upon the subject he regained. Lucre- 
 tia became a mother, but their child formed no endearing tie 
 between the ill-assorted pair ; it rather embittered their discord. 
 Dimly, even then, as she bent over the cradle, that vision which 
 now, in the old house at Brompton, haunted her dreams, and 
 beckoned her over seas of blood into the fancied future, was 
 foreshadowed in the face of her infant son. To be born again 
 in that birth, to live only in that life, to aspire as man may 
 aspire, in that future man whom she would train to knowledge
 
 320 LUCRETIA. 
 
 and lead to power these were the feelings with which thai 
 sombre mother gazed upon her babe. The idea that the low- 
 born, grovelling father had the sole right over that son's des- 
 tiny, had the authority to cabin his mind in the walls of form, 
 bind him down to the sordid apprenticeship, debased, not dig- 
 nified, by the solemn mien, roused her indignant wrath ; she 
 sickened when Braddell touched her child. All her pride of 
 intellect, that had never slept ; all her pride of birth, long dor- 
 mant, woke up to protect the heir of her ambition, the descend- 
 ant of her race, from the defilement of the father's nurture. 
 Not long after her confinement, she formed a plan for escape ; 
 she disappeared from the house with her child. Taking refuge 
 in a cottage, living on the sale of the few jewels she possessed, 
 she was for some weeks almost happy. But Braddell, less 
 grieved by the loss than shocked by the scandal, was indefati- 
 gable in his researches he discovered her retreat. The scene 
 between them was terrible. There was no resisting the power 
 which all civilized laws give to the rights of husband and 
 father. Before this man, whom she scorned so unutterably, 
 Lucretia was impotent. Then, all the boiling passions long 
 suppressed beneath that command of temper, which she owed 
 both to habitual simulation and intense disdain, rushed forth. 
 Then, she appalled the impostor with her indignant denuncia- 
 tions of his hypocrisy, his meanness, and his guile. Then, 
 throwing off the mask she had worn, she hurled her anathema 
 on his sect, on his faith, with the same breath that smote his 
 conscience and left it wordless. She shocked all the notions 
 he sincerely entertained, and he stood awed by accusations 
 from a blasphemer whom he dared not rebuke. His rage 
 broke at length from his awe. Stung, maddened by the scorn 
 of himself, his blood fired into juster indignation by her scoff 
 at his creed, he lost all self-possession, and struck her to the 
 ground. In the midst of shame and dread at disclosure of his 
 violence, which succeeded the act so provoked, he vas not less 
 relieved than amazed when Lucretia, rising slowly, laid her 
 hand gently on his arm, and said: "Repent not, it is past; 
 fear not, I will be silent ! Come, you are the stronger you 
 prevail. I will follow my child to your home." 
 
 In this unexpected submission in one so imperious, Braddell's 
 imperfect comprehension of character saw but fear, and his 
 stupidity exulted in his triumph. Lucretia returned with him. 
 A few days afterwards, Braddell became ill; the illness in- 
 creased, slow, gradual, wearing. It broke his spirit with his 
 health; and then the steadfast imperiousness of Lucretia' s sterri
 
 LtTCRETtA. 321 
 
 will ruled and subjugated him. He cowered beneath her 
 haughty, searching gaze ; he shivered at her sidelong, malig- 
 nant glance; but with this fear came necessarily hate; and this 
 hate, sometimes sufficing to vanquish the fear, spitefully evinced 
 itself in thwarting her legitimate control over her infant. He 
 would have it (though he had little real love for children) con- 
 stantly with him, and affected to contradict all her own orders 
 to the servants, in the sphere in which mothers arrogate most 
 the right. Only on these occasions sometimes would Lucretia 
 lose her grim self-control, and threaten that her child yet should 
 be emancipated from his hands; should yet be taught the scorn 
 for hypocrites which he had taught herself. These words sank 
 deep, not only in the resentment, but in the conscience of the 
 husband. Meanwhile, Lucretia scrupled not to evince her dis- 
 dain of Braddell, by markedly abstaining from all the cere- 
 monies she had before so rigidly observed. The sect grew 
 scandalized. Braddell did not abstain from making known his 
 causes of complaint. The haughty, imperious woman was con- 
 demned in the community, and hated in the household. 
 
 It was at this time that Walter Ardworth, who was then striv- 
 ing to eke out his means by political lectures (which at the 
 earlier part of the century found ready audience) in our great 
 towns, came to Liverpool. Braddell and Ardworth had been 
 schoolfellows, and even at school, embryo politicians of con- 
 genial notions; and the conversion of the former to one of the 
 sects which had grown out of the old creeds, that, under Crom- 
 well, had broken the sceptre of the son of Belial, and established 
 the Commonwealth of Saints, had only strengthened the repub- 
 lican tenets of the sour fanatic. Ardworth called on Braddell, 
 and was startled to find in his schoolfellow's wife the niece of 
 his benefactor, Sir Miles St. John. Now, Lucretia had never 
 divulged her true parentage to her husband. In an union so 
 much beneath her birth, she had desired to conceal from all her 
 connections the fall of the once-honored heiress. She had de- 
 scended, in search of peace, to obscurity; but her pride re- 
 volted from the thought that her low-born husband might boast 
 of her connections, and parade her descent to his level. For- 
 tunately, as she thought, she received Ardworth before he was 
 admitted to her husband, who now, growing feebler and feebler, 
 usually kept his room. She stooped to beseech Ardworth not 
 to reveal her secret, and he, comprehending her pride, as a man 
 well-born himself, and pitying her pain, readily gave his prom- 
 ise. At the first interview, Braddell evinced no pleasure in 
 the sight of his old schoolfellow. It was natural enough that
 
 322 LUCRETIA. 
 
 one so precise should be somewhat revolted by one so careless 
 of all form. But when Lucretia imprudently evinced satisfac- 
 tion at his surly remarks on his visitor; when he perceived that 
 it would please her that he should not cultivate the acquain- 
 tance offered him, he was moved by the spirit of contradiction, 
 and the spiteful delight even in frivolous annoyance, to concili- 
 ate and court the intimacy he had at first disdained; and then, by 
 degrees, sympathy in political matters and old recollections of 
 sportive, careless boyhood cemented the intimacy into a more 
 familiar bond than the sectarian had contracted really with any 
 of his late associates. 
 
 Lucretia regarded this growing friendship with great uneasi- 
 ness the uneasiness increased to alarm, when one day, in the 
 presence of Ardworth, Braddell, writhing with a sudden spasm, 
 said: "I cannot account for these strange seizures; I think 
 verily I am poisoned!" and his dull eye rested on Lucretia's 
 pallid brow. She was unusually thoughtful for some days after 
 this remark, and one morning she informed her husband that 
 she had received the intelligence that a relation, from whom 
 she had pecuniary expectations, was dangerously ill, and re- 
 quested his permission to visit this sick kinsman, who dwelt in 
 a distant county. Braddell's eyes brightened at the thought of 
 her absence; with little further questioning he consented; and 
 Lucretia, sure perhaps that the barb was in the side of her vic- 
 tim, and reckoning, it may be, on greater freedom from sus- 
 picion if her husband died in her absence, left the house. It 
 was, indeed, to the neighborhood of her kindred that she went. 
 In a private conversation with Ardworth, when questioning 
 him of his news of the present possessor of Laughton, he had 
 informed her that he had heard accidentally that Vernon's two 
 sons (Percival was not then born) were sickly; and she went 
 into Hampshire, secretly and unknown, to see what were really 
 the chances that her son might yet become the lord of her lost 
 inheritance. 
 
 During this absence, Braddell, now gloomily aware that his 
 days were numbered, resolved to put into practice the idea 
 long contemplated, and even less favored by his spite than justi- 
 fied by the genuine convictions of his conscience. Whatever 
 his faults, sincere at least in his religious belief, he might well 
 look with dread to the prospect of the training and education 
 his son would receive from the hands of a mother who had 
 blasphemed his sect, and openly proclaimed her infidelity. By 
 will, it is true, he might create a trust, and appoint guardians 
 to his child. But to have lived under the same roof with his*
 
 LUCREftA. 323 
 
 wife, nay, to have carried her back to that roof when she had 
 left it, afforded tacit evidence that whatever the disagreement 
 between them, her conduct could hardly have merited her ex- 
 clusion from the privileges of a mother. The guardianship 
 might therefore avail little to frustrate Lucretia's indirect con- 
 tamination, if not her positive control. Besides, where guar- 
 dians are appointed money must be left; and Braddell knew 
 that at his death his assets would be found insufficient for his 
 debts. Who would be guardian to a penniless infant? He 
 resolved, therefore, to send his child from his roof, to some 
 place where, if reared humbly, it might at least be brought up 
 in the right faith some place which might defy the search and 
 be beyond the perversion of the unbelieving mother. He looked 
 round, and discovered no instrument for his purpose that 
 seemed so ready as Walter Ardworth. For by this time he had 
 thoroughly excited the pity and touched the heart of that good- 
 natured, easy man. His representations of the misconduct of 
 Lucretia were the more implicitly believed by one who had 
 always been secretly prepossessed against her ; who, admitted 
 to household intimacy, was an eye-witness to her hard indiffer- 
 ence to her husband's sufferings; who saw in her very request 
 not to betray her gentle birth, the shame she felt in her election ; 
 who regarded with indignation her unfeeling desertion of Brad- 
 dell in his last moments, and who, besides all this, had some 
 private misfortunes of his own, which made him the more 
 ready listener to themes on the faults of women, and had al- 
 ready, by mutual confidences, opened the hearts of the two an- 
 cient schoolfellows to each other's complaints and wrongs. The 
 only other confidante in the refuge selected for the child was 
 a member of the same community as Braddell, who kindly 
 undertook to search for a pious, godly woman, who, upon such 
 pecuniary considerations as Braddell, by robbing his creditors, 
 could afford to bestow, would permanently offer to the poor 
 infant a mother's home and a mother's care. When this woman 
 was found, Braddell confided his child to Ardworth, with such 
 a sum as he could scrape together for its future maintenance. 
 And to Ardworth, rather than to his fellow-sectarian, this 
 double trust was given, because the latter feared scandal and 
 misrepresentation, if he should be ostensibly mixed up in so 
 equivocal a charge. Poor and embarrassed as Walter Ard- 
 worth was, Braddell did not for once misinterpret character 
 when he placed the money in his hands, and this because the 
 characters we have known in transparent boyhood we have 
 known forever. Ardworth was reckless, and his whole life
 
 324 LUCRETIA. 
 
 had been wrecked, his whole nature materially degraded, by the 
 want of common thrift and prudence. His own money slipped 
 through his fingers, and left him surrounded by creditors, whom, 
 rigidly speaking, he thus defrauded ; but direct dishonesty was 
 as wholly out of the chapter of his vices, as if he had been a 
 man of the strictest principles and the steadiest honor. 
 
 The child was gone the father died Lucretia returned, as 
 we have seen in Grabman's letter, to the house of death, to 
 meet suspicion and cold looks, and menial accusations, and an 
 inquest on the dead : but through all this the reft tigress 
 mourned her stolen whelp. As soon as all evidence against her 
 was proved legally groundless, and she had leave to depart, she 
 searched blindly and frantically for her lost child; but in vain. 
 The utter and penniless destitution in which she was left by 
 her husband's decease did not suffice to terminate her madden- 
 ing chase. On foot she wandered from village to village, and 
 begged her way, wherever a false clue misled her steps. 
 
 At last, in reluctant despair, she resigned the pursuit, and 
 found herself one day in the midst of the streets of London, 
 half-famished and in rags; and before her suddenly, now 
 grown into vigorous youth, blooming, sleek, and seemingly 
 prosperous, stood Gabriel Varney. By her voice, as she ap- 
 proached and spoke, he recognized his stepmother; and, after 
 a s"hort pause of hesitation, he led her to his home. It is not 
 our purpose (for it is not necessary to those passages of their 
 lives from which we have selected the thread of our tale) to 
 follow these two thus united, through their general career of 
 spoliation and crime. Birds of prey, they searched in human 
 follies and human errors for their food: sometimes severed, 
 sometimes together, their interests remained one. Varney prof- 
 ited by the mightier and subtler genius of evil to which he had 
 leashed himself; for, caring little for luxuries, and dead to the 
 softer senses, she abandoned to him readily the larger share of 
 their plunder. Under a variety of names and disguises, 
 through a succession of frauds, some vast and some mean, but 
 chiefly on the Continent, they had pursued their course, elud- 
 ing all danger, and baffling all law. 
 
 Between three and four years before this period, Varney's 
 uncle the painter, by one of those unexpected caprices of for- 
 tune which sometimes find heirs to a millionnaire at the weaver's 
 loom or the laborer's plough, had suddenly, by the death of a 
 very distant kinsman, whom he had never seen, come into pos- 
 session of a small estate, which he sold for 6000. Retiring 
 from his profession, he lived, as comfortably as his shattered
 
 LUCRETIA. 325 
 
 constitution permitted, upon the interest of this sum ; and he 
 wrote to his nephew, then at Paris, to communicate the good 
 news, and offer the hospitality of his heart. Varney hastened 
 to London. Shortly afterwards a nurse, recommended as an ex- 
 perienced, useful person in her profession, by Nicholas Grab- 
 man, who in many a tortuous scheme had been Gabriel's con- 
 federate, was installed in the poor painter's house. From that 
 time his infirmities increased. He died, as his doctor said, 
 "by abstaining from the stimulants to which his constitution 
 had been so long accustomed," and Gabriel Varney was sum- 
 moned to the reading of the will. To his inconceivable dis- 
 appointment, instead of bequeathing to his nephew the free dis- 
 posal of his 6000, that sum was assigned to trustees for the 
 benefit of Gabriel and his children yet unborn: "An induce- 
 ment," said the poor testator tenderly, "for the boy to marry 
 and reform!" So that the nephew could only enjoy the in- 
 terest, and had no control over the capital. The interest of 
 6000 invested in the Bank of England, \fasjlocci, nauci to 
 the voluptuous spendthrift, Gabriel Varney! 
 
 Now these trustees were selected from the painter's earlier 
 and more respectable associates, who had dropped him, it is 
 true, in his days of beggary and disrepute, but whom the for- 
 tune that made him respectable had again conciliated. One 
 of these trustees had lately retired to pass the remainder of his 
 days at Boulogne ; the other was a hypochondriacal valetudin- 
 arian. Neither of them, in short, a man of business. Ga- 
 briel was left to draw out the interest of the money, as it becarpe 
 perodically due at the Bank of England. In a few months, 
 the trustee settled at Boulogne died; the trust, of course, lapsed 
 to Mr. Stubmore, the valetudinarian survivor. Soon pinched 
 by extravagances, and emboldened by the character and help- 
 less state of the surviving trustee, Varney forged Mr. Stub- 
 more's signature to an order on the Bank, to sell out such 
 portion of the capital as his wants required. The impunity of 
 one offence begot courage for others, till the whole was well- 
 nigh expended. Upon these sums Varney had lived very 
 pleasantly, and he saw with a deep sigh the approaching failure 
 of so facile a resource. 
 
 In one of the melancholy moods engendered by this reflec- 
 tion, Varney happened to be in the very town in France in 
 which the Mainwarings, in their later years, had taken refuge, 
 and from which Helen had been removed to the roof of Mr. 
 Fielden. By accident he heard the name, and, his curiosity 
 leading to further inquiries, learned that Helen was made an
 
 326 LUCRETIA. 
 
 heiress by the will of her grandfather. With this knowledge 
 came a thought of the most treacherous, the most miscreant, 
 and the vilest crime, that even he yet had perpetrated ; so 
 black was it, that for a while he absolutely struggled against 
 it. But in guilt there seems ever a Necessity, that urges on 
 step after step, to the last consummation. Varney received a 
 letter to inform him that the last surviving trustee was no more; 
 that the trust was, therefore, now centred in his son and heir; 
 that that gentleman was at present very busy in settling his own 
 affairs, and examining into a very mismanaged property in 
 Devonshire which had devolved upon him; but that he hoped 
 in a few months to discharge, more efficiently than his father 
 had done, the duties of trustee, and that some more profitable 
 investment than the Bank of England would probably occur. 
 
 This new trustee was known personally to Varney a con- 
 temporary of his own, and, in earlier youth, a pupil to his 
 uncle. But since then he had made way in life, and retired from 
 the profession of Art. This younger Stubmore he knew to be 
 a bustling, officious man of business; somewhat greedy and 
 covetous, but withal somewhat weak of purpose, good- 
 natured in the main, and with a little lukewarm kindness 
 for Gabriel, as a quondam fellow-pupil. That Stubmore 
 would discover the fraud it was evident ; that he would de- 
 clare it, for his own sake, was evident also; that the Bank 
 would prosecute; that Varney would be convicted, was no less 
 surely to be apprehended. There was only one chance left to 
 the forger: if he could get into his hands, and in time, before 
 Stubmore's bustling interference, a sum sufficient to replace 
 what had been fraudulently taken, he might easily manage, he 
 thought, to prevent the forgery ever becoming known. Nay, 
 if Stubmore, roused into strict personal investigation , by the 
 new Power of Attorney which a new investment in the Bank 
 would render necessary, should ascertain what had occurred, 
 his liabilities being now indemnified, and the money replaced, 
 Varney thought he could confidently rely on his ci-devant fel- 
 low-pupil's assent to wink at the forgery, and hush up the mat- 
 ter. But this was his only chance. How was the money to be 
 gained? He thought of Helen's fortune, and the last scruple 
 gave way to the imminence of his peril, and the urgency of 
 his fears. 
 
 With this decision he repaired to Lucretia, whose concur- 
 rence was necessary to his designs. Long habits of crime had 
 now deepened still more the dark and stern color of that dread 
 woman's sombre nature. But through all that had g-roimd the
 
 LUCRETIA. 327 
 
 humanity from her soul, one human sentiment, fearfully tainted 
 and adulterated as it was, still struggled for life the memory 
 of the mother. It was by this, her least criminal emotion, that 
 Varney led her to the worst of her crimes. He offered to sell 
 out the remainder of the trust-money by a fresh act of forgery ; 
 to devote such proceeds to the search for her lost Vincent ; he 
 revived the hopes she had long since gloomily relinquished, 
 till she began to conceive the discovery easy and certain. He 
 then brought before her the prospect of that son's succession 
 to Laughton but two lives now between him and those broad 
 lands; those two lives, associated with just cause of revenge! 
 Two lives ! Lucretia, till then, did not know that Susan had 
 left a child ; that a pledge of those nuptials, to which she im- 
 puted all her infamy, existed to revive a jealousy never extin- 
 guished, appeal to the hate that had grown out of her love. 
 More readily than Varney had anticipated, and with fierce ex- 
 ultation, she fell into his horrible schemes. 
 
 Thus had she returned to England, and claimed the guardian- 
 ship of her niece. Varney engaged a dull house in the suburb, 
 and looking out for a servant, not likely to suspect and betray, 
 found the nurse who had watched over his uncle's last illness; 
 but Lucretia, according to her invariable practice, rejected all 
 menial accomplices, reposed no confidence in the tools of her 
 black deeds. Feigning an infirmity that would mock all sus- 
 picion of the hand that mixed the draught, and the step that 
 stole to the slumber, she defied the justice of earth, and stood 
 alone under the omniscience of heaven. 
 
 Various considerations had delayed the execution of the 
 atrocious deed so coldly contemplated. Lucretia herself drew 
 back ; perhaps more daunted by conscience than she herself was 
 distinctly aware, and disguising her scruples in those yet foule-r 
 refinements of hoped revenge which her conversations with 
 Varney have betrayed to the reader. The failure of the earlier 
 researches for the lost Vincent, the suspended activity of Stub- 
 more, left the more impatient murderer leisure to make the ac- 
 quaintance of St. John, steal into the confidence of Helen, and 
 render the Insurances on the life of the latter less open to sus- 
 picion than if effected immediately on her entrance into that 
 shamble-house, and before she could be supposed to form that 
 affection for her aunt which made probable so tender a fore- 
 thought. These causes of delay now vanished, the Parcse 
 closed the abrupt woof, and lifted the impending shears. 
 
 Lucretia had long since dropped the name of Braddell. She 
 shrank from proclaiming those second spousals, sullied by the
 
 328 LUCRETIA. 
 
 degradation to which they had exposed her, and the suspicions 
 implied on the inquest on her husband, until the hour for ac- 
 knowledging her son should arrive. She resumed, therefore, 
 the name of Dalibard, and by that we will continue to call her. 
 Nor was Varney uninfluential in dissuading her from proclaim- 
 ing her second marriage till occasion necessitated. If the son 
 were discovered, and the proofs of his birth in the keeping of 
 himself and his accomplice, his avarice naturally suggested the 
 expediency of wringing from that son some pledge of adequate 
 reward on succession to an inheritance which they alone could 
 secure to him : out of this fancied fund, not only Grabman, 
 but his employer, was to be paid. The concealment of the 
 identity between Mrs. Braddell and Madame Dalibard might 
 facilitate such an arrangement. This idea Varney locked as 
 yet in his own breast. He did not dare to speak to Lucretia 
 of the bargain- he ultimately meditated with her son. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 MR. GRABMAN'S ADVENTURES. 
 
 THE lackeys in their dress-liveries stood at the porch of 
 Laughton, as the postilions drove rapidly along the road, 
 sweeping through venerable groves tinged with the hues of 
 autumn, up to that stately pile. From the window of the 
 large, cumbrous vehicle which Percival, mindful of Madame 
 Dalibard's infirmity, had hired for her especial accommodation, 
 Lucretia looked keenly forth. On the slope of the hill grouped 
 the deer and below, where the lake gleamed, the swan rested 
 on the wave. Farther on to the left, gaunt and stag-headed, 
 rose, living still, from the depths of the glen, Guy's memorable 
 oak. Coming now in sight, though at a distance, the gray 
 church tower emerged from the surrounding masses of solemn 
 foliage. Suddenly, the road curves round, and straight before 
 her (the rooks cawing above the turrets, the sun reflected from 
 the vanes) Lucretia gazes on the halls of Laughton. And didst 
 thou not, O Guy's oak, murmur warning from thine oracular 
 hollows? And thou, who sleepest below the church tower, 
 didst thou not turn. Miles St. John, in thy grave, when, with 
 such tender care, the young Lord of Laughton bore that silent 
 guest across his threshold, and with credulous, moistened 
 eyes, welcomed Treason and Murther to his hearth? 
 
 There, at the porch, paused Helen, gazing with the rapt eye 
 0f the poetess on the broad landscape, checkered by the vast
 
 LtJCfcETtA. 
 
 shadows cast from the setting sun. There, too, by her side, 
 lingered Varney, with an artist's eye for the stately scene, till 
 a thought, not of art, changed the face of the earth, and the 
 view without mirrored back the Golgotha of his soul. 
 
 Leave them thus, we must hurry on. 
 
 One day a traveller stopped his gig at a public house in a 
 village i\i Lancashire. He chucked his rein to the ostler, and 
 in reply to a question what oats should be given to the horse, 
 said: "Hay and water the beast is on job." Then saunter- 
 ing to the bar, he called for a glass of raw brandy for himself; 
 and while the host drew the spirit forth from the tap, he asked, 
 carelessly, if, some years ago, a woman of the name of Joplin 
 had not resided in the village. 
 
 "It is strange," said the host musingly. 
 
 "What is strange?" 
 
 "Why, we have just had a gent asking the same question. I 
 have only been here nine year come December, but my old 
 ostler was born in the village, and never left it. So the gent 
 had in the ostler, and he is now gone into the village to pick 
 up what else he can learn." 
 
 This intelligence seemed to surprise and displease the trav- 
 eller. "What the deuce," he muttered, "does Jason mistrust 
 me? Has he set another dog on the scent? Humph!" He 
 drained off his brandy, and sallied forth to confer with the 
 ostler. 
 
 "Well, my friend," said Mr. Grabman, for the traveller was 
 no other than that worthy; "well, so you remember Mrs. Jop- 
 lin, more than twenty years ago eh?" 
 
 "Yees, I guess; more than twenty years since she left the 
 Pleck."* 
 
 "Ah, she seems to have been a restless body she had a 
 child with her!" 
 
 "Yees, I moind that." 
 
 "And I dare say you heard her say the child was not her 
 own, that she was paid well for it, eh?" 
 
 "Noa; my missus did not loike me to chaffer much with 
 neighbor Joplin, for she was but a bad 'un pretty fease, 
 too. She lived agin the ivogh f yonder, where you see that 
 gent coming out." 
 
 "Oho ! That is the gent who was asking after Mrs. Joplin?" 
 
 -"Yes; and he giv' me half-a-croon ! " said the clever ostler, 
 holding out his hand. 
 
 * Pleck. Lancashire and Yorkshire, synonym for flatt. 
 t A nglicc wall.
 
 330 LUCRETIA. 
 
 Mr. Grabman, too thoughtful, too jealous of his rival, to 
 take the hint at that moment, darted off, as fast as his thin legs 
 could carry him, towards the unwelcome interferer in his own 
 business. 
 
 Approaching the gentleman a tall, powerful-looking young 
 man he somewhat softened his tone, and mechanically 
 touched his hat as he said: 
 
 "What, sir, are you, too, in search of Mrs. Joplin?" 
 
 "Sir, I am," answered the young man, eyeing Grabman de- 
 liberately, "and you, I suppose, are the person I have found 
 before me on the same search first, at Liverpool; next, at 
 
 C , about fifteen miles from that town ; thirdly, at L ; 
 
 and now we meet here. You have had the start of me. What 
 have you learned?" 
 
 Mr. Grabman smiled: "Softly, sir, softly. May I first ask 
 (since open questioning seems the order of the day) whether I 
 have the honor to address a brother practitioner one of the 
 law, sir one of the law?" 
 
 "I am one of the law." 
 
 Mr. Grabman bowed and scowled. 
 
 "And may I make bold to ask the name of your client? 
 
 "Certainly, you may ask. Every man has a right to ask 
 what he pleases, in a civil way." 
 
 "But you'll not answer? Deep! Oh, I understand! Very 
 good. But I am deep too, sir. You know Mr. Varney, I 
 suppose?" 
 
 The gentleman looked surprised. His bushy brows met over 
 his steady, sagacious eyes; but after a moment's pause, the 
 expression of the face cleared up. 
 
 "It is as I thought," he said, half to himself. "Who else 
 could have had an interest in similar inquiries?" "Sir," he 
 added, with a quick and decided tone, ' 'you are, doubtless, 
 employed by Mr. Varney on behalf of Madame Dalibard, and 
 in search of evidence connected with the loss of an unhappy 
 infant. I am on the same quest, and for the same end. The 
 interests of your client are mine. Two heads are better than 
 one; let us unite our ingenuity and endeavors." 
 
 "And share the pec, I suppose?" said Grabman dryly, 
 buttoning up his pockets. 
 
 "Whatever fee you may expect, you will have, anyhow, 
 whether I assist you or not. I expect no fee, for mine is a 
 personal interest, which I serve gratuitously; but I can under- 
 take to promise you, on my own part, more than the ordinary 
 professional reward for your co-operation."
 
 "LUCRETIA. 33 1 
 
 "Well, sir," said Grabman, mollified, "you speak very 
 much like a gentleman. My feelings were hurt at first, I own. 
 I am hasty, but I can listen to reason. Will you walk back 
 with me to the house you have just left? And suppose we 
 then turn in and have a chop together, and compare notes." 
 
 "Willingly!" answered the tall stranger, and the two inquis- 
 itors amicably joined company. The result of their inquiries 
 was not, however, very satisfactory. No one knew whither 
 Mrs. Joplin had gone, though all agreed it was in company 
 with a man of bad character and vagrant habits; all agreed, 
 too, in the vague recollection of the child, and some remem- 
 bered that it was dressed in clothes finer than would have been 
 natural to an infant legally and filially appertaining to Mrs. 
 Joplin. One old woman remembered, that on her reproaching 
 Mrs. Joplin for some act of great cruelty to the poor babe, she 
 replied that it was not her flesh and blood, and that if she had 
 not expected more than she had got, she would never have 
 undertaken the charge. On comparing the information 
 gleaned at the previous places of their research, they found an 
 entire agreement as to the character personally borne by Mrs. 
 Joplin. At the village to which their inquiry had been first 
 detected, she was known as a respectable, precise young woman, 
 one of a small congregation of rigid dissenters. She had mar- 
 ried a member of the sect, and borne him a child, which died 
 two weeks after birth. She was then seen nursing another 
 infant, though how she came by it, none knew. Shortly after 
 this her husband, a journeyman carpenter of good repute, died; 
 but, to the surprise of the neighbors, Mrs. Joplin continued to 
 live as comfortably as before, and seemed not to miss the wages 
 of her husband; nay, she rather now, as if before kept back by 
 the prudence of the deceased, launched into a less thrifty mode 
 of life, and a gayety of dress at variance both with the mourn- 
 ing her recent loss should have imposed, and the austere ten- 
 ets of her sect. This indecorum excited angry curiosity, and 
 drew down stern remonstrance. Mrs. Joplin, in apparent dis- 
 gust with this intermeddling with her affairs, withdrew from the 
 village to a small town, about twenty miles distant, and there 
 set up a shop. But her moral lapse became now confirmed; 
 her life was notoriously abandoned, and her house the resort 
 of all the reprobates of the place. Whether her means began 
 to be exhausted, or the scandal she provoked attracted the no- 
 tice of the magistrates, and imposed a check on her course, was 
 not very certain, but she sold off her goods suddenly, and was 
 next tracked to the village in which Mr. Grabman met his new
 
 332 LUCRETiA. 
 
 coadjutor;- and there, though her conduct was less flagrant and 
 her expenses less reckless, she made but a very unfavorable im- 
 pression, which was confirmed by her flight with an itinerant 
 hawker of the lowest possible character. Seated over their 
 port wine, the two gentlemen compared their experiences, and 
 consulted on the best mode of re-mending the broken thread 
 of their research; when Mr. Grabman said coolly: "But, after 
 all, I think it most likely that we are not on the right scent. 
 This bantling may not be the one we search for." 
 
 "Be not misled by that doubt. To arrive at the evidence 
 we desire, we must still track this wretched woman." 
 
 "You are certain of that?" 
 
 "Certain." 
 
 "Hem! Did you ever hear of a Mr. Walter Ardworth?" 
 
 "Yes; what of him?" 
 
 "Why, he can best tell us where to look for the child." 
 
 "I am sure he would counsel as I do." 
 
 "You know him, then?" 
 
 "I do." 
 
 "What! He lives still?" 
 
 "I hope so." 
 
 "Can you bring me across him?" 
 
 "If necessary." 
 
 "And that young man, who goes by his name, brought up 
 by Mr. Fielden? " 
 
 "Well, sir?" 
 
 "Is he not the son of Mr. Braddell?" 
 
 The stranger was silent, and, shading his face with his hand, 
 seemed buried in thought. He then rose, took up his candle, 
 and said quietly: 
 
 "Sir, I wish you good-evening. I have letters to write in 
 my own room. I will consider by to-morrow, if you stay till 
 then, whether we can really aid each other farther, or whether 
 we should pursue our researches separately." With these 
 words, he closed he door; and Mr. Grabman remained baffled 
 and bewildered. 
 
 However, he too had a letter to write; so, calling for pen, 
 ink, and paper, and a pint of brandy, he indited his com- 
 plaints and his news to Varney: 
 
 "Jason (he began) are you playing me false? Have you set 
 another man on the track with a view to bilk me of my prom- 
 ised fee? Explain, or I throw up the business." 
 
 Herewith Mr. Grabman gave a minute description of the 
 Stranger, and related pretty accurately what had passed between
 
 LUCRtTIA. 333 
 
 that gentleman and himself. He then added the progress of 
 his own inquiries, and renewed, as peremptorily as he dared, 
 his demand for candor and plain dealing. Now it so hap- 
 pened that, in stumbling upstairs to bed, Mr. Grabman passed 
 the room in which his mysterious fellow-seeker was lodged, and, 
 as is the usage in hostels, a pair of boots stood outside the door, 
 to be cleaned betimes in the morning. Though somewhat 
 drunk, Grabman still preserved the rays of his habitual astute- 
 ness. A clever, and a natural, idea shot across his brain, 
 illuminating the fumes of the brandy; he stooped, and while 
 one hand on the wall steadied his footing, with the other he 
 fished up a boot, and peering within, saw legibly written : 
 "John Ardworth, Esq., Gray's Inn." At that sight he felt 
 what a philosopher feels at the sudden elucidation of a trouble- 
 some problem. Downstairs again tottered Grabman, re- 
 opened his letter, and wrote: "P. S. I have wronged you, 
 Jason, by my suspicions; never mind Jubilate ! This inter- 
 loper, who made me so jealous who, think you, it is? Why, 
 young Ardworth himself; that is, the lad who goes by such 
 name. Now, is it not clear? Of course, no one else has such 
 interest in learning his birth as the lost child himself Here he 
 is! If old Ardworth lives (as he says), old Ardworth has set 
 him to work on his own business. But then, that Fielden 
 rather a puzzler that! Yet, no; now I understand: old Ard- 
 worth gave the boy to Mrs. Joplin, and took it away from 
 her again when he went to the parson's. Now, certainly, it 
 may be quite necessary to prove first, that the boy he took 
 from Mr. Braddell'she gave to Mrs. Joplin; secondly, that the 
 boy he left with Mr. Fielden was the same that he took again 
 from that woman; therefore, the necessity of finding out 
 Mother Joplin, an essential witness: Q. E. D., Master Jason!" 
 It was not till the sun had been some hours risen that Mr. 
 Grabman imitated that luminary's example. When he did so, 
 he found, somewhat to his chagrin, that John Ardworth had 
 long been gone. In fact, whatever the motive that had led the 
 latter on the search, he had succeeded in gleaning from Grab- 
 man all that that person could communicate, and their inter- 
 view had inspired him with such disgust of the attorney, and 
 so small an opinion of the value of his co-operation (in which 
 last belief, perhaps, he was mistaken) that he had resolved to 
 continue his inquiries alone, and had already, in his early 
 morning's walk through the village, ascertained that the man 
 with whom Mrs. Joplin had quitted the place had some time 
 after been sentenced to six months imprisonment in the county
 
 334 LtlCRETiA. 
 
 gaol. Possibly the prison authorities might know something 
 to lead to his discovery; and through him the news of his par- 
 amour might be gained. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 MORE OF MRS. JOPLIN. 
 
 ONE day at the hour of noon the court boasting the tall resi- 
 dence of Mr. Grabman was startled from the quiet usually 
 reigning there at broad daylight, by the appearance of two men, 
 evidently no inhabitants of the place. The squalid, ill-favored 
 denizens lounging before the doors stared hard; and, at the 
 fuller view of one of the men, most of them retreated hastily 
 within. Then, in those houses, you might have heard a mur- 
 mur of consternation and alarm. The ferret was in the bur- 
 row a Bow Street officer in the court ! The two men paused, 
 looked round, and, stopping before the dingy tower-like house, 
 selected the bell which appealed to the inmates of the ground- 
 floor, to the left. At that summons Bill the cracksman impru- 
 dently presented a full view of his countenance through his 
 barred window; he drew it back with astonishing celerity; but 
 not in time to escape the eye of the Bosv Street runner. 
 
 "Open the door, Bill; there's nothing to fear; I have no 
 summons against you, 'pon honor. You know I never de- 
 ceive. Why should I? Open the door, I say!" 
 
 No answer. 
 
 The officer tapped with his cane at the foul window. 
 
 "Bill, there's a gentleman who comes to you for informa- 
 tion, and he will pay for it handsomely." 
 
 Bill again appeared at the casement, and peeped forth, very 
 cautiously, thorough the bars. 
 
 "Bless my vitals, Mr. R ! and it is you, is it? What 
 
 were you saying about 'paying handsomely'? " 
 
 "That your evidence is wanted not against a pal, man. I 
 will hurt no one, and put at least five guineas in your pocket." 
 
 "Ten guineas!" said the Bow Street officer's companion. 
 
 "You be' s a man of 'onor, Mr. R !" said Bill emphat- 
 ically; "and I scorns to doubt you so here goes." 
 
 With that, he withdrew from the window, and in another 
 minute or so the door was opened, and Bill, with a superb bow, 
 asked his visitors into his room. 
 
 In the interval, leisure had been given to the cracksman to 
 remove all trace of the wonted educational employment of his
 
 LUCRETIA. 335 
 
 hopeful children. The urchins were seated on the floor, play- 
 ing at push-pin; and the Bow Street officer benignly patted a 
 pair of curly heads as he passed them, drew a chair to the 
 table, and, wiping his forehead, sat down, quite at home. Bill 
 then deliberately seated himself, and, unbuttoning his waist- 
 coat, permitted the butt-ends of a brace of pistols to be seen 
 
 by his guests. Mr. R 's companion seemed very unmoved 
 
 by this significant action. He bent one inquiring, steady look 
 on the cracksman, which, as Bill afterwards said, went through 
 him "like a gimblet through a panny, " and, taking out a 
 purse, through the network of which the sovereigns gleamed 
 pleasantly, placed it on r the table, and said: 
 
 "This purse is yours, if you will tell me what has become of 
 
 a woman named Joplin, with whom you left the village of , 
 
 in Lancashire, in the year 18 ." 
 
 "And," put in Mr. R , "the gentleman wants to know, 
 
 with no view of harming the woman. It will be to her own ad- 
 vantage to inform us where she is." 
 
 " 'Pon honor, again?" said Bill. 
 "Pon honor!" 
 
 "Well, then, I has a heart in my buzzom, and if so be I can 
 do a good turn to the 'oman wot I has loved, and kep com- 
 pany with, why not?" 
 
 "Why not, indeed?" said Mr. R . "And as we want to 
 
 learn, not only what has become of Mrs. Joplin, but what she 
 did with the child she carried off from , begin at the be- 
 ginning, and tell us all you know." 
 
 Bill mused. 
 
 "How much is there in the pus?" 
 
 "Eighteen sovereigns." 
 
 "Make it twenty you nod; twenty then? A bargain! 
 Now, I'll go right on ahead. You sees as how, some months 
 
 arter we that is, Peggy Joplin and self left , I was put 
 
 in quod in Lancashire gaol, so I lost sight of the blowen. 
 When I got out, and came to Lunnun it was a matter of seven 
 year, afore, all of a sudding, I came bang up agin her at the 
 corner of Common Garden. 'Why, Bill!' says she. 'Why 
 Peggy!' says I, and we bussed each other like winky. 'Shall 
 us come together agin?' says she. 'Why, no,' says I; 'I has 
 a wife wots a good 'un, and gets her bread by setting up as a 
 widder with seven small children ! By-the-by, Peg, what's a 
 come of your brat?' for as you says, sir, Peg had a child put 
 out to her to nurse. Lor! how she cuffed it! 'The brat!' 
 says she, laughing like mad. 'Oh, I got rid o' that, when you
 
 LUCREflA. 
 
 were in gaol, Bill.' 'As how?' says I. 'Why, there was a 
 woman begging agin St. Poll's churchyard, so I purtended to 
 see a frind at a distance: " 'old the babby a moment," says I, 
 puffing and panting, "while I ketches my friend yonder.". So 
 she 'olds the brat, and I never sees it agin; and there's an ind 
 of the bother!' 'But wont they ever ax for the child them 
 as giv' it you!?' 'Oh no,' says Peg, 'they left it too long for 
 that, and all the tin was a-gone; and one mouth is hard enough 
 to feed in these days! let by, other folks' bantlings. ' 'Well,' 
 says I, 'where do you hang out? I'll pop in, in a friendly 
 way.' So she tells me som'are in Lambeth (I forgets hex- 
 actly), and many's the good piece of work we hi' done 
 togither." 
 
 "And where is she now?" asked Mr. R 's companion. 
 
 "I doesn't know purcisely, but I can com' at her: you see, 
 when my poor wife died, four years com' Chris'mas, and left 
 me with as fine a famuly, tho' I says it, as hold King Georgy 
 himself walked afore, with his gold-'eaded cane, on the terris 
 at Vindsor all heights and all hages, to the babby in arms (for 
 the littel un there warn't above a year old, and had been 
 a-brought up upon spoon-meat, with a dash o' blue ruin to 
 make him slim and ginteel); as for the bigger uns wot you 
 don't see. they be doin' well in forin parts, Mr. R !" 
 
 Mr. R smiled significantly. 
 
 Bill resumed. "Where was I? Oh, when my wife died, I 
 wanted sum un to take care of the childern, so I takes Peg into 
 the 'ous. But Lor! how she larrupped 'em: she has a cruel 
 
 heart, hasn't she, Bob? Bob is a cute child, Mr. R . 
 
 Just as I was a-thinking of turning her out neck an' crop, a 
 gemmen what lodges aloft, wot be a laryer, and wot had just 
 
 saved my nick, Mr. R , by proving a halibi, said, 'That's a 
 
 tidy body, your Peg!' (for you see he was often a-wisiting 
 here, an' hindeed, sin' then, he has taken our third floor, No. 
 9). 'I've bin a-speakin' to her, and I find she has been anus 
 to the sick. I has a frind wots a huncle that's ill, can you 
 spare her, Bill, to attind him?' 'That I can,' says I, 'any- 
 thing to obleedge. ' So Peg packs off, bag and baggidge." 
 
 "And what was the sick gentleman's name?" asked Mr. 
 R.'s companion. 
 
 "It was one Mr. Warney a painter, wot lived at Clap'am. 
 Since thin I've lost sight of Peg; for we had 'igh words about 
 the childern, and she's a spiteful 'oman. But you can larn . 
 where she be at Mr. Warney's, if so be he's still above-ground." 
 
 "And did this woman still go by the name of Joplin?"
 
 LUCRETIA. 337 
 
 Bill grinned: "She warn't such a spooney as that; that 
 
 name was in your black books too much, Mr. R , for a 
 
 'spectable nuss for sick bodies; no, she was then called Martha 
 Skeggs, what was her own mother's name afore marridge. 
 Anything more, gemmen?" 
 
 "I am satisfied," said the younger visitor, rising; "there is 
 
 the purse, and Mr. R will bring you ten sovereigns in 
 
 addition. Good-day to you." 
 
 Bill, with superabundant bows and flourishes showed his 
 visitors out, and then, in high glee, he began to romp with 
 his children; and the whole family circle was in a state of up- 
 roarious enjoyment when the door flew open, and in entered 
 Grabman, his brief-bag in hand, dust-soiled, and unshaven. 
 
 "Aha, neighbor! Your servant your servant. Just come 
 back! Always so merry for the life of me, I couldn't help 
 looking in! Dear me, Bill, why, you're in luck!" and Mr. 
 Grabman pointed to a pile of sovereigns which Bill had emptied 
 fiom the purse to count over, and weigh on the tip of his fore- 
 finger. 
 
 "Yes," said Bill, sweeping the gold into his corduroy pock- 
 et; "and who do you think brought me these shiners? Why, 
 who but old Peggy, the 'oman wot you put out at Clap'am." 
 
 "Well, never mind Peggy, now, Bill; I want to ask you 
 what you have done with Margaret Joplin, whom, sly seducer 
 that you are, you carried off from " 
 
 "Why, man, Peggy be Joplin, and Joplin be Peggy! And 
 it's for that piece of noos that I got all them pretty new picters 
 of his majesty, Bill my namesake, God bliss "im!" 
 
 "D n," exclaimed Grabman, aghast, "the young chap's 
 spoiling my game again!" And seizing up his brief-bag, he 
 darted out of the house, in the hope to arrive, at least, at 
 Clapham before his competitors. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 BECK'S DISCOVERY. 
 
 UNDER the cedar trees, at Laughton, sate that accursed and 
 abhorrent being, who sate there young, impassioned, hopeful, 
 as Lucretia Clavering under the old cedar trees, which, save 
 that their vast branches cast an imperceptibly broader shade 
 over the mossy sward, the irrevocable winters had left the 
 same. Where, through the nether boughs, the autumn sun- 
 beams came aslant, the windows, enriched by many a haughty
 
 338 LUCRETIA. 
 
 scutcheon, shone brightly against the western rays. From the 
 flower-beds in the quaint garden near at hand, the fresh yet tran- 
 quil air wafted faint perfumes from the lingering heliotrope and 
 fading rose. The peacock perched dozingly on the heavy balus- 
 trade; the blithe robin hopped busily along the sun-track on the 
 lawn; in the distance the tinkling bells of the flock, the plaining 
 low of some wandering heifer, while, breaking the silence, 
 seemed still to blend with the repose. All images around lent 
 themselves to complete that picture of stately calm, which is the 
 character of those old mansion houses, which owner after 
 owner has loved, and heeded, leaving to them the graces of 
 antiquity, guarding them from the desolation of decay. 
 
 Alone sate Lucretia, under the cedar trees, and her heart made 
 dismal contrast to the noble tranquillity that breathed around. 
 From whatever softening or repentant emotions which the scene 
 of her youth might first have awakened; from whatever of less 
 unholy anguish which memory might have caused, when she 
 first, once more, sate under those remembered boughs, and, as 
 a voice from a former world, some faint whisper of youthful 
 love sighed across the waste and ashes of her devastated soul, 
 from all such rekindled humanities in the past she had now, 
 with gloomy power, wrenched herself away. Crime such as 
 hers admits not long the sentiment that softens the remorse of 
 gentler error. If there wakes one moment from the past the 
 warning and melancholy ghost, soon from that abyss rises the 
 Fury with the lifted scourge, and hunts on the frantic foot- 
 steps towards the future. In the future, the haggard intellect 
 of crime must live ; must involve itself mechanically in webs 
 and meshes, and lose past and present in the welcome atmos- 
 phere of darkness. 
 
 Thus, while Lucretia sate, and her eyes rested upon the halls 
 of her youth, her mind overleapt the gulf that yet yawned be- 
 tween her and the object on which she was bent. Already, in 
 fancy, that home was hers again ; its present possessor swept 
 away, the interloping race of Vernon, ending in one of those 
 abrupt lines familiar to genealogists, which branch out busily 
 from the main tree, as if all pith and sap were monopolized by 
 them, continue for a single generation, and then shrink into a 
 printer's bracket, with the formal laconism, "Died without 
 issue." Back, then, in the pedigree would turn the eye of 
 some curious descendant, and see the race continue in the 
 posterity of Lucretia Clavering. 
 
 With all her ineffable vices, mere cupidity had not, as we 
 have often seen, been a main characteristic of this fearful
 
 LUCRETIA. 339 
 
 woman ; and in her design to endow, by the most determined 
 guilt, her son with the heritage, of her ancestors, she had 
 hitherto looked but little to mere mercenary advantages for 
 herself ; but now, in the sight of that venerable and broad do- 
 main, a covetousness, absolute in itself, broke forth. Could 
 she have gained it for her own use, rather than her son's, she 
 would have felt a greater zest in her ruthless purpose. She 
 looked upon the scene as a deposed monarch upon his usurped 
 realm ; it was her right. The early sense of possession in that 
 inheritance returned to her. Reluctantly would she even yield 
 her claims to her child. Here, too, in this atmosphere she 
 tasted once more what had long been lost to her, the luxury of 
 that dignified respect which surrounds the well-born. Here, 
 she ceased to be the suspected adventuress, the friendless out- 
 cast, the needy wrestler with hostile fortune, the skulking 
 enemy of the law. She rose at once, and without effort, to her 
 original state, the honored daughter of an illustrious house. 
 The homeliest welcome that greeted her from some aged but un- 
 forgotten villager, the salutation of homage, the bated breath 
 of humble reverence even trifles like these were dear to 
 her, and made her the more resolute to retain them. In her 
 calm, relentless, onward vision, she saw herself enshrined in 
 those halls, ruling in the delegated authority of her son, safe 
 evermore from prying suspicion and degrading need, and 
 miserable guilt for miserable objects. Here, but one great 
 crime, and she resumed the majesty of her youth! While thus 
 dwelling on the future, her eye did not even turn from those 
 sunlit towers to the forms below, and more immediately invit- 
 ing its survey. On the very spot where, at the opening of this 
 tale, sate Sir Miles St. John, sharing his attention between his 
 dogs and his guest, sate now Helen Mainwaring; against the 
 balustrade, where had lounged Charles Vernon, leant Percival 
 St. John ; and in the same place where he had stationed him- 
 self that eventful evening to distort, in his malignant sketch, 
 the features of his father, Gabriel Varney, with almost the same 
 smile of irony on his lips, was engaged in transferring to his 
 canvas a more faithful likeness of the heir's intended bride. 
 Helen's countenance, indeed, exhibited comparatively but little 
 of the ravages which the pernicious ailment, administered so 
 noiselessly, made upon the frame. The girl's eye, it is true, 
 had sunk, and there was a languid heaviness in its look ; but 
 the contour of the cheek was so naturally rounded, and the 
 features so delicately fine, that the fall of the muscles was less 
 evident; and the bright, warm hue of the complexion, and the
 
 34 LUCRETIA. 
 
 pearly sparkle of the teeth, still gave a fallacious freshnes? to 
 the aspect. But, as yet, the poisoners had forborne those in- 
 gredients which invade the springs of life, resorting only to 
 such as undermine the health, and prepare the way to unsus- 
 pected graves. Out of the infernal variety of the materials at 
 their command, they had selected a mixture which works by 
 sustaining perpetual fever ! which gives little pain, little suffer- 
 ing, beyond that of lassitude and thirst; which wastes like con- 
 sumption, and yet puzzles the physician, by betraying few or 
 none of its ordinary symptoms. But the disorder, as yet, was 
 not incurable; its progress would gradually cease with the dis- 
 continuance of the venom. 
 
 Although October was far advanced, the day was as mild 
 and warm as August. But Percival, who had been watching 
 Helen's countenance, with the anxiety of love and fear, now 
 proposed that the sitting should be adjourned. The sun was 
 declining, and it was certainly no longer safe for Helen to be 
 exposed to the air without exercise. He proposed that they 
 should walk through the garden, and Helen, rising cheerfully, 
 placed her hand on his arm. But she had scarcely descended 
 the steps of the terrace when she stopped short, and breathed 
 hard and painfully. The spasm was soon over, and, walking 
 slowly on, they passed Lucretia with a brief word or two, and 
 were soon out of sight amongst the cedars. 
 
 "Lean more on my arm, Helen," said Percival. "How 
 strange it is, that the change of air has done so little for you, 
 and our country doctor still less! I should feel miserable, in- 
 deed, if Simmons, whom my mother always considered very 
 clever, did not assure me that there was no ground for alarm; 
 that these symptoms were only nervous. Cheer up, Helen; 
 sweet love, cheer up!" 
 
 Helen raised her face, and strove to smile, but the tears 
 stood in her eyes: "It would be hard to die now, Percival!" 
 she said falteringly. 
 
 "To die oh, Helen! No; we must not stay here longer 
 the air is certainly too keen for you. Perhaps your aunt will 
 go to Italy why not all go there, and seek my mother? And 
 she will nurse you, Helen, and and " He could not trust 
 his voice farther. 
 
 Helen pressed his arm tenderly: "Forgive me, dear Perci- 
 val; it is but at moments that I feel so despondent now, 
 again, it is past. Ah, I so long to see your mother! When 
 will you hear from her? Are you not too sanguine? Do you 
 really feel sure she will consent to so lowly a choice?"
 
 LUCRETIA. 341 
 
 "Never doubt her affection her appreciation of you," an- 
 swered Percival gladly, and hoping that Helen's natural anxiety 
 might be the latent cause of her dejected spirits: "Often 
 when talking of the future, under these very cedars, my mother 
 has said: 'You have no cause to marry for ambition, marry 
 only for your happiness.' She never had a daughter in re- 
 turn for all her love, I shall give her that blessing." 
 
 Thus talking, the lovers rambled on till the sun set, and 
 then, returning to the house they found that Varney and Mad- 
 ame Dalibard had preceded them. That evening Helen's 
 spirits rose to their natural buoyancy. And Percival's heart 
 was once more set at ease by her silvery laugh. 
 
 When, at their usual early hour, the rest of the family retired 
 to sleep, Percival remained in the drawing-room to write again, 
 and at length, to Lady Mary and Captain Greville. While 
 thus engaged his valet entered, to say, that Beck, who had been 
 out since the early morning, in search of a horse that had strayed 
 from one of the pastures, had just returned with the animal, 
 who had wandered nearly as far as Southampton. 
 
 "I am glad to hear it," said Percival abstractedly, and con- 
 tinuing his letter. 
 
 The valet still lingered; Percival looked up in surprise. 
 
 "If you please, sir, you said you particularly wished to see 
 Beck when he came back." 
 
 "I oh, true! Tell him to wait. I will speak to him by 
 and by; you need not sit up for me; let Beck attend to the bell. " 
 
 The valet withdrew. Percival continued his letter, and 
 filled page after page, and sheet after sheet; and when at 
 length the letters, not containing a tithe of what he wished to 
 convey, were brought to a close, he fell into a revery that 
 lasted till the candles burnt low, and the clock from the turret 
 tolled one. Starting up in surprise at the lapse of time, Perci- 
 val then, for the first time remembered Beck, and rung the bell. 
 
 The ci-devant sweeper, in his smart livery, appeared at the 
 door. 
 
 "Beck, my poor fellow, I am ashamed to have kept you wait- 
 ing so long; but I received a letter this morning which relates 
 to you. Let me see, I left it in my study upstairs. Ah, you 
 will never find the way follow me; I have some questions to 
 put to you." 
 
 "Nothin agin my carakter, I hopes, your 'onor," said Beck 
 timidly. 
 
 "Oh, no!" 
 
 "Noos of the mattriss, then?" exclaimed Beck joyfully.
 
 342 LUCREflA. 
 
 "Nor that either," answered Percival, laughing, as he lighted 
 the chamber candlestick, and followed by Beck, ascended the 
 grand staircase to a small room which, as it adjoined his sleep- 
 ing apartment, he had habitually used as his morning writing- 
 room and study. 
 
 Percival had, indeed, received that day a letter which had 
 occasioned him much surprise; it was from John Ardworth, 
 and ran thus: 
 
 "Mv DEAR PERCIVAL: 
 
 "It seems that you have taken into your service a young man 
 known only by the name of Beck. Is he now with you at 
 Laugh ton? If so, pray retain him, and suffer him to be in 
 readiness to come to me at a day's notice if wanted, though it 
 is probable enough that I may come to you. At present, 
 strange as it may seem to you, I am detained in London by 
 business connected with that important personage. Will you 
 ask him carelessly, as it were, in the mean while, the following 
 questions : 
 
 "First: How did he become possessed of a certain child's 
 coral, which he left at the house of one Becky Carruthers, in 
 Cole's Buildings? 
 
 "Secondly: Is he aware of any mark on his arm if so, 
 will he describe it? 
 
 "Thirdly: How long has he known the said Becky Carru- 
 thers? 
 
 "Fourthly: Does he believe her to be honest, and truthful? 
 
 "Take a memorandum of his answers, and send it to me. I 
 am pretty well aware of what they are likely to be ; but I desire 
 you to put the questions that I may judge if there be any dis- 
 crepancy between his statement and that of Mrs. Carruthers. 
 I have much to tell you, and am eager to receive your kind 
 congratulations upon an event that has given me more happi- 
 ness than the fugitive success of my little book. Tenderest 
 regards to Helen; and, hoping soon to see you, ever affection- 
 ately yours. 
 
 "P. S. Say not a word of the contents of this letter to Ma- 
 dame Dalibard, Helen, or to any one except Beck. Caution 
 him to the same discretion. If you can't trust to his silence, 
 send him to town." 
 
 When the post brought this letter, Beck was already gone on 
 his errand, and after puzzling himself with vague conjectures, 
 Percival's mind had been naturally too absorbed with his 
 anxieties for Helen to recur much to the subject.
 
 LUCRETIA. 343 . 
 
 Now, refreshing his memory with the contents of the letter, 
 he drew pen and ink before him, put the questions seriatim, 
 noted down the answers as desired, and smiling at Beck's 
 frightened curiosity to know who could possibly care about 
 such matters, and feeling confident (from that very fright) of 
 his discretion, dismissed the groom to his repose. 
 
 Beck had never been in that part of the house before ; and 
 when he got into the corridor, he became bewildered, and knew 
 not which turn to take, the right or the left. He had no candle 
 with him; but the moon came clear through a high and wide 
 skylight; the light, however, gave him no guide. While paus- 
 ing, much perplexed, and not sure that he should even know 
 again the door of the room he had just quitted, if venturing to 
 apply to his young master for a clue through such a labyrinth, 
 he was inexpressibly startled and appalled by a sudden ap- 
 parition. A door at one end of the corridor opened noiseless- 
 ly, and a figure, at first scarcely distinguishable, for it was robed 
 from head to foot in a black, shapeless garb, scarcely giving even 
 the outline of the human form, stole forth. Beck rubbed his 
 eyes, and crept, mechanically, close within the recess of one 
 of the doors that communicated with the passage. The figure 
 advanced a few steps towards him ; and what words can de- 
 scribe his astonishment, when he beheld thus erect, and in full 
 possession of physical power and motion, the palsied cripple 
 whose chair he had often seen wheeled into the garden, and 
 whose unhappy state was the common topic of comment in the 
 servants' hall. Yes, the moon from above shone full upon that 
 face which never, once seen, could be forgotten. And it 
 seemed more than mortally stern and pale, contrasted with the 
 sable of the strange garb, and beheld by that mournful light. 
 Had a ghost, indeed, risen from the dead, it could scarcely 
 have appalled Tiim more. Madame Dalibard did not see the 
 involuntary spy ; for the recess in which he had crept was on 
 that side of the wall on which the moon's shadow was cast. 
 With a quick step, she turned into another room, opposite 
 that which she had quitted, the door of wh'ich stood ajar, and 
 vanished noiselessly as she had appeared. 
 
 Taught suspicion by his earlier acquaintance with the "night- 
 side" of human nature, Beck had good cause for it here; this 
 detection of an imposture most familiar to his experience 
 that of a pretended cripple the hour of the night, the evil ex- 
 pression on the face of the deceitful guest, Madame Dalibard's 
 familiar intimacy and near connection with Varney Varney 
 the visitor to Grabman, who received no visitors but those who
 
 344 LUCREtlA. 
 
 desire not to go to law, but to escape from its penalties Var- 
 ney, who had dared to brave the Resurrection Man in his den, 
 and who seemed so fearlessly at home in abodes where nought 
 but poverty could protect the honest, Varney now, with that 
 strange woman, an inmate of a house in which the master was 
 so young, so inexperienced, so liable to be duped by his own 
 generous nature all these ideas vaguely combined inspired 
 Beck with as vague a terror; surely something, he knew not 
 what, was about to be perpetrated against his benefactor ; some 
 scheme of villany which it was his duty to detect. He breathed 
 hard, formed his resolves, and, stealing on tiptoe, followed the 
 shadowy form of the poisoner through the half-opened door- 
 way. The shutters of the room of which he thus crossed the 
 threshold were not closed the moon shone in, bright and still. 
 He kept his body behind the door, peeping in, with straining, 
 fearful stare. He saw Madame Dalibard standing beside a 
 bed, round which the curtains were closed standing for a mo- 
 ment or so motionless, and as if in the act of listening, with 
 one hand on a table beside the bed. He then saw her take 
 from the folds of her dress something white and glittering, and 
 pour from it, what appeared to him but a drop or two cau- 
 tiously, slowly into a phial on the table, from which she with- 
 drew the stopper ; that done, she left the phial where she had 
 found it, again paused a moment, and turned towards the door. 
 Beck retreated hastily to his former hiding-place, and gained it 
 in time. Again the shadowy form passed him, and again the 
 white face in the white moonlight froze his blood with its fell 
 and horrible expression. He remained cowering and shrinking 
 against the wall for some time, striving to collect his wits, and 
 considering what he should do. His first thought was to go at 
 once and inform St. John of what he had witnessed. But the 
 poor have a proverbial dread of deposing aught against a su- 
 perior. Madame Dalibard would deny his tale; the guest 
 would be believed against the menial; he should be but dismissed 
 with ignominy. At that idea, he left his hiding-place, and crept 
 along the corridor, -in the hope of finding some passage at the 
 end which might lead to the offices. But when he arrived at 
 the other extremity, he was only met by great folding doors, 
 which evidently communicated with the state apartments. He 
 must retrace his steps he did so ; and when he came to the 
 door which Madame Dalibard had entered, and which still 
 stood ajar, he had recovered some courage, and with cour- 
 age, curiosity seized him. For what purpose could the 
 strange woman seek that room at night thus feloniously;
 
 LUCRETIA. 345 
 
 what could she have poured and with such stealthy caution 
 into the phial? Naturally and suddenly the idea of poison 
 flashed across him. Tales of such crime (as indeed of all crime) 
 had necessarily often thrilled the ear of the vagrant fellow- 
 lodger with burglars and outlaws. But poison to whom. 
 Could it be meant for his benefactor? Could St. John sleep in 
 that room? Why not? The woman had sought the chamber 
 before her young host had retired to rest, and mingled her 
 potion with some medicinal draught. All fear vanished before 
 the notion of danger to his employer. He stole at once through 
 the doorway, and noiselessly approached the table on which 
 yet lay the phial. His hand closed on it firmly. He resolved 
 to carry it away, and consider next morning what next to do. 
 At all events, it might contain some proof to back his tale and 
 justify his suspicions. When he came once more into the cor- 
 ridor, he made a quick rush onwards, and luckily arrived at the 
 staircase. There, the blood-red stains reflected on the stone- 
 floors from the blazoned casements daunted him little less than 
 the sight at which his hair still bristled. He scarcely drew 
 breath till he had got into his own little crib, in the wing set 
 apart for the stablemen, when, at length, he fell into broken 
 and agitated sleep, the visions of all that had successively dis- 
 turbed him waking, united confusedly, as in one picture of 
 gloom and terror. He thought that he was in his old loft in 
 St. Giles ; that the Gravestealer was wrestling with Varney for 
 his body, while he himself, lying powerless on his pallet, fancied 
 he should be safe so long as he could retain as a talisman, his 
 child's coral, which he clasped to his heart. Suddenly, in that 
 black, shapeless garb in which he had beheld her, Madame 
 Dalibard bent over him, with her stern, colorless face, and 
 wrenched from him his charm. Then ceasing his struggle with 
 his horrible antagonist, Varney laughed aloud, and the Grave- 
 stealer seized him in his deadly arms. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE TAPESTRY CHAMBER. 
 
 WHEN Beck woke the next morning, and gradually recalled 
 all that had so startled and appalled him the previous night, 
 the grateful creature felt less by the process of reason than by 
 a brute instinct, that in the mysterious resuscitation and noc- 
 turnal wanderings of the pretended paralytic, some danger 
 menaced his master; he became anxious to learn whether it
 
 346 LUCRETIA. 
 
 was really St. John's room Madame Dalibard stealthily vis- 
 ited. A bright idea struck him, and in the course of the day, 
 at an hour when the family were out of doors, he contrived to 
 coax the good-natured valet, who had taken him under his 
 special protection, to show him over the house. He had heard 
 the other servants say there was such a power of fine things, 
 that a peep into the rooms was as good as a show, and the valet 
 felt pride in being cicerone even to Beck. After having stared 
 sufficiently at the banquet-hall and the drawing-room, the 
 armor, the busts, and the pictures, and listened, open-mouthed, 
 to his guide's critical observations, Beck was led up the great 
 stairs into the old family picture-gallery, and into Sir Miles's 
 ancient room at the end, which had been left undisturbed, with 
 the bed still in the angle; on returning thence, Beck found 
 himself in the corridor which communicated with the prin- 
 cipal bedrooms, in which he had lost himself the night 
 before. 
 
 "And vot room be that vith the littul vite 'ead hover the 
 door?" asked Beck, pointing to the chamber from which 
 Madame Dalibard had emerged. 
 
 "That white head, Master Beck, is Floorer the goddess; but 
 a heathen like you knows nothing about goddesses. Floorer 
 has a half-moon in her hair, you see, which shows that the 
 idolatrous Turks worship her, for the Turkish flag is a half 
 moon, as I have seen at Constantinople ! I have travelled, 
 Beck." 
 
 "And vot room be it? Is it the master's?" persisted 
 Beck. 
 
 "No, the pretty young lady, Miss Mainwaring, has it at pres- 
 ent. There is nothing to see in it. But that one, opposite, 
 and the valet advanced to the door through which Madame 
 Dalibard had disappeared: "that is curious; and as Madame 
 is out, we may just take a peep." He opened the door gently, 
 and Beck looked in. "This, which is called the turret-cham- 
 ber, was Madame's when she was a girl, I have heard Old 
 Bessy say; so master pops her there now. For my part, I'd 
 rather sleep in your little crib, than have those great, gruff- 
 looking figures staring at me by the firelight, and shaking their 
 heads with every wind on a winter's night." And the valet 
 took a pinch of snuff, as he drew Beck's attention to the faded 
 tapestry on the walls. As they spoke, the draught between the 
 door and the window caused the gloomy arras to wave with a 
 lifelike motion; and to those more superstitious than romantic, 
 the chamber had certainly no inviting aspect,
 
 LUCRETIA. 347 
 
 "I never sees these old tapestry rooms, said the valet, 
 "without thinking of the story of the lady who coming from 
 a ball and taking off her jewels, happened to look up, and saw 
 an eye in one of the figures which she felt sure was no peeper 
 in worsted." 
 
 "Vot vos it, thin?" asked Beck timidly, lifting up the hang- 
 ings, and noticing that there was a considerable space between 
 them and the wall, which was filled up in part by closets and 
 wardrobes set into the wall, with intervals more than deep 
 enough for the hiding-place of a man. 
 
 "Why," answered the valet, "it was a thief. He had come 
 for the jewels; but the lady had the presence of mind to say 
 aloud, as if to herself, that she had forgotten something, 
 slipped out of the room, locked the door, called up the ser- 
 vants, and the thief, who was no less a person than the under- 
 butler, was nabbed." 
 
 "And the French 'oman sleeps 'ere?" said Beck mus- 
 ingly. 
 
 "French 'oman! Master Beck, nothing's so vulgar as these 
 nicknames, in a first-rate sitivation. It is all very well when 
 one lives with skinflints; but with such a master as our'n, 
 respect's the go. Besides, Madame is not a French 'oman; 
 she is one of the family and as old a family it is, too, 
 as e'er a lord's in the three kingdoms. But come, your 
 curiosity is satisfied now, and you must trot back to your 
 horses." 
 
 As Beck returned to the stables, his mind yet more misgave 
 him as to the criminal designs of his master's visitor. It was 
 from Helen's room that the false cripple had walked, and the 
 ill-health of the poor young lady was a general subject of com- 
 passionate comment. But Madame Dalibard was Helen's rela- 
 tion ; from what motive could she harbor an evil thought against 
 her own niece? But still, if those drops were poured into the 
 healing draught for good why so secretly? Once more he 
 resolved the idea of speaking to St. John ; an accident dis- 
 suaded him from this intention ; the only proof to back his 
 tale was the mysterious phial he had carried away; but unluck- 
 ily, forgetting that it was in his pocket, at a time when he flung 
 off his coat to groom one of the horses, the bottle struck 
 against the corn-bin and broke all the contents were spilt. 
 This incident made him suspend his intention, and wait till he 
 could obtain some fresh evidence of evil intentions. The day 
 passed without any other noticeable occurrence. The doctor 
 called, found Helen somewhat better, and ascribed it to his
 
 348 LUCRETIA. 
 
 medicines, especially to the effect of his tonic draught the 
 first thing in the morning. Helen smiled: "Nay, doc- 
 tor," said she, "this morning, at least, it was forgotten. I 
 did not find it by my bedside. Don't tell my aunt, she 
 would be so angry." The doctor looked rather discom- 
 posed. 
 
 "Well," said he, soon recovering his good-humor, "since 
 you are certainly better to-day without the draught, discon- 
 tinue it also to-morrow. I will make an alteration for the day 
 after." So that night Madame Dalibard visited in vain her 
 niece's chamber Helen had a reprieve. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE SHADES ON THE DIAL. 
 
 THE following morning was indeed eventful to the family at 
 Laughton ; and, as if conscious of what it brought forth, it 
 rose dreary and sunless; one heavy mist covered all the land- 
 scape, and a raw, drizzling rain fell pattering through the yel- 
 low leaves. 
 
 Madame Dalibard, pleading her infirmities, rarely left her 
 room before noon, and Varney professed himself very irregular 
 in his hours of rising; the breakfast, therefore, afforded no 
 social assembly to the family, but each took that meal in the 
 solitude of his or her own chamber. Percival, in whom all hab- 
 its partook of the healthfulness and simplicity of his character, 
 rose habitually early; and that day, in spite of the weather, 
 walked forth betimes to meet the person charged with the let- 
 ters from the post. He had done so for the last three or four 
 days, impatient to hear from his mother, and calculating that it 
 was full time to receive the expected answer to his confession 
 and his prayer. He met the messenger at the bottom of the 
 park, not far from Guy's Oak. This day he was not disap- 
 pointed. The letter-bag contained three letters for himself, 
 two with the foreign post-mark, the third in Ardworth's hand. 
 It contained also a letter for Madame Dalibard, and two for 
 Varney. 
 
 Leaving the messenger to take these last to the hall, Percival, 
 with his own prize, plunged into the hollow of the glen before 
 him, and, seating himself at the foot of Guy's Oak, through 
 the vast branches of which the rain scarcely came, and only in
 
 LUCRETIA. 3J9 
 
 single, mournful drops, he opened first the letter in his moth- 
 er's hand, and read as follows: 
 
 "My DEAR, DEAR SON: 
 
 "How can I express to you the alarm your letter has given 
 me ! So these, then, are the new relations you have discov- 
 ered ! I fondly imagined that you were alluding to some of my 
 own family, and conjecturing who amongst my many cousins 
 should have so captivated your attention. These the new 
 relations ! Lucretia Dalibard Helen Mainwaring ! Percival, 
 do * you not know No, you cannot know that Helen 
 Mainwaring is the daughter of a disgraced man ; of one who 
 (more than suspected of fraud in the bank in which he was 
 a partner) left his country, condemned even by his own father. 
 
 If you doubt this, you have but to inquire at , not ten 
 
 miles from Laughton, where the elder Mainwaring resided. Ask 
 there, what became of William Mainwaring. And Lucretia, 
 you do not know that the dying prayer of her uncle, Sir Miles 
 St. John, was that she might never enter the house he bequeathed 
 to your father. Not till after my poor Charles's death did I 
 know the exact cause for Sir Miles' s displeasure, though con- 
 fident it was just ; but then amongst his papers I found the un- 
 grateful letter which betrayed thoughts so dark, and passions 
 so unwomanly, that I blushed for my sex to read it. Could it 
 be possible that that poor old man's prayers were unheeded ; 
 that that treacherous step could ever cross your threshold; that 
 that cruel eye which read with such barbarous joy the ravages 
 of death on a benefactor's face, could rest on the hearth, by 
 which your frank, truthful countenance has so often smiled 
 away my tears, I should feel indeed, as if a thunder-cloud 
 hung over the roof. No! If you marry the niece, the aunt 
 must be banished from your house. Good Heavens! and it is 
 the daughter of William Mainwaring, the niece and ward of 
 Lucretia Dalibard, to whom you have given your faithful affec- 
 tion; whom you single from the world as your wife! Oh! 
 my son, my beloved, my sole surviving child, do not think that 
 I blame you ; that my heart does not bleed while I write thus; 
 but I implore you on my knees to pause at least ; to suspend 
 this intercourse, till I myself can reach England. And what 
 then? Why, then, Percival, I promise, on my part, that I will 
 see your Helen with unprejudiced eyes; that I will put away 
 from me, as far as possible, all visions of disappointed pride 
 the remembrance of faults not her own ; and if she be as you 
 say and think, I will take her to my heart and call her 'Paugh-
 
 350 LUCRETIA. 
 
 ter.' Are you satisfied? If so, come to me come at once, 
 and take comfort from your mother's lips. How I long to be 
 with you while you read this ! How I tremble at the pain I 
 so rudely give you ! But my poor sister still chains me here ; 
 I dare not leave her, lest I should lose her last sigh. Come 
 then, come, we will console each other. 
 
 "Your fond (how fond!) and sorrowing mother, 
 "October 3, 1831. "MARY ST. JOHN. 
 
 "Sorrento. 
 
 "P. S. You see by this address that we have left Pisa for 
 this place, commended by our physician; hence an unhappy 
 delay of some days in my reply. Ah Percival, how sleepless 
 will be my pillow till I hear from you ! " 
 
 Long, very long, was it before St. John, mute and over- 
 whelmed with the sudden shock of his anguish, opened his 
 other letters the first was from Captain Greville: 
 
 "What trap have you fallen into, foolish boy? That you 
 would get into some silly scrape or another was natural enough. 
 But a scrape for life, sir that is serious ! But, God bless you 
 for your candor, my Percival; you have written to us in time; 
 you are old-fashioned enough to think that a mother's consent 
 is necessary to a young man's union. And you have left it in 
 our power to save you yet ; it is not every boyish fancy that 
 proves to be true love. But enough of this preaching ; I shall 
 do better than write scolding letters, I shall come and scold 
 you in person. My servant is at this very moment packing 
 my portmanteau, the laquais-de-place is gone to Naples for my 
 passport. Almost as soon as you receive this I shall be with 
 you; and if I am a day or two later than the mail, be patient; 
 do not commit yourself further. Break your heart if you 
 please, but don't implicate your honor. I shall come at once 
 to Curzon Street. Adieu! "H. GREVILLE." 
 
 Ardworth's letter was shorter than the others ; fortunately 
 so, for otherwise it had been unread : 
 
 "If I do not come to you myself the day after you receive 
 this, dear Percival, which, indeed is most probable, I shall 
 send you my proxy in one whom, for my sake, I know that you 
 will kindly welcome. He will undertake my task, and clear 
 up all the mysteries with which, I trust, my correspondence has 
 thoroughly bewildered your lively imagination. 
 "Yours, ever, 
 
 "Gray's Inn," "JOHN ARDWORTH."
 
 LUCRETIA. 351 
 
 Little, indeed, did Percival's imagination busy itself with 
 the mysteries of Ardworth's correspondence. His mind 
 scarcely took in the sense of the words, over which his eye 
 mechanically wandered. 
 
 And the letter which narrated the visit of Madame Dalibard 
 to the house thus solemnly interdicted to her step, was on its 
 way to his mother; nay, by this time would almost have 
 reached her. Greville was on the road; nay, as his tutor's 
 letter had been forwarded from London, might, perhaps, be in 
 Curzon Street that day. How desirable to see him before he 
 could reach Laughton, to prepare him for Madame Dalibard's 
 visit; for Helen's illness; explain the position in which he was 
 involved, and conciliate the old soldier's rough, kind heart to 
 his love and his distress ! 
 
 He did not dread the meeting with Greville ; he yearned for 
 it. He needed an adviser, a confidant, a friend. To dismiss 
 abruptly his guests from his house, impossible ! To abandon 
 Helen because of her father's crime, or her aunt's fault (what- 
 ever that last might be, and no clear detail of it was given) that 
 never entered his thoughts! Pure and unsullied, the starry 
 face of Helen shone the holier from the cloud around it. An 
 inexpressible and chivalrous compassion mingled with his love 
 and confirmed his faith. She, poor child, to suffer for the 
 deeds of others ! No. What availed his power as man, and 
 dignity as gentleman, if they could not wrap in their own shelter 
 the one by whom such shelter was now doubly needed? Thus, 
 amidst all his emotions, firm and resolved, at least on one point, 
 and beginning already to recover the hope of his sanguine nature, 
 from his reliance on his mother's love, on the promises that 
 softened her disclosures and warnings, and on his conviction 
 that Helen had only to be seen for every scruple to give way, 
 Percival wandered back towards the house, and, coming 
 abruptly on the terrace, he encountered Varney, who was lean- 
 ing motionless against the balustrades, with an open letter in 
 his hand. Varney was deadly pale, and there was the trace of 
 some recent and gloomy agitation in the relaxed muscles of his 
 cheeks, usually so firmly rounded. But Percival did not heed 
 his appearance as he took him gravely by the arm, and leading 
 him into the garden, said, after a painful pause: 
 
 "Varney, I am about to ask you two questions, which your 
 close connection with Madame Dalibard may enable you to 
 answer; but in which from obvious motives, I must demand 
 the strictest confidence. You will not hint to her or to Helen 
 what I am about to say?"
 
 352 LUCRETIA. 
 
 Varney stared uneasily on Percival's serious countenance, 
 and gave the promise required. 
 
 "First, then, for what offence was Madame Dalibard ex- 
 pelled her uncle's house this house of Laughton? 
 
 "Secondly, what is the crime with which Mr. Mainwaring, 
 Helen's father, is charged?" 
 
 "With regard to the first," said Varney, recovering his com- 
 posure, "I thought I had already told you that Sir Miles was a 
 proud man, and that, in consequence of discovering a girlish 
 flirtation between his niece Lucretia (now Madame Dalibard) 
 and Mainwaring, who afterwards jilted her for Helen's mother, 
 he altered his will 'expelled her his house,' is too harsh a 
 a phrase. This is all I know. With regard to the second 
 question, no crime was ever brought home to William Main- 
 waring. He was suspected of dealing improperly with the 
 funds of the bank, and he repaid the alleged deficit by the 
 sacrifice of all he possessed." 
 
 "This is the truth!" exclaimed Percival joyfully. 
 
 "The plain truth, I believe; but why these questions at this 
 moment? Ah, you too, I see, have had letters I understand! 
 Lady Mary gives these reasons for withholding her consent." 
 
 "Her consent is not withheld," answered Percival; "but, 
 shall I own it? remember, I have your promise not to wound 
 and offend Madame Dalibard by the disclosure : my mother 
 does refer to the subjects I have alluded to, and Captain Gre- 
 ville, my old friend and tutor, is on his way to England per- 
 haps to-morrow he may arrive at Laughton." 
 
 "Ha!" said Varney, startled ; "to-morrow! And what sort 
 of a man is this Captain Greville?" 
 
 "The best man possible for such a case as mine: kind- 
 hearted, yet cool, sagacious, the finest observer, the quickest 
 judge of character nothing escapes him. Oh, one interview 
 will suffice to show him all Helen's innocent and matchless 
 excellence!" 
 
 "To-morrow! This man comes to-morrow!" 
 
 "All that I fear is for he is rather rough and blunt in his 
 manner, all that I fear is, his first surprise, and, dare I say, 
 displeasure, at seeing this poor Madame Dalibard, whose 
 faults, I fear, were graver than you suppose, at the house from 
 which her uncle to whom, indeed, I owe this inheritance 
 
 "I see I see!" interrupted Varney quickly. "And 
 Madame Dalibard is the most susceptible of women: so well- 
 born, and so poor, so gifted, and so helpless it is natural. 
 Can you not write, and put off this Captain Greville for a few
 
 LUCRETIA. 353 
 
 days? Until, indeed, I can find some excuse for terminating 
 our visit." 
 
 "But my letter may be hardly in time to reach him; he may 
 be in town to-day." 
 
 "Go then to town at once; you can be back late at night, or 
 at least to-morrow. Anything better than wounding the pride 
 of a woman on whom, after all, you must depend for free and 
 open intercourse with Helen." 
 
 "That is exactly what I thought of; but what excuse? ' 
 
 "Excuse! A thousand! Every man coming of age into 
 such a property has business with his lawyers ; or why not say 
 simply that you want to meet a friend of yours, who has just 
 left your mother in Italy? In short, any excuse suffices, and 
 none can be offensive." 
 
 "I will order my carriage instantly." 
 
 "Right!" exclaimed Varney; and his eye followed there- 
 ceding form of Percival with a mixture of fierce exultation and 
 anxious fear. Then turning towards the window of the turret- 
 chamber, in which Madame Dalibard reposed, and seeing it 
 still closed, he muttered an impatient oath ; but even while he 
 did so, the shutters were slowly opened, and a footman, step- 
 ping from the porch, approached Varney with a message, that 
 Madame Dalibard would see him in five minutes, if he would 
 then have the goodness to ascend to her room. 
 
 Before that time was well expired, Varney was in the cham- 
 ber. Madame Dalibard was up, and in her chair: and the 
 unwonted joy which her countenance evinced was in strong 
 contrast with the sombre shade upon her son-in-law's brow, 
 and the nervous quiver of his lip. 
 
 "Gabriel," she said, as he drew near to her, "my son is 
 found!" 
 
 "I know it," he answered petulantly. 
 
 "You! From whom?" 
 
 "From Grabman." 
 
 "And I from a still better authority from Walter Ard worth 
 himself! He lives; he will restore my child!" She extended 
 a letter while she spoke. He, in return, gave her, not that still 
 crumpled in his hand, but one which he drew from his breast. 
 These letters severally occupied both, begun and finished 
 almost in the same moment. 
 
 That from Grabman ran thus: 
 "DEAR JASON: 
 
 "Toss up your hat, and cry hip-hip! At last, from person 
 to person, I have tracked the lost Vincent Braddell. He lives
 
 354 LucRETiA. 
 
 still! We can maintain his identity in any court of law. 
 Scarce in time for the post, I have not a moment for further 
 particulars. I shall employ the next two days in reducing all 
 the evidence to a regular digest, which I will despatch to you. 
 Meanwhile, prepare, as soon as may be, to put me in possession 
 of my fee, 5000, and my expedition merits something more. 
 Yours, NICHOLAS GRABMAN." 
 
 The letter from Ard worth was no less positive: 
 
 "MADAM: 
 
 "In obedience to the command of a dying friend, I took 
 charge of his infant, and concealed its existence from his 
 mother yourself. On returning to England, I need not say 
 that I was not unmindful of my trust. Your son lives; and, 
 after mature reflection, I have resolved to restore him to your 
 arms. In this I have been decided by what I have heard from 
 one whom I can trust, of your altered habits, your decorous life, 
 your melancholy infirmities, and the generous protection you 
 have given to the orphan of my poor cousin Susan, my old 
 friend Mainwaring. Alfred Braddell himself, if it be permitted 
 to him to look down and read my motives, will pardon me, I 
 venture to feel assured, this departure from his injunctions. 
 Whatever the faults which displeased him, they have been 
 amply chastened. And your son, grown to man, can no longer 
 be endangered by example, in tending the couch, or soothing 
 the repentance, of his mother. 
 
 "These words are severe; but you will pardon them in him 
 who gives you back your child. I shall venture to wait on you 
 in person, with such proofs as may satisfy you as to the iden- 
 tity of your son. I count on arriving at Laughton to-morrow. 
 Meanwhile, I simply sign myself by a name, in which you will 
 recognize the kinsman to one branch of your family, and the 
 friend of your dead husband, J. WALTER ARDWORTH. 
 
 "Craven Hotel, October, 1831." 
 
 "Well! and you are not rejoiced!" said Lucretia, gazing 
 surprised on Varney's sullen and unsympathizing face. 
 
 "No; because time presses; because, even while discover- 
 ing your son, you may fail in securing his heritage; because, 
 in the midst of your triumph, I see Newgate opening to my- 
 self ! Look you, I, too, have had my news less pleasing than 
 yours. This Stubmore (curse him!) writes me word that he 
 shall certainly be in town next month at farthest, and that he 
 meditates, immediately on his arrival, transferring the legacy 
 from the Bank of England to an excellent mortgage of which
 
 LUCRETIA. 355 
 
 he has heard. Were it not for this scheme of ours, nothing 
 would be left for me but flight and exile." 
 
 "A month! That is a long time! Do you think now that 
 my son is found, and that son one like John Ardworth (for 
 there can be no doubt that my surmise was right), with genius 
 to make station the pedestal to the power I dreamed of in my 
 youth, but which my sex forbade me to attain do you think I 
 will keep him a month from his inheritance? Before the 
 month is out, you shall replace what you have taken, and buy 
 your trustee's silence, if need be, either from the sums you 
 have insured, or from the rents of Laughton." 
 
 "Lucretia," said Varney, whose fresh color had grown livid, 
 "what is to be done must be done at once! Percival St. John 
 has heard from his mother. Attend!" And Varney rapidly 
 related the questions St. John had put to him, the dreaded 
 arrival of Captain Greville, the danger of so keen an observer, 
 the necessity, at all events, of abridging their visit, the urgen- 
 cy of hastening the catastrophe to its close. 
 
 Lucretia listened in ominous and steadfast silence. 
 
 "But," she said, at last, "you have persuaded St. John to 
 give this man the meeting in London to put off his visit for 
 the time. St. John will return to us to-morrow. Well; and if 
 he finds his Helen is no more! Two nights ago I, for the first 
 time, mingled in the morning draught that which has no anti- 
 dote and no cure. This night two drops more, and St. John 
 will return to find that Death is in the house before him. And 
 then for himself the sole remaining barrier between my son 
 and this inheritance, for himself why grief sometimes kills 
 suddenly; and there be drugs whose effect simulates the 
 death-stroke of grief." 
 
 "Yet, yet, this rapidity, if necessary, is perilous. Nothing 
 in Helen's state forbodes sudden death by natural means. 
 The strangeness of two deaths, both so young Greville in 
 England, if not here hastening down to examine, to inquire, 
 with such prepossessions against you: there must be an 
 inquest!" 
 
 "Well, and what can be discovered? It was I who shrunk 
 before; it is I who now urge despatch. I feel as in my proper 
 home in these halls. 1 would not leave them again but to my 
 grave! I stand on the hearth of my youth. I fight for my 
 rights and my son's. Perish those who oppose me!" 
 
 A fell energy and power were in the aspect of the murderess 
 as she thus spoke; and while her determination awed the infe- 
 rior villany of Varney, it served somewhat to mitigate his fears.
 
 35 6 LUCRETIA. 
 
 As in more detail they began to arrange their execrable plans, 
 Percival, while the horses were being harnessed to take him to 
 the nearest post-town, sought Helen, and found her in the little 
 chamber which he had described and appropriated as her own, 
 when his fond fancy had sketched the fair outline of the future. 
 
 This room had been originally fitted up for the private devo- 
 tions of the Roman Catholic wife of an ancestor, in the reign 
 of Charles II.; and in a recess, half veiled by a curtain, there 
 still stood that holy symbol, which, whether Protestant or 
 Roman Catholic, no one sincerely penetrated with the solemn 
 pathos of sacred history can behold unmoved the Cross of 
 the Divine Agony. Before this holy symbol Helen stood in 
 earnest reverence. She did not kneel (for the forms of the 
 religion in which she had been reared were opposed to that 
 posture of worship before the graven image), but you could see 
 in that countenance, eloquent at once with the enthusiasm and 
 the meekness of piety, that the soul was filled with the memor- 
 ies and the hopes, which, age after age, have consoled the 
 sufferer, and inspired the martyr. The soul knelt to the idea, 
 if the knee bowed not to the image, embracing the tender 
 grandeur of the sacrifice, and the vast inheritance opened to 
 faith in the redemption. 
 
 The young man held his breath while he gazed. He was 
 moved, and he was awed. Slowly Helen turned towards him, 
 and, smiling sweetly, held out to him her hand. They seated 
 themselves in silence in the depth of the overhanging case- 
 ment; and the mournful character of the scene without, where, 
 dimly through the misty rains, gloomed the dark foliage of the 
 cedars, made them insensibly draw closer to each other, in the 
 instinct of love when the world frowns around it. Percival 
 wanted the courage to say that he had come to take farewell, 
 though but for a day, and Helen spoke first. 
 
 "I cannot guess why it is, Percival, but I am startled at the 
 change I feel in myself no, not in health, dear Percival, I 
 mean in mind; during the last few months since, indeed, we 
 have known each other. I remember so well the morning in 
 which my aunt's letter arrived at the dear vicarage. We were 
 returning from the village fair, and my good guardian was 
 smiling at my notions of the world. I was then so giddy, and 
 light, and thoughtless everything presented itself to me in 
 such gay colors, I scarcely believed in sorrow. And now I 
 feel as if I were awakened to a truer sense of nature, of the 
 ends of our being here; I seem to know that life is a grave and 
 solemn thing. Yet I am not less happy, Percival. No, I
 
 LUCRETIA. 357 
 
 think, rather, that I knew not true happiness till I knew you. 
 I have read somewhere that the slave is gay in his holiday from 
 toil; if you free him, if you educate him, the gayety vanishes, 
 and he cares no more for the dance under the palm-tree. But 
 is he less happy? So it is with me!" 
 
 "My sweet Helen, I would rather have one gay smile of old 
 the arch, careless laugh which came so naturally from those 
 rosy lips, than hear you talk of happiness with that quiver in 
 your voice, those tears in your eyes." 
 
 "Yet gayety," said Helen thoughtfully, and in the strain of 
 her pure, truthful poetry of soul, "is only the light impression 
 of the present moment, the play of the mere spirits ; and hap- 
 piness seems a forethought of the future, spreading on, far and 
 broad, over all time and space." 
 
 "And you live, then, in the future, at last; you have no 
 misgivings now, my Helen? Well, that comforts me! Say it, 
 Helen, say the future will be ours!" 
 
 "It will it will forever and forever," said Helen ear- 
 nestly, and her eyes involuntarily rested on the Cross. 
 
 In his younger spirit and less imaginative nature, Percival 
 did not comprehend the depth of sadness implied in Helen's 
 answer; taking it literally, he felt as if a load were lifted from 
 his heart, and kissing with rapture the hand he held, he ex- 
 claimed: "Yes, this shall soon oh, soon be mine! I fear 
 nothing while you hope. You cannot guess how those words 
 have cheered me, for I am leaving you, though but for a few 
 hours, and I shall repeat those words they will ring in my 
 ear, in my heart, till we meet again." 
 
 "Leaving me!" said Helen, turning pale, and her clasp on 
 his hand tightened. Poor child, she felt, mysteriously, a sen- 
 timent of protection in his presence. 
 
 "But at most for a day. My old tutor, of whom we have so 
 often conversed, is on his way to England; perhaps, even now 
 in London. He has some wrong impressions against your 
 aunt his manner is blunt and rough. It is necessary that I 
 should see him before he comes hither; you know how suscep- 
 tible is your aunt's pride; just to prepare him for meeting 
 her, you understand?" 
 
 "What impressions against my aunt? Does he even know 
 her?" asked Helen; and if such a sentiment as suspicion 
 could cross that candid innocence of mind, that sentiment 
 towards this stern relation whose arms had never embraced her, 
 whose lips had never spoken of the past, whose history was as 
 a sealed volume, disturbed and disquieted her.
 
 358 LUCRETIA. 
 
 "It is because he has never known her that he does her 
 wrong. Some old story of her indiscretion as a girl of her 
 uncle's displeasure what matters now?' ' said Percival, shrink- 
 ing sensitively from one disclosure that might wound Helen in 
 her kinswoman. "Meanwhile, dearest, you will be prudent; 
 yeu will avoid this damp air, and keep quietly at home, and 
 amuse yourself, sweet fancier of the future, in planning how to 
 improve these old halls, when they and their unworthy master 
 are your own. God bless you! God guard you, Helen!" 
 
 He rose, and with that loyal chivalry of love which felt re- 
 spect the more for the careless guardianship to which his Helen 
 was entrusted, he refrained from that parting kiss which their 
 pure courtship warranted, for which his lip yearned. But as 
 he lingered, an irresistible impulse moved Helen's heart. 
 Mechanically she opened her arms, and her head sunk on his 
 shoulder. In that embrace, they remained some moments 
 still, and an angel might unreprovingly have heard their hearts 
 beat through the stillness. 
 
 At length, Percival tore himself from those arms which re- 
 laxed their imploring hold reluctantly; she heard his hurried 
 step descend the stairs, and, in a moment more, the roll of the 
 wheels in the court without; a dreary sense as of some utter 
 desertion, some everlasting bereavement, chilled and appalled 
 her. She stood motionless, as if turned to stone, on the floor: 
 suddenly the touch of something warm on her hand, a plaining 
 whine, awoke her attention; Percival's favorite dog missed his 
 master, and had slunk for refuge to her. The dread senti- 
 ment of loneliness vanished in that humble companionship; 
 and, seating herself on the ground, she took the dog in her 
 arms, and, bending over it, wept in silence. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 MURDER, TOWARDS HIS DESIGN, MOVES LIKE A GHOST. 
 
 THE reader will, doubtless, have observed the consummate 
 art with which the poisoner had hitherto advanced upon her 
 prey. The design conceived from afar, and executed with 
 elaborate stealth, defied every chance of detection, against 
 which the ingenuity of practised villany could guard. Grant 
 even that the deadly drugs should betray the nature of the 
 death they inflicted, that by some unconjectured secret in the 
 science of chemistry, the presence of those vegetable com- 
 pounds which had hitherto baffled every known and positive
 
 LUCRETIA. 359 
 
 test in the posthumous examination of the most experienced 
 surgeons, should be clearly ascertained, not one suspicion 
 seemed likely to fall upon the ministrant of death. The medi- 
 cines were never brought to Madame Dalibard, were never 
 given by her hand; nothing ever tasted by the victim could be 
 tracked to her aunt. The helpless condition of the cripple, 
 which Lucretia had assumed, forbade all notion even of her 
 power of movement. Only in the dead of night, when, as she 
 believed, every human eye that could watch her was sealed in 
 sleep, and then in those dark habiliments, which (even, as 
 might sometimes happen, if the victim herself were awake,) a 
 chance ray of light struggling through chink or shutter could 
 scarcely distinguish from the general gloom, did she steal to 
 the chamber, and infuse the colorless and tasteless liquid * in 
 the morning draught, meant to bring strength and healing. 
 Grant that the draught was untouched; that it was examined 
 by the surgeon; that the fell admixture could be detected; sus- 
 picion would wander anywhere rather than to that crippled and 
 helpless kinswoman, who could not rise from her bed without 
 aid. 
 
 But now this patience was to be abandoned, the folds of the 
 serpent were to coil in one fell clasp upon its prey. 
 
 Fiend as Lucretia had become, and hardened as were all her 
 resolves by the discovery of her son, and her impatience to 
 endow him with her forfeited inheritance, she yet shrank from 
 the face of Helen that day; on the excuse of illness she kept 
 her room, and admitted only Varney, who stole in from time 
 to time, with creeping step and haggard countenance, to sus- 
 tain her courage or his own. And every time he entered, he 
 found Lucretia sitting with Walter Ardworth's open letter in her 
 hand, and turning with a preternatural excitement, that 
 seemed almost like aberration of mind, from the grim and hor- 
 rid topic which he invited, to thoughts of wealth, and power, 
 and triumph, and exulting prophecies of the fame her son 
 should achieve. He looked but on the blackness of the gulf, 
 and shuddered; her vision overleapt it, and smiled on the 
 misty palaces her fancy built beyond. 
 
 Late in the evening, before she retired to rest, Helen 
 knocked gently at her aunt's door; a voice quick and startled 
 bade her enter; she came in, with her sweet caressing look, 
 and took Lucretia's hand, which struggled from the clasp. 
 Bending over that haggard brow, she said, simply, yet to Lu- 
 cretia's ear the voice seemed that of command: "Let me kiss 
 
 * The celebrated aytia tfi Tu/ania (Tufania water) was wholly without taste or color.
 
 360 LUCRETIA. 
 
 you, this night!" and her lips pressed that brow. The mur- 
 deress shuddered, and closed her eyes; when she opened them, 
 the angel visitor was gone. 
 
 Night deepened and deepened into those hours from the 
 first of which we number the morn, though night still is at hei 
 full. Moon-beam and star-beam came through the casements, 
 shyly, and fairy-like, as on that night when the murderess was 
 young and crimeless in deed, if not in thought that night 
 when, in the book of leechcraft, she meted out the hours in 
 which the life of her benefactor might still interpose between 
 her passion and its end. Along the stairs, through the hall, 
 marched the armies of light noiseless, and still, and clear, as 
 the judgments of God, amidst the darkness and shadow of 
 mortal destinies. In one chamber alone, the folds, curtained 
 close, forbade all but a single ray; that ray came direct, as the 
 stream from a lantern, as the beam reflected back from an eye 
 as an eye it seemed watchful, and steadfast, through the dark; 
 it shot along the floor, it fell at the foot of the bed. 
 
 Suddenly, in the exceeding hush, there was a strange and 
 ghastly sound it was the howl of a dog! Helen started 
 from her sleep. Percival's dog had followed her into her 
 room, it had coiled itself, grateful for the kindness, at the foot 
 of the bed. Now it was on the pillow, she felt its heart beat 
 against her hand ; it was trembling; its hairs bristled up, and 
 the howl changed into a shrill bark of terror and wrath. 
 Alarmed, she looked round: quickly between her and that 
 ray from the crevice, a shapeless Darkness passed, and was 
 gone! So undistinguishable, so without outline, that it had no 
 likeness of any living form: like a cloud, like a thought, like 
 an omen, it came in gloom, and it vanished. 
 
 Helen was seized with a superstitious terror; the dog con- 
 tinued to tremble and growl low. All once more was still ; 
 the dog sighed itself to rest. The stillness, the solitude, the 
 glimmer of the moon, all contributed yet more to appall the 
 enfeebled nerves of the listening, shrinking girl. At length 
 she buried her face under the clothes, and towards daybreak 
 fell into a broken, feverish sleep, haunted with threatening 
 dreams. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE MESSENGER SPEEDS. 
 
 TOWARDS the afternoon of the following day, an elderly 
 gentleman was. seated in the coffee-room of an hotel at South-
 
 LtickETtA. 361 
 
 amptori, engaged in writing a letter, while the waiter in attend- 
 ance was employed on the wires that fettered the petulant 
 spirit contained in a bottle of Schweppe's soda water. There 
 was something in the aspect of the old gentleman, and in the 
 very tone of his voice, that inspired respect, and the waiter had 
 cleared the other tables of their latest newspapers to place 
 before him. He had only just arrived by the packet from 
 Havre, and even the newspapers had not been to him that 
 primary attraction they generally constitute to the Englishman 
 returning to his bustling native land, which, somewhat to his 
 surprise has contrived to go on tolerably well during his ab- 
 sence. 
 
 We use our privilege of looking over his shoulder while he 
 writes: 
 
 "Here I am, then, dear Lady Mary, at Southampton, and 
 within an easy drive of the old Hall! A file of Galignani's 
 Journals, which I found on the road between Marseilles and 
 Paris, informed me, under the head of 'fashionable movements,' 
 that 'Percival St. John, Esq., was gone to his seat at Laugh- 
 ton.' According to my customary tactics of marching at once 
 to the seat of action, I therefore made direct for Havre, instead 
 of crossing from Calais, and I suppose I shall find our young 
 gentleman engaged in the slaughter of hares and partridges. 
 You see, it is a good sign that he can leave London. Keep up 
 your spirits, my dear friend. If Perce has been really duped 
 and taken in, as all you mothers are so apt to fancy, rely 
 upon an old soldier to defeat the enemy, and expose the ruse. 
 But if, after all, the girl is such as he describes and believes 
 innocent, artless, and worthy his affection oh, then I range 
 myself, with your good heart, upon his side. Never will I run 
 the risk of unsettling a man's whole character for life by wan- 
 tonly interfering with his affections. But there we are agreed. 
 
 "In a few hours I shall be with our dear boy, and his whole 
 heart will come out clear and candid as when it beat under his 
 midshipman's true blue. In a day or two, I shall make him 
 take me to town, to introduce me to the whole nest of them. 
 Then I shall report progress. Adieu, till then ! Kind regards 
 to your poor sister. I think we shall have a mild winter. Not 
 one warning twinge, as yet, of the old rheumatism. 
 
 "Ever your devoted old friend and />reux chevalier, 
 
 "H. GREVILLE." 
 
 The captain had completed his letter, sipped his soda water, 
 and was affixing to his communication his seal, when he heard
 
 362 LUCRETiA. 
 
 the rattle of a post-chaise without. Fancying it was the one 
 he had ordered, he went to the open window which looked on 
 the street; but the chaise contained travellers, only halting to 
 Change horses. Somewhat to his surprise, and a little to his 
 chagrin, for the captain did not count on finding company at 
 the Hall, he heard one of the travellers in the chaise ask the 
 distance to Laughton. The countenance of the questioner was 
 not familiar to him. But, leaving the worthy captain to ques- 
 tion the landlord, without any satisfactory information, and to 
 hasten the chaise for himself, we accompany the travellers on 
 their way to Laughton. They were but two the proper com- 
 plement of a post-chaise and they were both of the ruder sex. 
 The elder of the two was a man of middle age, but whom the 
 wear and tear of active life had evidently advanced towards 
 the state called elderly. But there was still abundant life in 
 his quick, dark eye; and that mercurial youthf illness of char- 
 acter, which in some happy constitutions, seems to defy years 
 and sorrows, evinced itself in a rapid play of countenance, and 
 as much gesticulation as the narrow confines of the vehicle, 
 and the position of a traveller, will permit. The younger man, 
 far more grave in aspect and quiet in manner, leaned back in 
 the corner with folded arms, and listened with respectful at- 
 tention to his companion. 
 
 "Certainly, Dr. Johnson is right great happiness in an Eng- 
 lish post-chaise properly driven ! More exhilarating than a pal- 
 anquin: 'Post equitem sedet atra curd" true only of such 
 scrubby hacks as old Horace could have known. Black Care 
 does not sit behind English posters eh, my boy!" As he 
 spoke this, the gentleman had twice let down the glass of the 
 vehicle, and twice put it up again. 
 
 "Yet," he resumed, without noticing the brief, good- 
 humored reply of his companion; "Yet this is an anxious 
 business enough that we are about. I don't feel quite easy in 
 my conscience. Poor Braddell's injunctions were very strict, 
 and I disobey them. It is on your responsibility, John!" 
 
 "I take it without hesitation. All the motives for so stern 
 a severance must have ceased, and is it not a sufficient punish- 
 ment to find in that hoped-for son, a 
 
 "Poor woman!" interrupted the elder gentleman, in whom 
 we begin to recognize the sol-distant Mr. Tomkins; "True, 
 indeed too true. How well I remember the impression Lu- 
 cretia Clavering first produced on me; and to think of her now 
 as a miserable cripple! By Jove, you are right, sir! Drive on, 
 postboy, quick, quick!"
 
 LUCRETIA. 363 
 
 There was a short silence. 
 
 The elder gentleman, abruptly put his hand upon his com- 
 panion's arm. 
 
 ' ' What consummate acuteness, what patient research you have 
 shown! What could I have done in this business without you? 
 How often had that garrulous Mrs. Mivers bored me with 
 Becky Carruthers, and the coral, and St. Paul's, and not a sus- 
 picion came across me, a word was sufficient for you ; and 
 then to track this unfeeling old Joplin from place to place, 
 till you find her absolutely a servant under the very roof of 
 Mrs. Braddell herself! Wonderful! Ah, boy, you will be an 
 honor to the law, and to your country. And what a hard- 
 hearted rascal you must think me, to have deserted you so 
 long!" 
 
 "My dear father," said John Ardworth tenderly, "your 
 love now recompenses me for all. And ought I not rather to 
 rejoice not to have known the tale of a mother's shame, until 
 I could half forget it on a father's breast?" 
 
 "John," said the elder Ardworth, with a choking voice, "I 
 ought to wear sackcloth all my life, for having given you such 
 a mother. When I think what I have suffered from the habit 
 of carelessness in those confounded money matters ( ' irritamcntct 
 malorum,' indeed!) I have only one consolation, that my pa- 
 tient, noble son, is free from my vice. You would not believe 
 what a well-principled, honorable fellow I was at your age, 
 and yet, how truly I said to my poor friend, William Mainwar- 
 ing, one day at Laugh ton (I remember it now), 'Trust me 
 with anything else but half-a-guinea!' Why, sir, it was that 
 fault that threw me into low company; that brought me in con- 
 tact with my innkeeper's daughter at Limerick. I fell in love, 
 and I married (for, with all my faults, I was never a seducer, 
 John). I did not own my marriage; why should I? My rela- 
 tives had cut me already. You were born, and hunted poor 
 devil as I was, I forgot all by your cradle. Then, in the midst 
 of my troubles, that ungrateful woman deserted me; then, I 
 was led to believe that it was not my son whom I had kisssed 
 and blessed. Ah, but for that thought should I have left you 
 as I did ! And even in infancy, you had the features only of 
 your mother. Then, when the death of the adulteress set me 
 free, and years afterwards, in India, I married again, and had 
 new ties, my heart grew still harder to you. I excused myself 
 by knowing that at least you were cared for, and trained to 
 good by a better guide, than I. But when, by so strange a haz- 
 ard, the very priest who had confessed your mother on her
 
 364 LUCRETIA. 
 
 death-bed (she was a Catholic), came to India, and (for he had 
 known me at Limerick) [recognized my altered person, and 
 obeying his penitent's last injunctions, assured me that you 
 were my son, oh, John, then, believe me, I hastened back to 
 England on the wings of remorse! Love you, boy! I have 
 left at Madras, three children, young and fair, by a woman now 
 in heaven, who never wronged me, and, by my soul, John Ard- 
 worth, you are dearer to me than all!" 
 
 The father's head dropped on his son's breast as he spoke; 
 then, dashing away his tears, he resumed: 
 
 "Ah, why would not Braddell permit me, as I proposed, to 
 find for his son the same guardianship as that to which I en- 
 trusted my own ; but his bigotry besotted him a clergyman of 
 the high church, that was worse than an atheist! I had no 
 choice left to me but the roof of that she-hypocrite. Yet I 
 ought to have come to England when I heard of the child's 
 loss; braved duns and all; but I was money-making, money- 
 making retribution for money-wasting; and well, it's no use 
 repenting! And and there is the lodge, the park, the old 
 trees! Poor Sir Miles!" 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 THE SPY FLIES. 
 
 MEANWHILE at Laughton there was confusion and alarm. 
 Helen had found herself more than usually unwell in the morn- 
 ing; towards noon the maid who attended her informed Mad- 
 ame Dalibard that she was afraid the poor young lady had much 
 fever, and inquired if the doctor should be sent for. Madame 
 Dalibard seemed surprised at the intelligence, and directed her 
 chair to be wheeled into her niece's room, in order herself to 
 judge of Helen's state. The maid, sure that the doctor would 
 be summoned, hastened to the stables, and seeing Beck, in- 
 structed him to saddle one of the horses, and to await further 
 orders. Beck kept her talking a few moments, while he sad- 
 dled his horse, and then followed her into the house, observing 
 that it would save time if he were close at hand. 
 
 "That is quite true," said the maid, "and you may as 
 well wait in the corridor. Madame may wish to speak to 
 you herself, and give you her own message or note to the 
 doctor." 
 
 Beck, full of gloomy suspicions, gladly obeyed ; and while
 
 LUCRETIA. 365 
 
 the maid entered the sick chamber, stood anxiously without. 
 Presently Varney passed him, and knocked at Helen's door; 
 the maid half opened it. 
 
 "How is Miss Mainwaring?" said he eagerly. 
 
 "I fear she is worse, sir; but Madame Dalibard does not 
 think there is any danger." 
 
 "No danger! I am glad ; but pray ask Madame Dalibard to 
 let me see her for a few moments in her own room. If she 
 come out I will wheel her chair to it. Whether there is danger 
 or not, we had better send for other advice than this country 
 doctor, who has perhaps mistaken the case ; tell her I am very 
 uneasy, and beg her to join me immediately." 
 
 "I think you are quite right, sir," said the maid, closing the 
 door. 
 
 Varney then turning round for the first time, noticed Beck, 
 and said roughly: "What do you do here? Wait below till 
 you are sent for." 
 
 Beck pulled his forelock, and retreated back, not in the direc- 
 tion of the principal staircase, but towards that used by the ser- 
 vants, and which his researches into the topography of the 
 mansion had now made known to him. To gain these back 
 stairs he had to pass Lucretia's room; the door stood ajar; 
 Varney's face was turned from him. Beck breathed hard, 
 looked round, then crept within, and, in a moment, was be- 
 hind the folds of the tapestry. 
 
 Soon the chair in which sate Madame Dalibard was drawn 
 by Varney himself into the room. 
 
 Shutting the door with care, and turning the key k Gabriel 
 said, with low, suppressed passion: 
 
 "Well; your mind seems wandering speak!" 
 
 "It is strange," said Lucretia, in hollow tones, "can Nature 
 turn accomplice and befriend us here?" 
 
 "Nature! did you not last night administer the " 
 
 "No," interrupted Lucretia. "No; she came into the 
 room; she kissed me here, on the brow that even then was 
 meditating murder. The kiss burned; it burns still; it ate 
 into the brain, like remorse. But I did not yield ; I read her 
 false father's protestation of love ; I read again the letter an- 
 nouncing the discovery of my son, and remorse lay still. I 
 went forth as before ; I stole into her chamber ; I had the fatal 
 crystal in my hand " 
 
 "Well! well!" 
 
 "And suddenly there came the fearful howl of a dog! And 
 the dog's fierce eyes glared on me I paused I trembled
 
 366 LUCREtlA. 
 
 Helen started, woke, called aloud I turned and fled. The 
 poison was not given." 
 
 Varney ground his teeth. "But this illness ! Ha! the effect, 
 perhaps, of the drops adminstered two nights ago." 
 
 "No; this illness has no symptoms like those the poison 
 should bequeathe; it is but natural fever, a shock on the 
 nerves; she told me she had been wakened by the dog's howl, 
 and seen a dark form, like a thing from the grave, creeping 
 along the floor. But she is really ill; send for the physician; 
 there is nothing in her illness to betray the hand of man. Be 
 it as it may that kiss still burns I will stir in this no more. 
 Do what you will yourself!" 
 
 "Fool, fool!" exclaimed Varney, almost rudely grasping 
 her arm. "Remember how much we have yet to prepare for 
 how much to do and the time so short! Percival's return 
 perhaps this Greville's arrival. Give me the drugs; I will mix 
 them for her in the potion the physician sends. And when 
 Percival returns his Helen dead or dying why I will attend 
 on him ! Silent still? Recall your son! Soon you will clasp 
 him in your arms as a beggar or as the lord of Laughton!" 
 
 Lucretia shuddered, but did not rise; she drew forth a ring 
 of keys from her bosom, and pointed towards a secretary. 
 Varney snatched the keys, unlocked the secretary, seized the 
 fatal casket, and sate down quietly before it. 
 
 When the dire selections were made, and secreted about his 
 person, Varney rose, approached the fire, and blew the wood 
 embers to a blaze. 
 
 "And now," he said, with his icy irony of smile, "we may 
 dismiss these useful instruments, perhaps forever. Though 
 Walter Ardworth, in restoring your son, leaves us dependent 
 on that son's filial affection, and I may have, therefore, little to 
 hope for from the succession, to secure which I have risked, and 
 am again to risk, my life, I yet trust to that influence which 
 you never fail to obtain over others. I take it for granted 
 that, when these halls are Vincent Braddell's, we shall have 
 no need of gold, nor of these pale alchemies. Perish, then, 
 the mute witnesses of our acts! the elements we have bowed 
 to our will! No poisons shall be found in our hoards! Fire, 
 consume your consuming children!" 
 
 As he spoke, he threw upon the hearth the contents of the 
 casket, and set his heel upon the logs. A bluish flame shot up, 
 breaking into countless sparks, and then died. 
 
 Lucretia watched him, without speaking. 
 
 In coming back towards the table, Varney felt something
 
 LUCRfctiA. 367 
 
 hard beneath his tread; he stooped, and picked up the ring 
 which has before been described as amongst the ghastly treas- 
 ures of the casket, and which had rolled on the floor, almost 
 to Lucretia's feet, as he had emptied the contents on the 
 hearth. 
 
 "This, at least, need tell no tales," said he; "A pity to 
 destroy so rare a piece of workmanship one, too, which we 
 never can replace!" 
 
 "Ay," said Lucretia abstractedly; "and, if detection comes, 
 it may secure a refuge from the gibbet give me the ring!" 
 
 "A refuge more terrible than the detection," said Varney; 
 "beware of such a thought," as Lucretia, taking it from his 
 hand, placed the ring on her finger. 
 
 "And now, I leave you for a while to re-collect yourself, to 
 compose your countenance, and your thoughts. I will send 
 for the physician." 
 
 Lucretia, with her eyes fixed on the floor, did not heed him, 
 and he withdrew. 
 
 So motionless was her attitude, so still her very breathing, 
 that the unseen witness behind the tapestry, who, while struck 
 with horror at what he had overheard (the general purport of 
 which it was impossible that he could misunderstand), was 
 parched with impatience to escape, to rescue his beloved mas- 
 ter from his impending fate, and warn him of the fate hovering 
 nearer still over Helen, ventured to creep along the wall to the 
 threshold; to peer forth from the arras and, seeing her eyes 
 still downcast, to emerge, and place his hand on the door. 
 
 At that very moment Lucretia looked up, and saw him glid- 
 ing from the tapestry; their eyes met; his were fascinated as 
 the bird's by the snake's. At the sight, all her craft, her in- 
 tellect returned. With a glance, she comprehended the terrible 
 danger that awaited her. Before he was aware of her move- 
 ment, she was at his side her hand on his own her voice in 
 his ear. 
 
 "Stir not a step, utter not a sound, or you are " 
 
 Beck did not suffer her to proceed. With the violence 
 rather of fear than of courage, he struck her to the ground; 
 but she clung to him still ; and, though rendered for the mo- 
 ment speechless by the suddenness of the blow, her eyes took 
 an expression of unspeakable cruelty and fierceness. He 
 struggled with all his might to shake her off; as he did so, she 
 placed feebly her other hand upon the wrist of the lifted arm 
 that had smitten her, and he felt a sharp pain, as if the nails 
 had fastened into the flesh. This but exasperated him into
 
 36S LudkEfiA. 
 
 new efforts. He extricated himself from her grasp, which re- 
 laxed, as her lips writhed into a smile of scorn and triumph, 
 and, spurning her while she lay before the threshold, he opened 
 the door, sprang forward, and escaped. No thought had he of 
 tarrying in that House of Pelops, those human shambles, of de- 
 nouncing Murder in its lair; to fly, to reach his master, warn 
 and shield him, that was the sole thought which crossed his 
 confused, bewildered brain. 
 
 It might be from four to five minutes, that Lucretia, half- 
 stunned, half-senseless, lay upon those floors; for, besides the 
 violence of her fall, the shock of the struggle, upon nerves 
 weakened by the agony of apprehension, occasioned by the im- 
 minent and unforeseen chance of detection, paralyzed her won- 
 drous vigor of mind and frame, when Varney entered. 
 
 "They tell me she sleeps," he said, in hoarse muttered ac- 
 cents, before he saw the prostrate form at his very feet. But 
 Varney's step, Varney's voice, had awakened Lucretia's rea- 
 son to consciousness and the sense of Deril. Rising, though 
 with effort, she related hurriedly, what had passed. 
 
 "Fly! fly!" she gasped, as she concluded. "Fly to de- 
 tain, to secrete this man somewhere, for the next few hours. 
 Silence him but till then I have done the rest!" And her 
 finger pointed to the fatal ring. 
 
 Varney waited for no farther words ; he hurried out, and 
 made at once to the stables: his shrewdness conjectured that 
 Beck would carry his tale elsewhere. The groom was already 
 gone (his fellows said) without a word, but towards the lodge 
 that led to the Southampton road. Varney ordered the 
 swiftest horse the stables held to be saddled, and said, as he 
 sprang on its back: 
 
 "I too, must go towards Southampton the poor young lady ! 
 I must prepare your master he is on his road back to us"; 
 and the last word was scarce out of his lips, as the sparks flew 
 from the flints under the horse's hoofs, and he spurred from 
 the yard. 
 
 As he rode at full speed through the park, the villain's mind 
 sped more rapidly than the animal he bestrode sped from 
 fear to hope hope to assurance. Grant that the spy lived to 
 tell his tale incoherent, improbable as the tale would be who 
 would believe it? How easy to meet tale by tale! The man 
 must own that he was secreted behind the tapestry; wherefore 
 but to rob? Detected by Madame Dalibard, he had coined 
 this wretched fable. And the spy, too, could not live through 
 the day ; he bore Death with him as he. rode ; he fed its force
 
 LUCRETIA. 369 
 
 by his speed, and the effects of the venom itself would be those 
 of frenzy. Tush ! his tale, at best, would seem but the rav- 
 ings of delirium. Still, it was well to track him where he went, 
 delay him, if possible; and Varney's spurs plunged deep and 
 deeper into the bleeding flanks: on desperately scoured the 
 horse. He passed the lodge, he was on the road a chaise and 
 pair dashed by him; he heard not a voice exclaim "Varney!" 
 He saw not the wondering face of John Ardworth ; bending 
 over the tossing mane, he was deaf, he was blind, to all with- 
 out and around. A milestone glides by, another, and a third. 
 Ha! his eyes can see now. The object of his chase is before 
 him ; he views distinctly, on the brow of yon hill, the horse and 
 the rider spurring fast, like himself. They descend the hill, 
 horse and horseman, and are snatched from his sight. Up the 
 steep strains the pursuer. He is at the summit. He sees the 
 fugitive before him, almost within hearing. Beck has slack- 
 ened his speed ; he seems swaying to and fro in the saddle. 
 Ho, ho! the barbed ring begins to work in his veins! Varney 
 looks round not another soul is in sight a deep wood skirts 
 the road. Place and time seem to favor. Beck has reined in 
 his horse; he bends low over the saddle, as if about to fall. 
 Varney utters a half-suppressed cry of triumph, shakes his 
 reins, and spurs on, when, suddenly (by the curve of the road, 
 hid before) another chaise comes in sight, close where Beck 
 had wearily halted. 
 
 The chaise stops; Varney pulls in and draws aside to the 
 hedgerow ! Some one within the vehicle is speaking to the 
 fugitive ! May it not be St. John himself? To his rage and 
 his terror, he sees Beck painfully dismount from his horse; 
 sees him totter to the door of the chaise; sees a servant leap 
 from the box, and help him up the step; sees him enter. It 
 must be Percival on his return ! Percival, to whom he tells 
 that story of horror ! Varney's brute-like courage forsook him; 
 his heart was appalled. In one of those panics so common 
 with that boldness which is but animal, his sole thought be- 
 came that of escape. He turned his horse's head to the fence, 
 forced his way desperately through the barrier, made into the 
 wood, and sate there, cowering and listening, till in another 
 minute he heard the wheels rattle on, and the horses gallop 
 hard down the hill towards the park. 
 
 The autumn wind swept through the trees; it shook the 
 branches of the lofty ash that overhung the Accursed One. 
 What observer of nature knows not that peculiar sound which 
 the ash gives forth in the blast ! Not the solemn groan of the
 
 370 LUCRETIA. 
 
 oak, not the hollow murmur of the beech, but a shrill wail a 
 shriek, as of a human voice in sharp anguish. Varney shud- 
 dered, as if he had heard the death-cry of his intended vic- 
 tims! Through briars and thickets, torn by the thorns, 
 bruised by the boughs, he plunged deeper and deeper into the 
 wood gained at length the main path cut through it found 
 himself in a lane, and rode on, careless whither, till he 
 had reached a small town about ten miles from Laughton, 
 where he resolved to wait till his nerves had recovered 
 their tone, and he could more calmly calculate the chances 
 of safety. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 LUCRETIA REGAINS HER SON. 
 
 IT seemed as if now, when danger became most imminent 
 and present that that very danger served to restore to Lucre- 
 tia Dalibard all her faculties, which during the earlier day had 
 been steeped in a kind of dreary stupor. The absolute neces- 
 sity of playing out her execrable part with all suitable and con- 
 sistent hypocrisy braced her into iron. But the disguise she 
 assumed was a supernatural effort; it stretched to cracking 
 every fibre of the brain. It seemed almost to herself as if, 
 her object once gained, either life or consciousness could hold 
 out no more! 
 
 A chaise stopped at the porch two gentlemen descended. 
 The elder paused irresolutely, and at length, taking out a card, 
 inscribed "Mr. Walter Ardworth," said, "If Madame Dali- 
 bard can be spoken to for a moment, will you give her this 
 card?" 
 
 The footman hesitatingly stared at the card, and then invited 
 the gentlemen into the hall, while he took up the message. 
 Not long had the visitor to wait, pacing the dark oak floors 
 and gazing on the faded banners, before the servant reap- 
 peared Madame Dalibard would see him. He followed his 
 guide up the stairs; while his young companion turned from 
 the hall, and seated himself musingly on one of the benches 
 on the deserted terrace. 
 
 Grasping the arms of the chair with both hands, her eyes 
 fixed eagerly on his face, Lucretia Dalibard awaited the wel- 
 come visitor. 
 
 Prepared as he had been for change, Walter was startled by 
 the ghastly alteration in Lucretia' s features, increased, as it
 
 LUCRETIA. 371 
 
 was that moment, by all the emotions which raged within. 
 He sank into the chair placed for him opposite Lucretia, and, 
 clearing his throat, said, falteringly : 
 
 "I grieve indeed, madam, that my visit, intended to bring 
 but joy, should chance thus inopportunely. The servant in- 
 formed me, as we came up the stairs, that your niece was ill, 
 and I sympathize with your natural anxiety Susan's only 
 child, too poor Susan!" 
 
 "Sir," said Lucretia impatiently, "these moments are pre- 
 cious. Sir sir! My son my son!" and her eyes glanced 
 to the door. "You have brought with you a companion, 
 does he wait without? My son!" 
 
 "Madam, give me a moment's patience. I will be brief, 
 and compress what, in other moments, might be a long narra- 
 tive, into a few sentences." 
 
 Rapidly, then, Walter Ardworth passed over the details, un- 
 necessary now to repeat to the reader; the injunctions of 
 Braddell, the delivery of the child to the woman selected by 
 his fellow-sectarian (who, it seemed, by John Ardworth's 
 recent inquiries, was afterwards expelled the community, and 
 who, there was reason to believe, had been the first seducer of 
 the woman thus recommended). No clue to the child's par- 
 entage had been given to the woman, with the sum entrusted 
 for his maintenance, which sum had perhaps been the main 
 cause of her reckless progress to infamy and ruin. The narra- 
 tor passed lightly over the neglect and cruelty of the nurse, to 
 her abandonment of the child when the money was exhausted. 
 Fortunately, she had overlooked the coral round its neck. By 
 that coral, and by the initials, V. B., which Ardworth had had the 
 precaution to have burned into the child's wrist, the lost son 
 had been discovered; the nurse herself (found in the person of 
 Martha Skeggs, Lucretia's own servant) had been confronted 
 with the woman to whom she gave the child, and recognized 
 at once. Nor had it been difficult to obtain from her the con- 
 fession which completed the evidence. 
 
 "In this discovery," continued Ardworth, "the person I em- 
 ployed met your own agent, and the last links in the chain they 
 traced together. But to that person to his zeal and intelli- 
 gence you owe the happiness I trust to give you. He sym- 
 pathized with me the more that he knew you personally, felt 
 for your sorrows, and had a lingering belief that you supposed 
 him to be the child you yearned for. Madam, thank my son 
 for the restoration of your own!" 
 
 Without sound, Lucretia had listened to these details, though
 
 372 LUCRETIA. 
 
 her countenance changed fearfully as the narrator proceeded. 
 But now she groaned aloud and in agony. 
 
 "Nay, madam," said Ardworth, feelingly and in some sur- 
 prise, "surely the discovery of your son should create gladder 
 emotions. Though, indeed, you will be prepared to find that 
 the poor youth so reared wants education and refinement, I 
 have heard enough to convince me that his dispositions are 
 good and his heart grateful. Judge of this yourself; he is in 
 these walls he is " 
 
 "Abandoned by a harlot reared by a beggar! My son!" 
 interrupted Lucretia, in broken sentences. ' 'Well, sir, have you 
 discharged your task! Well have you replaced a mother!" 
 
 Before Ardworth could reply, loud and rapid steps were 
 heard in the corridor, and a voice, cracked, indistinct, but ve- 
 hement. The door was thrown open, and, half-supported by 
 Captain Greville, half-dragging him along, his features con- 
 vulsed, whether by pain or passion, the spy upon Lucretia's 
 secrets, the denouncer of her crime, tottered to the threshold. 
 Pointing to where she sat with his long, lean arm, Beck ex- 
 claimed: "Seize her! I 'cuse her , face to face, of the mur- 
 der of her niece! Of of I told you, sir I told you " 
 
 "Madam," said Captain Greville, "you stand charged by 
 this witness with the most terrible of human crimes. I judge 
 you not. Your niece, I rejoice to hear, yet lives ! Pray God 
 that her death be not traced to those kindred hands!" 
 
 Turning her eyes from one to the other with a wandering 
 stare, Lucretia Dalibard remained silent. But there was still 
 scorn on her lip, and defiance on her brow. At last she said 
 slowly, and to Ardworth: 
 
 "Where is my son? You say, he is within these walls; call 
 him forth to protect his mother ! Give me, at least, my son 
 my son!" 
 
 Her last words were drowned by a fresh burst of fury from 
 her denouncer. In all the coarsest invective his education 
 could supply; in all the hideous vulgarities of his untutored 
 dialect; in that uncurbed licentiousness of tone, look, and 
 manner which passion, once aroused, gives to the dregs and 
 scum of the populace, Beck poured forth his frightful 
 charges his frantic execrations. In vain Captain Greville 
 strove to check him. In vain Walter Ardworth sought to draw 
 him from the room. But while the poor wretch maddening 
 not more with the consciousness of the crime, than with the 
 excitement of the poison in his blood thus raved and stormed, 
 a terrible suspicion crossed Walter Ardworth; mechanically -
 
 LUCRETIA. 373 
 
 as his grasp was on the accuser's arm he bared the sleeve, 
 and on the wrist were the dark blue letters, burned into the 
 skin, and bearing witness to his identity with the lost Vincent 
 Braddell. 
 
 "Hold, hold!" he exclaimed then; "Hold, unhappy man! 
 It is your mother whom you denounce!" 
 
 Lucretia sprang up erect her eyes seemed starting from her 
 head ; she caught at the arm pointed towards her in wrath and 
 menace, and there, amidst those letters that proclaimed her 
 son, was the small puncture surrounded by a livid circle, that 
 announced her victim. In the same instant she discovered her 
 child in the man who was calling down upon her head the ha- 
 tred of Earth and the justice of Heaven, and knew herself his 
 murderess. 
 
 She dropped the arm, and sank back on the chair; and, 
 whether the poison had now reached to the vitals, or whether 
 so unwonted a passion in so frail a frame sufficed for the 
 death-stroke, Beck himself, with a low, suffocated cry, slid 
 from the hand of Ardworth, and tottering a -step or so, the 
 blood gushed from his mouth, over Lucretia's robe ; his head 
 drooped an instant, and falling, rested first upon her lap, then 
 struck heavily upon the floor. The two men bent over him, 
 and raised him in their arms: his eyes opened and closed; his 
 throat rattled, and, as he fell back into their arm a corpse, a 
 laugh rose close at hand it rang through the walls, it was 
 heard near and afar, above and below. Not an ear in that 
 house that heard it not. In that laugh fled forever, till the 
 Judgment-day, from the blackened ruins of her lost soul, the 
 reason of the murderess-mother. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 THE LOTS VANISH WITHIN THE URN. 
 
 VARNEY'S self-commune restored to him his constitutional 
 audacity. He returned to Laughton towards the evening, and 
 held a long conference with Greville. Fortunately for him, 
 perhaps, and happily for all, Helen had lost all more dangerous 
 symptoms , and the physician who was in the house saw in her 
 state nothing not easily to be accounted for by natural causes. 
 Percival had arrived, had seen Helen no wonder she was 
 better. Both from him and from Helen, Madame Dalibard's 
 fearful condition was for the present concealed. Ardworth's 
 story, and the fact of Beck's identity with Vincent Braddell,
 
 374 LUCRETIA. 
 
 were also reserved for a later occasion. . . . The tale which 
 Beck had poured into the ear of Greville (when recognizing 
 the St. John livery the Captain stopped his chaise to inquire 
 if Percival were at the Hall, and when, thrilled by the hideous 
 import of his broken reply, that gentleman had caused him to 
 enter the vehicle to explain himself further) Varney, with his 
 wonted art and address, contrived to strip of all probable sem- 
 blance. Evidently the poor lad had been already delirious; 
 his story must be deemed the night-mare of his disordered rea- 
 son. Varney insisted upon surgical examination as to the 
 cause of his death: the membranes of the brain were found 
 surcharged with blood, as in cases of great mental excitement ; 
 the slight puncture in the wrist, ascribed to the prick of a rusty 
 nail, provoked no suspicion. If some doubts remained still 
 on Greville's acute mind, he was not eager to express, still less 
 to act, upon them. Helen was declared to be out of danger. 
 Percival was safe why affix by minute inquiry into the 
 alleged guilt of Madame Dalibard (already so awfully affected 
 by the death of her son and by the loss of her reason) so foul 
 a stain on the honored family of St. John? But Greville was 
 naturally anxious to free the house as soon as possible both of 
 Varney and that ominous Lucretia, whose sojourn under its 
 roof seemed accursed. He therefore readily assented when 
 Varney proposed, as his obvious and personal duty, to take 
 charge of his mother-in-law, and remove her to London for 
 immediate advice. 
 
 At the dead of the black-clouded night no moon and no 
 stars the son of Olivier Dalibard bore away the form of the 
 once formidable Lucretia : the form, for the mind was gone ; 
 that teeming-, restless, and fertile intellect, which had carried 
 along the projects, with the preter-human energies, of the 
 fiend, was hurled into night and chaos. Manacled and bound, 
 for at times her paroxysms were terrible, and all partook of the 
 destructive and murderous character which her faculties, when 
 present, had betrayed, she was placed in the vehicle by the 
 shrinking side of her accomplice. 
 
 Long before he arrived in London, Varney had got rid of 
 his fearful companion. His chaise had stopped at the iron 
 gates of a large building, somewhat out of the main road, and 
 the doors of the Madhouse closed on Lucretia Dalibard. 
 
 Varney then hastened to Dover with intentions of flight into 
 France; he was just about to step into the vessel when he was 
 tapped rudely on the shoulder, and a determined voice said; 
 "Mr. Gabriel Varney, you are my prisoner!"
 
 LUCRETIA. 375 
 
 'For what some paltry debt?" said Varney haughtily. 
 
 "For forgery on the Bank of England!" 
 
 Varney's hand plunged into his vest. The officer seized it 
 in time, and wrested ihe blade from his grasp. Once arrested 
 for an offence it was impossible to disprove, although the very 
 smallest of which his conscience might charge him, Varney 
 sank into the blackest despair. Though he had often boasted, 
 not only to others, but to his own vain breast, of the easy 
 courage with which, when life ceased to yield enjoyment, he 
 could dismiss it by the act of his own will ; though he had pos- 
 sessed himself of Lucretia's murderous ring, and death, if fear- 
 ful, was therefore at his command, self-destruction was the last 
 thought that occurred to him; that morbid excitability of fancy, 
 which, whether in his art or in his deeds, had led him to 
 strange delight in horror, now served but to haunt him with 
 the images of death in those ghastliest shapes familiar to them 
 who look only into the bottom of the charnel, and see but the 
 rat and the worm, and the loathsome agencies of corruption. 
 It was not the despair of conscience that seized him, it was the 
 abject clinging to life; not the remorse of the soul, that still 
 slept within him, too noble an agency for one so debased but 
 the gross physical terror. As the fear of the tiger once 
 aroused is more paralyzing than that of the deer, proportioned 
 to the savageness of a disposition to which fear is a novelty, 
 so the very boldness of Varney coming only from the perfec- 
 tion of the nervous organization, and unsupported by one 
 moral sentiment, once struck down, was corrupted into the 
 vilest cowardice. With his audacity, his shrewdness forsook 
 him. Advised by his lawyer to plead guilty, he obeyed, and 
 the sentence of transportation for life gave him, at first, a feel- 
 ing of reprieve ; but when his imagination began to picture, in 
 the darkness of his cell, all the true tortures of that penalty, 
 not so much, perhaps, to the uneducated peasant felon, inured 
 to toil, and familiarized with coarse companionship, as to one 
 pampered like himself by all soft and half womanly indul- 
 gences the shaven hair, the convict's dress, the rigorous pri- 
 vation, the drudging toil, the exile seemed as grim as the 
 grave. In the dotage of faculties smitten into drivelling, he 
 wrote to the Home Office, offering to disclose secrets connected 
 with crimes that had hitherto escaped or baffled justice, on 
 condition that his sentence might be repealed, or mitigated 
 into the gentler forms of ordinary transportation. No answer 
 was returned to him; but his letter provoked research; cir- 
 cumstances connected with his uncle's death, and with various
 
 376 LUCRfcTlA. 
 
 other dark passages in his life, sealed against him all hope of 
 more merciful sentence, and when some acquaintances whom 
 his art had made for him, and who, while grieving for his 
 crime, saw in it some excuses (ignorant of his feller deeds), 
 sought to intercede in his behalf, the reply of the Home 
 Office was obvious: "He is a fortunate man to have been 
 tried and condemned for his least offence." Not one indul- 
 gence that could distinguish him from the most execrable ruf- 
 fian, condemned to the same sentence, was conceded. 
 
 The idea of the gibbet lost all its horror. Here was a gib- 
 bet for every hour! No hope; no escape. Already that 
 Future Doom which comprehends the "Forever" opened upon 
 him, black and fathomless. The hour-glass was broken up; 
 the hand of the time-piece was arrested. The Beyond stretched 
 before him, without limit, without goal on into Annihilation 
 or into Hell. 
 
 EPILOGUE TO PART THE SECOND. 
 
 STAND, O Man, upon the hill-top, in the stillness of the 
 evening hour, and gaze, not with joyous, but with contented 
 eyes, upon the beautiful world around thee! See, where the 
 mists, soft and dim, rise over the green meadows, through 
 which the rivulet steals its way! See where, broadest and 
 stillest, the wave expands to the full smile of the setting sun; 
 and the willow that trembles on the breeze, and the oak that 
 stands firm in the storm, are reflected back, peaceful both, 
 from the clear glass of the tides ! See, where, begirt by the 
 gold of the harvests, and backed by the pomp of a thousand 
 groves, the roofs of the town bask, noiseless, in the calm glow 
 of the sky. Not a sound from those abodes floats in discord to 
 thine ear; only from the church-tower, soaring high above the 
 rest, perhaps faintly heard through the stillness, swells the note 
 of the holy bell. Along the mead low-skims the swallow ; on the 
 wave, the silver circlet, breaking into spray, shows the sport 
 of the fish. See, the Earth, how serene, though all eloquent 
 of activity and life! See the Heavens, how benign, though 
 dark clouds, by yon mountain, blend the purple with the gold ! 
 Gaze contented, for Good is around thee; not joyous, for Evil 
 is the shadow of Good! Let thy soul pierce through the veil 
 of the senses, and thy sight plunge deeper than the surface 
 which gives delight to thine eye. Below the glass of that river,
 
 LUCRETIA. 377 
 
 the pike darts on his prey; the circle in the wave, the soft 
 splash amongst the reeds, are but signs of Destroyer and of 
 Victim. In the ivy round the oak by the margin, the owl hun- 
 gers for the night, which shall give its beak and its talons liv- 
 ing food for its young ; and the spray of the willow trembles 
 with the wing of the redbreast, whose bright eye sees the worm 
 on the sod. Canst thou count too, O Man! all the cares, all 
 the sins, that those noiseless roof-tops conceal? With every 
 curl of that smoke to the sky, a human thought soars as dark, 
 a human hope melts as briefly. And the bell from the 
 church-tower, that to thy ear gives but music, perhaps knells 
 tor the dead. The swallow but chases the moth, and the cloud 
 that deepens the glory of the heaven and the sweet shadows on 
 the earth, nurses but the thunder that shall rend the grove, 
 and the storm that shall devastate the harvests. Not with 
 fear, not with doubt, recognize, O Mortal, the presence of Evil 
 in the world.* Hush thy heart in the humbleness of awe, 
 that its mirror may reflect as serenely the shadow as the light. 
 Vainly, for its moral, dost thou gaze on the landscape, if thy 
 soul puts no check on the dull delight of the senses. Two 
 wings only raise thee to the summit of Truth, where the Cher- 
 ub shall comfort the sorrow, where the Seraph shall enlighten 
 the joy. Dark as ebony spreads the one wing, white as snow 
 gleams the other mournful as thy reason when it descends into 
 deep, exulting as ihy faith when it springs to the day-star. 
 
 Beck sleeps in the churchyard of Laughton. He had lived 
 to frustrate the monstrous design intended to benefit himself, 
 and to become the instrument, while the victim, of the dread 
 Eumenides. That done, his life passed with the crimes that 
 had gathered around, out of the sight of mortals. Helen 
 slowly regained her health in the atmosphere of love and hap- 
 piness ; and Lady Mary soon learned to forget the fault of the 
 father in the virtues of the Child. Married to Percival, Helen 
 fulfilled the destinies of woman's genius, in calling forth into 
 action man's earnest duties. She breathed into Percival's 
 warm, beneficent heart her own more steadfast and divine in- 
 telligence. Like him she grew ambitious, by her he became 
 distinguished. While I write, fair children play under the 
 cedars of Laughton. And the husband tells the daughters to 
 resemble their mother; and the wife's highest praise to the 
 
 * Not, indeed, that the evil here narrated is the ordinary evil of the wotld. The lesson 
 it inculcates would be lost, if so construed ; but that the mystery of evil, whatever its de- 
 gree, only increases the necessity of faith in the vindication of the contrivance which re- 
 quires infinity for its range, and eternity for its consummation! It is 10 the existence of 
 evil that man finds his duties, and his. soul its progress,
 
 378 LUCRETIA. 
 
 boys is: "You have spoken truth or done good like your 
 father." 
 
 John Ardworth has not paused in his career, nor belied the 
 promise of his youth. Though the elder Ardworth, partly by 
 his own exertions, partly by his second marriage with the 
 daughter of the French merchant (through whose agency he 
 had corresponded with Fielden), had realized a moderate for- 
 tune, it but sufficed for his own wants, and for the children of 
 his later nuptials, upon whom the bulk of it was settled. 
 Hence, happily perhaps for himself and others, the easy cir- 
 cumstances of his father allowed to John Ardworth no ex- 
 emption from labor. His success in the single episode from 
 active life to literature, did not intoxicate or mislead him. He 
 knew that his real element was not in the field of letters, but 
 in the world of men. Not undervaluing the noble destinies of 
 the Author, he felt that those destinies, if realized to the ut- 
 most, demanded powers other than his own ; and that man is 
 only true to his genius when the genius is at home in his 
 career. He would not renounce for a brief celebrity distant 
 and solid fame. He continued for a few years in patience and 
 privation, and confident self-reliance, to drudge on, till the 
 occupation for the intellect fed by restraint, and the learning 
 accumulated by study, came and found the whole man devel- 
 oped and prepared. Then he rose rapidly from step to step; 
 then, still retaining his high enthusiasm, he enlarged his sphere 
 of action from the cold practice of law, into those vast social 
 improvements which law, rightly regarded, should lead, and 
 vivify, and create. Then, and long before the twenty years he 
 had imposed on his probation had expired, he gazed again 
 upon the senate and the abbey, and saw the doors of the one 
 open to his resolute tread, and anticipated the glorious sepul- 
 chre which heart and brain should win him in the other. 
 
 John Ardworth has never married. When Percival rebukes 
 him for his celibacy, his lip quivers slightly, and he applies 
 himself with more dogged earnestness to his studies or his 
 career. But he never complains that his lot is lonely or his 
 affections void. For him who aspires, and for him who loves, 
 life may lead through the thorns, but it never stops in the desert. 
 
 On the minor personages involved in this history, there is 
 little need to dwell. Mr. Fielden, thanks to St. John, has 
 obtained a much better living in the rectory of Laughton, but 
 has found new resources of pleasant trouble for himself, in 
 seeking to drill into the mind of Pcrcival's eldest son the ele- 
 ments of Euclid and the principles of Latin syntax,
 
 LUCRETIA. 379 
 
 We may feel satisfied that the Mivers will go on much the 
 same while trade enriches without refining, and while, never- 
 theless, right feelings in the common paths of duty may unite 
 charitable emotions with graceless language. 
 
 We may rest assured that the poor widow who had reared 
 the lost son of Lucretia received from the bounty of Percival 
 all that could comfort her for his death. 
 
 We have no need to track the dull crimes of Martha, or the 
 quick, cunning vices of Grabman, to their inevitable goals, in 
 the hospital or the prison, the dunghill or the gibbet. 
 
 Of the elder Ardworth our parting notice may be less brief. 
 We first saw him in sanguine and generous youth, with higher 
 principles and clearer insight into honor than William Main- 
 waring. We have seen him next a spendthrift and a fugitive, his 
 principles debased, and his honor dimmed. He presents to us 
 no uncommon example of the corruption engendered by that 
 vulgar self-indulgence which mortgages the morrow for the 
 pleasures of to-day. No Deity presides where Prudence is 
 absent. Man, a world in himself, requires for the develop- 
 ment of his faculties, patience; and for the balance of his 
 actions, order. Even where he had deemed himself most op- 
 pressively made the martyr, viz., in the profession of mere 
 political opinions, Walter Ardworth had but followed out into 
 theory the restless, uncalculating impatience, which had 
 brought adversity on his manhood, and, despite his constitu- 
 tional cheerfulness, shadowed his age with remorse. The 
 death of the child committed to his charge, long (perhaps to 
 the last) embittered his pride in the son whom, without 
 merit of his own, Providence had spared to a brighter fate. 
 But for the faults which had banished him his country, and 
 the habits which had seared his sense of duty, could that child 
 have been so abandoned and have so perished? 
 
 It remains only to cast our glance over the punishments 
 which befell the sensual villany of Varney, the intellectual 
 corruption of his fell stepmother. 
 
 These two persons had made a very trade of those crimes to 
 which man's law awards death. They had said in their hearts 
 that they would dare the crime, but elude the penalty. By 
 wonderful subtlety, craft, and dexterity, which reduced guilt 
 to a science, Providence seemed, as in disdain of the vulgar 
 instruments of common retribution, to concede to them that 
 which they had schemed for, escape from the rope and gibbet. 
 Varney, saved from detection of his darker and more inexplic- 
 able crimes, punished only for the least one, retained what had
 
 380 LUCRETIA. 
 
 seemed to him the master boon life! Safer still from the 
 law, no mortal eye had plumbed the profound night of Lucre- 
 tia's awful guilt. Murderess of husband and son, the blinded 
 law bade her go, unscathed, unsuspected. Direct as from 
 Heaven, without a cloud, fell the thunderbolt. Is the life 
 they have saved worth the prizing? Doth the chalice, unspilt 
 on the ground, not return to the hand? Is the sudden pang of 
 the hangman more fearful than the doom which they breathe 
 and bear? Look, and judge! 
 
 Behold, that dark ship on the waters ! Its burthens are not 
 of Ormus and Tyre. No goodly merchandise doth it waft over 
 the wave, no blessing cleaves to its sails; freighted with terror 
 and with guilt, with remorse and despair, or more ghastly than 
 either, the sullen apathy of souls hardened into stone, it carries 
 the dregs and offal of the old world to populate the new. On a 
 bench in that ship sit side by side two men, companions 
 assigned to each other. Pale, abject, cowering, all the bravery 
 rent from his garb, all the gay insolence vanished from his 
 brow, can that hollow-eyed, haggard wretch be the same man 
 whose senses opened on every joy, whose nerves mocked at 
 every peril? But beside him, with a grin of vile glee on his 
 features, all muscle and brawn in the form, all malice, at once 
 spiteful and dull, in the heavy eye, sits his fit comrade the 
 Grave-stealer! At the first glance each has recognized each, 
 and the prophecy and the vision rushed back upon the daintier 
 convict. If he seek to escape from him, the grave-stealer 
 claims him as a prey, he threatens him with his eye as a slave, 
 he kicks him with his hoof as they sit, and laughs at the writh- 
 ing of the pain. Carry on your gaze from the ship: hear the 
 cry from the mast-head see the land arise from the waste! 
 A land without hope! At first, despite the rigor of the Home 
 Office, the education and intelligence of Varney have their 
 price ; the sole crime for which he is convicted is not the dark- 
 est. He escapes from that hideous comrade ; he can teach as 
 a schoolmaster ; let his brain work, not his hands ! But the 
 most irredeemable of convicts are ever those of nurture, and 
 birth, and culture better than the ruffian-rest. You may en- 
 lighten the clod, but the meteor still must feed on the marsh : 
 And the pride, and the vanity, work where the crime itself 
 seems to lose its occasion. Ever avid, ever grasping, he falls 
 step by step, in the foul sink, and the colony sees in Gabriel 
 Varney its most pestilent rogue; arch-convict amidst convicts, 
 doubly lost amongst the damned; they banish him to the 
 sternest of the penal settlements ; they send him forth with the
 
 LUCRETIA. 381 
 
 vilest to break stones upon the roads. Shrivelled, and bowed, 
 and old, prematurely see that sharp face peering forth amongst 
 the gang, scarcely human ; see him cringe to the lash of the 
 scornful overseer; see the pairs chained together, night and 
 day! Ho, ho! his comrade hath found him again, the Artist 
 and the Grave-stealer leashed together. Conceive that fancy 
 so nurtured by habit: those tastes, so womanized by indul- 
 gence the one suggesting the very horrors that are not, the 
 other revolting at all toil as a torture. 
 
 But, intellect not all gone, though hourly dying heavily down 
 to the level of the brute, yet schemes for delivery and escape. 
 Let the plot ripen, and the heart bound : break his chain ; set 
 him free; send him forth to the wilderness. Hark, the whoop 
 of the wild men. See those things that ape our species dance 
 and gibber round the famishing, hunted wretch. Hark how 
 he shrieks at the torture! How they tear, and they pinch, 
 and they burn, and they rend him! They, too, spare his 
 life it is charmed! A Caliban amidst Calibans, they heap 
 him with their burthens, and feed him on their offal. Let 
 him live; he loved life for himself, he has cheated the gibbet; 
 LET HIM LIVE! Let him watch, let him once more escape; 
 all naked and mangled, let him wander back to the huts of his 
 gang. Lo! where he kneels, the foul tears streaming down, 
 and cries aloud: "I have broken all your laws, I will tell you 
 all my crimes ; I ask but one sentence hang me up let me 
 die!" And from the gang groan many voices: "Hang us up 
 let us die!" The overseer turns on his heel, and Gabriel Var- 
 ney again is chained to the laughing Grave-stealer. 
 
 You enter those gates so jealously guarded ; you pass, with 
 a quick beat of the heart, by those groups on the lawn, though 
 they are harmless; you follow your guide through those pas- 
 sages; where the open doors will permit, you see the emperor 
 brandish his sceptre of straw ; hear the speculator counting his 
 millions ; sigh, where the maiden sits smiling the return of her 
 shipwrecked lover, or gravely shake the head and hurry on 
 where the fanatic raves his Apocalypse and reigns in judgment 
 on the world ; you pass by strong grates into corridors gloom- 
 ier and more remote. Nearer and nearer you hear the yell and 
 the oath and blaspheming curse ; you are in the heart of the 
 Mad-house, where they chain those at once cureless and dan- 
 gerous, who have but sense enough left them to smite, and to 
 throttle, and to murder. Your guide opens that door, massive 
 as a wall, you see (as we, who narrate, have seen her) Lucretia 
 Dalibard: a grisly, squalid, ferocious mockery of a. human
 
 382 LUCRETIA. 
 
 being more appalling and more fallen, than Dante ever fabled 
 in his spectres, than Swift ever scoffed in his Yahoos ! Only 
 where all other feature seems to have lost its stamp of human- 
 ity still burns with unquenchable fever the red devouring 
 eye. That eye never seems to sleep, or, in sleep, the lid never 
 closes over it. As you shrink from its light, it seems to you 
 as if the mind that had lost coherence and harmony still re- 
 tained latent and incommunicable consciousness as its curse. 
 For days, for weeks, that awful maniac will preserve obstinate 
 unbroken silence; but, as the eye never closes, so the hands 
 never rest: they open and grasp, as if at some palpable object 
 on which they close, vise-like, as a bird's talons on its prey ; 
 sometimes they wander over that brow, where the furrows seem 
 torn as the thunder scars, as if to wipe from it a stain, or charm 
 from it a pang ; sometimes they gather up the hem of that sor- 
 did robe, and seem, for hours together, striving to rub from it 
 a soil. Then out from prolonged silence, without cause or 
 warning, will ring, peal after peal (till the frame, exhausted 
 with the effort, sinks senseless into stupor) the frightful laugh. 
 But speech, intelligible and coherent, those lips rarely yield. 
 
 There are times, indeed, when the attendants are persuaded 
 that her mind in part returns to her; and those times experi- 
 ence has taught them to watch with peculiar caution. The 
 crisis evinces itself by a change in the manner; by a quick 
 apprehension of all that is said; by a straining, anxious look at 
 the dismal walls ; by a soft, fawning docility ; by murmured 
 complaints of the chains that fetter ; and (though, as we have 
 said, but very rarely), by prayers, that seem rational, for 
 greater ease and freedom. 
 
 In the earlier time of her dread captivity, perhaps, when it 
 was believed at the asylum that she was a patient of condition, 
 with friends who cared for her state, and would liberally re- 
 ward her cure, they, in those moments, relaxed her confine- 
 ment, and sought the gentler remedies their art employs ; but 
 then invariably, and, it was said, with a cunning that surpassed 
 all the proverbial astuteness of the mad, she turned this indul- 
 gence to the most deadly uses ; she crept to the pallet of some 
 adjacent sufferer weaker than herself, and the shrieks that 
 brought the attendants into the cell scarcely saved the in- 
 tended victim from her hands. It seemed, in those imperfectly 
 lucid intervals, as if the reason only returned to guide her to 
 destroy, only to animate the broken mechanism into the beast 
 of prey. 
 
 Years have now passed since her entrance within those
 
 LUCRETIA. 383 
 
 walls. He who placed her there never had returned ; he had 
 given a false name ; no clue to him was obtained ; the gold he 
 had left was but the quarter's pay. When Varney had been 
 first apprehended, Percival requested the younger Ardworth to 
 seek the forger in prison and to question him as to Madame 
 Dalibard ; but Varney was then so apprehensive that, even if 
 still insane, her very ravings might betray his share in her crimes, 
 01 still more, if she recovered, that the remembrance of her 
 son's murder would awaken the repentance and the confession 
 of crushed despair, that the wretch had judged it wiser to say 
 that his accomplice was no more; that her insanity had already 
 terminated in death. The place of her confinement thus con- 
 tinued a secret locked in his own breast. Egotist to the last, 
 she was henceforth dead to him why not to the world? 
 Thus the partner of her crimes had cut off her sole resource, 
 in the compassion of her unconscious kindred ; thus the gates 
 of the living world were shut to her evermore. Still, in a kind 
 of compassion, or as an object of experiment as a subject to 
 be dealt with unscrupulously in that living dissection-hall her 
 grim gaolers did not grudge her an asylum. But, year after 
 year, the attendance was more slovenly, the treatment more 
 harsh ; and strange to say, while the features were scarcely 
 recognizable ; while the form underwent all the change which 
 the shape suffers when mind deserts it, that prodigious vitality 
 which belonged to the temperament still survived. No signs 
 of decay are yet visible. Death, as if spurning the carcass, 
 stands inexorably afar off. Baffler of man's law, thou, too, 
 hast escaped with life! Not for thee is the sentence, "Blood 
 for blood" ! Thou livest thou mayst pass the extreme boun- 
 daries of age. Live on, to wipe the blood from thy robe! 
 LIVE ON ! 
 
 Not for the coarse object of creating an idle terror; not for 
 the shock upon the nerves and the thrill of the grosser interest 
 which the narrative of crime creates, has this book been com- 
 piled from the facts and materials afforded to the author. 
 When the great German poet describes, in not the least noble 
 of his lyrics, the sudden apparition of some "Monster Fate" 
 in the circles of careless Joy, he assigns to him who teaches 
 the world through parable or song the right to invoke the 
 spectre. It is well to be awakened at times from the easy 
 commonplace that surrounds our habitual life ; to cast broad 
 and steady and patient light on the darker secrets of the heart ; 
 on the vaults and caverns of the social state, over which we 
 build the market-place and the palace. We recover from the
 
 384 LUCRETIA. 
 
 dread, and the awe, and the half-incredulous wonder, to set 
 closer watch upon our inner and hidden selves. In him who 
 cultivates only the reason, and suffers the heart and the spirit 
 to lie waste and dead; who schemes, and constructs, and re- 
 volves round the axle of self, unwanned by the affections, un- 
 poised by the attraction of right, lies the germ Fate might 
 ripen into the guilt of Olivier Dalibard. Let him who but 
 lives through the senses, spread the wings of the fancy in the 
 gaudy glare of enjoyment corrupted, avid to seize, and impa- 
 tient to toil, whose faculties are curbed but to the range of phy- 
 sical perception, whose very courage is but the strength of the 
 nerves, who developes but the animal as he stifles the man, let 
 him gaze on the villany of Varney, and startle to see some 
 magnified shadow of himself thrown dimly on the glass ! Let 
 those who, with powers to command and passions to wing the 
 powers, would sweep without scruple from the aim to the end, 
 who, trampling beneath their footprint of iron the humanities 
 that bloom up in their path, would march to success with the 
 proud stride of the destroyer, hear, in the laugh of yon maniac 
 murderess, the glee of the fiend they have wooed to their own 
 souls! Guard well, O Heir of Eternity, the portal of sin the 
 thought! From the thought to the deed, the subtler thy 
 brain, and the bolder thy courage, the briefer and straighter 
 is the way. Read these pages in the disdain of self-com- 
 mune they shall revolt thee, not instruct; read them, looking 
 steadfastly within, and how humble soever the art of the narra- 
 tor, the fact he narrates, like all history, shall teach by exam- 
 ple. Every human Act, good or ill, is an Angel to guide or to 
 warn;* and the deeds of the worst have messages from 
 Heaven to the listening hearts of the best. Amidst the glens 
 in the Apennine, in the lone wastes of Calabria, the sign of the 
 Cross marks the spot where a deed of violence has been done; 
 on all that pass by the road the symbol has varying effect ; 
 sometimes it startles the conscience, sometimes it invokes the 
 devotion ; the robber drops the blade, the priest counts the 
 rosary. So is it with the record of crime; and in the witness 
 of Guilt, Man is thrilled with the whisper of Religion. 
 
 * Our Acts our Angels are or good or ill ; 
 The fatal shadows that walk by us still. 
 
 FLETCHER.
 
 NOTE. 
 
 CERTAIN criticisms on "Lucretia," at its first appearance, having been 
 made the vehicle for remarks of no common virulence on the Author's 
 general writings, he took the occasion thus afforded to him, to put forth in 
 the following pages, entitled, " A Word to the Public," not only a vindica- 
 tion of his own ethical designs, in his various fictions, but an exposition of 
 the prerogatives of inventive art in the selection of the agencies employed 
 towards moving the passions of pity and terror. The " Word to the Public" 
 is still retained as an appendix to this romance : for though it may be no 
 longer needed as a defence of the works which Time itself has sufficed to 
 clear from the charges to which they were once subjected, it may still have 
 an interest to the general reader as a somewhat elaborate analysis of the main 
 causes that conduce lo emotions legitimately tragic. If, therefore, it have 
 any value, it is less as the vindication which an author makes of his own 
 works, ihan as the result of the study he has devoted to the masterpieces of 
 others ; in short, as a ctiiical essay, offering suggestions as to the grander 
 uses of imaginative compositions in the passions which they openly sway, 
 and the warnings which they unconsciously bequeath. 
 
 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC; 
 
 CONTAINING 
 
 HINTS TOWARDS A CRITICAL ESSAY UPON THE ARTISTIC 
 PRINCIPLES AND ETHICAL DESIGNS OF FICTION. 
 
 IT is not as a retort to attacks that I write these pages. They are 
 designed, it is true, to remove errors, whether of wilful misstatement, or hon- 
 est misconception, on subjects affecting myself. But as those subjects are 
 connected with interests in literature, very general and important, I shall 
 endeavor to preserve the dispassionate tone proper to au inquiry addressed 
 to the candor of the public, and the consideration of educated men. 
 
 I pass by all assaults that may appear to have exceeded the due license of 
 criticism with the single remark, that wherever personal motives are strong 
 enough to violate the ordinary decorum of literary censure, the reader must 
 be prepared to expect that they will suffice to corrupt all integrity of state- 
 ment. Thus extracts will be garbled and misquoted, sentences stripped of 
 the context that explains them, and opinions, which the writer most earnestly 
 holds up to reprobation, and places in the lips of- characters whom he draws 
 but lo condemn, be deliberately cited as the sentiments of the author him- 
 self. I do not stop lo comment on artifices like these ; if, from no broader 
 principle than that of jusiice to the author, they need rebuke or are capable 
 of discouragement discouragement and rebuke will come more efficiently 
 
 385
 
 386 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 from others ; nor should I have made even this brief reference to matters 
 not immediately essential to my argument, if some temporary injustice to the 
 author were the only evil such practices could possibly effect ; but thus, a 
 work the most innocent can not only be represented as mUchievous, but in 
 reality rendered so. Let me forestall the subsequent inquiry, and assume 
 for the moment, that the true moral, whether of "Eugene Aram" or the 
 "Children of Night," be either salutary or harmless, and then let me sup- 
 pose it gravely asserted in some two or three of those popular journals which 
 penetrate every corner of society, read alike by the educated and the igno- 
 rant, the good aud the bad the sole vehicles of literary information to those 
 whom it is most facile and most dangerous to mislead that the author, a 
 man of some social position, and some acknowledged repute in letters, lends 
 all the weight of his name and authority to the defence and encouragement 
 of crime, is the author himself the party most seriously aggrieved ? The 
 injury done to him may be wholly effaced by the gradual influence of the 
 judicious, and the tranquil investigation of time ; but is it so easy to efface 
 the injury effected by garbled extracts, and wilful misrepresentation, upon 
 minds uninstructed and perverted, at which the book itself, with its real les- 
 sons, never may arrive, and which only too readily accept the sanction that 
 the newspaper assures them it affords ? 
 
 So far as concerns myself, I am contented to appeal, from assailants of 
 this kind, to those cultivators of literature with whom I may claim fellow- 
 ship, and to that Public who, I trust, have connected gentler associations 
 with my name. 
 
 With regard to those purely literary faults and defects which afford the 
 fair questions to criticism, though, some years since, I might have been 
 tempted to enter into the vindication of a few, at least, out of the many 
 with which I have been charged, I am not now disposed to intrude upon the 
 public a defence against censures morally unimportant and legitimately 
 made. Good or bad, my works have b-.en wriiun with such care as I could 
 bc.sto-.v on them ; and in all that affects their literary reputation alone, I 
 willingly leave them to that calm and equitable decision between praise and 
 blame which time only can pronounce. 
 
 I confine myself to questions of graver moment than those which relate 
 to the mere skill or ability displayed by a living writer in the treatment of 
 the subjects he selects, and if I would borrow something from indulgence, 
 it is only a certain leniency whenever an earnest wish to correct misconcep- 
 tion may render me tedious in explanation. For the charges against me are 
 not limited to a single work ; and it is necessary that I should invite an in- 
 quiry, from the warrantable conclusions of which, I trust, my entire vindi- 
 cation will proceed, viz., into the recognized principles of fiction, and the 
 fair liberty in the choice of materials which it is the interest, both of art and 
 the public, to permit to imaginative writers. 
 
 In this discussion I ask, then, but for that patience with which we listen to 
 the most ordinary mechanic, when at home in the subject of a craft to which 
 his toil and life have been applied. For several years I have studied the art 
 of which I treat ; and it is but reasonable to suppose that I should speak 
 with some knowledge of the principles which, applied to practice, have gained 
 me whatever reputation I possess. I will presume that the reader enters on 
 the consideration of the matters which he is called upon to adjudicate, not 
 with a mind steeled against conviction, and determined to resist, but ra'her 
 with a juryman's sincere desire to judge for himself, and exclude from the 
 trial all that he has heard out of court ; regretting generously if, at the close, 
 he is obliged to condemn, rejoicing honestly if his reason and his con-
 
 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 387 
 
 science allow him to acquit. And if there be many who come to this inquiry 
 with minds so prepared, amongst them there may be those who unthinkingly 
 have done me wrong, and who, after hearing the evidence I shall adduce, 
 and more carefully considering the laws by which I should be judged, may 
 depart from the heating with a manly desire to repair an injury small in- 
 deed, if it were as lightly felt as it is heedlessly inflicted ! 
 
 It is nol so easy as at first it may appear, to decide upon the moral tenden- 
 cies and designs of a wri;er. Upon no conceivable subject have more signal 
 mistakes been made ; and none affords us a more memorable warning to judge 
 of others with modest charity and cautious deliberation. It would take a 
 large catalogue to contain the titles of those books which have been de- 
 nounced as immoral and mischievous, and which are now universally 
 acknowledged as the sources of harmless pleasure or ethical instruction. 
 From the father of poetry, from Homer himself who has been charged 
 "wiih degrading the gods, and demoralizing man," "sanctioning perjury 
 and avarice," " holding up even parricides to reverence," " leaching what is 
 wicked, and debasing what is good," through the long order of his illustrious 
 children, we can find few whom we now recognize amongst our most genial 
 civilizers, and our gentlest teachers, who have not, at one time or another, 
 been subjected to the common charge of immoral tendency and pernicious 
 effect. 
 
 Since the good Bishop Heliodorus saw his tale of " Theagenes and 
 Chariclea" condemned by a synod, as prejudicial to the young ; since Ma- 
 homet denounced in the Koran those harmless tales, of which the " Arabian 
 Nights " are a sample, novelists have been treated, if possible, more harshly 
 than their elder brothers the poets. There is no novel we more willingly 
 give to the schoolboy than " Don Quixote," yet Cervantes has been driven 
 to find in Sismondi a defence " against those who consider ' Don Quixote ' 
 the most melancholy book ever written," and (adds Mr. Hal'am) "who no 
 doubt consider it also as one of the most immoral, as chilling and pernicious 
 in its influence on the social converse of mankind, as 'The Prince 'of 
 Machiavel is in their political intercourse." * There is no tale that with 
 safer conscience we submit to the simplest understanding than the " Ras- 
 selas " of Dr. Johnson, and yet it has been charged with instilling the same, 
 more than doubtful, moral that freezes men's hopes in the mockery of 
 " Candide." f Philosophers the most earnest, moralists the most rigid, have 
 been as liable to this erring accusation, as the wildest of poets and the most 
 careless of romancers. Locke presides over our academies, yet he has been 
 denounced r,s the founder of a sect of materialists. Cudwotth is received 
 amongst the holiest champions of religion, yet Warbmton informs us that 
 he never published the second part of his work because of the malignity that 
 had visited the first. In the same painful and warning mistake of shallow 
 judgments, our divines themselves have been assailed, and the twin Mghts 
 of our religious literature, Tillotson and Taylor, calumniated the one as a 
 Socinian in disguise, the other as a schismatic in design. 
 
 Time brings justice at the end. and vindicates the name if it prese-ves the 
 work. Happy he, whose justification comes before the hand has forgot 
 its cunning, and the tomb shut out the sweets of the atonement from the 
 bitterness of the wrong ! Happy he, too, who, early inured to calumny, 
 grows indifferent to its sting ! He will not, at least, die a lunatic, like 
 
 * Hallam's History of Literature, vol. iii., p. 156. 
 
 t Voltaire congratulated himself, indeed, that "Candide" had appeared before "Ras- 
 selas," so that the scoffing wit might not be accused of plagiarizing his moral from our 
 serious and sturdy Doctor.
 
 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 Ritson, " stabbed by assassins in the dark," nor like Cummyne, waste away 
 " in the slow fever produced by an anonymous assault." * 
 
 Do not let me be suspected of so egregious a conceit as implying a claim 
 to association with the lofty names that I have cited. I but use the argu- 
 ment the citations suggest, to establish the simple truth which literary history 
 affords to a more intelligent, and, I trust, a more liberal age, viz., that the 
 public should receive with great caution rash accusations against the motives 
 of authors and the latent immorality of works. For easy to the lowest un- 
 derstanding is this general charge of immoral tendency and object, and 
 tempting it is to malice, when it cannot deny the literary reputation which it 
 envies, to assail the moral design, because that (always more or less compli- 
 cated) needs some effort beyond the commonplace indifference of the public 
 to perceive and to defend. Of whatever is plainly obscene and licentious ; 
 of whatever openly assails the acknowledged principles of religion, or saps 
 the moral foundations of society, all men may judge ; and on these, at least 
 in our own age, no differences of opinion are likely to exist. But the wise 
 and the honest will be wary of ascribing to writers secret tendencies and 
 objects at variance, not only with the designs they announce, but the repu- 
 tation accorded to them by judges, whether at home or abroad, uninfluenced 
 by personal predilections, or political bias. And I fear that the writer the 
 most really dangerous to society is to be found in the critic who bids the 
 young and unthinking search, amidst the most popular forms of literature, 
 for excuses to vice and sanctions to crime, which the author himself never 
 intended, and which, without such directions, no reader would have sus- 
 pected. It is critics like these who would pervert to poison the most inno- 
 cent intellectual nutriment ; who would interpret the exhortations of St. 
 Augustine into an appeal to the passions, or the " Whole Duty of Man " into 
 a libel on one's neighbor. Shortly after Addison's "Cato" had appeared 
 upon the stage, an unhappy person destroyed himself, leaving upon his table 
 a paper with these words : 
 
 " That must be good 
 Which Cato did and Addison approved." 
 
 One must mournfully regret this poor man's perverse misconstruction of 
 " Cato," yet who can say, for that reason, that " Cato " is dangerous, or that 
 Addison sanctioned suicide ? But suppose that Addison had lived, and 
 " Cato " been produced, in our day, and suppose that some writer in one of 
 our popular journals had, after some prelude upon " morbid idiosyncrasies 
 and the frequency of suicides." instead of removing from such " morbid 
 idiosyncrasies " the dangerous impression that Addison approved self - 
 slaughter, preferred rather to gratify a spleen against the poet, in asserting 
 that the design of the tragedy and the purpose of the author were devoted to 
 the mischievous vindication of suicide ; would not that writer have incurred 
 the gravest responsibilities, afforded to " morbid idiosyncrasies " the very 
 stimulus it was his duty to withhold, and encouraged the very error it was 
 his duty to expose ? Let the editor of every influential journal weigh well 
 the considerations this reflection should suggest, and perhaps he may confess 
 that the more readily an author's intention may be misconceived by sickly or 
 ignorant minds, the more the popular reviewer, whose opportunities give him 
 the quickest and readiest facility towards correcting such mistake, should 
 seek not to confirm but dispel the dangerous misconception. 
 
 It is not given to all to have genius : it is given to all to have hpoesty 
 of purpose ; an ordinary writer may have this in common with the greatest 
 
 * DISRAELI, " Curiosities of Literature."
 
 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 389 
 
 that he may compose his works with sincere and distinct views of promoting 
 liuth and administering to knowledge. I claim this intention fearlessly for 
 myself. And if, contrary to my must solemn wishes, and my must thoughtful 
 designs, any one of my writings can be shown by dispassionate argument to 
 convey lessons tending to pervert the understanding, and confound the 
 eternal distinction between right and wrong, I will do my best to correct the 
 error, by stamping on it my own condemnation, and omitting it from the Hat 
 of those it does not shame me to acknowledge. 
 
 Eveiy reader who has honored my books with some attention must long 
 since have recognized in their very imperfections as works of art, the favorite 
 and peculiar studies of their author; some, especially, of the companions of my 
 youth must often have traced to those inquiries, which we pursued together 
 through the labyrinth of metaphysics, and amidst the ingenious speculations 
 of writers who have sought by the analysis of our ideas to arrive at Ihe springs 
 of our manifold varieties in conduct, that over-indulgence of moralizing 
 deductions, and those often tedious attempts to explain the workings of 
 mil d, which have weakened the effect of my characters, and interrupted 
 the progress of my plots. But no man can have made the study of the great 
 investigators of human conduct his passion and his habit, and ever conscious 
 and wilfully meditate a work at variance with morality ; more likely is 
 is that he will err in the opposite extreme, and undertake no work, however 
 light, without a purpose too sharply definite. Even in the object on which he 
 is most intent, it is true that he may err the gravest moralists, the wisest 
 divines, have so erred ; human judgment cannot be infallible ; 
 
 " Tacere 
 Tutum semper erit." 
 
 " If one would be safe, one has no resource but to be silent." But an error 
 of this kind is one only of mistaken, yet honest, intention, and may surely be 
 exposed, without heated invectives and calumnious personalities. 
 
 What is the charge that has been brought against me urged and re-urged, 
 in words which I will not trust myself to repeat, and in a spiiit which I will 
 not pause to expose? I state its broad substance, I believe, fail ly in this: 
 
 ' That I have had a morbid and mischievous passion for treating of crime 
 and guilt ; that it is the prevailing character of my books to make heroes of 
 criminals and felons." 
 
 J$nw it jg thp outerest of all writers, from the greatest poet to the meanest 
 novili.-t, that the due licence of fiction in. the rn.iti.ri;. Is it selects should lie 
 ch a i lxJaiil.do.wn and j.'.<-iui .!ly admitted. And it is no less to the interest 
 of the public that writers should not be scared, by tacit acquiescence in 
 charges most painful to honorable men, from whatever exposition of evil as 
 it exists whatever investigation of the human mind, in its sublimity or its 
 baseness, its virtues or its guilt, the uniform example of received authori- 
 ties in literature has proved it to be salutary or safe to permit to the scope of 
 the poet, and the purpose of the teacher. 
 
 I shall p-oceed to show that, if the delineation of crime did afford the 
 ordinary and favorite subject of my works ; if criminals or felons were made 
 what is called the heroes (that is, the leading characters) in all or most of 
 them such a charge would only prove the ignorance of those who advance 
 it, whether of the most acknowledged privileges of fiction, or the scope of 
 the moral which writers the most blameless have been left at liberty to de- 
 velop and enforce. But the charge itself is so utterly untrue, that a single 
 glance over the list of my publications will suffice to refute it. I annex that 
 list as my reply ;
 
 39 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 " Pelham " ; " The Disowned " ; " Devereux " ; " Godolphin " ; * " Paul 
 Clifford " ; " The Pilgrims of the Rhine " ; * "Eugene Aram " ; " The Last 
 Days of Pompeii" ; "Rienzi"; "The Conquest of Grenada" ; "Ernest 
 Maltravers, first part" ; " Ernest Maltravers, second part ; (first printed as 
 Alice " ; " Night and Morning " ; " Zanoni " ; " The Last of the Barons " ; 
 *" Lucretia." 
 
 So that out of a list of sixteen works of fiction (besides five Plays), the es- 
 says called " England and the English," and " The Student," a History of 
 Athens (and a volume or two of poems *), the three to which I have^ prefixed 
 an asterisk are the only books in which felons or criminals have been made 
 the heroes. In works professing to treat of human life in all its complexi- 
 ties, this is surely but a small proportion assigned to the express delineation 
 of human crimes. And this list alone, to those who have read the works, is 
 a sufficient answer to the charge that it has been my habit as an author to 
 select criminals and felons as my heroes. Five of the fictions I have cited 
 are devoted to the historical illustration of former times, with whatever 
 images, fair or noble, the age might afford, or the progress of the narrative 
 present ; six to those circles of modern society, in which it was difficult to 
 avoid the opposite reproach of dealing exclusively with the more polished or 
 more frivolous classes, and forgetting that beneath the surface of manners 
 grave and stern lessons are to be found yes, even in the guilt and the woe, 
 which are at work within the deeps ; and two out of the number (''Zanoni" 
 and '' The Pilgrims of the Rhine'') are dedicated to fancies which maybe 
 called, if you please, too visionary and unreal, but are wholly remote from that 
 grosser and more actual world of evil and sin, to which I am accused of hav- 
 ing morbidly confined my intention, or monotonously directed my research. 
 
 In each and all of these, no doubt, there are (could they paint life without, 
 or has any novel's! attempted to do so?) characters good and bad. But in 
 none of my books (save the three before mentioned) has crime been made 
 the leading agency, or a criminal the predominant character. In most of 
 them, indeed, the fairer and gentler side of human nature has been not un- 
 favorably exhibited ; in most of them, I believe, the characters that remain 
 the more vividly clear in the remembrance of an impartial reader will be as- 
 sociated with such qualities as dignify or endear our species. 
 
 To only three fictions out of sixteen, then, does the charge so indiscrimi- 
 mtely made against all, shrink in its application ; viz., that " I have sought 
 materials in crime, and heroes in criminals." We come, then, at once to a 
 question which common-ten^e and universal authority ought long since to 
 have decit'ed, viz., " How far the delineation of crime is a legitimate object 
 of fictitious composition." 
 
 It would seem from the hackneyed repetition of the same accusation 
 against me, and the vehemence with which it is accompanied, that I had had 
 the discredit to introduce into fiction some hideous innovation, opposed by 
 the greatest writers or at variance with the usual privileges of my calling. 
 But what is the fact ? Has not the delineation of crime, in every age, been 
 the more especial and chosen thesis of the greatest masters of art quoted to 
 us as authorities and held up to us as models ? The parricide of CEdipus 
 furnishes inspiration to the all-perfect and all-polished genius of Sophocles ; 
 Medea murders her children; Clytemnestra her husband, Orestes his mother ; 
 Phaedra woos her step-son. I grant all that may be said as to differences of 
 
 * Including a translation of Schiller, to which I could have had n reasonable induce- 
 ment to devote the liborof more than two years, except that of rendering more familiar to my 
 countrymen a collection of Pr>:-, is, universally considered to create, upon the whole, morel 
 impressions peculiarly pure and. elevating,
 
 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 39! 
 
 ancient manners nnd habits of thought ; but these very same subjects have 
 been readapted to the modern stage, adorned by the greatest geniuses of 
 France, in an age when she especially prided herself on the purity of her 
 drama and the humanity of her audiences. They are enrolled amongst the 
 masterpieces of Racine, Corneille, and Voltaire. They are incorporated with 
 the drama of Italy. In England they furnish plots to the authors who were 
 Hs'cned to as Reformers of the stage from its ruder barbarities and grosser 
 license. 
 
 Turn to the titles in the earlier edition of Shakespeare's plays, and they 
 even seem to invite attention by the promise of the crimes they are to depict. 
 What are we to say of the 
 
 " Tragedie of Kynge Richard, conteyninge his treacherous plots against 
 his brother Clarence, and the murther of his innocent nephewes in the 
 Tower ; wyth tlie whole course of his detested life " ? Or of 
 
 " Hamlet, Prince of Denrnarke, wyth his just revenge on the adulterous 
 Kynge Claudius, and the poysoning of the Queen Gertrude''? 
 
 Or, " The Tragedie of Macbeth, showing how, by treachery and many- 
 fold murders, he obtained the crown of Scotland " ? 
 
 Or, " Othello, the Moore of Venice, his deathe and strangling the fair 
 Desdemona " ? * 
 
 I attach no weight to these titles themselves, of which Shakespeare is 
 doubtless innocent ; but they certainly do not exaggerate the crimes which 
 the plays depict. Crime in fact, is the essential material of the Tragic 
 Piaiua. Take crime from tragedy, and you a:mihila'e tragedy itself. 
 Whatever aims at the tragic effect, whether on the stage or in more sober 
 narrative, cannot dispense with the evil which works to mischief, excites to 
 teiror, involves the innocent in its own ruin, and conduces to the tragic pas- 
 slOns of our pity and our awe f You may say at once, and literally, of 
 nearly all tragic writers, "that they have sought in crimes their materials, 
 and in criminals their heroes." 
 
 Mr. Burke has probably in much accounted for this sombre selection of 
 character and subject, in those remarks, not the least subtle and profound, 
 in his memorable treatise, wherein he demonstrates that, as power is a source 
 of the sublime, so power to be sublime must be suggestive of terror, and 
 associated with attributes of destruction. 
 
 " Whatever," he says, "is fitied in any sort to excite the ideas of pain or 
 
 * To say nothing of " Titus Andronicus," which is, probably, not Shakespeare's, or his 
 only in part, but which we admit into our collections with no fear of demoralizing weak 
 minds, or poisoning the purity of youth by the successions of crimes and atrocities, mur- 
 ders, rapes amputating hands, plucking forth tongues, hewing off heads, stabbing with a 
 joke of " Weke, weke, so cries a pig," cutting throats on the stage, while Lavinialjetween 
 her stumps holds a bason for the blood, serving up to a mother her children baked in a pie, 
 etc., etc. Why is not this play (no matter whose it be) to be banished from our collections? 
 Because, here, time has brought healthful discernment ; because, whatever the defective 
 art which introduces such gratuitous horrors in " Titus Andronicus," every one knows that 
 they do not contaminate the moral sense ; the image of crime, made execrable, may pain 
 and revolt us, butybr that very reason it does not allure or corrupt. 
 
 t Nothing can be more unsatisfactory than all definitions which have sought to limit the 
 author's liberty of selection from criminal agencies and instruments. " The only circum- 
 stance," says one critic, " which elevates the crime into a subject for the poet or the 
 dramatist, is the influence under which it is committed, the object which it is to attain, the 
 nature of the impelling necessities which lead to it, when these spring from causes not 
 base or ignoble in themselves, when they come, for instance, from a combination of wrong 
 not otherwise to be redressed, murder becomes a poetic subject ; it is that which is dignified 
 as a ' tragedy ' and distinguished from mere felony." Words, signifying nothing ! t The 
 crimes of lago are base and ignoble in themselves ; they come from " no combination of 
 wrong not otherwise to be redressed"; neither do those of Richard III., nor those of 
 Phaedra, of Clytemnestra, of the daughters of Lear, and the mother of Hamlet, and the 
 wife of Macbeth,
 
 39 2 
 
 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 ' 
 
 danger ; that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conveisant about 
 terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of 
 the sublime." * 
 
 Again, ' ' that power derives all its sublimity from the terror with which it 
 is generally accompanied, will appear evidently, from its effect in a very few 
 cases in which it may be possible to strip a considerable degree of strength 
 of its power to hurt ; when you do this, you spoil it of everything sublime, 
 and it immediately becomes contemptible." He proceeds to compare the 
 ox, strong but innocent, and therefore the idea of which is not grand, with 
 the bull, which, precisely because its strength is often destructive, has fre- 
 quently a place in sublime description. " We have continually about us 
 animals of a strength that is considerable, but not pernicious ; amongst 
 these we never look for the sublime. It comes upon us in the gloomy forest 
 and in the howling wilderness : in the forms of the lion, the tiger : the panther, 
 or rhinoceros." f 
 
 Without absolutely going to the extreme of the principle this eminent 
 
 thinker has enforced, or asserting that strength, to be sublime, must be 
 
 necessarily pernicious; it is undeniable, at least, that the association of power 
 
 with destruction is one of the most obvious sources of the sublime. And, as 
 
 guilt in M.an, when accompanied with intellect or daring, contains a power 
 
 I infinitely exceeding the brute force of the mere animal, so crime is the cus- 
 
 ; tomary material for tragic art, and furnishes the tremendous instrument for 
 
 moving the human heart by the agency of terror. 
 
 : , Other reasons might be adduced to show why crime has been made an 
 essential element on the stage ; how it has afforded to the master of human 
 nature his amplest scope for investigating the most subtle and hidden 
 recesses of character and passion, unravelling the skein of intellectual error, 
 and holding up to a thoughtless world those striking and solemn warnings in 
 which the more direct morality of tragic composition may be said to consist. 
 Perhaps the old Greek Platonist who eloquently defended Homer from the 
 accusations of his master has made some remarks on this part of our subject 
 not unworthy of attention. 
 
 "It appears to me," he says, "that whatever is tragical, monstrous, and 
 out of the common course of nature in poetical fictions, excites the hearers in 
 all imaginable ways to the investigation of the truth, attracts us to recondite 
 knowledge, and does not suffer us through apparent probability to rest satis- 
 fied with superficial conceptions, but compels us to penetrate into the interior 
 parts of fables, to explore the obscure intention of their authors," etc. \ 
 
 Enough, then, has been said to show that crime is an admitted and 
 necessary element of tragic fiction, an agency employed by the greatest poets, 
 and to be vindicated by the plainest principles of their art ; and so popularly 
 is this understood, that tJie very statue of the 7"ragic Muse is represented with 
 the dagger in one hand, the poison bowl in the other. 
 
 But then it is implied, if not openly contended, that, though the presen- 
 tation cf crime is allowable on the stage, it is to be condemned, in a novel. 
 Much is said about the " weak minds of circulating library readers," " the 
 young " and " impressionable," etc. As if there were no weak minds in the 
 
 * Burke on the " Sublime and Beautiful," part i., sec. vii. 
 
 t Ib. part ii., sec. v. 
 
 % Taylor's translation of Proclus in the " Apology for the Fables of Homer." I prefer 
 adopting his translation, though not so forcible as I could wish, to any attempt of my own. 
 1 have taken, however, the liberty of substituting for the word "unnatural" the para- 
 phrase, " out of the (foramon course of nature," which is certainly the (rue meaning of 
 Proclus,
 
 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 393 
 
 pit and the gallery of Drury Lane ; as if only sages and stoics were to be 
 found in the boxes ; as if a dramatic audience were not, upon the whole, a 
 fur more miscellaneous class than that of subsciibeis to a circulating library, 
 comprehending far lower degrees of instruction, and a more general admix- 
 ture, both of rank and of age ; * as if, too, after all, literature were a kind 
 of medicated farina, to be adapted with the daintiest nicety to the digestion 
 of the weakly and diseased ; as if any man of education and vigor, no matter 
 whether he write a novel or a history, must not take it for granted, that he 
 addresses readers of ordinary understanding and healthful comprehension ! 
 Is there, in fact, a book in the world that could ever have established a fame 
 if it had not mainly addressed itself to strong heads and clear intellects ? 
 Much, too, is said of the example of former novelists, who were contented 
 
 with exhibiting manners, and ridiculing folly, as if all prose fiction were to be 
 end were forbidden to the compositions of fiction, because they are divided 
 
 narrowed into a single classification, or as if all grave purpose and tiagic 
 
 into chapters, not compressed into acts ! What is the fair source of terror in 
 one composition may be as readily resorted to in another. What is free to 
 the imagination, if put into five acts, does not become reprehensible, if em- 
 ployed in three volumes. Each^-tb-Hafi'ative of"ttre i dyuaa t is bound but by 
 its own peculiar modes of relation or expression. And since, whatever our 
 varieties of appeal to the passions, all are traceable to springs in the human 
 mind, to which all who treat of the passions must apply, the narrator is not 
 only privileged, but absolutely constrained, to come to the same sources as 
 the writer for the stage. Pause to consider how moral terror in tragic com- 
 position is obtained. The more you examine, the more you will find that 
 moral f terror is never excited except by images of evil or punishment, by 
 some destroying or dangerous agency. Look a little deeper, and you will 
 find that there are only two kinds of this agency the first, supernatural, 
 such as Fate, a ghost, a witch, a fiend, an oracle, etc., in which the images 
 from another world are summoned to exercise evil influence over this ; the 
 second agency is human crime. Search, I say, all tragedies, all fictions, and 
 you will find that moral terror is never produced, but by some evil or 
 destroying power, and that that power is never to be found, except in the 
 two agencies I have named, viz., the supernatural or the criminal. Grant, 
 then, what you cannot deny, that the narrator is in the exercise of his un- 
 doubted right to attempt, if he can, to create the passion of terror, and you 
 are compelled to grant him the only means by which he can effect his ob- 
 ject, viz., the supernatural or the criminal. This is so evident a truth, that 
 it would be unnecessary to say a word further on the subject, if it were not that 
 the public are less familiarized to representations of guilt in the narrative 
 fiction, than they are in the dramatic ; and hence the comparative unfamil- 
 iarity has given a readier reception to shallow criticism of the romance, than 
 common-sense and daily custom would permit to be applied to the drama. 
 But this only proves what is undeniable, viz., that the tragic prose romance 
 is of very recent date in literature, and has hitherto been sparingly culti- 
 vated. 1 believe that Richardson's " Clarissa Harlowe " was the first prose 
 fiction, attaining permanent celebrity, that resorted for interest to the ele- 
 
 * These poor circulating library readers are a little too superciliously treated. Say what 
 we like about them, they still form the ordinary mass of the reading public, and compre- 
 hend all its varieties of intclle* <. and instruction. They certainly cannot be said to exclude 
 the refined and scholastic few, while they as certainly do not embrace the lowest orders in 
 mental cultivation. 
 
 
 1 1 say moral terror, though even the physical terror caused by representations of bodily 
 ain and danger can scarcely be artistic 
 cither in those who endure, or Miose who i 
 
 , 
 
 pain and danger can scarcely be artistically produced, without tracing it to moral evil, 
 
 inflict it.
 
 394 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 ments of tragedy. I need not say that the plot of that work is founded o 
 the progress and perpetration of a crime equally odious and base, conducted 
 through scenes, abetted by characters, and consummated by means which 
 the public would probably not permit to a writer in the present day. Yet 
 of Richardson our great moralist could say with truth " that he taught the 
 passions to move at the command of Virtue." The next tragic fiction that 
 won fame from the public was the "Julia de Roubigne" of the gentle- 
 hearted Mackenzie. It closes in murder and suicide ; and those who would 
 fly at higher game than the living, may find, perhaps, something to say 
 against the dead great author, who holds up as the ideal of chivalrous 
 honor high, though erring the jealous assassin, who poisons his wife, and 
 escapes by self-slaughter the penalties and shame of his deed. Yet who, 
 amongst the true judges of literature, would deny to Mackenzie the praise 
 he deserves as a writer of the purest intentions, and the mildest humanity ? 
 Not long after this, with some tragic purpose (though I do not include it 
 amongst the fictions that we recognize as critically tragic), came the " Ze- 
 luco " of Moore the gloomy portrait of a hero whom no moral sentiment 
 ennobles, no genial impulse ever warms, but justifying the author by his aim 
 to show in the maturer life of his hero the errors of early education, and 
 the absorbing debasement of culiivated egotism. Nor has any man ventured 
 to deny that Dr. Moore in his wriiings has deserved the reputation for vir- 
 tuous purpose, which, more than his genius, obtained him the favor of the 
 public. 
 
 To these succeeded the truly tragic fiction of Godwin's " Caleb Williams," 
 in which, as in " Julia de Roubigne," a murderer is made the hero, with 
 false honor for his tempter, while his remorse and his terror supply both 
 analysis and incident. Yet, whatever may be said of Mr. Godwin's specula- 
 tive opinions, on political and other subjects, all will admit that his aims 
 were those of a philosopher, who sought, in his own way, the inculcation of 
 morals. And while his more erroneous expositions of doctrine have sunk 
 into oblivion, " Caleb Williams " lives yet, and will, perhaps, live while our 
 language lasts, as a monument of genius, on which are graven admonitions 
 to error. 
 
 Thus it will be perceived that in all the classic tragic prose fictions preced- 
 ing our own age, criminals have afforded the prominent characters, and 
 crime the essential material. 
 
 Since the production of those works, prose fiction has yet more extended 
 its ancient limits * It has entered with Goethe the domains of speculative 
 thought ; it has been enlarged to almost boundless extent by the energies of 
 Scott. But while that last-named and illustrious writer enriched the realms 
 he had won with the stores of the historian, and from the minds of the poet; 
 while, in mere form, more than any one, he relieved and animated the prog- 
 ress of narrative, and the delineation of character with the dialogue and 
 action of the stage, of tragic fiction, rigidly so called, he has left but one 
 signal masterpiece, "The Bride of Lammermoor." f In this, to create his 
 
 * Thus, indeed, a class of composition has arisen, for which as yet we have no definite 
 name ; it corresponds not with our associations of the novel, nor yet with those of the 
 romance. It does not belong precisely to either. We cannot justly call " Wilhelm 
 Meister " or " Anastasius," "Undine or " Picciola," "Atala" or " Rene," "Caleb 
 Williams " and " Julia de Roubigne," either novels or romances. In England the word 
 fiction has thus crept into use, for want of one less general and vague. 
 
 t Unless we admit, as perhaps we ought, the more mixed and less gloomy romance of 
 " Kenilworth," in which I need not say, that all which is effected of terror is produced by 
 the agency of guilt ; in fact, wherever Walter Scott has produced terror without employ- 
 ing supernatural means, it will always and unavoidably, from the causes stated in tho 
 text, be found in connection with crime.
 
 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 it 
 
 effects of awe, though human evil is unquestionably introduced, he rather 
 resorted to the old Greek instrumentality of fate a means which (for an ob- 
 vious reason that I shall state hereafter) he could not have continued to em- 
 ploy if he had more generally directed his genius to tragic compositions. 
 But, though " The Bride of Lammermoor " suffices to show that Scott's 
 power in the sterner narrative surpassed all before him and since, the more 
 habitual tendencies of his mind did not lead his choice to the regions over 
 which awe and terror preside ^ 
 
 " Di quibus impejKim est animarum umbraeque silentes 
 Et Chaos et PHlegethon, loca node silentia late"; 
 
 still to the adventurer whmn those regions invite, it is permitted to add : 
 
 " Sit mihi fas audita loqui : sit, numine vestro, 
 Panderg4es alta terra et caligine mersas." 
 
 The tragic fiction is conceived it has taken growth it may be destined, 
 amidst the comparative neglect of the stage, to supply the lessons which the 
 tragic drama has, for a while, abandoned. Do not fetter its wanderings 
 from free search after truth through the mazes of society, and amidst all the 
 contrasts of nature. If it is to be a voice to the heart, an interpreter of the 
 secrets of life, you cannot withhold from it the broadest experience of the 
 struggle between good and evil, happiness and woe. 
 
 " Hunc igitur terrorem>ilirni, tenebrasque necesse est." 
 
 But I am told, somewhat more definitely and precisely, that though 
 crimes of a lofty order, rendered high and solemn by ancient tradition, and 
 clad in the pomp of history, are fitting subjects for fiction, the crimes which 
 occur in our own day, and finish their career at the gallows or the hulks, are 
 wholly to be banished from recital. " Such things may be : leave them 
 to their own ignominy. Why elevate vulgar felons into heroes, and 
 take us for interest to the Old Bailey? " 
 
 This, I believe, is a correct quotation from the kind of censure with which 
 (stripped of its grosser personalities) I have had to contend. Once for all, I 
 will seek to answer it as seriously as if it were an argument, not a declama- 
 tion ; a friendly remonstrance, not a hostile and heated assault. And while 
 replying to my assailants in the Press, I address calmly and respectfully my 
 argument to those on whom attacks so frequently and passionately urged 
 may have produced an impression which it pains me most deeply to think 
 any work of mine should create on one honorable and impartial mind. 
 
 I have already, I trust, shown that the charge of habitually selecting crim- 
 inals for my themes is in itself untrue. I proceed now to the question, how 
 far the crimes of our own days, the crimes of Tyburn and the Old Bailey, may 
 be admissible to the license of art in fiction, and conducive to the moral it 
 should inculcate. 
 
 I will grant at once that, for the purposes of poeiry, high tragic effect miy 
 be more readily produced, and may iminlly create a grander or less distress- 
 ful sentiment of awe, when it is sought in the ancient treasure-house of 
 history or fable ; and in some of my works I have reverently drawn from 
 such elder and remoter sources. But one region of art does not exclude 
 the other. The past cannot otonopofize the sorrows and crimes of ages. 
 While we live, we ourselves become a past. And we are unquestionably 
 warranted to consult the Book of Time, in the paee which is spread before 
 our eyes. Can we do so faithfully if we strike out all passages that pain or 
 perplex us ? Can we give any fair idea of the record, if we confine all our 
 extracts to what we ins 1 inctively approve and readily comprehend? No,
 
 394- A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 every one concedes to me at once, that a writer is at libeity to search amidst 
 the materials afforded to him in modern life, for the subjects and characters 
 of fiction. The comic writer takes fearlessly whatever in the errors and 
 vices of mankind adapts itself to the comic result of exciting our ridicule, 
 and moving our contempt : 
 
 - 
 
 " Licet, semperque licebit 
 
 dicere cle vitiis." * 
 
 " It ever has, and ever will be, lawful to speak of the vices " which it is the 
 province of Comedy as of Satire to expose. The Tartttffe of Moliere, (he 
 Blifil vi Fielding, the Squire Thornhill tot Goldsmith (a scoundrel, perhaps 
 the vilest and the most sparingly punished in comic fiction), the whole spirit in 
 Le Sage, the whole object in Swift, are unifoimly directed to the exposure 
 of the meaner and more vicious propensities of men. Folly and error, vice 
 punished by ridicule, constitute the main materials of the comic writer, 
 whether he employ them in a drama or a novel. Must we not grant to the 
 writer who seeks for the elements of tragedy that exist in his own time, the 
 equal license to seek for the materials to which tragedy must apply? What 
 are those materials but ihe passions and the crimes of men as, for comedy, the 
 materials are drawn from the humors and the vices ? Terror and compassion 
 are the sources of the tragic writer's effects ; the destructive or pernicious 
 power of intellect corrupted into guilt, affords him the natural means of 
 creating terror for the evil, and compassion for its victims. To say that the 
 criminals he is thus compelled to employ as the agents of his plot are unfit 
 for his purpose because they may be classed amongst the prey of Newgate 
 and the Old Bailey, is but to lay down the preposterous principle that we 
 must not extract tragedy from times in which laws are carried into effect ; it 
 is simply to say that, because men in our day are transported and hanged 
 for guilt, the guilt of our day it is improper to analyze and depict. All 
 crimes now, if detected, must obtain the notoiiety of th. Old Bailey, or reap 
 their desert in Newgate ; and to contend that Newgate and the Old Bailey 
 unfit them for the uses of the writer of fiction, is virtually to deprive him of 
 the use of all crimes punished by modern law and enacted in the modern 
 day : as if there were 110 warning to be drawn from sins that are not ennobled 
 by ermine and purple ; as if there were no terror in the condemned cell, no 
 tragedy at the foot of the gallows ! And yet how hackneyed is the aphorism 
 that the human heait, and the tragedy to be drawn from it, remain the same 
 in every age ! Unless, then, we deny altogether that we are to seek for trie 
 sources of tragedy amidst the times which we must necessarily know the best, 
 amongst the characters on which the broadest and steadiest light can be cast, 
 amidst the warnings the most immediately useful to us, we cannot reject to 
 the writer of modern fiction the materials of modern tragedy, even though 
 they are drawn from the records of the prison-house, and the judgments of the 
 , law. The materials must be open to choice, with certain stipulations as to 
 the treatment, into which we shall enter hiler. 
 
 TTHasTofigindeed been the opinion of many minds the most thoughtfully 
 bent upon the alliance between humanity and art, that we have too much 
 neglected the deeper and graver characteristics of our own age ; too much 
 contented ourselves with surveys of the surface, delineations of manners, 
 fashions, and foibles, and turned to the past for that sterner poetry which is 
 not less sensibly to be found in the sorrows and the guilt of the life around 
 us. Thus, towards the close of his life, Schiller, whom at that time no man 
 can accuse of rash and unconsidered tamperings with the legitimate end of 
 
 * HOR. Sat. 4, lib. x.
 
 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 to) 
 
 genius, meditated a drama that would seem least poetical to the shallow, but 
 was intended to extract poetry from the very sources which it seems we are 
 now forbidden to explore. His proposed subject was " The French Police "; 
 and I need not say that the conception could not fail to comprehend the 
 
 evils, the abuses, and the crimes of modern civilization. , _ 
 
 Good men there are, no doubt, who would interdict altogether the presen- 
 tation of actual crime as painful and revolting as administering to a passion 
 for diseased excitement ; I respect their scruples. But, without here pausing 
 to^exarnine what weight can be attached to them, is the prohibition even pos- ; 
 sible ? "Crime meets us as a fact everywhere ; you cannot open a newspaper, ; 
 you caVinot refer to statistics, you cannot mix in the ordinary world, but 
 crime is forced daily and hourly on your notice. You must close up for 
 purity and you'h all history, sacred and profane : you must shut out from) 
 the calendar of life the tyrant and the martyr ; you must seal up the foun- 
 tains of literature, and silence the long succession of poets from Soph- 
 ocles to Dante, from Dante to Shakespeare, from Shakespeare to the last 
 song that has thrilled through the world if you seek to exclude fiom the , 
 mind the dark certainties of guilt. Even then you will fail. Man has but 
 to live, to know that crime is the foe man must brave. Could you instruct 
 him what he should resist and abhor, if you could leave him ignorant of its 
 existence and its chastisement? You cannot, like the Emperor of China, 
 live in a fancied succession of triumphs and security, and receive congratu- 
 lations on the felicity of your reign and the impregnability of your dominion, 
 while the enemy are blockading your ports and sailing up your rivers. The 
 essential characteristic of this age and land is publicity. There exists a 
 Press which bares at once to the universal eye every example of guilt that 
 comes before a legal tribunal. In these very newspapers which would for- 
 bid a romance writer to depict crime with all that he can suggest to demon- 
 strate its causes, portray its hideousness, insist on -its inevitable doom, are 
 everywhere to be found the minutest details of guilt ; the meanest secrets of 
 the pri>o -house are explored, turnkeys interrogated, and pages filled with 
 descriptions of the personal appearance of the felon, his dress at the bar, 
 his courage at the gallows. To find the true literature of Newgate and 
 Tyburn, you have only to open the newspaper on your table. That reports 
 thus sent abroad to all quarters of a motley civilization, read aloud in the 
 lowest alehouse, and in the vilest resorts of outcasts and thieves the only 
 literary food (ns newspapers are) of the most uneducated classes that sue h 
 may do harm, I am ready to confess, and this from the careless tone and the 
 base detail, the obtrusion of a criminal notoriety unaccompanied by a single 
 lesson gorging the curiosity and familiarizing away the solemnity of guilt.* 
 But how different this from the narrative of a writer of fiction, who presents 
 no single portraiture of crime to monopolize the morbid fancy ; who con- 
 trasts it with images of purity and innocence ; who analyzes the workings of 
 the heart, and thus checks its progress lo corruption ; who accompanies the 
 crime, as by its shadow, with the darkness of i;s own deformity ; whoexer s 
 all the power he possesses to accumulate terrors round its consequences and 
 chastisements ; whose work by its literary treatment (if the author possess 
 but ordinary scholarship), to say nothing of its mode of publication, is not 
 destined to penetrate, like the newspaper, amongst the most ignorant and 
 perverted, the accomplices and imitators of the guilty, but is almost necessarily 
 
 * This is the necessity of the newspaper press, rather than a reproach to it. That press 
 but obeys the imperious demands for publicity which the age enforces. Its business is to 
 deal with facts ; and it can only partially and briefly convey the deductions which the 
 author of a fiction writes volumes to explain. 
 
 in
 
 398 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 confined to classes of a certain education, which would render the imitation 
 as untempting as the guilt itself is abhorrent. The fiction supplies the very 
 lessons the newspaper cannot give. If the reader doubt this, let him only 
 compare the impressions made on his mind by a crime brought before the 
 courts of law with those produced by a crime which some imaginative writer 
 has depicted ; I am greatly mistaken if he does not own, at once, that the 
 last are infinitely more grave, more forcible, and more enduring. 
 
 Analysis of the darker or coarser crimes of society is not intended to 
 reform the criminals them it does not reach. It is not as a curb to tyrants 
 that " William Tell" is effective. It is not to reform an Appius that we 
 express our sympathy with Virginius. It is not to breathe virtue into burglars 
 that " Jonathan Wild" was composed, or to prevent men from poisoning 
 their wives that Mackenzie wrote his " Julia de Roubigne." Limifed, indeed, 
 would be the moral uses of fiction, if confined to the peculiar idiosyncrasies 
 of character it selects Nor is it only by the catastrophe itself that fiction 
 reaches the heart, but y^t more by the mental dissection which it admits, 
 that it corrects our errors in developing their causes. It is by the tendencies 
 to which terror or compassion in the tragic form, ridicule and contempt in the 
 comic, are the agents, that we confirm social enthusiasm for virtue, and unite 
 the reason with the passions in detestation of crime. And all this can be 
 equally effected, whether we resort for materials to the past or to the present, 
 to the vices of the great or to those of the mean. It is the treatment that 
 ennobles, not the subject. Grant that the characters are what convention 
 calls low in birth, station, instruction ; born ina cellar, dyingon the gibbet, 
 they are not one jot, for those reasons, made necessarily low to art. Art can, 
 with Fielding, weave an epic from adventures with gamekeepers and barbers. 
 Art can, with Goethe, convert into poetry the most lofty, the homely image 
 of the girl condemned for infanticide, and confine the vast war between 
 spirits and men to the floors of her felon cell. Rightly has the most majestic 
 of poets placed at the Portals of Dread, not those fiends which are the 
 tempters of the great and deluders of the wise, but rather the demons of the 
 ruder multitude, "Fear and ill-udvising Hunger, Labor and shameful 
 Want " 
 
 " Et M etus, et malesuada Fames et turpis Egestas ; 
 Terribiles visu forma; Letumque, Laborqtie." * 
 
 To sum up, I think, then, we must allow : 
 
 First. That crime, however great and heinous, is an admitted and neces- 
 sary agency in tragic fiction, warranted by the employment of the greatest 
 masters, and the sanction of all ages. 
 
 Secondly. That it is equally admissible in the narrative fiction as the 
 dramatic. 
 
 Thirdly. That we may seek for the materials of terror in crime, or 
 destructive power, amidst the present as the past ; that we are limited neither 
 to particular periods, nor conventional gradations of rank ; that wherever we 
 find the facts that furnish the passion of terror, f and the characters that 
 permit the analysis of motive to conduct (the cause to the effect) we are at 
 full liberty to use them. 
 
 I said that we have a right to demand certain stipulations as to treatment 
 and selection. 
 
 * VIRG. Mn. vi. 276, 277. 
 
 t I should apologize for the fatiguing repetition of the word terror throughout this in. 
 quiry. But I could not avoid it without obscurity and circumlocution. I must make the 
 t*s>e excuse for the repetition of the word art.
 
 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 390 
 
 Firstly. We have a right to demand that, whatever interest the author 
 bids us take in the criminal, we should never, by any metaphysical sophistry, 
 be seduced into admiration of the crime ; I hat even where, as usually in the 
 drama, the criminal is invested with attributes that enforce respect, or is in- : 
 duced to an offence at war with his general character by circumstance and > 
 temp'ation, still the crime itself should be shown clearly as a violation of 
 eternal laws, and be condemned, not only by the result in the fiction, but 
 the reason of the beholder. We are not forbidden to sympathize with 
 Othello in his jealousy, nor to admire the nobleness which contrasts an in- 
 firmity ordinarily mean and egotistical: for we see that the crime to which it 
 urges him entails its own direful punishment, and no compassion for the 
 muiderer lessens our horror of the murder. 
 
 Secondly. The crimes depicted should not be of a nature to lead us 
 through licentious scenes, nor accompanied with descriptions that appeal 
 dangerously to the senses. There is one class of evil which shocks and re- 
 volts us ; there is another class of evil to which the most perilous ally is in 
 our own nature. There is nothing to corrupt us in the delineation of murder 
 and violent wrong ; our instincts recoil at once from the idea of imitation. 
 There may be much to corrupt us in the delineation of an adulterous love, 
 though the moral it is meant to convey may, in itself, be excellent. And, 
 therefore, it is safest not to make prominent or minutely to detail crimes of a 
 nature which less openly revolts us than insidiously allures.* 
 
 Thirdly. In dealing especially with the coarser and more violent crimes 
 least idealized by remote tradition, least dignified by history above vulgar 
 associations, the author is bound to have some object in view, belonging to 
 the purer and more thoughtful principles of art, to which the means he em- 
 ploys are subordinate and conducive. If in "Jonathan Wild," Fielding 
 takes us almost solely among thieves and pickpockets, it is not merely, and 
 objectively, as it were, to familiarize us with their principles and habits- ]n 
 describing the actual meanness, he is aiming his satire at false greatness. It 
 is not because a man is a felon and a criminal that therefore he furnishes a 
 fitting theme for the drama or the narrative. I guard myself especially 
 against appearing to sanction so preposterous a conclusion. But if there be 
 anything so peculiar in his guilt, or the circumstances attending it, as to 
 afford fair scope for artistic purpose, suggest useful reflections, or inculcate 
 a salutary lesson, then it is, not because he is a criminal or felon, that he be- 
 comes on unfit instrument for those ends to which, indeed (as we have seen), 
 the agency of crime is essential. If, therefore, the author make use of the 
 actual and more violent guilt that forms one element of the society around \ 
 us, we have a right to expect that it will be introduced, not in wanton levity, 
 but for some thoughtful purpose tending (to the best of his judgment) to 
 illustrate some serviceable truth. 
 
 These, I believe, are the main restrictions which we must impo?e upon the 
 liberty of the author, in granting him all the privileged resources of his arL_ 
 
 I venture to assert that by these restrictions I have been bound. Throw- 
 ing myself on the indulgence of the candid for an egotism, rendered neces- 
 sary by the direct personality of the attacks, and without which the reader 
 must be sensible that these remarks would be. desultory and incomplete ; 
 and assuming merely, that the three works I am called upon to defend have 
 
 * And this principle of treatment, be it observed } holds as good in the delineation of virtue 
 as in the exhibition of guilt. " Pamela," for instance, is intended to celebrate the 
 triumph of virtue in a woman ; " Caleb Williams " depicts the guilty fall of a man. Yet 
 which of the two fictions would a father prefer to trust to his children ? The design of 
 Richardson is eminently virtuous, hut, by an error in art, the treatment obtrudes scenes 
 and suggests ideas of very questionable safety.
 
 466 A WORD TO THE PUBLld. 
 
 been read by those to whom I address myself, I proceed to challenge for 
 them the severest application the impartial can bestow, of the rules I have 
 laid down for the proprieties of treatment. 
 
 And first, as to " Paul Clifford." * The object of " Paul Clifford " ought 
 to be sufficiently apparent. It was written at a time when capital punish- 
 ment was still in this country indiscriminately impolitic and severe ; when 
 society was not employed, as it is virtuously now, in seeking to reform the 
 circumstances which engender crime in the masses ; but was content with 
 punishing by severity the offences it had in much caused by neglect. To 
 quote from the short preface to the edition of 1840, it was my design there- 
 fore, "to draw attention to two errors in our penal institutions: viz., a 
 vicious prison discipline, and a sanguinary criminal code the habit of first 
 corrupting the boy by the very punishment that ought to redeem him, and 
 then hanging the man on the first occasion, as the easiest way of getting rid 
 of our own blunders "; it was " a satire on the shortcut established between 
 the house of correction and the condemned cell." 
 
 Paul Clifford himself is thus represented as one of the very numerous 
 class to which all practical philanthropists are now inviting our attention ; 
 exposed in boyhood to the contagion of evil companionship, sent to prison 
 for an offence he does not commit ; escaping from it by the dexterity of one 
 of those confirmed rogues, with whom a prison brings him into familiar 
 association ; and afterwards, almost necessarily diiven for a livelihood into 
 defiance of the Law, which had already expelled him from its pale. Paul 
 Clifford offends, and he is punished he is an exile forever from his country ; 
 but as his offence is extenuated by circumstances ; as society in itself is in 
 some measure a partaker of it ; as some good qualities, that show him capable 
 of reform, belong to his character, and as he has been led into none of the 
 darker crimes of cruelty, revenge, and bloodshed so he is not punished to 
 the extent of the gallows. He is allowed to work out his redemption by 
 repentance and atonement. In all this, the Novelist does but second the 
 improved disposition of Society itself. He does but advocate in a fiction the 
 principles which are nowenlighleningour journals and ameliorating our laws. 
 
 To guard against danger of imitation by the modern invaders of property 
 (if such a book could ever reach them), Paul Clifford is not represented as 
 certain parties choose unblushingly to assert as a mere pickpocket and 
 thief ; he is taken out of the range of existing subjects for the Old Bailey. 
 His offence is that of the obsolete, and now impossible, nature which char- 
 acterized what was satirically called the "Gentleman Highwayman"; nud 
 has passed away from our well-regulated roads and enclo-ed commons as en- 
 tirely as the band of Robin Hood has passed from the glades of Sherwood. 
 It can now be imitated no more than adventurous youth can imitate the 
 Locksley and the Rob Roy of Walter Scott. And with quite as much jus- 
 tice in the last-cited novel may its great and healthful author be accused of 
 exalting a robber into a hero, and weaving round him a dangerous and im- 
 moral interest, as the humbler writer, now put upon his defence, of such a 
 design in the moonlight rides of Paul Clifford, the Highwayman. f If excep- 
 tion be taken to the mere lowness of scenes and characters occasionally intro- 
 
 * The real hero of this book is perhaps rather William Brandon than his son ; but I take 
 the responsibility created by the title selected. 
 
 t Rob Roy defies the law, plunders the traveller, ravages the border, spares not life, if in 
 his way, and is represented on the whole as an amiable and gallant character, and dis- 
 missed without punishment, to the doubtful approbation of the reader. In all this th 
 assailers of " Paul Clifford " see nothing to call for the charge of raising robbers into 
 heroes, or bestowing interest upon criminals. And they are right. Let them be but con* 
 sistcnt. If this miserable jargon is to be employed at all, let them use it impartially.
 
 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 4OI 
 
 duced in the book, but by no means forming the principal part of it, I may 
 observe, that as they contain nothing obscene or licentious, nothing to incite 
 or inflame, and are not introduced for themselves, but for satire upon the 
 real vulgarity often found beneath the mere conventional polish they trav- 
 esty or burlesque so whatever may be said against such an introduction on 
 the score of art, it is free, at least, from all tendency to corrupt. And in 
 this, since I cannot claim the merit of originality, I have at least the sanc- 
 tion of authorities the most respected not only in the disputed morality of 
 the " Beggars' Opera," or the nobler precedent of '' Jonathan Wild," but in 
 the " Beggars' Bush" of Beaumont and Fletcher, which does not disdain to 
 put slang into verse, in the " Guzman D'Alfarache " of Le Sage, in the 
 " Sharper " of Quevedo, and in the innumerable scenes in what is called 
 " low life," which are never cited in reproach of our greatest novelists. 
 
 I think, therefore, that I may fairly dismiss "Paul Clifford" to the acquit- 
 tal of any impartial jury upon the capital charges that, without evidence and 
 against precedent, have been laid to its charge. 
 
 In "Eugene Aram" the case was wholly different, demanding graver 
 treatment and more awful chastisement ; here, at least, there was no vulgar 
 offender, nor here was there any victim to the errors and neglect of society. 
 Here was one of those startling phenomena in human conduct which had ar- . ,^/\ 
 rested the attention of the historian, claimed the muse of the Poet, which Ar 
 had been more than the nine days' wonder in the age in which it had oc- 
 curred, and remained in the record and memories of men, as containing the 
 problems, and exciting the terror, of a completed tragedy in itself. The 
 picture of a laborious and self-taught student, apparently of a life the most 
 blameless, a character the most humane, locking within his conscience the 
 secret of a dark and inexplicable crime, not to be explained by intelligible 
 motives attributed to what seemed essentially opposite to his nature and 
 pursuits (viz., the mean desire of gain) brought to light after many years, 
 by a series of circumstances, regular and coherent as the links in a Drama, 
 is surely not to be classed amidst the vulgar and commonplace offences of 
 Newgate records ; and if ever crime be admissible in fiction, I confess that 
 I know of few within that wide history in which it finds its place more set 
 apart and marked out for tragic analysis and delineation. Not in the vari- 
 ous subjects it has been my fortune to select, though' they have dealt with 
 larger and more complicated interests of mankind ; not in Piiny's fearful ac- 
 count of the flaming mountain and buried city ; not in the failing attempt of 
 Kienzi to resuscitate the corpse of Roman grandeur, recorded in the annals 
 of Italy ; not in the wild and gloomy struggle in which our own Chroniclers 
 have tracked, amidst the Wars of the Roses, the sanguinary transition from 
 the feudal to the social age, can I recognize a theme more adapted to tragic 
 purposes than the image of that solitary mind, silent and bowed down be- 
 neath the weight of its solitary crime. I was not singular in my belief that 
 this subject was appropriate to the purposes to which I presumed to apply 
 it. Mr. Godwin assured me that he had often meditated a fiction, of which 
 Eugene Aram was to be the hero ; and I am informed by a high and indis- 
 putable authority,* that Sir Walter Scott expressed his surprise that a crime 
 so peculiarly adapted to tragedy or romance, had been so long untreated by 
 either. 
 
 I venture, then, to assume that the choice of my subject was sufficiently 
 legitimate. And I addressed myself to its execution with an earnest study 
 neither to palliate the offence, nor diminish the terror of the chastisement. 
 
 * Our distinguished diplomatist, Sir Hamilton Seymour,
 
 402 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 Here, unlike the milder guilt of Paul Clifford, the author was not to imply 
 reform to society, nor open in this world atonement and pardon to the crim- 
 inal. As it would have been wholly in vain to disguise, by mean tamper- 
 ings with art and truth, the ordinary habits of life and attributes of charac- 
 ter, which all record and remembrance ascribed to Eugene Aram, as it would 
 have defeated every end of the moral inculcated by his guilt, to portray, in 
 the caricature of the murderer of melodrame, a man immersed in study, of 
 whom it was noted that he turned aside from the worm in his path,* so I 
 have allowed to him whatever contrasts with his inexpiable crime have been 
 recorded on sufficient authority. But I have invariably taken care that the 
 crime itself should stand stripped of every sophistry, and be hideous to the 
 perpetrator as well as to the world. Allowing all by which attention to his 
 biography may explain the tremendous paradox of fearful guilt in a man as- 
 piring after knowledge and not generally inhumane allowing that the crime 
 came upon him in the partial insanity, produced by the combining circum- 
 stances of a brain overwrought by intense study, disturbed by an excited im- 
 agination, and the fumes of a momentary disease of the reasoning faculty, 
 consumed by the desire of knowledge, unwholesome and morbid, because 
 coveted as an end, not a means, added to the other physical causes of mental 
 aberration to be found in loneliness, and want verging upon famine all 
 these which a biographer may suppose to have conspired to his crime, have 
 never been used by the novelist as excuses for its enormity, nor indeed, lest 
 they should seem as excuses, have they ever been clearly presented to the 
 view. The moral consisted in showing more than the mere legal punishment 
 at the close. It was to show how the consciousness of the deed was to exclude 
 whatever humanity of character preceded and belied it from all aciive exer- 
 cise all social confidence : how the knowledge of the bar between the minds 
 of others and his own, deprived the criminal of all motive to ambition, and 
 blighted knowledge of all fruit : Miserable in his affections, barren in his in- 
 tellect ; clinging to solitude, yet accursed in it ; dreading as a danger the 
 fame he had once coveted ; obscure in spite of learning, hopeless in spite of 
 love, fruitless and joyless in his life, calamitous and shameful in his end, 
 surely such is no palliative of crime, no dalliance and toying with the grim- 
 ness of evil ! And surely, to any ordinary comprehension, any candid mind, 
 such is the moral conveyed by the fiction of " Eugene Aram "! 
 
 I come now to the last of the three works of which I have undertaken the 
 defence. But before I speak of the object really intended in the romance of 
 " Lucretia," I must clear up a very signal and general mistake on the part of 
 my critics. In the preface to "Lucretia," it will be observed that I speak 
 much of an intention I had long entertained of depicting the influences of 
 money upon modern civilization, and exposing what I held as a vice of the 
 day, in impatience or dislike to the slow returns of legitimate toil, whether 
 in pecuniary speculation or intellectual ambition. And upon this, wi'h the 
 exception of two or three reviewers, there has been an outcry of simultane- 
 ous discovery that the design announced in the preface was not borne out in 
 the execution of the book ; and accordingly that the book was a failure, be- 
 cause the author had not accurately defined what the book was intended to 
 convey. If these gentlemen will do me the favor to correct in themselves 
 that "impatience" which I took the liberty to denounce, and look with a 
 liitle less hasie at thnt unfortunate preface, they will, perhaps, convince 
 themselves that I never professed " Lucretia" to be the fulfilment or carry- 
 ing out of the purpose which I said I had once meditated in an earlier de- 
 
 * The Rev. Mr. Hinton said " he used frequently to observe Aram, when walking in the 
 garden, stoop down tp remove a snail or a worm from the path."
 
 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 403 
 
 sign. What I stated, I thought with sufficient distinctness, was, that when 
 I half implied my farewell to the character of a novelist, I had imagined 
 that an attempt to illus rate the influences of money might be best worked 
 out upon the stage ; that that design, with which I wished to couple some 
 exposition of the popular vice of impatience, I afterwards thought I could 
 best treat in a novel ; but that while meditating such a conception, I became 
 acquainted with the lives of two criminals, so remarkable as to engage my 
 examination and analysis ; and, that this second design had supplanted 
 the first, I thought I had made abundantly clear by the following remarks : 
 
 " I could not resist the temptation of reducing to a tale the materials 
 (viz., the lives and letters of the said two criminals) which had so engrossed 
 my interest and tasked my inquiries ; and, in this attempt, various inciden ta I 
 opportunities have occurred, if not of completely carrying out, still of inci- 
 dentally illustrating my earlier design." And, a few lines farther, I ex- 
 pressly observe, " that the delineation of the darker crime formed the staple 
 of my narrative," proceeding to remark, that in that delineation "ihe kss 
 obvious moral must be found in those uses to which poets have applied the 
 portraiture of gigantic crime." 
 
 Therefore, any impartial person will perceive at once, that even at the 
 commencement of my book its object has been, to say the least, carelessly 
 misrepresented ; that what made the purpose of an earlier and suspended 
 design, only furnished incidental illustration to the present ; and that that 
 illustration was the less noticeable in the agencies of the greater crime which 
 formed the staple of the narrative, and in which another moral must neces- 
 sarily be sought. 
 
 " The incidental opportunities " to which I limited my engagement, occur 
 chiefly in the minor agents of the fiction. William Mainwaring, with a 
 competent fortune, and abiliiies calculated, with steady perseverance, to 
 gratify ambition by an honorable repute, finds his tempter in the undue de- 
 sire of gain, and the rash impatience for distinction. Without these ene- 
 mies in his own breast, Lucretia had been powerless against him. On the 
 other hand Walter Ardworth, represented as honest in his impulse and gen- 
 erous in his sympathies, loses character for want of due regard to the pru- 
 dence in preserving, which is the counter error to greed in acquiring ; and 
 too impatient, even in the social and generous tendencies which attach him 
 to liberty as the advancement of his species, to study the application of the- 
 ory to practice, sinks into a shallow declaimer, as useless to his cause as 
 unprofitable to himself. In contrast to both these, meant to unite the 
 talenis of the one with the sympathies of the other, is sketched in outline 
 the character of John Ardworth : energetic but not rash ; uncovetous, but 
 self-denying ; valuing money at its just standard, and looking to steadfast 
 labor as the surest means of success. Incidentally (if only incidentally) the 
 secret and sinister influences of money upon conduct are also suggested in 
 tne mechanical avarice of Beck, the habitual degradation of Grabman ; in~ 
 cidentally they even apply to the career of the two arch criminals them- 
 selves covetousness and impatience are twin elements in the grasping, hol- 
 low character of the scoundrel, Varney, " alieni appetens, suiprofusus," with 
 the cold heart of the miser, the rank lusts of the spendthrift. Impatience to 
 attain to the end, which her selfish love for Mainwaring suggests, is the first 
 cause of those criminal desires in Lucretia, which are the germs of her crim- 
 inal deeds, and by which she first permits herself to encourage the contem- 
 plation of a human life as an obstacle in her way. And with all her 
 constitutional indifference to money in itself, so much is money mixed up 
 With men's fellegt as their noblest designs, that it is for the coveted inherit-
 
 404 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 ance of her son, for the power money can bestow, that her crowning and 
 most hideous guilt is principally conceived and accomplished. If it be said 
 that these are not the patent and obvious influences of money, I reply that, 
 even in my earlier design, such indirect influences were not those which I 
 stated it to be my intention to depict. The broad characteristics, whether 
 of a Harpagon, a Beveiley, or an Heir of Lynn, have been sufficiently por- 
 trayed. I .spoke emphatically of a former design to trace rather "the 
 strange and secret ways in which that arch civilizer, familiarly called money, 
 insinuates itself into our thoughts and motives, our hearts and actions." 
 But all I professed in this work, was to take advantage of incidental oppor- 
 tunities of suggesting such lessons and I have now shown that I have 
 fulfilled my intention to the extent of my engagement. 
 
 The deeper, sterner, and more tragical design to be found in the crimes 
 that form the staple of the narrative, I did not detail in my preface, partly 
 because I tiusted it might be sufficiently obvious to the more intelligent 
 reader, partly because it could not have been explained without impertinently 
 forestalling the plot, and could not well have been understood till the 
 volumes were closed, and the mind could look back upon the whole. I was 
 mistaken, it seems, in my first reason for silence, and I have no longer the 
 motive for the second. Here let me pause for a moment, and endeavor to 
 remove from the mind of the reader the principal obstacle, I apprehend, in 
 the way of his candid judgment. 
 
 Colley Gibber tells us, in his amusing autobiography, that in his time actors 
 did not like to represent the parts of villains, " lest in some sort they should 
 be confounded with the persons represented," and, indeed, that the audi- 
 ence themselves " were shy of giving applause to lago, lest they should be 
 looked on as abettors of the wickedness in view." Nay, " the Master of 
 the Revels, who then licensed plays for the stage, would strike out whole 
 scenes, where a vicious and immoral character was introduced, however vis- 
 ibly it were shown that it was to be afterwards punished or reformed." 
 Once, much to poor Colley s dismay, this wise Master of the Revels struck 
 out the whole of the first act of Richard III., "without leaving a line of 
 it." In vain was the prayer, " for a speech or two, that the other four acts 
 might limp on with a little less absurdity." The Master of the Revels was 
 obdurate, "and so the play was positively acted for some years without the 
 first act at all !" 
 
 Now something, perhaps, of this prejudice still exists in the public ; when 
 the author has presented some character of villany to their eyes, perhaps 
 they are still shy of their applause, " lest they be looked upon as abettors 
 of the wickedness described." Nay, perhaps the more lifelike and truthful 
 the villany, the greater the dread of being entrapped into owning the faith- 
 ful colors of the author, and the easier, by some artful foe in the house, 
 they may be led into venting on the writer some part of the resentment 
 which he designedly raised against his creations. This is like beheading Dr. 
 Guillotine by the very machine he intended, out of the least truculent mo- 
 tives, for the more artistic decapitation of felons. I must fntreat, however, 
 the reader to lay aside that prejudice which, however amiable, is certainly 
 unjust, and dissociate entirely the idea of what is due to the author, from 
 the sense of what is due to the characters whom the author has purposely 
 submitted to abhorrence. He does not the less hate the crimes, because he 
 has sought, in presenting, to deduce from them what warnings they may con- 
 vey : and he is abcut now more clearly to explain what moral, perhaps not 
 unprofitable, may come, clear and fair, from the guilt it has shocked the 
 good to behold,
 
 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 40$ 
 
 When the chief materials for the gloomier part of this tale were submitted 
 to me, in the lives, writings, and correspondence of the two persons repre- 
 sented under the names of Lucretia and Varney, that which made upon me 
 the deepest and most startling impression was the degree of intellectual cul- 
 tivation which accompanied and heightened their ineffable guilt. We are so 
 accustomed to consider crime the hideous offspring of ignorance, that when 
 we find it accompanied by much literary instruction, it startles the wonder of 
 the indifferent, and rouses the inquiry of those who love to explore the 
 workings of the human mind. 
 
 The person whose guilt is certainly not exaggerated in Varney, was an 
 artist, a musician, a critic, and a writer of liveliness and versatility. In his 
 correspondence, he appears to have skimmed the surface of a large and va- 
 rious reading speaks familiarly of Kant, and hints at a translation of Schel- 
 ling. In the correspondence of the original from whom is drawn the 
 Lucretia of the fiction, are apparent a cultivation more elaborate, and fac- 
 ulties more formidable. These were facts not to begot over. Some lesson, 
 like all facts, they must convey. And I searched for that lesson as a physi- 
 cian may watch some fearful disease, so rare indeed in itself, that his 
 deductions might never be applied to one precisely similar, but which, if 
 comprehended and detailed, might add to the general stores of pathology, 
 and unravel some of the more mysterious complications of the human 
 frame. It is even painful to believe in the union of mental cultivation with 
 cruel propensities or moral depravity ; still, the fact of such a union rises 
 out from every page in fhe varying chronicles of history. Sometimes the 
 most ruthless exterminator is found in one who has armed himself against 
 his kind, with all the learning of his age ; and the accomplishments of a 
 woman have been interwoven with the ferocities of a savage. The most 
 sanguinary tyrant of ancient Greece so cultivated the reasoning faculties he 
 perverted, as to induce the popular error to class him amongst the sages : 
 Nero had stored his cruel and sensual mind with the very accomplishments 
 supposed most to humanize and soften ; everything that his time could teach 
 him, refined into system the atrocities of Caesar Borgia ; Tiptoft, Earl of 
 Worcester, surpassed the most ruthless in an age of barbarity ; yet " with 
 his head," say the chroniclers, "fell half the scholarship of England"; 
 Richard the Third brought to the fierce, unlettered struggles of his day the 
 arts of Italy and the learning of Utrecht. Happily, the moral to be drawn 
 from these colossal criminals is, the utter failure of the very intellect so per- 
 verted and misused. And as, whatever our inclination to the contrary, we 
 cannot deny that in private individuals the same discordant and dismal 
 union of cultivated intellect and corrupted conscience does sometimes, 
 though rarely, exist, let us deduce from biography and fiction the same salu- 
 tary truth that consoles us in history. History makes clear the fact and 
 loud the warning. Is it wrong for fiction, that history of the inner heart, to 
 do the same ? To show the nothingness and impotence of intellect, even in 
 the attainment of its own intellectual aims, when it once admits crime as its 
 agency ; to show how useless, nay, pernicious, to the guilty possessor is the 
 very mental power he thus desecrates and perverts ; to show that goodness 
 and genial affection are essential to the triumph and fruitfulness of all that 
 mind may plot for, and force would command for these lessons, it might be 
 as permissible to dive into the guilt of Lucretia as into that of the Prince of 
 Valentinois, and expose in the humbler villain of our own day the same at- 
 tributes of chitracter, the same alliance of the sensual and the cruel, the 
 effeminate and unsparing, which may startle us in the imperial poisoner and 
 parricide of old. It is only " the property-man " of the stage that sees
 
 406 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 grandeur but in the crown or the toga. Strip off the externals. We have 
 a right to compare men with men. 
 
 1 wished, then, to show the fate of intelligence abused to the ends of 
 guilt. Somewhat of this had already been shadowed out, as I have said, in 
 the tale of " Eugene Aram." I sought now to follow the inquiry it sug- 
 gested into wider tracks, and into yet more comprehensive results. With 
 two out of the three great divisions of human intelligence, facts supplied 
 me ; I drew from invention for the third. 
 
 In Dalibard, the intention was to portray the wary, calculating, and 
 laborious intellect, which, rightly directed, leads to science ; in Varney, the 
 versatile, lively, impressionable fancy, which, purified and guided, may con- 
 duct to art ; in Lucretia, the energy and active will, which, nobly stimulated 
 and trained, may lead to eminence and success in the outward concerns of life. 
 
 All these intellects had but to be honest to succeed. Each of these intel- 
 lects divorces itself early from all interests but its own. Each works and 
 plo's solely for objects identified with itself. Each admits crime for its 
 agency ; and from that moment all three, so essentially disiinct, are merged 
 in one common infamy and degradation from that moment, every effort of 
 the intellect itself becomes a failure ; and time and justice, and the truth of 
 things, crush them beneath the Alps they themselves have created. In the 
 minutiae of treatment, all ground for such mischief, as the most cautious 
 might apprehend, in instructing depravity (if depravity such a book should 
 ever reach) as to the materials at its command, has been so studiously 
 avoided, that the reader will perceive the uniform care with which the pos- 
 sible attainment of those materials has been placed out of the reach of the 
 guilty ; the temporary success that attends the poisons employed by the 
 murderers is made to depend solely on their selection of no drug to be pro- 
 cured by commonplace villany in the secrets of chemical compounds, 
 which at no shop could be purchased, of which no hint is conveyed, except 
 that only by chemistry, the most erudite and skilful, they can possibly be 
 combined. Rather than incur, however innocently, the possibility of sup- 
 plying to one " morbid idiosyncrasy " the agencies at the service of these 
 modern Borgias, I have willingly invited the much more plausible accusation 
 of far-fetched and impracticable devices, if ever existing, wholly lost to the 
 invention, wholly out of the command, of guilt in the age in which we live. 
 
 I said in my preface that the originals from whom I had drawn had as 
 little as imagination can conceive to redeem their guilt. And this, I trust, 
 I have sternly kept in view. I have never once held them up to compas- 
 sion. I have left them that degree of ability which was justified by facts ; 
 not elevated into the genius, with which, as in history, we find such crimi- 
 nality is not accompanied. It has been even reproached to me, that I have 
 not given them genius, and that all their cunning, instruction, or audacity 
 avails them not for worldly success. Why, that was precisely one truth 
 that I aimed at ! The Borgias and the Richards fall short of genius, but 
 have ability sufficient to have won them some distinction in good, and power- 
 ful only for destruction when applied to evil. I have never suffered ability 
 so debased to pass into the command of admiration ; I have shown how im- 
 potent it was to lessen one atom of our detestation, though sufficient (if such 
 art be in the writer) to accompany detestation with terror. Pressed into the 
 service of Death, Mind itself grows grim and hateful as the king that it 
 serves. 
 
 " Black it stands as Night, 
 Fierce as ten furies, terrible as heH, 
 And shakes a deadly dart 1 "
 
 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 407 
 
 These Children of Night, by the paths they themselves have chosen, are 
 conducted to catastrophes, which, while punishing them the most in the sin 
 each had most favored, was that which each (could the soul have foreseen 
 it) would have regarded as the most fearful and appalling. Dalibard, the 
 coward and the calculator, shrinking from all physical danger, and using 
 his holiest relationships but as tools to his purpose, is betrayed at the 
 hearth he has desecrated, and butchered by the dull ruffian he had duped. 
 Varney, who had prostituted the perfection of his physical senses to their 
 vilest gratifications, luxurious amidst his infamy, effeminate in despite of his 
 animal audacity, is sentenced to the coarsest of hardships, the vilest of 
 labor, chained to the most loathsome of malefactors, doomed to all that the 
 senses, most pampered, would shudder from the most, all that the fancy, so 
 perverted, could body forth of horror and despair. Lucretia, who had made 
 on earth no god but the intellect, is cursed in the intellect smitten down 
 below the brutes, but with the consciousness of the mortal retaining, 
 amidst the ruins of all the past, only the image of her crime, standing face 
 to face with it, as a visible thing. Surely these punishments are as appall' 
 ing and as appropriate to the guilt as poelic justice can command I And 
 beside them the gibbet is mercy and reprieve. 
 
 The delineation, then, of these three arch criminals, was not the indul- 
 gence of any idle or morbid affection for the contemplation of guilt in itself, 
 it was but undertaken for an honest and ?erious purpose. And a thoughtful 
 reader will perceive that even the more subordinate images of evil introduced 
 were in accordance with one earnest and elaborate design. The dull and 
 villanous brutality of the grave-stealer, for instance, forms no superfluous 
 figure on the gloomy canvas, nor, in chaining that sordid ruffian to the more 
 pampered miscreant, is the idea of befitting punishment to the last, alone en- 
 forced. But in confounding in one lowest abyss of human degradation, the 
 man in whom no nobler faculty has ever been awakened, ai:d the man to 
 whom all faculties sufficing for the perception of good have been given, and 
 by whom they have been voluntarily perverted to odious and execrable ends, 
 it was sought to convey a truth, suggestive ef no unprofitable reflections. 
 
 That wise man, Dr. Slop, in discussing Yorick's Sermon, contends that the 
 Roman Catholic Sermons " have greatly the advantage, that they never in- 
 troduce any character below a patriarch, or a patriarch's wife, or a martyr, or 
 a saint. 'There are some very bad characters in this, however,' said my fa- 
 ther, ' and I do not think the sermon is a jot the worse for 'em.'" 
 
 Perhaps Mr. Shandy in this was a better judge than Dr. Slop. 
 
 I conlend, then, and I think that I have proved, that the design of this 
 book of the " Children of Night " was conformable to the laws of fiction and 
 the truths of history ; that the moral it enforces is serious and impressive ; 
 not the less for the pain it bequeaths ; that it can but deepen the horror of 
 guilt, and the dread of its consequences ; that it can but preach wholesome 
 lessons to the intellect, and awaken lively self-examination in the heart ; and 
 that there is not a single attempt to create for the criminals any interest save 
 that of terror and suspense in their deeds,* or to pervert for one instant the 
 channels of sympathy from their legitimate source. 
 
 I have been told, indeed, that, though these dark social phenomena may 
 exist, they are too peculiar, too rnre, for moral or artisiical treatment. 1'er- 
 haps, such critics would never have made the charge had they been aware of 
 
 * By a strange inconsistency, the very parties that reproached me for blending some re- 
 deeming good qualities with tne offences of Paul Clifford and the crime of Kugcne Aram, 
 reproach me for the opposite fault of leaving the wickedness of Varney and Lucretia utterly 
 unredeemed.
 
 408 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 the compliment it implies. Every man, really a critic in art, knows that rare 
 truths are more important than-freqaent ones. "The teaching of Nature," 
 says one who has thoroughly mastered the subject he treats of, " is as varied 
 and infinite as it is constant, and the duty of the painter is to watch for every 
 one of her lessons, and to give (for human life can admit of nothing more) 
 those in which she has manifested each of her principles in the most striking 
 and peculiar way. The rarer his phenomena, the more valuable his works 
 will be." Not, indeed, that we must delineate the rare alone. "Both the 
 frequent and the rare are parts of the same great system ; to give either ex- 
 clusively is imperfect truth." If these "Children of Night" are happily 
 rare deviations from the order established below, they do not occupy the 
 whole of my canvas, and they are surrounded with images more bright and, I 
 believe, more frequent. Is there nothing innocent in Helen ? Nothing 
 frank and pure in the youth of Percy? Nothing honest and upright in John 
 Ardworth? Nothing benevolent in Fielden ? Nothing amiable and genial 
 in Sir Miles St. John ? And as the general disposition and tendencies of an 
 author are not to be judged by one work alone, so I may venture to invite 
 those who have really read me, to add to the contrast of the gloom and guilt 
 depicted in " Lucretia," whatever of gentler fancies they may rerm-mber in 
 the" Pilgrims of the Rhine," of attempts to symbolize the beautv of Art in 
 the romance of " Zanoni," or to embody the steadfast virtue of practical life 
 in the Mordaunt of " The Disowned." And if they will permit their thoughts 
 to wander for a moment through the whole range of my writings, they will 
 own at least that, whatever their faults, they are not to be accused of same- 
 ness in the characters, nor of monotony in treatment. 
 
 " Lucretia " I confess to be a painful book ; all delineation of fearful crime 
 and the ruin it entails must necessarily be so. If, in its treatmen:, I have 
 overstepped the true limits of terror, that may be an error in art, bui not one 
 (be it remembered and distinguished) in moral tendency and design.* 
 
 There is this distinction between the old tragedy and the new. With the 
 Greek, Fate was the main instrument of woe and crime ; so with the Greek, 
 there was little need of mental analysis ; little need to show from what errors 
 of his own man suffered and sinned. Fate stalked across his way or stood 
 upon his hearth his fell and irresistible foe. An oracle declared he should 
 murder, a god led his steps to his doom. But, with us, guilt or woe has its 
 source in ourselves. Our conscience is our oracle, our deeds shape our fate. 
 And though, in a few rare instances, modern writers have still had recourse 
 to the iron deity of old, it is obvious that unless the instrumentality of a 
 power which we cannot influence and control be most sparingly and cautiously 
 employed, we should seem to sanction the dangerous principle that we are 
 the passive and unconscious tools, not the active and reasoning" contrivers, of 
 the evil that conducts us to the abyss. Hence arises the imperious necessity, 
 for those who resott to the sources of tragedy, and trace from them the chan- 
 nels of woe or guilt, to search narrowly and patiently (often, it may be, 
 with distaste to themselves) into all that is dark and hidden in the mechan- 
 ism of the mind for the causes of evil, and the links between the thought 
 and the sin. And thus in proportion to the crime they depict, and the de- 
 struction it effects, must be the gloom of the impression they create, and tlic 
 degree of pain tiny inflict. If, in the narrative of these " Children of 
 NightV"- if, as sorrie*Hss;KrT7 " its horror is burlesque," and its treatment 
 "excites rather ridicule than awe" if, as I am assured by others, it is 
 
 * In the present edition it will be seen that the author has endeavored, by an alteration 
 in the catastrophe, to lighten the pain which the earlier cast of the work had produced.
 
 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 409 
 
 " dulness upon dulness," " nothing graphic in the pictures," " nothing strik- 
 ing in the incidents," then, though its moral cannot be pernicious, I have 
 certainly failed to render it instructive. But if it bequeaths (as the facts on 
 which it is founded should enable it to do) the effect of tragedy thoroughly 
 in earnest ; a sensation of tenor that oppresses the more from the conviction 
 that reality lies beneath the fiction ; a relief in the heartfelt detestation of the 
 crime from which the terror, proceeds; a diead of "the destructive power" 
 which is the essence of the hateful combination between intellect and guilt, 
 and a desire to rush for escape to the cheerful atmosphere of the good then 
 does this book come, at least, within the alloted limits of the art that is built 
 upon terror, and sanctions its connection with pain and distress,* and then 
 does it attain to those moral effects which are produced by the means of the 
 passions. -^ 
 
 The moral conveyed in all works of the imagination is in part distinct and / 
 immediate, in part also it is untraceable, distant, and indirect. And this lat- ! 
 ter part is perhaps the most really valuable and efficient. Ask any thought- 
 ful and educated man what works have produced the most marked and rec- 
 ognized influence on his conduct, and I believe he will never name a fiction 
 or a poem. Next, and unspeakably subordinate, to the more sacred moni- 
 tors whose counsel he reverently obeys, he will tell us, perhaps, of some 
 homely treatise, or some artless biography. But ask that mm to dissociate 
 from the general influences on his conduct whatever he may have learned ' 
 from the pages of poetry and fiction, and he will doubtless tell you it is im- 
 possible. He will acknowledge how much, yet how insensibly, they have 
 strengthened his moral impressions ; how much they have suggested reflec- 
 tions that brighten his perceptions of truths ; how much they have added to 
 that general knowledge of the heart which has set emotion on its guard, and 
 animated into generous passion his love for the noble and the good, his scorn 
 for the sordid and the evil. And this it is, I presume, that some writer in- | 
 tended to express when he finely asked, " Who amongst us now living can 
 tell what he would have been if Shakspeare had never existed ? " 
 
 None of my readers will ever, I know, have to resist one temptation to a 
 villany, a millionth part so hateful as that described in " Lucretia " as a 
 monstrous phenomenon. But in the struggles of life, the minor seductions 
 of evil are often repelled by the lively horror derived from the doom which 
 poet or tale-teller has assigned to concessions to the greater. If this were 
 not so, the gigantic and unfamiliar crimes depicted on the heroic s'age, would 
 be but idle exaggerations. Who amongst the audience that listen to " Mac- 
 beth " will have to wr.de through blood to a throne, yet who may not have 
 some selfish object his ambition would promote, and be tempted by the mean- 
 er " juggles of the fiend " ? In the picture of a crime dwells the warning to 
 an error. Divers and specious are the allurements to attain to ends coveted 
 by the intellect, through means more or less disapproved by the conscience : 
 and not unsalutary may be the true lesson to be derived from " Lucretia" if 
 the impressions it bequeaths, though vigue and unanalyzed, serve to quicken 
 
 * In quoting the following passage, it is not with the presumption of advancing any claim 
 to the high attainment of which mention is made, but simply to show that, in the Judg- 
 ment of a very eminent critic, art finds in t/istress one ingredient of the sublime ; and though 
 of course, an effect in not sublime because it is distressing, yet at least it is not an offence 
 to art that the sensation of distress is occasioned. Though a writer may make no pretence 
 to the sublime, he may still apply for such effects as his degrees of power permits him to 
 produce to whatever are suggested as its sources. " Of ftr/ing; little more can be said, 
 than that the idea of bodily pain hi all the modes and degrees of labor, pain, anguish tor- 
 ment, is productive of the sublime, and nothing else in this sense can produce it." " Its 
 strongest emotion (that of the sublimo) is an emotion of distress, and no pleasure from a 
 positive cause belongs to it," DCKKE (' tite Sublime a n<( Beautiful, part ii. Sect. aa.
 
 410 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 the instantaneous conviction that all which defiles the conscience defeats and 
 defrauds the intellect. 
 
 " The first step passed, compels us on to more. 
 And guilt proves fate, which was but choice before." 
 
 A task reluctantly undertaken is now fulfilled. I have shown that it is 
 uncharitable and rash to decide in haste against the mornl purposes of writ- 
 ers who have no object to deprave ; I have shown the laws and examples 
 which render justifiable in ficiion the delineations of crime ; I have exposed 
 the falsity of the charge so reiterated against myst If, that habitually, and hy 
 preference, I have made criminals my heroes ; I have shown that, out of 
 sixteen fictions, to three only can this charge be applied. I have, I trust, 
 made it manifest, that each of these three will bear the test of the strictest 
 reference to the due restiictions to be placed upon their treatment and de- 
 sign ; that no sophistry has been employed to vindicate the crime ; that the 
 crime has not been of that nature in which the narrative needs, or has found, 
 inflammatory appeals to the more tempting passions obtruding the presen- 
 tation of licentious images, and clothing itself in a garb which rather allures 
 than revolts ; and, finally, I trust I have made it clear to the reader, that 
 such stern and sombre subjects have not been undertaken without the befit- 
 ting gravity of thoughtful and earnest purpose. 
 
 If I have not entered at length into the subjects of my other works, it is 
 because such self-criticism would have been unpardonable, unless for the 
 imperative necessities of self-defence each singly considered, their moral 
 tendencies and objects have been tacitly admitted, or only vaguely assailed ; 
 and the reader will acknowledge, that in mainly confining myself to those 
 works in which criminals have been made the predominant characters, I 
 have fairly and honestly met the gravamen of the charge that has been urged 
 against me. The rest of my writings, therefore, I confidently leave to the 
 recollections of the general reader ; and though, amongst works so numer- 
 ous, commenced at so early an age, and comprehending delineations of life, 
 with its manners and its passions, so widely various, there may occur, un- 
 avoidably, some errors of judgment, some passages too lightly considered 
 (and what writer could bear a malignant research through more than forty 
 volumes, made with a design of interpreting every sentence to the worst ?), 
 yet I am convinced that the result of my candid survey would establish the 
 fact, that all those works were conceived with the heartfelt desire to minis- 
 ter, however humbly, to truth and good, and executed with a reverent care 
 to unsettle no man's mind as to the clear principles of religion, or the broad 
 distinctions which the conscience has established between what we should 
 aspire to, and what we should avoid. 
 
 This vindication, which, I think has been conducted in that fair spirit of 
 dispassionate argumtnt which I prescribed to myself at the commencement, 
 shall be sent to those whose charges, less temperately made, have called it 
 forth. It is at their option to treat it with silence, or, if it so please them, 
 in the same tone, and with recourse to the same arts, by which they have 
 previously sought to pervert my meaning, and degrade my name ; or why 
 should I think so ill, even of enemies, as not to hope that some amongst 
 them, at least, while retaining fairly their opinion of the literary demerits 
 of my writings, may retract what alone I have the right to complain of, viz., 
 heedless and unconsidered misstatements as to their honest tendency and 
 design ? Be 'his as it may, though the wrong that has been done me may 
 not, and cannot, be readily and lightly repaired ; though I am aware that 
 many who never read my works have yet read, and may be long impressed
 
 A WORD TO THE PUBLIC. 411 
 
 by, the attacks of their assailants ; that many more, who have read both 
 the works and the attacks, will never read this explanation of the one and 
 this reply to the other nay, even though these pages, like the works that 
 preceded them, may he garbled and distorted from their meaning yet I am 
 immovably persuaded that, from few to more, from the segment to the circle, 
 the main truths I have stated will gradually but surely penetrate and ex- 
 tend ; and that, whatever literary faults and blemishes in my writings may 
 be justly condemned, soon or late, the author will be held to have given an 
 unanswerable vindication of the legitimate selection of his materials, and his 
 conscientious sense of his more serious responsibilities. 
 
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