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+Project Gutenberg's Confessions Of Con Cregan, by Charles James Lever
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost
+no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use
+it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Confessions Of Con Cregan
+       An Irish Gil Blas
+
+Author: Charles James Lever
+
+Illustrator: Phiz.
+
+Release Date: April 19, 2010 [EBook #32060]
+Last Updated: May 7, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFESSIONS OF CON CREGAN ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+_CONFESSIONS OF_
+
+CON CREGAN
+
+ _An Irish Gil Blas_
+
+
+By Charles Lever
+
+
+With Illustrations by Phiz.
+
+
+Boston: Little, Brown, And Company. 1913
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+CHAPTER I.   A PEEP AT MY FATHER
+
+CHAPTER II.   ANOTHER PEEP AT MY FATHER
+
+CHAPTER III.   A FIRST STEP ON LIFE'S LADDER
+
+CHAPTER IV.   HOW I ENTERED COLLEGE, AND HOW I LEFT IT
+
+CHAPTER V.   A PEEP AT "HIGH AND LOW COMPANY"
+
+CHAPTER VI.   VIEWS OF LIFE
+
+CHAPTER VII.   A BOLD STROKE FOR AN OPENING IN THE WORLD
+
+CHAPTER VIII.   A QUIET CHOP AT 'KILLEEN'S'
+
+CHAPTER IX.   SIR DUDLEY BROUGHTON
+
+CHAPTER X.   THE VOYAGE OUT
+
+CHAPTER XI.   MEANS AND MEDITATIONS
+
+CHAPTER XII.   A GLIMPSE OF ANOTHER OPENING IN LIFE
+
+CHAPTER XIII.   QUEBEC
+
+CHAPTER XIV.   FELL IN AND OUT WITH THE WIDOW DAVIS
+
+CHAPTER XV.   AN EMIGRANTS FIRST STEP ON SHORE
+
+CHAPTER XVI.   A NIGHT IN THE LOWER TOWN
+
+CHAPTER XVII.   MY LUCUBRATIONS ON THE ST. LAWRENCE
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.   THE ORDINARY OF ALL NATIONS
+
+CHAPTER XIX.   ON BOARD THE 'CHRISTOBAL'
+
+CHAPTER XX.   THE LOG-HUT AT BRAZOS
+
+CHAPTER XXI.   A NIGHT IN THE FOREST OF TEXAS
+
+CHAPTER XXII.   THE LAZARETTO OF BEXAR
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.   THE PLACER
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.   THE FATE OF A GAMBUSINO
+
+CHAPTER XXV.   LA SEÑHORA
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.   THE DISCOVERY
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.   GUAJUAQUALLA
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.   THE VOYAGE OF THE 'ACADIE'
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.   THE CARCEL MORENA AT MALAGA
+
+CHAPTER XXX.   CONSOLATIONS OF DIPLOMACY
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.   A NEW WALK IN PROGRESSIVE LIFE
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.   MOI ET MON PRINCE
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.     A SOIRÉE IN THE GREAT WORLD
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.   CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+An eminent apothecary of my acquaintance once told me that at each
+increase to his family, he added ten per cent to the price of his drugs,
+and as his quiver was full of daughters, Blackdraught, when I knew him,
+was a more costly cordial than Curaçoa.
+
+To apply this to my own case, I may mention that I had a daughter born
+to me about the time this story dates from, and not having at my command
+the same resource as my friend the chemist, I adopted the alternative of
+writing another story, to be published contemporaneously with that now
+appearing,--"The Daltons;" and not to incur the reproach so natural in
+criticism--of over-writing myself--I took care that the work should come
+out without a name.
+
+I am not sure that I made any attempt to disguise my style; I
+was conscious of scores of blemishes--I decline to call them
+mannerisms--that would betray me: but I believe I trusted most of all to
+the fact that I was making my monthly appearance to the world in another
+story, and with another publisher, and I had my hope that my small
+duplicity would thus escape undetected.
+
+I was aware that there was a certain amount of peril in running an
+opposition coach on the line I had made in some degree my own; not to
+say that it might be questionable policy to glut the public with a kind
+of writing more remarkable for peculiarity than perfection.
+
+I remember that excellent Irishman Bianconi, not the less Irish that he
+was born at Lucca,--which was simply a "bull,"--once telling me that to
+popularize a road on which few people were then travelling, and on which
+his daily two-horse car was accustomed to go its journey, with two or at
+most three passengers, the idea occurred to him that he would start
+an opposition conveyance, of course in perfect secrecy, and with every
+outward show of its being a genuine rival. He effected his object with
+such success that his own agents were completely taken in, and never
+wearied of reporting, for his gratification, all the shortcomings and
+disasters of the rival company.
+
+At length, and when the struggle between the competitors was at its
+height, one of his drivers rushed frantically into his office one day,
+crying out, "Give a crown-piece to drink your honor's health for what I
+done to-day."
+
+"What was it, Larry?"
+
+"I killed the yallow mare of the opposition car; I passed her on the
+long hill, when she was blown, and I bruk her heart before she reached
+the top."
+
+"After this I gave up the opposition," said my friend; "'mocking was
+catching,' as the old proverb says; and I thought that one might carry a
+joke a little too far."
+
+I had this experience before me, and I will not say it did not impress
+me. My puzzle was, however, in this wise: I imagined I did not care on
+which horse I stood to win; in other words, I persuaded myself that it
+was a matter of perfect indifference to me which book took best with the
+public, and whether the reader thought better of "The Daltons" or "Con
+Cregan," that it could in no way concern me.
+
+That I totally misunderstood myself, or misconceived the case before
+me, I am now quite ready to own. For one notice of "The Daltons" by the
+Press, there were at least three or four of "Con Cregan," and while the
+former was dismissed with a few polite and measured phrases, the latter
+was largely praised and freely quoted. Nor was this all. The critics
+discovered in "Con Cregan" a freshness and a vigor which were so sadly
+deficient in "The Daltons." It was, they averred, the work of a less
+practised writer, but of one whose humor was more subtle, and whose
+portraits, roughly sketched as they were, indicated a far higher power
+than the well-known author of "Harry Lorrequer."
+
+The unknown--for there was no attempt to guess him--was pronounced not
+to be an imitator of Mr. Lever, though there were certain small points
+of resemblance; for he was clearly original in his conception of
+character, in his conduct of his story, and in his dialogues, and there
+were traits of knowledge of life in scenes and under conditions to
+which Mr. Lever could lay no claim. One critic, who had found out more
+features of resemblance between the two writers than his colleagues,
+uttered a friendly caution to Mr. Lever to look to his laurels, for
+there was a rival in the field possessing many of the characteristics by
+which he first won public favor, but a racy drollery in description and
+a quaintness in his humor all his own. It was the amusement of one of my
+children at the time to collect these sage comments and torment me with
+their judgments, and I remember a droll little note-book, in which they
+were pasted, and read aloud from time to time with no small amusement
+and laughter.
+
+One or two of these I have even now before me:--
+
+"Our new novelist has great stuff in him."--_Bath Gazette_.
+
+"'Con Cregan'--author unknown--begins promisingly; his first number is a
+decided hit."--_Cambridge Chronicle_.
+
+"The writer of 'Con Cregan' is a new hand, but we predict he will be a
+success"."--_Cambridge Advertiser_.
+
+"A new tale, in a style with which Lever and his followers have made us
+acquainted."--_Hampshire Advertiser_.
+
+"This tale is from the pen of an able Irish writer. The dialogue is very
+smartly written, so much so--and we cannot pay the writer a more
+genuine compliment--that it bespeaks the author to be an Irishman,
+&c."--_Somerset Gazette_.
+
+"'Con Cregan '--by an unnamed author--is a new candidate for
+popularity," &c.--_Northern Whig_, Belfast.
+
+"The writer must be an Irishman."--_Nottingham Gazette_.
+
+"A new bark, launched by an unknown builder."--_Cheltenham Chronicle_.
+
+"That the author's name is not disclosed will not affect the popularity
+of this work,--one of the most attractive," &c.--_Oxford Journal_.
+
+"This is a new tale by the pen of some able Irish writer, the first part
+of which is only published."--_Ten Town Messenger_.
+
+"Another new candidate for popular fame, and 'Harry Lorrequer' had
+better look to his laurels. There is a poacher in the manor in the
+person of the writer of 'Con Cregan.'"--_Yorkshireman_.
+
+"'Con Cregan' promises to become as great a fact as 'Harry Lorrequer.'
+"--_People's Journal_.
+
+"The author of 'Con Cregan,' whoever he be, is no ordinary man."
+
+"Another daring author has entered the lists, and with every promise of
+success."--_Exeter Post_.
+
+It may sound very absurd to confess it, but I was excessively provoked
+at the superior success of the unacknowledged book, and felt the rivalry
+to the full as painfully as though I had never written a line of it. Was
+it that I thought well of one story and very meanly of the other, and
+in consequence was angry at the want of concurrence of my critics? I
+suspect not. I rather imagine I felt hurt at discovering how little hold
+I had, in my acknowledged name, on a public with whom I fancied myself
+on such good terms; and it pained me to see with what little difficulty
+a new and a nameless man could push for the place I had believed to be
+my own.
+
+"The Daltons" I always wrote, after my habit, in the morning; I never
+turned to "Con Cregan" until nigh midnight; and I can still remember the
+widely different feelings with which I addressed myself to the task I
+liked, and to a story which, in the absurd fashion I have mentioned, was
+associated with wounded self-love.
+
+It is scarcely necessary for me to say that there was no plan whatever
+in this book. My notion was, that "Con Cregan," once created, would not
+fail to find adventures. The vicissitudes of daily poverty would beget
+shifts and contrivances; with these successes would come ambition
+and daring. Meanwhile a growing knowledge of life would develop his
+character, and I should soon see whether he would win the silver spoon
+or spoil the horn. I ask pardon in the most humble manner for presuming
+for a moment to associate my hero with the great original of Le Sage.
+
+But I used the word "Irish" adjectively, and with the same amount of
+qualification that one employs to a diamond, and indeed, as I have read
+it in a London paper, to a "Lord."
+
+An American officer, of whom I saw much at the time, was my guide to the
+interior of Mexico; he had been originally in the Santa Fé expedition,
+was a man of most adventurous disposition, and a love of stirring
+incident and peril, that even broken-down health and a failing
+constitution could not subdue.
+
+It was often very difficult for me to tear myself away from his Texan
+and Mexican experiences, his wild scenes of prairie life, or his sojourn
+amongst Indian tribes, and keep to the more commonplace events of my own
+story; nor could all my entreaties confine him to those descriptions of
+places and scenes which I needed for my own characters.
+
+The saunter after tea-time, with this companion, generally along that
+little river that tumbles through the valley of the Bagno di Lucca, was
+the usual preparation for my night's work; and I came to it as intensely
+possessed by Mexico--dress, manner, and landscape--as though I had been
+drawing on the recollection of a former journey.
+
+So completely separated in my mind were the two tales by the different
+parts of the day in which I wrote them, that no character of "The
+Daltons" ever crossed my mind after nightfall, nor was there a trace of
+"Con Cregan" in my head at my breakfast next morning.
+
+None of the characters of this story have been taken from life. The one
+bit of reality in the whole is in the sketch of "Anticosti," where I
+myself suffered once a very small shipwreck, but of which I retain a
+very vivid recollection to this hour.
+
+I have already owned that I bore a grudge to the story as I wrote it;
+nor have I outlived the memory of the chagrin it cost me, though it is
+many a year since I acknowledged that "Con Cregan" was by the author of
+"Harry Lorrequer."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. A PEEP AT MY FATHER
+
+When we shall have become better acquainted, my worthy reader, there
+will be little necessity for my insisting upon a fact which at this
+early stage of our intimacy, I deem it requisite to mention; namely,
+that my native modesty and bashfulness are only second to my veracity,
+and that while the latter quality in a manner compels me to lay an
+occasional stress upon my own goodness of heart, generosity, candor, and
+so forth, I have, notwithstanding, never introduced the subject without
+a pang,--such a pang as only a sensitive and diffident nature can suffer
+or comprehend. There now, not another word of preface or apology!
+
+I was born in a little cabin on the borders of Meath and King's County.
+It stood on a small triangular bit of ground, beside a cross-road; and
+although the place was surveyed every ten years or so, they were never
+able to say to which county we belonged; there being just the same
+number of arguments for one side as for the other,--a circumstance,
+many believed, that decided my father in his original choice of the
+residence; for while, under the "disputed boundary question," he paid
+no rates or county cess, he always made a point of voting at both county
+elections! This may seem to indicate that my parent was of a naturally
+acute habit; and indeed the way he became possessed of the bit of ground
+will confirm that impression.
+
+There was nobody of the rank of gentry in the parish, nor even
+"squireen;" the richest being a farmer, a snug old fellow, one Henry
+M'Cabe, that had two sons, who were always fighting between themselves
+which was to have the old man's money,--Peter, the elder, doing
+everything to injure Mat, and Mat never backward in paying off the
+obligation. At last Mat, tired out in the struggle, resolved he would
+bear no more. He took leave of his father one night, and next day set
+off for Dublin, and 'listed in the "Buffs." Three weeks after, he sailed
+for India; and the old man, overwhelmed by grief, took to his bed, and
+never arose from it after.
+
+Not that his death was any way sudden, for he lingered on for months
+long,--Peter always teasing him to make his will, and be revenged on
+"the dirty spalpeen" that disgraced the family, but old Harry as stoutly
+resisting, and declaring that whatever he owned should be fairly divided
+between them.
+
+These disputes between them were well known in the neighborhood. Few of
+the country people passing the house at night but had overheard the old
+man's weak, reedy voice, and Peter's deep, hoarse one, in altercation.
+When at last--it was on a Sunday night--all was still and quiet in the
+house,--not a word, not a footstep, could be heard, no more than if it
+were uninhabited,--the neighbors looked knowingly at each other, and
+wondered if the old man was worse--if he was dead!
+
+It was a little after midnight that a knock came to the door of our
+cabin. I heard it first, for I used to sleep in a little snug basket
+near the fire; but I did n't speak, for I was frightened. It was
+repeated still louder, and then came a cry, "Con Cregan! Con, I
+say, open the door! I want you." I knew the voice well; it was Peter
+M'Cabe's; but I pretended to be fast asleep, and snored loudly. At last
+my father unbolted the door, and I heard him say, "Oh, Mr. Peter, what's
+the matter? Is the ould man worse?"
+
+"Faix that's what he is, for he 's dead!"
+
+"Glory be his bed! when did it happen?"
+
+"About an hour ago," said Peter, in a voice that even I from my corner
+could perceive was greatly agitated. "He died like an ould haythen, Con,
+and never made a will!"
+
+"That's bad," says my father; for he was always a polite man, and said
+whatever was pleasing to the company.
+
+"It is bad," said Peter; "but it would be worse if we could n't help
+it. Listen to me now, Corny, I want ye to help me in this business; and
+here's five guineas in goold, if ye do what I bid ye. You know that ye
+were always reckoned the image of my father, and before he took ill ye
+were mistaken for each other every day of the week."
+
+"Anan!" said my father; for he was getting frightened at the notion,
+without well knowing why.
+
+"Well, what I want is, for ye to come over to the house, and get into
+the bed."
+
+"Not beside the corpse?" said my father, trembling.
+
+"By no means, but by yourself; and you 're to pretend to be my father,
+and that ye want to make yer will before ye die; and then I 'll send for
+the neighbors, and Billy Scanlan the schoolmaster, and ye 'll tell him
+what to write, laving all the farm and everything to me,--ye understand.
+And as the neighbors will see ye, and hear yer voice, it will never be
+believed but that it was himself that did it."
+
+"The room must be very dark," says my father.
+
+"To be sure it will, but have no fear! Nobody will dare to come nigh the
+bed; and ye 'll only have to make a cross with yer pen under the name."
+
+"And the priest?" said my father.
+
+"My father quarrelled with him last week about the Easter dues, and
+Father Tom said he 'd not give him the 'rites,' and that's lucky now!
+Come along now, quick, for we 've no time to lose; it must be all
+finished before the day breaks."
+
+My father did not lose much time at his toilet, for he just wrapped his
+big coat 'round him, and slipping on his brogues, left the house. I
+sat up in the basket and listened till they were gone some minutes; and
+then, in a costume as light as my parent's, set out after them, to
+watch the course of the adventure. I thought to take a short cut, and
+be before them; but by bad luck I fell into a bog-hole, and only escaped
+being drowned by a chance. As it was, when I reached the house, the
+performance had already begun.
+
+I think I see the whole scene this instant before my eyes, as I sat on
+a little window with one pane, and that a broken one, and surveyed the
+proceeding. It was a large room, at one end of which was a bed, and
+beside it a table, with physic-bottles, and spoons, and teacups; a
+little farther off was another table, at which sat Billy Scanlan, with
+all manner of writing materials before him. The country people sat two,
+sometimes three, deep round the walls, all intently eager and anxious
+for the coming event. Peter himself went from place to place, trying
+to smother his grief, and occasionally helping the company to whiskey,
+which was supplied with more than accustomed liberality.
+
+All my consciousness of the deceit and trickery could not deprive the
+scene of a certain solemnity. The misty distance of the half-lighted
+room; the highly wrought expression of the country people's faces,
+never more intensely excited than at some moment of this kind; the low,
+deep-drawn breathings, unbroken save by a sigh or a sob,--the tribute of
+affectionate sorrow to some lost friend, whose memory was thus forcibly
+brought back; these, I repeat it, were all so real that, as I looked, a
+thrilling sense of awe stole over me, and I actually shook with fear.
+
+A low, faint cough, from the dark corner where the bed stood, seemed to
+cause even a deeper stillness; and then, in a silence where the buzzing
+of a fly would have been heard, my father said, "Where's Billy Scanlan?
+I want to make my will!"
+
+"He's here, father!" said Peter, taking Billy by the hand and leading
+him to the bedside.
+
+"Write what I bid ye, Billy, and be quick; for I hav'n't a long time
+afore me here. I die a good Catholic, though Father O'Rafferty won't
+give me the 'rites '!"
+
+A general chorus of muttered "Oh! musha, musha!" was now heard through
+the room; but whether in grief over the sad fate of the dying man, or
+the unflinching severity of the priest, is hard to say.
+
+"I die in peace with all my neighbors and all mankind!"
+
+Another chorus of the company seemed to approve these charitable
+expressions.
+
+"I bequeath unto my son Peter,--and never was there a better son, or
+a decenter boy!--have you that down? I bequeath unto my son Peter the
+whole of my two farms of Killimundoonery and Knocksheboora, with the
+fallow meadows behind Lynch's house; the forge, and the right of turf on
+the Dooran bog. I give him, and much good may it do him, Lanty Cassara's
+acre, and the Luary field, with the limekiln; and that reminds me that
+my mouth is just as dry; let me taste what ye have in the jug." Here the
+dying man took a very hearty pull, and seemed considerably refreshed
+by it. "Where was I, Billy Scanlan?" says he; "oh, I remember, at the
+limekiln; I leave him--that's Peter, I mean--the two potato-gardens at
+Noonan's Well; and it is the elegant fine crops grows there."
+
+"An't you gettin' wake, father, darlin'?" says Peter, who began to be
+afraid of my father's loquaciousness; for, to say the truth, the punch
+got into his head, and he was greatly disposed to talk.
+
+"I am, Peter, my son," says he; "I am getting wake; just touch my lips
+again with the jug. Ah, Peter, Peter, you watered the drink!"
+
+"No, indeed, father; but it's the taste is leavin' you," says Peter; and
+again a low chorus of compassionate pity murmured through the cabin.
+
+"Well, I'm nearly done now," says my father; "there's only one little
+plot of ground remaining; and I put it on you, Peter,--as ye wish to
+live a good man, and die with the same easy heart I do now,--that ye
+mind my last words to ye here. Are ye listening? Are the neighbors
+listening? Is Billy Scanlan listening?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Yes, father. We're all minding," chorused the audience.
+
+"Well, then, it's my last will and testament, and may--Give me over the
+jug." Here he took a long drink. "And may that blessed liquor be poison
+to me if I 'm not as eager about this as every other part of my will.
+I say, then, I bequeath the little plot at the cross-roads to poor Con
+Cre-gan; for he has a heavy charge, and is as honest and as hard-working
+a man as ever I knew. Be a friend to him, Peter, dear; never let him
+want while ye have it yourself; think of me on my death-bed whenever he
+asks ye for any trifle. Is it down, Billy Scanlan? the two acres at the
+cross to Con Cregan and his heirs in _secla seclorum_. Ah, blessed be
+the saints! but I feel my heart lighter after that," says he; "a good
+work makes an easy conscience. And now I 'll drink all the company's
+good health, and many happy returns--"
+
+What he was going to add, there 's no saying; but Peter, who was now
+terribly frightened at the lively tone the sick man was assuming,
+hurried all the people away into another room, to let his father die in
+peace.
+
+When they were all gone Peter slipped back to my father, who was putting
+on his brogues in a corner. "Con," says he, "ye did it all well; but
+sure that was a joke about the two acres at the cross."
+
+"Of course it was, Peter," says he; "sure it was all a joke, for the
+matter of that. Won't I make the neighbors laugh hearty to-morrow when I
+tell them all about it!"
+
+"You wouldn't be mean enough to betray me?" says Peter, trembling with
+fright.
+
+"Sure ye would n't be mean enough to go against yer father's dying
+words," says my father,--"the last sentence ever he spoke? And here he
+gave a low, wicked laugh, that made myself shake with fear.
+
+"Very well, Con!" says Peter, holding out his hand; "a bargain's a
+bargain; yer a deep fellow, that's all!" And so it ended; and my father
+slipped quietly home over the bog, mighty well satisfied with the legacy
+he left himself.
+
+And thus we became the owners of the little spot known to this day as
+Con's Acre; of which, more hereafter.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. ANOTHER PEEP AT MY FATHER
+
+My father's prosperity had the usual effect it has on similar cases.
+
+It lifted him into a different sphere of companionship and suggested new
+habits of life. No longer necessitated to labor daily for his bread,
+by a very slight exercise of industry he could cultivate his
+"potato-garden;" and every one who knows anything of Ireland well knows
+that the potato and its corollary, the pig, supply every want of an
+Irish cottier household.
+
+Being thus at liberty to dispose of himself and his time, my parent was
+enabled to practise a long-desired and much-coveted mode of life; which
+was to frequent "sheebeens" and alehouses, and all similar places of
+resort,--not, indeed, for the gratification of any passion for drink,
+for my father only indulged when he was "treated," and never could bring
+himself to spend a farthing in liquor himself, but his great fondness
+for these places took its origin in his passion for talk. Never, indeed,
+lived there a man--from Lord Brougham himself downwards--who had a
+greater taste for gossip and loquaciousness than my father. It mattered
+little what the subject, he was always ready; and whether it were a
+crim. con. in the newspapers, a seizure for rent, a marriage in
+high life, or a pig in the pound,--there he was, explaining away all
+difficult terms of law and jurisprudence; and many a difficulty that Tom
+Cafferty, the postmaster, had attempted in vain to solve was, by a kind
+of "writ of error," removed to my father's court for explanation and
+decision.
+
+That he soon became a kind of authority in the neighboring town of
+Kilbeggan need not excite any surprise. It is men of precisely his kind,
+and with talents of an order very similar to his, that wield influence
+in the great cities of the earth. It is your talking, pushing, forward
+men, seeming always confident in what they say, never acknowledging an
+error nor confessing a defeat, who take the lead in life. With average
+ability, and ten times the average assurance, they reach the goal that
+bashful merit never even so much as gets within sight of.
+
+His chief resort, however, was the Court of Quarter Sessions, where he
+sat from the first opening case to the last judgment, watching with an
+intense interest all the vacillating changes of the law's uncertainty,
+which unquestionably were not in any way diminished by the singular
+individual who presided in that seat of justice. Simon Ball, or, as he
+was better known at the bar, Snow Ball,--an epithet he owed to his white
+head and eyebrows,--had qualified himself for the Bench by improving
+upon the proverbial attribute of justice. He was not only blind but
+deaf. For something like forty-five years he had walked the hall of the
+Four Courts with an empty bag, and a head scarcely more encumbered, when
+one morning--no one could guess why--the "Gazette" announced that
+the Lord Lieutenant had appointed him to the vacant chairmanship
+of Westmeath,--a promotion which had the effect of confounding all
+political animosity by its perfect unaccountableness.
+
+It is a law of Nature that nothing ever goes to loss. Bad wine will make
+very tolerable vinegar; spoiled hay is converted into good manure; and
+so, a very middling lawyer often drops down into a very respectable
+judge. Had the gods but acknowledged Mr. Ball's abilities some years
+earlier, doubtless he had been an exception to the theory.
+
+They waited, however, so long that both sight and hearing were in
+abeyance when the promotion came. It seemed to rally him, however, this
+act of recognition, although late. It was a kind of corroboration of the
+self-estimate of a long life, and he prepared to show the world that he
+was very different from what they took him for. No men have the bump
+of self-esteem like lawyers; they live, and grow old, and die, always
+fancying that Holts, and Hales, and Mansfields are hid within the
+unostentatious exterior of their dusty garments; and that the wit that
+dazzles, and the pathos that thrills, are all rusting inside, just
+for want of a little of that cheering encouragement by which their
+contemporaries are clad in silk and walk in high places. Snow Ball was
+determined to show the world its error, and with a smart frock and green
+spectacles he took the field like a "fine old Irish barrister," with
+many a dry joke or sly sarcasm curled up in the wrinkles beside his
+mouth. However cheap a man may be held by his fellows in the "Hall,"
+he is always sure of a compensation in the provinces. There the country
+gentlemen looked upon their chairman as a Blackstone,--not alone
+a storehouse of law, but a great appeal upon questions of general
+knowledge and information. I should scarcely have ventured upon what
+some of my readers may regard as a mere digression, if it were not that
+the gentleman and the peculiar nature of his infirmities had led to an
+intimate relation with my father. My parent's fondness for law, and all
+appertaining to it, had attached him to the little inn where Mr. Ball
+usually put up at each season of his visit; and gradually, by tendering
+little services, as fetching an umbrella when it rained, hastening for a
+book of reference if called for, searching out an important witness, and
+probably by a most frequent and respectful use of the title "my lord,"
+instead of the humble "your worship," he succeeded in so ingratiating
+himself with the judge that, without exactly occupying any precise
+station, or having any regular employment, he became in some sort
+a recognized appendage, a kind of "unpaid attaché to the court" of
+Kilbeggan.
+
+My father was one of those persons who usually ask only a "lift" from
+Fortune, and do not require to be continually aided by her. From being
+the humble attendant on the judge, he soon succeeded to being his
+privy councillor; supplying a hundred little secret details of the
+neighborhood and its local failings, which usually gave Mr. Ball's
+decisions on the bench an air approaching inspiration, so full were they
+of a knowledge of individual life. As confidence ripened, my father
+was employed in reading out to the judge of an evening the various
+depositions of witnesses, the informations laid, and the affidavits
+sworn,--opportunities from which he did not neglect to derive the full
+advantage; for while he usually accompanied the written document with a
+running commentary of his own to Mr. Ball, he also contrived to let the
+suitor feel how great was his knowledge of the case, and what a powerful
+influence behind the scenes he wielded over the fortunes of the cause;
+insomuch that it became soon well known that he who had Con Cregan on
+his side was better off than with the whole Bench of country magistrates
+disposed to favor him.
+
+My father's prudence did not desert him in these trying circumstances.
+Without any historical knowledge of the matter, he knew by a species of
+instinct that pride was the wreck of most men, and that, to wield real,
+substantial power, it is often necessary to assume a garb of apparent
+inefficiency and incapacity. To this end, the greater the influence he
+possessed, the humbler did he affect to be; disclaiming everything like
+power, he got credit for possessing a far greater share than he ever
+really enjoyed.
+
+That the stream of justice did not run perfectly pure and clear,
+however, may not be a matter of surprise; for how many rocks, and
+shoals, and quicksands, are there in the channel! and certainly my
+father was a dangerous hand at the wheel. Litigation, it must be owned,
+lost much of its vacillation. The usual question about any case was,
+"What does Con say? Did Con Cregan tell ye ye 'll win?" That was
+decisive; none sceptical enough to ask for more!
+
+At the feet of this Gamaliel I was brought up; nothing the more tenderly
+that a stepmother presided over the "home department." As I was a stout
+boy, of some thirteen or fourteen at this period of my father's life,
+and could read and write tolerably well, I was constantly employed
+in making copies of various papers used at the Sessions. Were I
+psychologically inclined, I might pause here to inquire how far these
+peculiar studies had their influence in biassing the whole tenor of my
+very eventful life; what latent stores of artifice did I lay up from
+all these curious subtleties; how did I habituate my mind to weigh and
+balance probabilities, as evidence inclined to this side or that; above
+all, how gratified was I with the discovery that there existed a legal
+right and wrong, perfectly distinct from the moral ones,--a fact which
+served at once to open the path of life far wider and more amply before
+me.
+
+I must, however, leave this investigation to the reader's acuteness, if
+he think it worth following out; nor would I now allude to it save as
+it affords me the opportunity, once for all, of explaining modes
+of thinking and acting which might seem, without some such clue, as
+unfitting and unseemly in one reared and brought up as I was.
+
+Whether the new dignity of his station had disposed him to it or not,
+I cannot say; but my father became far more stern in his manner and
+exacting in his requirements as he rose in life. The practice of the
+law seemed to impart some feature of its own peremptory character to
+himself, as he issued his orders in our humble household with all the
+impressive solemnity of a writ,--indeed, aiding the effect by phrases
+taken from the awful vocabulary of justice.
+
+If my stepmother objected to anything the answer was, usually, she might
+"traverse in prox" at the next Sessions; while to myself every order was
+in the style of a "mandamus." Not satisfied with the mere terrors of the
+Bench, he became so enamoured of the pursuit as to borrow some features
+of prison discipline for the conduct of our household; thus, for
+the slightest infractions of his severe code I was "put" upon No. 3
+Penitentiary diet,--only reading potatoes _vice_ bread.
+
+There would seem to be something uncongenial to obedience in any form
+in the life of an Irish peasant; something doubtless in the smell of the
+turf. He seems to imbibe a taste for freedom by the very architecture of
+his dwelling, and the easy, unbuttoned liberty of his corduroys. Young
+as I was, I suppose the Celt was strong within me; and the "Times" says,
+that will account for all delinquencies. I felt this powerfully; not
+the less, indeed, that my father almost invariably visited me with the
+penalty of the case then before the Court; so that while copying out at
+night the details of the prosecution, I had time to meditate over the
+coming sentence. It was, perhaps, fortunate for me that capital cases
+do not come under the jurisdiction of a "sitting barrister;" otherwise I
+verily believe I might have suffered the last penalty of the law from my
+parent's infatuation.
+
+My sense of "equity" at last revolted. I perceived, that no matter who
+"sued," I was always "cast;" and I at length resolved on resistance. I
+remember well the night this resolution was formed; it was a cold and
+cheerless one of January. My father had given me a great mass of papers
+to copy, and a long article for the newspapers to write out, which the
+"Judge" was to embody in his address to the Bench. I never put pen to
+either, but sat with my head between my hands for twelve mortal hours,
+revolving every possible wickedness, and wondering whether in my
+ingenuity I could not invent some offences that no indictment could
+comprise. Day broke, and found me still unoccupied. I was just
+meditating whether I should avow my rebellion openly, and "plead" in
+mitigation, when my father came in.
+
+My reader must excuse me if I do not dwell on what followed. It is
+enough to say that the nature of my injuries are unknown to the criminal
+statute, and that although my wounds and bruises are familiar to the
+prize-ring, they are ignored by all jurisprudence out of the slave
+states. Even my stepmother confessed that I was not fit to "pick out of
+the gutter;" and she proved her words by leaving me where I lay.
+
+Revenge must be a very "human" passion; my taste for it came quite
+naturally. I had never read "Othello" nor "Zanga;" but I conceived a
+very clear and precise notion that I had a debt to pay, and pay it
+I would. Had the obligation been of a pecuniary character, and some
+"bankrupt commission" been in jurisdiction over it, I had doubtless been
+called upon to discharge it in a series of instalments proportional to
+my means of life; being a moral debt, however, I enjoyed the privilege
+of paying it at once, and in full; which I did thus: I had often
+remarked that my father arose at night and left the cabin, crossing a
+little garden behind the house to a little shed, where our pig and an
+ass lived in harmony together; and here, by dint of patient observation,
+I discovered that his occupation lay in the thatch of the aforesaid
+shed, in which he seemed to conceal some object of value.
+
+Thither I now repaired, some secret prompting suggesting that it might
+afford me the wished-for means of vengeance. My disappointment was
+indeed great that no compact roll of bank-notes, no thick woollen
+stocking close packed with guineas, or even crown-pieces, met my hand.
+A heavy bundle of papers and parchment was all I could find; and
+these bore such an unhappy family resemblance to the cause of all my
+misfortunes that I was ready to tear them to pieces in very spite. A
+mere second's reflection suggested a better course. There was a certain
+attorney in Kilbeggan, one Morissy, my father's bitterest enemy; indeed,
+my parent's influence in the Session court had almost ruined and left
+him without a client. The man of law and precedents in vain struggled
+against decisions which a secret and irresponsible adviser contrived
+beforehand, and Morissy's knowledge and experience were soon discovered
+to be valueless. It was a game in which skill went for nothing.
+
+This gentleman's character at once pointed him out as the fitting agent
+of vengeance on my father, and by an hour after daybreak did I present
+myself before him in all the consciousness of my injured state.
+
+Mr. Morissy's reception of me was not over gracious.
+
+"Well, ye spawn of the devil," said he, as he turned about from a small
+fragment of looking-glass, before which he was shaving, "what brings ye
+here? Bad luck to ye; the sight of ye's made me cut myself."
+
+"I'm come, sir, for a bit of advice, sir," said I, putting my hand to my
+hat in salutation.
+
+"Assault and battery!" said he, with a grin on the side of his mouth
+where the soap had been shaved away.
+
+"Yes, sir; an aggravated case," said I, using the phrase of the
+Sessions.
+
+"Why don't ye apply to yer father? He's Crown lawyer and
+Attorney-General; faith, he 's more besides,--he 's judge and jury too."
+
+"And more than that in the present suit, sir," says I, following up his
+illustration; "he's the defendant here."
+
+"What! is that his doing?"
+
+"Yes, sir; his own hand and mark," said I, laughing.
+
+"That's an ugly cut, and mighty near the eye! But sure, after all, you
+'re his child."
+
+"Very true, sir; it's only paternal correction; but I have something
+else!"
+
+"What's that, Con my boy?" said he; for we were now grown very familiar.
+
+"It is this, sir," said I; "this roll of papers that I found hid in the
+thatch,--a safe place my father used to make his strong-box."
+
+"Let us see!" said Morissy, sitting down and opening the package. Many
+were old summonses discharged, notices to quit withdrawn, and so on;
+but at last he came to two papers pinned together, at sight of which he
+almost jumped from his chair. "Con," says he, "describe the place you
+found them in."
+
+I went over all the discovery again.
+
+"Did ye yourself see your father put in papers there?"
+
+"I did, sir."
+
+"On more than one occasion?"
+
+"At least a dozen times, sir."
+
+"Did ye ever remark any one else putting papers there?"
+
+"Never, sir! none of the neighbors ever come through the garden."
+
+"And it was always at night, and in secret, he used to repair there?"
+
+"Always at night"
+
+"That'll do, Con; that 'll do, my son. You'll soon turn the tables on
+the old boy. You may go down to the kitchen and get your breakfast;
+be sure, however, that you don't leave the house to-day. Your father
+mustn't know where ye are till we're ready for him."
+
+"Is it a strong case, sir?" said I.
+
+"A very strong case--never a flaw in it."
+
+"Is it more than a larceny, sir?" said I.
+
+"It is better than that."
+
+"I'd rather it didn't go too far," said I, for I was beginning to feel
+afraid of what I had done.
+
+"Leave that to me, Con," said Mr. Morissy, "and go down to yer
+breakfast."
+
+I did as I was bid, and never stirred out of the house the whole day,
+nor for eight days after; when one morning Morissy bid me clean myself,
+and brush my hair, to come with him to the Court-house.
+
+I guessed at once what was going to happen; and now, as my head was
+healed, and all my bruises cured, I'd very gladly have forgiven all the
+affair, and gone home again with my father; but it was too late. As Mr.
+Morissy said, with a grin, "The law is an elegant contrivance; a child's
+finger can set it in motion, but a steam engine could not hold it back
+afterwards!"
+
+The Court was very full that morning; there were five magistrates on
+the bench, and Mr. Ball in the middle of them. There were a great many
+farmers, too, for it was market-day; and numbers of the townspeople, who
+all knew my father, and were not sorry to see him "up." Cregan versus
+Cregan stood third on the list of cases; and very little interest
+attached to the two that preceded it. At last it was called; and there I
+stood before the Bench, with five hundred pair of eyes all bent upon me;
+and two of them actually looking through my very brain,--for they were
+my father's, as he stood at the opposite side of the table below the
+Bench.
+
+The case was called an assault, and very soon terminated; for, by my own
+admission, it was clear that I deserved punishment; though probably
+not so severely as it had been inflicted. The judge delivered a very
+impressive lesson to my father and myself, about our respective duties,
+and dismissed the case with a reproof, the greater share of which fell
+to me. "You may go now, sir," said he, winding up a line peroration;
+"fear God and honor the king; respect your parents, and make your
+capitals smaller."
+
+"Before your worship dismisses the witness," said Morissy, "I wish to
+put a few questions to him."
+
+"The case is disposed of: call the next," said the judge, angrily.
+
+"I have a most important fact to disclose to your worship,--one which
+is of the highest importance to the due administration of justice,--one
+which, if suffered to lie in obscurity, will be a disgrace to the law,
+and a reproach to the learned Bench."
+
+"Call the next case, crier," said the judge. "Sit down, Mr. Morissy."
+
+"Your worshipw may commit me; but I will be heard--"
+
+"Tipstaff! take that man into--" "When you hear of a mandamus from the
+King's Bench--when you know that a case of compounding a felony--"
+
+"Come away, Mr. Morissy; come quiet, sir!" said the police-sergeant.
+
+"What were ye saying of a mandamus?" said the judge, getting frightened
+at the dreaded word.
+
+"I was saying this, sir," said Morissy, turning fiercely round; "that
+I am possessed of information which you refused to hear, and which
+will make the voice of the Chief Justice heard in this court, which now
+denies its ear to truth."
+
+"Conduct yourself more becomingly, sir," said one of the county
+magistrates, "and open your case."
+
+Morissy, who was far more submissive to the gentry than to the chairman,
+at once replied in his blandest tone:--
+
+"Your worship, it is now more than a month since I appeared before you
+in the case of Noonan versus M'Quade and others,--an aggravated case of
+homicide; I might go further, and apply to it the most awful term the
+vocabulary of justice contains! Your worship will remember that on that
+very interesting and important case a document was missing, of such a
+character that the main feature of the case seemed actually to hang upon
+it. This was no less than the deathbed confession of Noonan, formally
+taken before a justice of the peace, Mr. Styles, and written with all
+the accurate regard to circumstances the law exacts. Mr. Styles, the
+magistrate who took the deposition, was killed by a fall from his horse
+the following week; his clerk being ill, the individual who wrote the
+case was Con Cregan. Your worship may bear in mind that this man,
+when called to the witness box, denied all knowledge of this dying
+confession; asserted that what he took down in writing were simply some
+brief and unsatisfactory notes of the affray, all to the advantage
+of the M'Quades, and swore that Mr. Styles, who often alluded to the
+document as a confession, was entirely in error, the whole substance
+of it being unimportant and vague; some very illegible and-ill-written
+notes corroborating which were produced in court as the papers in
+question.
+
+"Noonan being dead, and Mr. Styles also, the whole case rested on the
+evidence of Cregan; and although, your worship, the man's character
+for veracity was not of that nature among the persons of his own
+neighborhood to--"
+
+"Confine yourself to the case, sir," said the judge, "without
+introducing matter of mere common report."
+
+"I am in a position to prove my assertion," said Morissy, triumphantly.
+"I hold here in my hand the abstracted documents, signed and sealed by
+Mr. Styles, and engrossed with every item of regularity. I have more: a
+memorandum purporting to be a copy of a receipt for eighteen pounds
+ten shillings, received by Cregan from Jos. M'Quade, the wages of this
+crime; and, if more were necessary, a promissory note from M'Quade for
+an additional sum of seven pounds, at six months' date. These are the
+papers which I am prepared to prove in court; this the evidence which
+a few minutes back I tendered in vain before you; and there," said he,
+turning with a vindictive solemnity to where my father was standing,
+pale, but collected, "there's the man who, distinguished by your
+worship's confidence, I now arraign for the suppression of this
+evidence, and the composition of a felony!"
+
+If Mr. Morissy was not perfectly correct in his law, there was still
+quite enough to establish a charge of misdemeanor against my father; and
+he was accordingly committed for trial at the approaching assizes,
+while I was delivered over to the charge of a police-sergeant, to be in
+readiness when my testimony should be required.
+
+The downfall of a dynasty is sure to evoke severe recrimination against
+the late ruler; and now my parent, who but a few days past could have
+tilted the beam of justice at his mere pleasure, was overwhelmed with
+not merely abuse and attack, but several weighty accusations of crime
+were alleged against him. Not only was it discovered that he interfered
+with the due course of justice, but that he was a prime actor in, and
+contriver of, many of the scenes of insurrectionary disturbance which
+for years back had filled the country with alarm and the jails with
+criminals.
+
+For one of these cases, a night attack for arms, the evidence was so
+complete and unquestionable that the Crown prosecutor, disliking the
+exhibition of a son giving evidence against his parent, dispensed with
+my attendance altogether, and prosecuting the graver charge obtained a
+verdict of guilty.
+
+The sentence was transportation for life, with a confiscation of all
+property to the Crown. Thus my first step in life was to exile my
+father, and leave myself a beggar,--a promising beginning, it must be
+owned!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. A FIRST STEP ON LIFE'S LADDER
+
+It is among the strange and singular anomalies of our nature that
+however pleased men may be at the conviction of a noted offender, few
+of those instrumental to his punishment are held in honor and esteem.
+If all Kilbeggan rejoiced, as they did, at my father's downfall, a very
+considerable share of obloquy rested on me,--a species of judgment, I
+honestly confess, that I was not the least prepared for.
+
+"There goes the little informer," said they, as I passed; "what did ye
+get for hanging--" a very admirable piece of Irish exaggeration--"for
+hanging yer father, Con?" said one.
+
+"Could n't ye help yer stepmother to a say voyage?" shouted another.
+
+"And then we 'd be rid of yez all," chimed in a third.
+
+"He's rich now," whined out an old beggar-man that often had eaten his
+potatoes at our fireside. "He's rich now, the chap is; he 'll marry a
+lady!"
+
+This was the hardest to bear of all the slights, for not alone had I
+lost all pretension to my father's property, but the raggedness of my
+clothes and the general misery of my appearance might have saved me from
+the reproach of what is so forcibly termed "blood-money."
+
+"Come over to me this evening," said Father Rush; and they were the
+only words of comfort I heard from any side. "Come over to me about six
+o'clock, Con, for I want to speak to you."
+
+They were long hours that intervened between that and six. I could not
+stay in the town, where every one I met had some sneer or scoff against
+me; I could not go home, I had none! and so I wandered out into the open
+country, taking my course towards a bleak common, about two miles off,
+where few, if any one, was like to be but myself.
+
+This wild and dreary tract lay alongside of the main road to Athlone,
+and was traversed by several footpaths, by which the country people were
+accustomed to make "short cuts" to market, from one part of the road to
+another; for the way, passing through a bog, took many a winding turn as
+the ground necessitated.
+
+There is a feeling of lonely desolation in wide far-stretching wastes
+that accords well with the purposeless vacuity of hopelessness; but,
+somehow or other, the very similitude between the scene without and the
+sense of desolation within, establishes a kind of companionship. Lear
+was speaking like a true philosopher when he uttered the words, "I like
+this rocking of the battlements."
+
+I had wandered some hours "here and there" upon the common; and it
+was now the decline of day when I saw at a little distance from me the
+figure of a young man whose dress and appearance bespoke condition,
+running along at a brisk pace, but evidently laboring under great
+fatigue.
+
+The instant he saw me he halted, and cried out, "I say, my boy, is that
+Kilbeggan yonder, where I see the spire?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And where is the high-road to Athlone?"
+
+"Yonder, sir, where the two trees are standing."
+
+"Have you seen the coach pass,--the mail for Athlone?"
+
+"Yes, sir, she went through the town about half an hour ago."
+
+"Are ye certain, boy? are ye quite sure of this?" cried he, in a voice
+of great agitation.
+
+"I am quite sure, sir; they always change horses at Moone's
+public-house; and I saw them 'draw up' there more than half an hour
+since."
+
+"Is there no other coach passes this road for Dublin?"
+
+"The night mail, sir, but she does not go to-night; this is Saturday."
+
+"What is to be done?" said the youth, in deep sorrow; and he seated
+himself on a stone as he spoke, and hid his face between his hands.
+
+As he sat thus, I had time to mark him well, and scan every detail of
+his appearance.
+
+Although tall and stoutly knit, he could not have been above sixteen, or
+at most seventeen, years of age; his dress, a kind of shooting-jacket,
+was made in a cut that affected fashion; and I observed on one finger
+of his very white hand a ring which, even to my uneducated eyes, bespoke
+considerable value.
+
+He looked up at last, and his eyes were very red, and a certain
+trembling of the lips showed that he was much affected. "I suppose, my
+lad, I can find a chaise or a carriage of some kind in Kilbeggan?" said
+he; "for I have lost the mail. I had got out for a walk, and by the
+advice of a countryman taken this path over the bog, expecting, as he
+told me, it would cut off several miles of way. I suppose I must have
+mistaken him, for I have been running for above an hour, and am too late
+after all; but still, if I can find a chaise, I shall be in time yet."
+
+"They 're all gone, sir," said I; "and sorry am I to have such tidings
+to tell. The Sessions broke up to-day, and they're away with the lawyers
+to Kinnegad."
+
+"And how far is that from us?"
+
+"Sixteen miles or more, by the road."
+
+"And how am I to get there?"
+
+"Unless ye walk it--"
+
+"Walk! impossible. I am dead beat already; besides, the time it would
+take would lose me all chance of reaching Dublin as I want."
+
+"Andy Smith has a horse, if he'd lend it; and there's a short road by
+Hogan's boreen."
+
+"Where does this Smith live?" said he, stopping me impatiently.
+
+"Not a half mile from here; you can see the house from this."
+
+"Come along, then, and show me the way, my boy," said he; and the gleam
+of hope seemed to lend alacrity to his movements.
+
+Away we set together, and as we went, it was arranged between us that if
+Andy would hire out his mare, I should accompany the rider as guide, and
+bring back the animal to its owner, while the traveller proceeded on his
+journey to town.
+
+The negotiation was tedious enough; for, at first, Andy would n't appear
+at all; he thought it was a process-server was after him,--a suspicion
+probably suggested by my presence, as it was generally believed that a
+rag of my father's mantle had descended to me. It was only after a very
+cautious and careful scrutiny of the young traveller through a small
+glass eye--it wasn't a window--in the mud wall that he would consent to
+come out. When he did so, he treated the proposal most indignantly.
+"Is it he hire out his baste? as if she was a dirty garraun of Betty
+Nowlan's of the head inn; he wondered who 'd ask the like!" and so on.
+
+The youth, deterred by this reception, would have abandoned the scheme
+at once; but I, better acquainted with such characters as Andy, and
+knowing that his difficulties were only items in the intended charge,
+higgled, and bargained, and bullied, and blarneyed by turns; and, after
+some five and forty minutes of alternate joking and abusing each other,
+it was at last agreed on that the "baste" was to be ceded for the sum of
+fifteen shillings,--"two and sixpence more if his honor was pleased with
+the way she carried him;" the turnpike and a feed of oats being also
+at the charge of the rider, as well as all repairs of shoes incurred
+by loss or otherwise. Then there came a supplemental clause as to the
+peculiar care of the animal. How "she was n't to be let drink too much
+at once, for she 'd get the colic;" and if she needed shoeing, she
+was to have a "twitch" on her nose, or she'd kick the forge to
+"smithereens." The same precaution to be taken if the saddle required
+fresh girthing; a hint was given, besides, not to touch her with the
+left heel, or she 'd certainly kick the rider with the hind leg of
+the same side; and, as a last caution given, to be on our guard at the
+cross-roads at Toomes-bridge, or she'd run away towards Croghan, where
+she once was turned out in foal. "Barring" these peculiarities, and
+certain smaller difficulties about mounting, "she was a lamb, and the
+sweetest-tempered crayture ever was haltered."
+
+In the very midst of this panegyric upon the animal's good and noble
+qualities he flung open the door of a little shed, and exhibited her to
+our view. I verily believe, whatever the urgency of the youth's reason
+for proceeding, that his heart failed him at the sight of the steed; a
+second's reconsideration seemed to rally his courage, and he said, "No
+matter, it can't be helped; saddle her at once, and let us be off."
+
+"That's easier said nor done," muttered Andy to himself, as he stood at
+the door, without venturing a step farther. "Con," said he, at last, in
+a species of coaxing tone I well knew boded peril, "Con, a cushla! get
+a hould of her by the head, that's a fine chap; make a spring at the
+forelock."
+
+"Maybe she 'd kick--"
+
+"Sorra kick! get up there, now, and I'll be talking to you all the
+while."
+
+This proposition, though doubtless meant as most encouraging, by no
+means reassured me.
+
+"Come, come! I'll bridle the infernal beast," said the youth, losing
+all patience with both of us, and he sprung forward into the stable; but
+barely had he time to jump back, as the animal let fly with both hind
+legs together. Andy, well aware of what was coming, pulled us both back
+and shut to the door, against which the hoofs kept up one rattling din
+of kicks that shook the crazy edifice from roof to ground.
+
+"Ye see what comes of startlin' her; the crayture's timid as a
+kid," said Andy, whose blanched cheek badly corroborated his assumed
+composure. "Ye may do what ye plaze, barrin' putting a bridle on her;
+she never took kindly to that!"
+
+"But do ye intend me to ride her without one?" said the youth.
+
+"By no manner of means, sir," said Andy, with a plausible slowness on
+each word that gave him time to think of an expedient. "I would n't be
+guilty of the like; none that knows me would ever say it to me: I 'm a
+poor man--"
+
+"You're a devilish tiresome one," broke in the youth, suddenly; "here we
+have been above half an hour standing at the door, and none the nearer
+our departure than when we arrived."
+
+"Christy Moore could bridle her, if he was here," said Andy; "but he's
+gone to Moate, and won't be back till evening; may be that would do?"
+
+A very impatient, and not very pious exclamation consigned Christy to an
+untimely fate. "Well, don't be angry, anyhow, sir," said Andy; "there's
+many a thing a body might think of, if they were n't startled. See, now,
+I have a way this minute; an elegant fine way, too."
+
+"Well, what is it? Confound your long-winded speeches!"
+
+"There, now, you're angry again! sure it's enough to give one quite a
+through-otherness, and not leave them time to reflect."
+
+"Your plan, your plan!" said the young man, his lips trembling with
+anger and impatience.
+
+"Here it is, then; let the 'gossoon,'" meaning me, "get up on the roof
+and take off two or three of the scraws, the sods of grass, till he can
+get through, and then steal down on the mare's back; when he 's once on
+her, she 'll never stir head nor foot, and he can slip the bridle over
+her quite asy."
+
+"The boy might be killed; no, no, I 'll not suffer that--"
+
+"Wait, sir," cried I, interrupting, "it's not so hard, after all; once
+on her back, I defy her to throw me."
+
+"Sure I know that well; sorra better rider in the Meath hunt than little
+Con," broke in Andy; backing me with a ready flattery he thought would
+deceive me.
+
+It was not without reluctance that the youth consented to this forlorn
+hope, but he yielded at last; and so, with a bridle fastened round me
+like a scarf, I was hoisted on the roof by Andy, and, under a volley of
+encouraging expressions, exhorted to "go in and win."
+
+"There! there, a cushla!" cried Andy, as he saw me performing the first
+act of the piece with a vigor he had never calculated on; "'tis n't a
+coach and six ye want to drive through. Tear and ages! ye'll take the
+whole roof off." The truth was, I worked away with a malicious pleasure
+in the destruction of the old miser's roof; nor is it quite certain
+how far my zeal might have carried me, when suddenly one of the
+rafters--mere light poles of ash--gave way, and down I went, at first
+slowly, and then quicker, into a kind of funnel formed by the smashed
+timbers and the earthen sods. The crash, the din, and the dust appeared
+to have terrified the wicked beast below, for she stood trembling in one
+corner of the stable, and never moved a limb as I walked boldly up and
+passed the bridle over her head. This done, I had barely time to spring
+on her back, when the door was forced open by the young gentleman, whose
+fears for my fate had absorbed every other thought.
+
+"Are you safe, my boy, quite safe?" he cried, making his way over the
+fallen rubbish.
+
+"Oh! the devil fear him," cried Andy, in a perfect rage of passion;
+"I wish it was his bones was smashed, instead of the
+roof-sticks--see!--Och, murther, only look at this." And Andy stood amid
+the ruins, a most comical picture of affliction, in part real and in
+part assumed. Meanwhile the youth had advanced to my side, and, with
+many a kind and encouraging word, more than repaid me for all my danger.
+
+"'T is n't five pound will pay the damage," cried Andy, running up on
+his fingers a sum of imaginary arithmetic.
+
+"Where's the saddle, you old--" What the young man was about to add, I
+know not; but at a look from me he stopped short.
+
+"Is it abusin' me you're for now, afther wrecking my house and
+destroying my premises?" cried Andy, whose temper was far from sweetened
+by the late catastrophe. "Sure what marcy my poor beast would get from
+the likes of ye! sorry step she 'll go in yer company; pay the damages
+ye done, and be off."
+
+Here was a new turn of affairs, and, judging from the irascibility
+of both parties, a most disastrous one; it demanded, indeed, all my
+skill,--all the practised dexterity of a mind trained, as mine had been
+been by many a subtlety, to effect a compromise, which I did thus:
+my patron being cast in the costs of all the damages to the amount of
+twenty shillings, and the original contract to be maintained in all its
+integrity.
+
+The young man paid the money without speaking; but I had time to mark
+that the purse from which he drew it was far from weighty. "Are we free
+to go at last?" cried he, in a voice of suppressed wrath.
+
+"Yes, yer honor; all's right," answered Andy, whose heart was mollified
+at the sight of money. "A pleasant journey, and safe to ye; take good
+care of the beast, don't ride her over the stones, and--"
+
+The remainder of the exhortation was lost to us, as we set forth in a
+short jog-trot, I running alongside.
+
+"When we are once below the hill, yonder," said I to my companion, "give
+her the whip, and make up for lose time."
+
+"And how are you to keep up, my lad?" asked he, in some surprise.
+
+I could scarcely avoid a laugh at the simplicity of the question; as
+if an Irish gossoon, with his foot on his native bog, would n't be an
+overmatch in a day's journey for the best hack that ever ambled! Away we
+went, sometimes joking over, sometimes abusing, the old miser Andy, of
+whom, for my fellow-traveller's amusement, I told various little traits
+and stories, at which he laughed with a zest quite new to me to witness.
+My desire to be entertaining then led me on to speak of my father and
+his many curious adventures,--the skill with which he could foment
+litigation, and the wily stratagems by which he sustained it afterwards.
+All the cunning devices of the process-server I narrated with a gusto
+that smacked of my early training: how, sometimes, my crafty parent
+would append a summons to the collar of a dog, and lie in wait till
+he saw the owner take it off and read it, and then, emerging from his
+concealment, cry out "sarved," and take to his heels; and again how he
+once succeeded in "serving" old Andy himself, by appearing as a beggar
+woman, and begging him to light a bit of paper to kindle her pipe.
+The moment, however, he took the bit of twisted paper, the assumed
+beggar-woman screamed out, "Andy, yer sarved: that's a process, my
+man!" The shock almost took Andy's life; and there's not a beggar in the
+barony dares to come near him since.
+
+"Your father must be well off, then, I suppose," said my companion.
+
+"He was a few weeks ago, sir; but misfortune has come on us since that."
+I was ashamed to go on, and yet I felt that strange impulse so strong in
+the Irish peasant to narrate anything of a character which can interest
+by harrowing and exciting the feelings.
+
+Very little pressing was needed to make me recount the whole story,
+down to the departure of my father with the other prisoners sentenced to
+transportation.
+
+"And whither were you going when I met you this morning on the common?"
+said my fellow-traveller, in a voice of some interest.
+
+"To seek my fortune, sir," was my brief answer; and either the words or
+the way they were uttered seemed to strike my companion, for he drew
+up short, and stared at me, repeating the phrase, "Seek your fortune!"
+"Just so," said I, warmed by an enthusiasm which then was beginning to
+kindle within me, and which for many a long year since, and in many a
+trying emergency, has cheered and sustained me. "Just so; the world is
+wide, and there 's a path for every one, if they 'd only look for it."
+
+"But you saw what came of _my_ taking a short cut, this morning," said
+my companion, laughing.
+
+"And you'd have been time enough too, if you had been always thinking of
+what you were about, sir; but as you told me, you began a thinking and
+a dreaming of twenty things far away. Besides, who knows what good turn
+luck may take, just at the very moment when we seem to have least of
+it?"
+
+"You 're quite a philosopher, Con," said he, smiling.
+
+"So Father Mahon used to say, sir," said I, proudly, and in reality
+highly flattered at the reiteration of the epithet.
+
+Thus chatting, we journeyed along, lightening the way with talk, and
+making the hours seem to me the very pleasantest I had ever passed. At
+last we came in sight of the steeple of Kinnegad, which lay in the plain
+before us, about a mile distant.
+
+The little town of Kinnegad was all astir as we entered it The "up
+mail" had just come down, in the main street, sending all its passengers
+flying in various directions,--through shop-windows; into cow-houses and
+piggeries; some being proudly perched on the roof of a cabin, and others
+most ignobly seated on a dunghill; the most lamentable figure of all
+being an elderly gentleman, who, having cut a summerset through an
+apothecary's window, came forth cut by a hundred small vials, and
+bearing on his person unmistakable evidence of every odor, from
+tar-water to assafotida. The conveyance itself lay, like the Ark after
+the Deluge, quietly reposing on one side; while animals male and female,
+"after their kind," issued from within. Limping and disconsolate figures
+were being assisted into the inn; and black eyes and smashed faces were
+as rife as in a country fair.
+
+I was not slow in appropriating the calamity to a good purpose. "See,
+sir," I whispered to my companion, "you said, a while ago, that nobody
+had such bad luck as yourself; think what might have happened you, now,
+if you had n't missed the coach."
+
+"True enough, Con," said he, "there is such a thing as being too late
+for bad as well as for good fortune; and I experience it now. But the
+next question is, how to get forward; for, of course, with a broken
+axle, the mail cannot proceed further."
+
+The difficulty was soon got over. The halt and the maimed passengers,
+after loudly inveighing against all coach-proprietors,--the man that
+made, and the man that horsed, he that drove, and he that greased the
+wheels of all public conveyances,--demanded loudly to be forwarded to
+the end of their journey by various chaises and other vehicles of the
+town; I at the same time making use of my legal knowledge to suggest
+that while doing so, they acted under protest; that it was "without
+prejudice" to any future proceedings they might deem fit to adopt for
+compensatory damages. If some laughed heartily at the source from
+which the hint came, others said I was a "devilish shrewd chap," and
+insinuated something about a joint-stock subscription of sixpences for
+my benefit; but the motion was apparently unseconded, and so, like
+many benefactors of my species, I had to apply to my conscience for my
+reward; or, safer still, had to wait till I could pay myself.
+
+My young companion, who now, in a few words, told me that he was a
+student at Trinity College and a "reader for honors," pulled out his
+purse to pay me. "Remember, my boy, the name of Henry Lyndsay; I 'm
+easily found, if you chance to come to Dublin,--not that I can be of
+much service to any one, but I shall not forget the service you rendered
+me this day. Here, take this, pay for the mare's feeding, and when she
+has rested--"
+
+I would not suffer him to proceed further, but broke in:
+
+"I'm not going back, sir! I'll never turn my footsteps that way again!
+Leave the mare in the inn; Andy comes every Saturday here for the
+market, and will find her safe. As for me, I must 'seek my fortune;'
+and when one has to search for anything, there's nothing like beginning
+early."
+
+"You 're a strange fellow, Con," said he, looking at me; and I was
+shrewd enough to see that his features exhibited no small astonishment
+at my words. "And where do you intend to look for this same fortune you
+speak of?"
+
+"No one place in particular, sir! I read in an old book once, that good
+luck is like sunshine, and is not found in all climates at the same
+time; so I intend to ramble about; and when I breakfast on the sunny
+side of the apple, never stay to dine off the green one."
+
+"And you are the kind of fellow to succeed!" said he, half to himself,
+and rather as though reflecting on my words than addressing me.
+
+"So I intend, sir," replied I, confidently.
+
+"Have you ever read 'Gil Blas,' Con?"
+
+"I have it almost by heart, sir."
+
+"That's it!" said he, laughing; "I see whence you've got your taste for
+adventure. But remember, Con, Gil Blas lived in different times from
+ours, and in a very different land. He was, besides, a well-educated
+fellow, with no small share of good looks and good manners."
+
+"As for age and country, sir," said I, boldly, "men and women are pretty
+much alike at all times, and in all places; in the old book I told you
+of a while ago, I read that human passions, like the features of the
+face, are only infinite varieties of the same few ingredients. Then, as
+to education and the rest,--what one man can pick up, so can another.
+The will is the great thing, and I feel it very strong in me. And now,
+to give a proof of it, I am determined to go up to Dublin, and with your
+honor too, and you'll see if I won't have my way."
+
+"So you shall, Con!" replied he, laughing; "I'll take you on the top of
+the chaise; and although I cannot afford to keep a servant, you shall
+stay with me in College until chance, in which you have such implicit
+faith, shall provide better for you. Come, now, lead the mare into the
+stable, for I see my companions are packing up to be gone."
+
+I was not slow in obeying the orders, and soon returned to assist my
+new master with his luggage. All was quickly settled; and a few minutes
+after saw me seated on a portmanteau on the roof on my way to Dublin.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. HOW I ENTERED COLLEGE, AND HOW I LEFT IT
+
+It was still dark, on a drizzling morning in January, as we reached the
+Capital; the lamps shone faintly through the foggy, wet atmosphere; and
+the gloom was deepened as we entered the narrow streets at the west of
+the city. A few glimmering lights from five-stories high, showed where
+some early riser was awaking to his daily toil; while here and there,
+some rough-coated policeman stood at the corner of a street to be rained
+on; except these, no sign of living thing appeared; and I own the whole
+aspect was a sad damper to the ardor of that enthusiasm which had often
+pictured the great metropolis as some gorgeous fairy-land.
+
+The carriage stopped twice, to set down two of the travellers, in
+obscure dingy streets, and then I heard Mr. Lyndsay say, "To the
+College;" and on we went through a long labyrinth of narrow lanes and
+thoroughfares, which gradually widened out into more spacious streets,
+and at length arrived at a great building, whose massive gates slowly
+opened to receive, and then solemnly closed after us. We now stood in a
+spacious quadrangle, silent and noiseless as a church at midnight.
+
+Mr. Lyndsay hastily descended, and ordering me to carry in some of the
+baggage, I followed him into a large scantily furnished room, beyond
+which was a bedchamber, of like accommodation. "This is my home, Con,"
+said he, with a melancholy attempt at a smile; "and here," said he,
+leading me to a small one-windowed room on the opposite side, "here is
+yours." A bed, of that humble kind called a stretcher, placed against
+one wall, and a large chest for holding coals against the other,
+a bottomless chair, and a shoe-brush with very scanty bristles,
+constituted the entire furniture.
+
+It was some time after all the luggage was removed before Mr. Lyndsay
+could get rid of the postilion; like all poor men in a like predicament,
+he had to bargain and reason and remonstrate, submitting to many a
+mortification, and enduring many a sore pang, at the pitiless ribaldry
+which knows nothing so contemptible as poverty; at last, after various
+reflections on the presumption of people who travel and cannot afford
+it, on their vanity, self-conceit, and so forth, the fellow departed,
+with what my ears assured me was no contemptible share of my poor
+master's purse.
+
+I was sitting alone in my den during this scene, not wishing by my
+presence to add anything to his mortification; and, now all was still
+and noiseless, I waited for some time expecting to be called,--to be
+told of some trifling service to execute, or, at least, to be spoken to;
+but no, not a sound, not a murmur, was to be heard.
+
+My own thoughts were none of the brightest: the ceaseless rain that
+streamed against the little window, and shut out all prospect of what
+was without; the cold and cheerless chamber and the death-like silence
+were like lead upon my heart.
+
+I had often, in my reveries at home, fancied that all who were lifted
+above the cottier in life must have neither care nor sorrow; that real
+want was unknown, save in their class; and that all afflictions of
+those more highly placed were of a character too trifling to be deemed
+serious; and now suddenly there came to me the thought, What if every
+one had his share of grief? I vow, the very suspicion thrilled through
+me, and I sat still, dwelling on the sad theme with deep intensity.
+
+As I sat thus, a sigh, low, but distinct, came from the adjoining
+chamber. I suddenly remembered my young master, and crept noiselessly to
+the door; it stood ajar, and I could see in, and mark everything well.
+He was sitting at a table covered with books and writing materials; a
+single candle threw its yellow glare over the whole, and lit up with a
+sickly tint the travel-worn and tired features of the youth.
+
+As I looked, he leaned his forehead down upon his arm, and seemed either
+overcome by sorrow or fatigue; when suddenly a deep-booming bell sent
+forth a solemn peal, and made the very chamber vibrate with its din.
+Lyndsay started at the sound; a kind of shudder, like a convulsive
+throe, shook his limbs; and sitting up on his seat, he pushed back the
+falling hair from his eyes, and again addressed himself to his book.
+The heavy tolling sounds seemed now no longer to distract, but rather
+to nerve him to greater efforts, for he read on with an intense
+persistence; turning from volume to volume, and repeatedly noting down
+on the paper as he read.
+
+Of a sudden the bell ceased, and Lyndsay arose from the table and passed
+into the bedroom, from which he almost instantaneously reappeared,
+dressed in his cap and gown,--a new and curious costume in my eyes, but
+which at the time was invested with a deep, mysterious interest to me.
+
+I retired silently now to my room, and saw him pass out into the wide
+court. I hastened to look out. Already some hundred others in similar
+costume were assembled there, and the buzz of voices and the sound of
+many feet were a pleasant relief to the desert-like silence of the
+court as I had seen it before. The change was, however, of a very brief
+duration; in less than a minute the whole assemblage moved off and
+entered a great building, whose heavy door closed on them with a deep
+bang, and all was still once more.
+
+I now set myself to think by what small services I could render myself
+acceptable to my young master. I arranged the scanty furniture into a
+resemblance, faint enough, certainly, to comfort, and made a cheerful
+fire with the remnant of the roomy coal-box. This done, I proceeded to
+put his clothes in order, and actually astonished myself with the skill
+I seemed to possess in my new walk. An intense curiosity to know what
+was going on without led me frequently to the door which led into the
+court; but I profited little by this step. The only figures which met my
+eye were now and then some elderly personage clad in his academic robes,
+gravely wending towards the "Hall," and the far less imposing cries
+of some "college women," as the hags are called who officiate as the
+University housemaids.
+
+It was at one of these visits that suddenly I heard the great door
+of the "Hall" burst open with a crash, and immediately down the
+steps poured the black tide of figures, talking and laughing in
+one multifarious din that seemed to fill the very air. Cautiously
+withdrawing, I closed the door, and retired; but scarcely had I reached
+my room, when young Lyndsay passed through to his own chamber: his cheek
+was flushed, and his eyes sparkled with animation, and his whole air and
+gesture indicated great excitement.
+
+Having removed his cravat, and bathed his temples with cold water, he
+once more sat down before his books, and was soon so immersed in study
+as not to hear my footsteps as I entered.
+
+I stood uncertain, and did not dare to interrupt him for some minutes;
+the very intensity of his application awed me. Indeed, I believe I
+should have retired without a word, had he not accidentally looked
+up and beheld me. "Eh!--what!--how is this?" cried he, endeavoring to
+recall his mind from the themes before him; "I had forgotten you, my
+poor boy, and you have had no breakfast."
+
+"And you, sir?" said I, in reality more interested for him than myself.
+
+"Take this, Con," said he, not heeding my remark, and giving me a piece
+of silver from his purse; "get yourself something to eat: to-morrow, or
+next day, we shall arrange these things better; for at this moment my
+head has its load of other cares."
+
+"But will _you_ not eat something?" said I; "_you_ have not tasted food
+since we met."
+
+"We are expected to breakfast with our tutor on the examination
+mornings, Con," said he; and then, not seeming to feel the inconsistency
+of his acts with his words, he again bent his head over the table,
+and lost all remembrance of either me or our conversation. I stole
+noiselessly away, and sallied forth to seek my breakfast where I could.
+
+There were few loiterers in the court; a stray student hurrying past,
+or an old slipshod hag of hideous aspect and squalid misery, were all I
+beheld; but both classes' bestowed most unequivocal signs of surprise
+at my country air and appearance, and to my question, where I could buy
+some bread and milk, answers the most cynical or evasive were returned.
+While I was yet endeavoring to obtain from one of the ancient maidens
+alluded to some information on the point, two young men, with velvet
+caps and velvet capes on their gowns, stopped to listen.
+
+"I say, friend," cried one, seemingly the younger of the two, "when did
+_you_ enter?"
+
+"This morning," said I, taking the question literally.
+
+"Do you hear that, Ward?" continued he to his companion. "What place did
+you take?"
+
+"I was on the roof," replied I, supposing the quaere bore allusion to
+the mode of my coming.
+
+"Quite classical," said the elder, a tall, good-looking youth; "you
+came as did Caesar into Gaul, '_summâ diligentiâ,_' on the top of the
+Diligence."
+
+They both laughed heartily at a very threadbare college joke, and were
+about to move away, when the younger, turning round, said, "Have you
+matriculated?"
+
+"No, sir,--what's that?"
+
+"It's a little ceremony," interposed the elder, "necessary, and indeed
+indispensable, to every one coming to reside within these walls. You've
+heard of Napoleon, I dare say?"
+
+"Bony, is it?" asked I, giving the more familiar title by which he was
+better known to my circle of acquaintance.
+
+"Exactly," said he, "Bony. Now Bony used to call a first battle the
+baptism of Glory; so may we style, in a like way, Matriculation to be
+the baptism of Knowledge. You understand me, eh?"
+
+"Not all out," said I, "but partly."
+
+"We 'll illustrate by a diagram, then."
+
+"I say, Bob," whispered the younger, "let us find out with whom he is;"
+then, turning to me, said, "Where do you live here?"
+
+"Yonder," said I, "where that lamp is."
+
+"Mr. Lyndsay's chambers?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"All right," cried the younger; "we'll show you the secret of
+matriculation."
+
+"Come along, my young friend," said the elder, in the same pompous tone
+he had used at first, "let us teach you to drink of that Pierian spring
+which 'Labitur et labetur in omne volubile oevum.'"
+
+I believe it was the fluent use of the unknown tongue which at once
+allayed any mistrust I might have felt of my new acquaintances; however
+that may be, there was something so imposing in the high-sounding
+syllables that I yielded at once, and followed them into another and
+more remote quadrangle.
+
+Here they stopped under a window, while one gave a loud whistle with his
+fingers to his lips; the sash was immediately thrown up, and a handsome,
+merry-looking face protruded. "Eh!--what!--Taylor and Ward," cried he,
+"what's going on?"
+
+"Come down, Burton; here's a youth for matriculation," cried the
+younger.
+
+"All right," cried the other. "There are eight of us here at breakfast;"
+and disappearing from the window, he speedily descended to the court,
+followed by a number of others, who gravely saluted me with a deep bow,
+and solemnly welcomed me within the classic precincts of old Trinity.
+
+"Domine--what's his name?" said the young gentleman called Burton.
+
+"Cregan, sir," replied I, already flattered by the attentions I was
+receiving,--"Con Cregan, sir."
+
+"Well, Domine Cregan, come along with us, and never put faith in a
+junior sophister. You know what a junior sophister is, I trust?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Tell him, Ward."
+
+"A junior sophister, Mr. Cregan, is one who, being in 'Locke' all day,
+is very often locked out all night, and who observes the two rubrics
+of the statute '_de vigilantibus et lucentibus_,' by extinguishing both
+lamps and watchmen."
+
+"Confound your pedantry!" broke in Burton; "a junior soph, is a man in
+his ninth examination."
+
+"The terror of the porters," cried one.
+
+"The Dean's milch cow," added another.
+
+"A credit to his parents, but a debtor to his tailor," broke in a third.
+
+"Seldom at Greek lecture, but no fellow commoner at the Currah," lisped
+out Taylor; and by this time we had reached a narrow lane, flanked on
+one side by a tall building of gloomy exterior, and on the other by an
+angle of the square.
+
+"Here we are, Mr. Cregan; as the poet says, 'this is the place, the
+centre of the wood.'"
+
+"Gentlemen sponsors, to your functions!" Scarce were the words out, when
+I was seized by above half a dozen pair of strong hands; my legs were
+suddenly jerked upwards, and, notwithstanding my attempts to resist, I
+was borne along for some yards at a brisk pace. I was already about
+to forbear my struggles, and suffer them to play their--as I deemed
+it--harmless joke in quiet, when straight in front of me I saw an
+enormous pump, at which, and by a double handle, Burton and another were
+working away like sailors on a wreck; throwing forth above a yard off, a
+jet of water almost enough to turn a mill.
+
+The whole plot now revealed itself to me at once, and I commenced a
+series of kickings and plungings that almost left me free. My enemies,
+however, were too many and too powerful; on they bore me, and in a
+perfect storm of blows, lunges, writhings, and boundings, they held me
+fast under the stream, which played away in a frothy current over my
+head, face, chest, and legs,--for, with a most laudable impartiality,
+they moved me from side to side till not a dry spot remained on my whole
+body.
+
+
+
+I shouted, I yelled, I swore, and screamed for aid, but all in vain; and
+my diabolical tormentors seemed to feel no touch of weariness in their
+inhuman pastime; while I, exhausted by my struggles and the continual
+rush of the falling water, almost ceased to resist; when suddenly a cry
+of "The Dean! the Dean!" was heard; my bearers let go their hold,--down
+I tumbled upon the flags, with barely consciousness enough to see
+the scampering crew flying in all directions, while a host of porters
+followed them in hot pursuit.
+
+"Who are you, sir? What brought you here?" said a tall old gentleman I
+at once surmised to be the Dean.
+
+"The devil himself, I believe!" replied I, rising with difficulty under
+the weight of my soaked garments.
+
+"Turn him outside the gates, Hawkins!" said the Dean to a porter behind
+him. "Take care, too, he never reenters them."
+
+"I 'll take good care of it, sir," said the fellow, as with one strong
+hand on my collar, and the closed fingers of the other administering
+gentle admonitions to the back of my head, he proceeded to march me
+before him through the square; revolving as I went thoughts which,
+certes, evinced not one sentiment of gratitude to the learned
+university.
+
+My college career was, therefore, more brief than brilliant, for I was
+"expelled" on the very same day that I "entered."
+
+With the "world before me where to choose," I stepped out into the
+classic precincts of College Green, fully assured of one fact, that
+"Town" could scarcely treat me more harshly than "Gown." I felt, too,
+that I had passed through a kind of ordeal; that my ducking, like
+the ceremonies on crossing the line, was a kind of masonic ordinance,
+indispensable to my opening career; and that thus I had got successfully
+through one at least of my "trials."
+
+A species of filial instinct suggested to me the propriety of seeing
+Newgate, where my father lay, awaiting the arrival of the convict ship
+that was to convey him to Van Diemen's Land; and thither I accordingly
+repaired, not to enter, but simply to gaze, with a very awestruck
+imagination, upon that double-barred cage of human ferocity and crime.
+
+In itself the circumstance has nothing worthy of record, nor should I
+mention it, save that to the deep impression of that morning do I owe a
+certain shrinking horror of all great crime; that impression has been of
+incalculable benefit to me through life.
+
+I strained my eyes to mark if, amid the faces closely pressed against
+the strong bars, I could recognize that of my parent, but in vain; there
+was a terrible sameness in their features, as if the individual had sunk
+in the criminal, that left all discrimination difficult; and so I turned
+away satisfied that I had done a son's part most completely.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. A PEEP AT "HIGH AND LOW COMPANY"
+
+I have often heard it observed that one has as little to do with the
+choice of his mode of life as with the name he receives at baptism. I
+rather incline to the opinion that this is true. My own very varied and
+somewhat dissimilar occupations were certainly far less the result of
+any preconceived plan or scheme than the mere "turn-up" of the rolling
+die of Fortune.
+
+It was while revolving a species of fatalism in this wise, and calmly
+assuring myself that I was not born to be starved, that I strolled along
+Merrion Square on the same afternoon of my expulsion from Trinity and
+visit to Newgate.
+
+There were brilliant equipages, cavaliers, and ladies on horseback;
+handsome houses, with balconies often thronged by attractive-looking
+occupants; and vast crowds of gayly dressed persons promenaded within
+the square itself, where a military band performed; in fact, there was
+more than enough to interest and amuse one of higher pretensions in the
+scale of pleasure than myself.
+
+While I was thus gazing on this brilliant panorama of the outdoor life
+of a great city, and wondering and guessing what precise object thus
+brought people together,--for no feature of a market, or a fair, or any
+festive occupation solved the difficulty,--I was struck by a class of
+characters who seemed to play the subordinate parts of the drama,--a set
+of ragged, ill-fed, half-starved boys, who followed in crowds each new
+arrival on horseback, and eagerly sought permission to hold his horse
+when he dismounted; the contrast of these mangy looking attendants to
+the glossy coated and handsomely caparisoned steeds they led about
+being too remarkable to escape notice. Although a very fierce rivalry
+prevailed amongst them, they seemed a species of organized guild,
+who constituted a distinct walk in life, and indignantly resented the
+attempt of some two or three "voluntaries" who showed a wish to join the
+fraternity.
+
+I sat against the rails of the square, studying with some curiosity
+little details of their etiquette, and their strange conventionalities.
+A regular corps of them stood in front of me, canvassing with all
+the eager volubility of their craft for the possession of a handsome
+thoroughbred pony, from which a young officer, in a cavalry undress, was
+about to dismount.
+
+"I 'm your own boy, Captain! I'm Tim, sir!" cried one, with a leer of
+most familiar intimacy.
+
+"'Tis me towld ye about Miss O'Grady, sir," shouted another, preferring
+another and stronger claim.
+
+"I'm the boy caught your mare the day ye was thrown, Captain!"
+insinuated a third, exhibiting a want of tact in the reminiscence that
+drew down many a scoff upon him from his fellows; for these ragged and
+starving curs had a most lively sense of the use of flattery.
+
+"Off with you!--stand off!" said the young dragoon, in a threatening
+tone; "let that fellow take my mare;" and he pointed to me as I sat,
+a patient but unconcerned spectator of the scene. Had a medical
+consultation been suddenly set aside on the eve of a great surgical
+operation, and the 'knife' committed to the unpractised hand of a new
+bystander, the breach of etiquette and the surprise could scarce have
+been greater. The gang stared at me with most undisguised contempt, and
+a perfect volley of abuse and irony followed me as I hastened to obey
+the summons.
+
+It has been very often my fortune in life to take a position for which I
+neither had submitted to the usual probationary study, nor possessed
+the necessary acquirement; but I believe this my first step in the
+very humble walk of a "horse-boy" gave me more pain than ever did any
+subsequent one. The criticisms on my dress, my walk, my country look, my
+very shoes,--my critics wore none,--were all poignant and bitter; and I
+verily believe, such is the force of ridicule, I should have preferred
+the rags and squalor of the initiated, at that moment, to the warm gray
+frieze and blue worsted stockings of my country costume.
+
+I listened attentively to the young officer's directions how I was to
+walk his mare, and where; and then, assuming a degree of indifference
+to sarcasm I was far from feeling, moved away from the spot in sombre
+dignity. The captain--the title is generic--was absent about an hour;
+and when he returned, seemed so well pleased with my strict obedience to
+his orders that he gave me a shilling, and desired me to be punctually
+at the same hour and the same place on the day following.
+
+It was now dark; the lamplighter had begun his rounds, and I was just
+congratulating myself that I should escape my persecutors, when I saw
+them approaching in a body. In an instant I was surrounded, and assailed
+with a torrent of questions as to who I was, where I came from,
+what brought me there, and, lastly, and with more eagerness than all
+besides,--what did "the captain" give me? As I answered this query
+first, the others were not pressed; and it being voted that I should
+expend the money on the fraternity, by way of entrance-fee, or, as they
+termed it, "paying my footing," away we set in a body to a distant part
+of the town, remote from all its better and more spacious thoroughfares,
+and among a chaos of lanes and alleys called the "Liberties." If the
+title were conferred for the excessive and unlimited freedoms permitted
+to the inhabitants, it was no misnomer. On my very entrance into it I
+perceived the perfect free and easy which prevailed.
+
+A dense tide of population thronged the close, confined passages, mostly
+of hodmen, bricklayers' laborers, and scavengers, with old-clothesmen,
+beggars, and others whose rollicking air and daring look bespoke more
+hazardous modes of life.
+
+My companions wended their way through the dense throng like practised
+travellers, often cutting off an angle by a dive through the two
+doors of a whiskey shop, and occasionally making a great short-cut by
+penetrating through a house and the court behind it,--little exploits
+in geography expiated by a volley of curses from the occupants, and
+sometimes an admonitory brickbat in addition.
+
+The uniform good temper they exhibited; the easy freedom with which they
+submitted to the rather rough jocularities of the passers-by,--the usual
+salute being a smart slap on the crown of the head, administered by
+the handicraft tool of the individual, and this sometimes being an iron
+trowel or a slater's hammer,--could not but exalt them in my esteem
+as the most patient set of varlets I had ever sojourned with. To my
+question as to why we were going so far, and whither our journey tended,
+I got for answer the one short reply,--"We must go to 'ould Betty's.'"
+
+Now, as I would willingly spare as much of this period's recital to my
+reader as I can, I will content myself with stating that "ould Betty,"
+or Betty Cobbe, was an old lady who kept a species of ordinary for the
+unclaimed youth of Dublin. They were fed and educated at her seminary;
+the washing cost little, and they were certainly "done" for at the very
+smallest cost, and in the most remarkably brief space of time. If ever
+these faint memorials of a life should be read in a certain far-off
+land, more than one settler in the distant bush, more than one angler in
+the dull stream of Swan River, will confess how many of his first sharp
+notions of life and manners were imbibed from the training nurture of
+Mrs. Elizabeth Cobbe.
+
+Betty's proceedings, for some years before I had the honor and felicity
+of her acquaintance, had attracted towards her the attention of the
+authorities.
+
+The Colonial Secretary had possibly grown jealous; for she had been
+pushing emigration to Norfolk Island on a far wider scale than ever
+a cabinet dreamed of; and thus had she acquired what, in the polite
+language of our neighbors, is phrased the "Surveillance of the
+Police,"--a watchful superintendence and anxious protectorate, for
+which, I grieve to say, she evinced the very reverse of gratitude.
+Betty had, in consequence, and in requirement with the spirit of the
+times--the most capricious spirit that ever vexed plain, old-fashioned
+mortals--reformed her establishment; and from having opened her doors,
+as before, to what, in the language of East Indian advertisements, are
+called "a few spirited young men," she had fallen down to that small
+fry who, in various disguises of vagrancy and vagabondage, infest the
+highways of a capital.
+
+By these disciples she was revered and venerated; their devotion was the
+compensation for the world's neglect, and so she felt it. To train them
+up with a due regard to the faults and follies of their better-endowed
+neighbors was her aim and object, and to such teaching her knowledge of
+Dublin life and people largely contributed.
+
+Her original walk had been minstrelsy; she was the famous ballad-singer
+of Drogheda Street, in the year of the rebellion of '98. She had been
+half a dozen times imprisoned,--some said that she had even visited
+"Beresford's riding-school," where the knout was in daily practice; but
+this is not so clear: certain it is, both her songs and sympathy had
+always been on the patriotic side. She was the terror of Protestant
+ascendency for many a year long.
+
+Like Homer, she sung her own verses; or, if they were made for her, the
+secret of the authorship was never divulged. For several years previous
+to the time I now speak of, she had abandoned the Muses, save on some
+special and striking occasions, when she would come before the world
+with some lyric, which, however, did little more than bear the name of
+its once famed composer.
+
+So much for the past. Now to the present history of Betty Cobbe.
+
+In a large unceilinged room, with a great fire blazing on the hearth,
+over which a huge pot of potatoes was boiling, sat Betty, in a straw
+chair. She was evidently very old, as her snow-white hair and lustreless
+eye bespoke; but the fire of a truculent, unyielding spirit still warmed
+her blood, and the sharp, ringing voice told that she was decided to
+wrestle for existence to the last, and would never "give in" until
+fairly conquered.
+
+Betty's chair was the only one in the chamber: the rest of the company
+disposed themselves classically in the recumbent posture, or sat,
+like primitive Christians, cross-legged. A long deal table, sparingly
+provided with wooden plates and a few spoons, occupied the middle of the
+room, and round the walls were several small bundles of straw, which I
+soon learned were the property of private individuals.
+
+"Come along till I show ye to ould Betty," said one of the varlets to
+me, as he pushed his way through the crowded room; for already several
+other gangs had arrived, and were exchanging recognitions.
+
+"She's in a sweet temper, this evening," whispered another, as we
+passed. "The Polis was here a while ago, and took up 'Danny White,' and
+threatened to break up the whole establishment."
+
+"The devil a thing at all they'll lave us of our institushuns," said a
+bow-legged little blackguard, with the 'Evening Freeman' written round
+his hat; for he was an attaché of that journal.
+
+"Ould Betty was crying all the evening," said the former speaker; by
+this time we had gained the side of the fireplace, where the old lady
+sat.
+
+"Mother! mother, I say!" cried my guide, touching her elbow gently;
+then, stooping to her ear, he added, "Mother Betty!"
+
+"Eh! Who's callin' me?" said the hag, with her hand aloft. "I'm here, my
+Lord, neither ashamed nor afeard to say my name."
+
+"She's wanderin'," cried another; "she thinks she's in Coort."
+
+"Betty Cobbe! I say. It's me!" said my introducer, once more.
+
+The old woman turned fiercely round, and her dimmed and glassy eyes,
+bloodshot from excess and passion, seemed to flare up into an angry
+gleam as she said, "You dirty thief! Is it you that's turnin' informer
+agin me,--you that I took up--out of yer mother's arms, in Green Street,
+when she fainted at the cutting down of yer father? Your father," added
+she, "that murdered old Meredith!"
+
+The boy, a hardened and bold-featured fellow, became lividly pale, but
+never spoke.
+
+"Yes, my Lord," continued she, still following the theme of her own wild
+fancies, "it's James Butterley's boy! Butterley that was hanged!" and
+she shook and rocked with a fiendish exultation at the exposure.
+
+"Many of us does n't know what bekem of our fathers!" said a
+sly-looking, old-fashioned creature, whose height scarcely exceeded two
+feet, although evidently near manhood in point of age.
+
+"Who was yours, Mickey?" cried another.
+
+"Father Glynn, of Luke Street," growled out the imp, with a leer.
+
+"And yours?" said another, dragging me forward, directly in front of
+Betty.
+
+"Con Cregan, of Kilbeggan," said I, boldly.
+
+"Success to ye, ma bouchal!" said the old hag; "and so you 're a son of
+Con the informer." She looked sternly at me for a few seconds, and then,
+in a slower and more deliberate tone, added, "I 'm forty years, last
+Lady Day, living this way, and keepin' company with all sorts of
+thieves, and rogues, and blaguards, and worse,--ay, far worse besides;
+but may I never see Glory if an informer, or his brat, was under the
+roof afore!"
+
+The steadfast decision of look and voice as she spoke seemed to
+impress the bystanders, who fell back and gazed at me with that kind of
+shrinking terror which honest people sometimes exhibit at the contact of
+a criminal.
+
+During the pause of some seconds, while this endured, my sense of abject
+debasement was at the very lowest. To be the Pariah of such a society
+was indeed a most distinctive infamy.
+
+"Are ye ashamed of yer father? Tell me that!" cried the hag, shaking me
+roughly by one shoulder.
+
+"It is not here, and before the like of these," said I, looking round at
+the ragged, unwashed assemblage, "that I should feel shame! or if I did,
+it is to find myself among them!"
+
+"That's my boy! that's my own spirited boy!" cried the old woman,
+dragging me towards her. "Faix, I seen the time we 'd have made
+somethin' out of you. Howld yer tongues, ye vagabonds! the child's
+right,--yer a dirty mean crew! Them!" said she, pointing to me, "them
+was the kind of chaps I used to have, long ago; that was n't afeard of
+all the Beresfords, and Major Sirr, and the rest of them. Singing every
+night on Carlisle Bridge, 'The Wearin' of the Green,' or 'Tra-lal-la,
+the French is coming;' and when they wor big and grown men, ready and
+willing to turn out for ould Ireland. Can you read, avick?"
+
+"Yes, and write," answered I, proudly.
+
+"To be sure ye can," muttered she, half to herself; "is it an informer's
+child,--not know the first rules of his trade!"
+
+"Tear and ages, mother!" cried out the decrepit imp called Mickey, "we
+'re starvin' for the meat!"
+
+"Sarve it up!" shouted the hag, with a voice of command; and she gave
+three knocks with her crutch on the corner of the table.
+
+Never was command more promptly obeyed. A savory mess of that smoking
+compound called "Irish stew" was ladled out on the trenchers, and
+speedily disposed around the table, which at once was surrounded by
+the guests,--a place being made for myself by an admonitory stroke of
+Betty's crutch on the red head of a very hungry juvenile who had jostled
+me in his anxiety to get near the table.
+
+Our meal had scarcely drawn to its close when the plates were removed,
+and preparations made for a new party; nor had I time to ask the reason,
+when a noisy buzz of voices without announced the coming of a numerous
+throng. In an instant they entered; a number of girls, of every age,
+from mere child to womanhood,--a ragged, tattered, reckless-looking set
+of creatures, whose wild, high spirits not even direst poverty could
+subdue. While some exchanged greetings with their friends of the other
+sex, others advanced to talk to Betty, or stood to warm themselves
+around the fire, until their supper, a similar one to our own, was got
+ready. My curiosity as to whence they came in such a body was satisfied
+by learning that they were employed at the "Mendicity Institution"
+during the day, and set free at nightfall to follow the bent of
+their own, not over well-regulated, tastes. These creatures were the
+ballad-singers of the city; and, sometimes alone, sometimes in company
+with one of the boys, they were wont to take their stand in some public
+thoroughfare, not only the character of the singer, but the poetry
+itself, taking the tone of the street; so that while some daring bit of
+town scandal caught the ears of College Green, a "bloody murder" or a
+"dying speech" formed the attraction of Thomas Street and the "Poddle."
+
+Many years afterwards, in the checkered page of my existence, when I
+have sat at lordly tables and listened to the sharpened wit and polished
+raillery of the high-born and the gifted, my mind has often reverted
+to that beggar horde, and thought how readily the cutting jest was
+answered, how soon repartee followed attack--what quaint fancies, what
+droll conceits, passed through those brains, where one would have deemed
+there was no room for aught save brooding guilt and sad repining.
+
+As night closed in, the assembly broke up; some issued forth to their
+stations as ballad-singers; some, in pure vagabond spirit, to stroll
+about the streets; while others, of whom I was one, lay down upon the
+straw to sleep, without a dream, till daylight.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. VIEWS OF LIFE
+
+When I woke the next morning, it was a few minutes before I could
+thoroughly remember where I was and how I came there; my next thought
+was the grateful one, that if the calling was not a very exaltued one,
+I had at least secured a mode of living, and that my natural acuteness,
+and, better still, my fixed resolve within me "to get forward in the
+world," would not permit me to pass my days in the ignoble craft of
+a "horse-boy." I found that the "walk," like every other career, had
+certain guiding rules and principles by which it was regulated. Not only
+were certain parts of the town interdicted to certain gangs, but it was
+a recognized rule that when a particular boy was singled out habitually
+by any gentleman that no other should endeavor to supplant him. This was
+the less difficult as a perfect community of property was the rule of
+the order; and all moneys were each night committed to the charge of
+"old Betty," with a scrupulous fidelity that would have shamed many a
+"joint-stock company."
+
+The regular etiquette required that each youth should begin his career
+in the north side of the city, where the class of horsemen was of a less
+distinguished order, and the fees proportionably lower. Thence he
+was promoted to the Four Courts; from which, as the highest stage, he
+arrived at Merrion Square and its neighborhood. Here the visitors were
+either the young officers of the garrison, the Castle officials, or a
+wealthy class of country gentlemen, all of whom gave sixpences; while
+in the cold quarter of northern Dublin, penny-pieces were the only
+currency. If the public differed in these three places, so did the
+claims of the aspirant: a grave, quiet, almost sombre look being the
+grand qualification in the one, while an air of daring effrontery was
+the best recommendation in the other. For while the master in
+chancery or the "six clerk" would only commit his bobtailed pony to a
+discreet-faced varlet of grave exterior, the dashing aide-de-camp on his
+thoroughbred singled out the wild imp with roguish eye and flowing hair,
+that kept up with him from the barrack in a sharp canter, and actually
+dived under a carriage-pole and upset an apple-stall to be "up" in
+time to wait on him; and while yet breathless and blown, was ready with
+voluble tongue to give him the current news of the neighborhood,--who
+was in the Square, or out dining; who had arrived, or why they were
+absent. To do this task with dexterity and tact was the crowning
+feature of the craft, and in such hasty journalism some attained a high
+proficiency; seasoning their scandal with sly bits of drollery or quaint
+allusions to the current topics of the day. To succeed in this, it
+was necessary to know the leading characters of the town and the
+circumstances of their private history; and these I set myself to learn
+with the assiduity of a study. Never did a Bath Master of the Ceremonies
+devote himself more ardently to the investigation of the faults and
+foibles of his company; never did young lady, before coming out, more
+patiently pore over Debrett, than did I pursue my researches into Dublin
+life and manners; until at last, what between oral evidence and shrewd
+observation, I had a key to the secret mysteries of nearly every
+well-known house in the city.
+
+None like me to explain why the father of the dashing family in
+Stephen's Green only appeared of a Sunday; how the blinds of No. 18 were
+always drawn down at three o'clock; and what meant the hackney-coach
+at the canal bridge every Thursday afternoon. From the gentleman that
+always wore a geranium leaf in his coat, to the lady who dropped her
+glove in the Square, I knew them all. Nor was it merely that I possessed
+the knowledge, but I made it to be felt. I did not hoard my wealth
+like a miser, but I came forth like a great capitalist to stimulate
+enterprise and encourage credit. Had I been a malicious spirit, there is
+no saying what amount of mischief I might have worked, what discoveries
+anticipated, what awkward meetings effected. I was, however, what the
+French call a "bon diable," and most generously took the side of
+the poor sinner against the strong spirit of right. How many a poor
+subaltern had been put in arrest for wearing "mufti," had I not been
+there to apprise him the town-major White was coming. How often have I
+saved a poor college-man from a heavy fine, who, with his name on the
+sick-list, was flirting in the "Square." How have I hastened, at the
+risk of my neck, between crashing carriages and prancing horses, to
+announce to a fair lady lounging in her britzska that the "Counsellor,"
+her husband, was unexpectedly returning from court an hour earlier than
+his wont. I have rescued sons from fathers, daughters from mothers; the
+pupil from his guardian, the debtor from his creditor,--in a word, was a
+kind of ragged guardian angel, who watched over the peccadilloes of the
+capital. My "amour propre"--if such an expression of such a quality may
+be conceded to one like me--was interested in the cause of all who did
+wrong. I was the Quixote of all deceivers.
+
+With "Con on the look-out," none feared surprise; and while
+my shrewdness was known to be first-rate, my honesty was alike
+unimpeachable. It may readily be believed how, with acquirements
+and talents like these, I no longer pursued the humble walk of
+"horse-holder;" indeed, I rarely touched a bridle, or, if I did so, it
+was only to account for my presence in such localities as I might need
+an excuse to loiter in. I was at the head of my profession; and the
+ordinary salutation of the cavaliers, "Con, get me a fellow to hold this
+mare," showed that none presumed to expect the ignoble service at my own
+hands.
+
+To some two or three of my early patrons, men who had noticed me in my
+obscurity, I would still condescend to yield this attention,--a degree
+of grateful acknowledgment on my part which they always rewarded most
+handsomely. Among these was the young officer whose pony I had held on
+the first night of my arrival. He was an Honorable Captain De Courcy,
+very well-looking, well-mannered, and very poor,--member of the
+Commander-in-Chief's staff, who eked out his life by the aid of his
+noble birth and his wits together.
+
+At the time I speak of, his visits to Merrion Square were devoted to the
+cause of a certain Mrs. Mansergh, the young and beautiful wife of an
+old red-faced, foul-mouthed Queen's Counsel, at least forty years her
+senior. The scandal was, that her origin had been of the very humblest,
+and that, seen by accident on circuit, she had caught the fancy of the
+old lawyer, a well-known connoisseur in female beauty. However that
+might be, she was now about two years married, and already recognized as
+the reigning beauty of the viceregal court and the capital.
+
+The circumstances of her history,--her low origin, her beauty, and the
+bold game she played,--all invested her with a great interest in my
+eyes. I used to flatter myself that there was a kind of similarity in
+at least our early fortunes; and I enlisted myself in her cause with an
+ardor that I could not explain to myself. How often, as she passed in
+her splendid barouche,--the best-appointed and handsomest equipage
+of the capital,--have I watched her as, wrapped in her Cashmere, she
+reclined in all the voluptuous indolence of her queenly state; glorying
+to think that _she_,--she, whose proud glance scarce noticed the
+obsequious throng that bowed with uncovered heads around her,--that she
+was perhaps not better nurtured than myself. Far from envious jealousy
+at her better fortune, I exulted in it; she was a kind of beacon set on
+a hill to guide and cheer me. I remember well, it was an actual
+triumph to me one day, as the Viceroy, a gay and dashing nobleman, not
+overscrupulous where the claim of beauty was present, stopped, with all
+his glittering staff, beside her carriage, and in playful raillery began
+to chide her for being absent from the last drawing-room. "We missed you
+sadly, Mrs. Mansergh," said he, smiling his most seductive smile. "Pray
+tell my friend Mansergh that he shows himself a most lukewarm supporter
+of the Government who denies us the fairest smiles of the capital."
+
+"In truth, my Lord, he would not give me a new train, and I refused to
+wear the old one," said she, laughing.
+
+"Downright disloyalty, upon my honor," said the Viceroy, with well
+got-up gravity.
+
+"Don't you think so, my Lord?" rejoined she; "so I even told him that
+I 'd represent the case to your Excellency, who, I 'm sure, would not
+refuse a velvet robe to the wife, while you gave a silk gown to the
+husband."
+
+"It will be the very proudest of my poor prerogatives," said he, bowing,
+while a flash of crimson lit up his pleased features. "Your favorite
+color is--"
+
+"I should like to wear your Lordship's," said she, with a look the most
+finished coquette might envy, so admirably blended were trust and timid
+bashfulness.
+
+What he replied I could not catch. There was a flattering courtesy,
+however, in his smile, and in the familiar motion of the hand with which
+he bade "good-bye," that were enough to show me that he, the haughty
+mirror of his sovereign, did not think it beneath him to bandy
+compliments and exchange soft looks with the once humble beauty. From
+that time out, my whole thoughts day and night were centred in her; and
+I have passed hours long, fancying all the possible fortunes for which
+destiny might intend her. It seemed to me as though she was piloting out
+the course for me in life, and that her success was the earnest of my
+own. Often, when a ball or a great reception was given by her, have
+I sat, cold, shivering, and hungry, opposite the house, watching with
+thrilling interest all the equipages as they came, and hearing the high
+and titled names called aloud by the servants, and thinking to myself,
+"Such are _her_ associates _now_. These great and haughty personages are
+here to do honor to _her_, their lovely hostess; and _she_, but a
+few years back, if report spoke truly, was scarcely better off than I
+was--I--myself."
+
+Only they who have a sanguine, hopeful temperament will be able to
+understand how the poor houseless, friendless boy--the very outcast
+of the world, the convict's child--could ever dare to indulge in such
+day-dreams of future greatness. But I had set the goal before my eyes;
+the intermediate steps to it I left to fortune. The noble bearing and
+polished graces of the high and wealthy, which to my humble associates
+seemed the actual birthright of the great, I perceived could all be
+acquired. There was no prescriptive claim in any class to the manners
+of high breeding; and why should not I, if fortune favored, be as good
+a gentleman as the best? In other particulars, all that I had observed
+showed me no wondrous dissimilarity of true feeling in the two classes.
+The gentleman, to be sure, did not swear like the common fellow; but on
+the racecourse or the betting-ground I had seen, to the full, as much
+deceit as ever I witnessed in my "own order." There was faithlessness
+beneath Valenciennes lace and velvet as well as beneath brown stuff and
+check; and a spirit of backbiting, that we ragged folk knew nothing of,
+seemed a current pastime in better circles.
+
+What, then, should debar me from that class? Not the manners, which I
+could feign, nor the vices, which I could feel. To be like them, was
+only to be of them,--such, at least, was then my conviction and my
+theory.
+
+Any one who will take the pains to reflect on and analyze the mode of
+thinking I have here mentioned, will see how necessarily it tends rather
+to depress those above than to elevate those beneath. I did not purpose
+to myself any education in high and noble sentiments, but simply the
+performance of a part which I deemed easy to assume. The result soon
+began to tell. I felt a degree of contemptuous hatred for the very
+persons I had once revered as almost demigods. I no longer looked up to
+the "gentleman" as such by right divine, but by accident; and I fostered
+the feeling by the writings of every radical newspaper I could come
+at. All the levelling doctrines of socialism, all the plausibilities
+of equality, became as great truths to me; and I found a most ready
+aptitude in my mind to square the fruits of my personal observation to
+these pleasant theories. The one question recurred every morning as I
+arose, and remained unanswered each night as I lay down, "Why should
+I hold a horse, and why should another man ride one?" I suppose the
+difficulty has puzzled wiser heads; indeed, since I mooted it to myself,
+it has caused some trouble in the world; nor, writing now as I do in the
+year of grace '48, do I suppose the question is yet answered.
+
+I have dwelt perhaps too long on this exposition of my feelings; but
+as my subsequent life was one of far more action than reflection, the
+indulgent reader will pardon the prosiness, not simply as explaining the
+history which follows, but also as affording a small breathing-space in
+a career where there were few "halts."
+
+I have said that I began to conceive a great grudge against all who
+were well off in life, and against none did I indulge this aversion
+more strongly than "the captain," my first patron,--almost my only one.
+Though he had always employed me,--and none ever approached him save
+myself,--he had never condescended to the slightest act of recognition
+beyond the tap on my head with his gold-mounted whip, and a significant
+nod where to lead his pony. No sign of his, no look, no gesture, ever
+confessed to the fact that I was a creature of his own species, that I
+had had a share in the great firm which, under the name of Adam and Co.,
+has traded so long and industriously.
+
+If I were sick, or cold, or hungry, it mattered not; my cheek might be
+sunk with want or care, my rags might drip with rain, or freeze with
+sleet,--he never noticed them; yet if the wind played too roughly with
+his Arab's mane, or the silky tasselled tail, he saw it at once. If her
+coat stirred with the chill breeze, he would pat and pet her. It was
+evident enough which had the better existence.
+
+If these thoughts chafed and angered me at first, at least they served
+to animate and rouse my spirit. He who wants to rise in life must feel
+the sharp spur of a wrong,--there is nothing like it to give vigor and
+energy to his motions. When I came to this conclusion, I did not wait
+long to put the feeling into action; and it was thus--But a new chapter
+of my life deserves a new chapter of my history.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. A BOLD STROKE FOR AN OPENING IN THE WORLD
+
+As regular as the day itself did I wait at the corner of Merrion Square,
+at three o'clock, the arrival of Captain De Courcy, who came punctual
+to the instant; indeed, the clatter of the pony's hoofs as he cantered
+along always announced the striking of the Post-office clock. To
+dismount, and fling me the bridle, with a short nod of the head in the
+direction he wished me to walk the animal, was the extent of recognition
+ever vouchsafed me; and as I never ventured upon even a word with
+him, our intercourse was of the simplest possible kind. There was an
+impassive quietude about his pale cold features that awed me. I never
+saw him smile but once; it was when the mare seized me by the shoulder,
+and tore with her teeth a great piece of my ragged coat away. Then,
+indeed, he did vouchsafe to give a faint, listless smile, as he said to
+his pampered nag, "Fie, fie! What a dirty feeder you are!"
+
+Very little notice on his part, the merest act of recognition, a look, a
+monosyllable, would have been enough to satisfy me,--anything, in short,
+which might acknowledge that we were part of the same great chain, no
+matter how many links might lie between us.
+
+I do not wish it to be inferred that I had any distinct right to such
+an acknowledgment, nor that any real advantage would have accrued to me
+from obtaining it,--far from that; very little consideration might
+have induced me to be contented with my station; and, if so, instead of
+writing these notes in a boudoir with silk hangings, and--but this is
+anticipating with a vengeance! And now to go back.
+
+After three hours of a cold wait, on a rainy and dreary afternoon, the
+only solace to my hunger being the imaginative one of reflecting on the
+pleasure of those happy mortals who were sitting down to dinner in the
+various houses along the Square, and fancying to myself the blessed
+state of tranquillity it must impart to a man's nature to see a meal of
+appetizing excellence, from which no call of business, no demand of any
+kind could withdraw him. And what speculations did I indulge in as to
+the genial pleasantry that must abound,--the happy wit, the joyous ease
+of such gatherings when three or four carriages at a door would bespeak
+the company at such a dinner-party!
+
+At last, out came my captain, with a haste and flurry of manner quite
+unusual. He did not, as was his constant custom, pass his hand along the
+mare's neck to feel her coat, nor did he mutter a single word of coaxing
+to her as he mounted. He flung himself with a jerk into the saddle, and,
+rapping my knuckles sharply with the gold knob of his whip, pettishly
+cried, "Let her go, sirrah!" and cantered away. I stood for some moments
+motionless, my mind in that strange state when the first thought of
+rebellion has entered, and the idea of reprisal has occurred. I was
+about to go away, when the drawing-room window, straight above me, was
+opened, and a lady stepped out upon the balcony. It was too dark to
+discern either her features or her dress; but a certain instinct told me
+it was Mrs. Mansergh. "Are you Captain De Courcy's boy?" said she, in a
+sweet and subdued voice. I replied in the affirmative, and she went on:
+"You know his quarters at the Royal Hospital? Well, go there at once,
+as speedily as you can, and give him this note." She hesitated for a
+second, as if uncertain what to say, and then added, "It is a note he
+dropped from his pocket by accident."
+
+"I'll do it, ma'am," said I, catching the letter and the half-crown,
+which she had half inserted in the envelope to give it weight. "You
+may trust me perfectly." Before the words were well uttered, she had
+retired, the window was closed, the curtain drawn, and, except the
+letter and the coin in my fingers, nothing remained to show that the
+whole had not been a trick of my foolish brain.
+
+My immediate impulse was to fulfil my mission; I even started off at
+full speed to do so. But as I turned the corner of the Square, the glare
+of a bright gas-lamp suggested the temptation of at least a look at
+my despatches; and what was my astonishment to find that on this note,
+which had been dropped by "accident" from the captain's pocket, the
+superscription was scarcely dry,--in the very act of catching, I had
+blotted the words! This, of course, was no affair of mine; but it
+evinced deception,--and deception at certain moments becomes a dangerous
+injury. There are times when the mind feels deceit to be an outrage. The
+stormy passions of the fury-driven mob, reckless and headstrong, show
+this; and the most terrible moment in all political convulsions is when
+the people feel, or even suspect, that they have been tricked. My frame
+of mind was exactly in that critical stage. A minute before, I was
+ready to yield any obedience, tender any service; and now, of a
+sudden,--without the slightest real cause, or from anything which could
+in the remotest way affect me,--I had become a rebel. Let the reader
+forgive the somewhat tedious analysis of a motive, since it comes from
+one who has long studied the science of moral chemistry, and made most
+of his experiments--as the rule directs--in "ignoble bodies."
+
+My whole resolve was changed: I would not deliver the note. Not that I
+had any precise idea wherefore, or that I had the least conception what
+other course I should adopt; I was a true disciple of revolt: I rebelled
+for very rebellion's sake.
+
+Betty Cobbe's was more than usually brilliant on that evening. A
+race, which was to come off at Kingstown the next day, had attracted a
+numerous company, in the various walks of horse-boys, bill-carriers, and
+pickpockets, all of whom hoped to find a ready harvest on the morrow.
+The conversation was, therefore, entirely of a sporting character.
+Anecdotes of the turf and the ring went round, and in the many curious
+devices of roguery and fraud might be read the prevailing taste of
+that select company. Combinations were also formed to raise the rate of
+payment, and many ingenious suggestions thrown out about turning cattle
+loose, slacking girths, stealing curb-chains, and so on, from that
+antagonistic part of the public who preferred holding their horses
+themselves than intrusting them to the profession.
+
+The race itself, too, engrossed a great share of interest; and a certain
+Fergusson was talked of with all the devotedness and affection of a dear
+friend. Nor, as I afterwards learned, was the admiration a merely blind
+one, as he was a most cunning adept in all the wily stratagems by which
+such men correct the wilful ways of Fortune.
+
+How my companions chuckled over stories of "rotten ditches" that were
+left purposely to betray the unwary; swinging gates that would open at
+the least touch, and inevitably catch the horse that attempted to clear,
+if the hoof but grazed them; bog-holes, to swamp, and stone fences, to
+smash,--had their share of approval; but a drain dug eight feet deep,
+and that must certainly break the back of the horse, if not of the rider
+also, who made a "mistake" over it, seemed the triumph which carried
+away the suffrages of the whole assembly.
+
+Now, although I had seen far more of real sport and horsemanship than
+the others, these narratives were for the most part new to me; and I
+listened with a high interest to every scheme and trick by which cunning
+can overreach and outmanoeuvre simplicity. The admiration of adroit
+knavery is the first step on the road to fraud; and he who laughs
+heartily at a clever trick, seldom suspects how he is "booking himself"
+for the same road. For my own part, neither were my principles so fixed,
+nor my education so careful, that I did not conceive a very high respect
+for the rogue, and a very contemptuous disdain for his victim.
+
+Morning came, and a bright sunny one it was, with a keen frost and that
+kind of sharp air that invigorates and braces both mind and body. The
+crisp, clear outline of every tree and building seen against the deep
+blue sky; the sparkling river, with its clean bed of bright gravel; and
+the ruddy faces one meets,--are all of a nature to suggest pleasant and
+cheerful thoughts. Even we--we, with our frail fragments and chapped
+hands--felt it, and there was an alacrity of movement and a bounding
+step, a gay laugh and a merry voice, everywhere. All set out for
+Kingstown, in the neighborhood of which the race was to come off. I
+alone remained behind, resisting every entreaty of my companions to join
+them,--I cannot yet say why I did so. It was partly that long habit had
+made my attendance upon "the Captain" a duty; partly, perhaps, that some
+vague notion that the letter, of which I still kept possession, should
+be delivered by me at last.
+
+The town was quite empty on that day,--not a carriage, nor a horseman
+to be seen. There were very few on foot, and the Square was deserted of
+all, save its nursery population. I never felt a more tedious morning.
+I had full time, as I loitered along all alone, to contrast my solitude
+with the enjoyment my companions were at that same moment pursuing.
+
+True to the instant, Captain De Courcy cantered up, his face a thought
+graver and more stern than I had ever seen it before. As he dismounted,
+my hand, in holding his stirrup, soiled the brilliant polish of his
+lacquered boot; he perceived it, and rewarded my awkwardness with a
+smart cut of his whip. A minute before I had made up my mind to give him
+the note; now, torture itself would not have torn it from me.
+
+I followed him with my eyes till he entered the house,--not over
+distinctly, it is true, for they were somewhat blinded by tears that
+would, in spite of me, come forth. The sensation was a most painful one;
+and I am heartily glad to confess I have seldom experienced a recurrence
+of it. Scarcely was the hall-door closed on him, when I remembered that
+he would soon hear of the note, which I had failed to deliver, and that,
+in all likelihood, a heavy punishment awaited me. My offence was a grave
+one: what was to be done? Turn the mare loose and fly, or patiently
+await my fate? Either were bad enough; the latter certainly the less
+advisable of the two. A third course soon suggested itself, doubtless
+inspired by that most mischief-working adage which says that one may be
+"as well hanged for the sheep as the lamb."
+
+I therefore voted for the "larger animal;" and to satisfy myself that
+I was honest to my own convictions, I immediately proceeded to act upon
+them. I led the mare quietly along to the angle of the Square, and then,
+turning into the next street, I shortened the stirrups, mounted, and
+rode off.
+
+"Set a beggar on horseback--" says the proverb; and although the
+consequence is only meant figuratively, I have a suspicion that it might
+bear a literal reading. I rode away, at first, at a trot, and then,
+striking into a brisk canter, I took the road to Kingstown, whither,
+even yet, some horsemen were hastening.
+
+Every stride of the bounding animal elevated my spirits and nerved my
+courage. The foot-passengers, that plodded wearily along, I looked down
+upon as inferior; with the horsemen on either side I felt a kind of
+equality. How differently does one view life from the saddle and from
+the ground! The road became more thronged as I advanced, thicker crowds
+pressed eagerly forward, and numerous carriages obstructed the way. At
+another moment, perhaps, I should have attracted attention; but stranger
+sights were passing at every instant, and none troubled their heads
+about the "ragged urchin on the thoroughbred."
+
+The crowd at last became so dense that horsemen were fain to desert
+the high road, and take short cuts wherever an open gate or an easily
+crossed fence opened the way. Following a group of well-mounted
+gentlemen, I cleared a low wall into a spacious grass field, over which
+we cantered, and beyond this, by leaping an easy ditch, into another of
+the same kind, till at length we saw the vast crowds that blackened a
+hill in front, and, beneath them, could distinguish the fluttering
+flags that marked the course, and the large floating standard of the
+winning-post.
+
+What a grand sight was that! For what is so imposing a spectacle as vast
+myriads of people stirred by one interest, and animated by one absorbing
+passion? Every one has nowadays seen something of the kind, therefore
+I shall not linger to tell of the impression it made upon my youthful
+senses. The first race had already come off; but the second, and the
+great event of the day, was yet to take place.
+
+It was a steeplechase by "gentlemen riders" over a very severe line of
+country; several fences of most break-neck character having been added
+to the natural difficulties of the ground.
+
+Mounted on my splendid barb, I rode boldly forward till I reached the
+field through which the first ditch ran,--a deep and wide trench, backed
+by a low rail,--a very formidable leap, and requiring both stride and
+strength to clear it.
+
+"Some of 'em will tail off, when they sees that!" said an English groom,
+with a knowing wink; and the words were only out when, at a "slapping
+canter," the riders were seen coming down the gently sloping hill. Three
+rode nearly abreast; then came a single horseman; and, after him, an
+indiscriminate mass, whose bright and party-colored jackets glowed like
+a rainbow.
+
+I watched them with a breathless interest; as they came nearer they
+widened the space between them, and each cast a rapid but stealthy
+glance at his neighbor. One--he rode a powerful black horse--took the
+lead, and, dashing at the leap, his horse rose too soon, and fell,
+chested against the opposite bank, the rider under him; the next swerved
+suddenly round and balked; the third did the same; so that the leading
+horseman was now he who rode alone at first. Quickening his speed as he
+came on, he seemed actually to fly; and when he did take the fence, it
+was like the bound of a cannon-shot,--up, and over at once! Of the
+rest, some two or three followed well; others pulled short up; while the
+larger share, in various forms of accident and misfortune, might be seen
+either struggling in the brook, or endeavoring to rescue their horses
+from the danger of broken legs and backs.
+
+I did not wait to watch them; my interest was in those who gallantly
+led onward, and who now, some four in number, rode almost abreast. Among
+these, my favorite was the sky-blue jacket who had led the way over the
+dyke; and him did I follow with straining eyes and palpitating heart.
+They were at this moment advancing towards a wall,--a high and strong
+one, and I thought, in the slackened pace and more gathered-up stride, I
+could read the caution a difficult leap enforced.
+
+A brown jacket with white sleeves was the first to charge it; and after
+a tremendous scramble, in which the wall, the horse, and the rider were
+all tumbling together, he got over; but the animal went dead lame, and
+the rider, dismounting, led him off the ground.
+
+Next came blue-jacket; and just at the very rise his mare balked, and,
+at the top of her speed, ran away along the side of the wall. A perfect
+roar of angry disappointment arose from the multitude, for she was
+the favorite of the country people, who were loudly indignant at this
+mischance.
+
+"The race is sold!" cried one.
+
+"Beatagh"--this was the rider--"pulled her round himself! the mare never
+was known to refuse a fence!"
+
+"I say you're both wrong!" cried a third, whose excited manner showed
+he was no indifferent spectator of the scene. "She never will take her
+first wall fairly; after that she goes like a bird!"
+
+"What a confounded nuisance to think that no one will lead her over the
+fence! Is there not one here will show her the way?" said he, looking
+around.
+
+"There's the only fellow I see whose neck can afford it!" said another,
+pointing to me. "He, evidently, was never born to be killed in a
+steeplechase."
+
+"Devilish well mounted he is, too!" remarked some one else.
+
+"Hallo, my smart boy!" said he who before alluded to the mare as a
+bolter, "try your nag over that wall yonder,--go boldly. Let her
+have her head, and give her a sharp cut as she rises. Make way there,
+gentlemen! Let the boy have fair play, and I 'll wager a five-pound note
+he does it! You shall have half the stakes too, if you win!" added he.
+These were the last words I heard; for the crowd, clearing in front,
+opened for me to advance, and without a moment's hesitation of any kind,
+I dashed my heels to the mare's flanks, and galloped forward. A loud
+shout, and a perfect shower of whips on the mare's quarter from
+the bystanders, put all question of pulling up beyond the reach of
+possibility. In a minute more I was at the wall, and, ere I well knew,
+over it. A few seconds after, the blue-jacket was beside me. "Well done,
+my lad! You've earned twenty guineas if I win the race! Lead the way a
+bit, and let your mare choose her ground when she leaps." This was all
+he said; but such words of encouragement never fell on my ears before.
+
+
+
+Before us were the others, now reduced to three in number, and evidently
+holding their stride and watching each other, never for a moment
+suspecting that the most feared competitor was fast creeping up behind
+them. One fence separated us, and over this I led again, sitting my mare
+with all the composure of an old steeplechaser. "Out of the way, now!"
+cried my companion, "and let _me_ at them!" and he tore past me at a
+tremendous pace, shouting out, as he went by the rest, "Come along, my
+lads! I 'll show the way!"
+
+And so he did! With all their efforts, and they were bold ones, they
+never overtook him afterwards. His mare took each fence flying, and as
+her speed was much greater than the others', she came in full half a
+minute in advance. The others arrived all together, crest fallen and
+disappointed, and, like all beaten men, receiving the most insulting
+comments from the mob, who are somewhat keen critics on misfortune. I
+came last, for I had dropped behind when I was ordered; but, unable
+to extricate my mare from the crowd, was compelled to ride the whole
+distance with the rest. If the losing horsemen were hooted and laughed
+at, _my_ approach was a kind of triumphal entry. "There's the chap that
+led over the wall! That little fellow rode the best of them all!" "See
+that ragged boy on the small mare; he could beat the field this minute!"
+
+"'T is fifty guineas in goold ye ought to have, my chap!" said
+another,--a sentiment the unwashed on all sides seemed most heartily to
+subscribe to.
+
+"Be my soul, I 'd rather be lookin' at him than the gentlemen!" said a
+very tattered individual, with a coat like a transparency. These, and
+a hundred similar comments, fell like hail-drops around; and I believe
+that in my momentary triumph I actually forgot all the dangers and
+perils of my offence.
+
+It is a great occasion for rejoicing among the men of rags and
+wretchedness when a member of their own order has achieved anything
+like fame. The assertion of their ability to enter the lists with "their
+betters" is the very pleasantest of all flatteries. It is, so to say,
+a kind of skirmish, before that great battle which, one day or other,
+remains to be fought between the two classes which divide mankind,--
+those who have, and those who have not.
+
+I little suspected that I was, to use the cant so popular at present,
+"the representative of a great principle" in my late success. I took all
+the praises bestowed, most literally, to myself, and shook hands with
+all the dirty and tattered mob, fully convinced that I was a very fine
+fellow.
+
+"Mister Beatagh wants to see the boy that led him over the ditch,"
+shouted out a huge, wide-shouldered, red-faced ruffian, as he shoved the
+crowd right and left to make way for the approach of the gentleman who
+had just won the race.
+
+"Stand up bowld, avic!" whispered one in my ear, "and don't be ashamed
+to ax for your reward."
+
+"Say ten guineas!" muttered another.
+
+"No; but twenty!" growled out a third.
+
+"And lashings of drink besides, for the present company!" suggested a
+big-headed cripple about two feet high.
+
+"Are you the lad that took the fence before me?" cried out a
+smart-looking, red-whiskered young man, with a white surtout loosely
+thrown over his riding costume.
+
+"Yes, sir," I replied, half modestly and half assured.
+
+"Who are you, my boy, and where do you come from?"
+
+"He's one of Betty Cobbe's chickens!" shouted out an old savage-faced
+beggar-man, who was terribly indignant at the great misdirection of
+public sympathy; "and a nice clutch they are!"
+
+"What is it to you, Dan, where the crayture gets his bread?" rejoined an
+old newsvender, who, in all likelihood, had once been a parlor boarder
+in the same seminary.
+
+"Never mind _them_, but answer me, my lad!" said the gentleman. "If you
+are willing to take service, and can find any one to recommend you--"
+
+"Sure, we'll all go bail for him--to any amount!" shouted out the little
+crippled fellow, from his "bowl;" and certainly a most joyous burst of
+laughter ran through the crowd at the sentiment.
+
+"Maybe ye think I'm not a householder," rejoined the fellow, with a grin
+of assumed anger; "but have n't I my own sugar hogshead to live in, and
+devil receave the lodger in the same premises!"
+
+"I see there 's no chance of our being able to settle anything here,"
+said the gentleman. "These good people think the matter more their own
+than ours; so meet to-morrow, my lad, at Dycer's, at twelve o'clock, and
+bring me anything that can speak for your character." As he said these
+few words he brushed the crowd to one side with his whip, and forcing
+his way, with the air of a man who would not be denied, left the place.
+
+"And he 's laving the crayture without givin' him a farden!" cried one
+of the mob, who suddenly saw all the glorious fabric of a carouse and a
+drunken bout disappear like a mirage.
+
+"Oh, the 'tarnal vagabond" shouted another, more indignantly; "to desart
+the child that a-way,--and he that won the race for him!"
+
+"Will yez see the little crayture wronged?" said another, who appeared
+by his pretentious manner to be a practised street orator. "Will yez
+lave the dissolute orphan--" he meant "desolate"--"to be chayted out
+of his pater money? Are yez men at all? or are yez dirty slaves of the
+bloody 'stokessy that's murderin' ould Ireland'?"
+
+"We'll take charge of the orphan, and of you too, my smart fellow, if
+you don't brush off pretty lively!" said a policeman, as, followed by
+two others, he pushed through the crowd with that cool determination
+that seems to be actually an instinct with them. Then, laying a strong
+hand on my collar, he went on: "How did you come by that mare, my lad?"
+
+"She belongs to Captain De Courcy, of the Royal Hospital," said I, doing
+my utmost to seem calm and collected.
+
+"We know that already; what we want to hear is, what brought you here
+with her? It was n't Captain De Courcy's orders?"
+
+"No, sir. I was told to hold her for him, and--and--"
+
+"And so you rode off with her,--out with it, it saves time, my lad. Now,
+let me ask you another question: Have you any notion of the crime you
+have just committed? Do you know that it amounts to horse-stealing? And
+do you know what the penalty is for that offence?"
+
+"No, sir; I know neither one nor the other," said I, resolutely; "and,
+if I did, it doesn't matter much. As well to live upon prison diet as to
+starve in the streets!"
+
+"He's a bad 'un; I told ye that!" remarked another of the policemen.
+"Take him off, Grimes!" and so, amid a very general but subdued murmur
+of pity and condolence from the crowd, I was dragged away on one side,
+while the mare was led off on another.
+
+It was a terrible tumble down, from being a hero to an embryo felon;
+from being cheered by the populace, to being collared by a policeman!
+As we went along towards Dublin on a jaunting-car, I was regaled by
+interesting narratives of others who had begun life like myself, and
+took an abrupt leave of it in a manner by no means too decorous. The
+peculiarity of anecdote which pertains to each profession was strongly
+marked in these officers of the law; and they appeared to have
+studied the dark side of human nature with eyes the keenest and most
+scrutinizing.
+
+I wish I could even now forget the long and dreary hours of the night
+that ensued, as I lay, with some fifty others, in the jail of the
+station-house. The company was assuredly not select, nor their manners
+at all improved by the near approach of punishment. It seemed as if all
+the disguises of vice were thrown off at once, and that iniquity stood
+forth in its own true and glaring livery. I do not believe that the
+heart can ever experience a ruder shock than when an unfledged criminal
+first hears himself welcomed into the "Masonry" of guilt. To be claimed
+by such associates as a fellow-laborer, to be received as one of the
+brethren into the guild of vice, is really an awful blow to one's
+self-esteem and respect; to feel yourself inoculated with a disease
+whose fatal marks are to stamp you like this one or that, sends a
+shuddering terror through the heart, whose cold thrill is never, in a
+life-long afterwards, thoroughly eradicated.
+
+There should be a quarantine for suspected guilt, as for suspected
+disease; and the mere doubt of rectitude should not expose any
+unfortunate creature to the chances of a terrible contagion! I do not
+affect by this to say that I was guiltless,--not in the least; but my
+crime should scarcely have classified me with the associates by whom
+I was surrounded. Nor was a night in such company the wisest mode of
+restoring to the path of duty one who might possibly have only slightly
+deviated from the straight line.
+
+When morning came I was marched off, with a strong phalanx of other
+misdoers, to the College Street office, where a magistrate presided
+whose bitterest calumniators could never accuse of any undue leanings
+towards mercy. By him I had the satisfaction of hearing a great variety
+of small offences decided with a railroad rapidity, only interrupted now
+and then by a whining lamentation over the "lenity of the legislature,"
+that never awarded one tithe of the suitable penalty, and bewailing his
+own inability to do more for the criminal than send him to prison for
+two months with hard labor, and harder diet to sweeten it.
+
+At last came my name; and as I heard it shouted aloud, it almost choked
+me with a nervous fulness in the throat. I felt as though I was the
+greatest criminal in the universe, and that the whole vast assemblage
+had no other object or aim there than to see me arraigned for my
+offence.
+
+I was scarcely ordered to advance before I was desired to stand back
+again, the prosecutor, Captain De Courcy, not being in court. While a
+policeman was, therefore, despatched by the magistrate to request that
+he would have the kindness to appear,--for the captain was an honorable
+and an aide-de-camp, titles which the sitting justice knew well how to
+respect,--other cases were called and disposed of. It was nigh three
+o'clock when a great bustle in the outer court and a tremendous falling
+back of the dense crowd, accompanied by an ostentatious display of
+police zeal, heralded a group of officers, who, with jingling spurs and
+banging sabretaches, made their way to the bench, and took their seats
+beside the justice. Many were the courtesies interchanged between the
+magistrate and the captain: one averring that the delay was not in
+the slightest degree inconvenient; the other professing the greatest
+deference for the rules of court; neither bestowing a thought upon him
+most deeply concerned of all.
+
+A very brief narrative, delivered by the captain with a most military
+abruptness, detailed my offence; and, although not exaggerated in the
+slightest degree, the occasional interruptions of the magistrate served
+very considerably to magnify its guilt,--such as "Dear me! a favorite
+mare; a pure Arab; a present from your noble father, Lord Littlemore;
+infamous treatment; abominable case; abandoned young scoundrel!" and so
+on; closing with the accustomed peroration of regret that, as hanging
+was now done away with, he feared that the recorder could only award me
+a transportation for life!
+
+"Have you anything to say, sirrah?" said he at last, turning towards me;
+"or would you rather reserve your observations for another time? as I
+shall certainly commit you for trial at the commission."
+
+"I have only to suggest," said I, with an air of most insolent
+composure, "that you are probably mistaken in your law. The offence with
+which I stand charged amounts, at most, to the minor one of breach of
+trust."
+
+"What! have we got a lawyer in the dock?" said the magistrate, reddening
+with fear and anger together.
+
+"I have enjoyed some opportunities of legal study, your worship," said
+I, "and am happy to state that my opinion in the present instance will
+not discredit the assertion. The case stands thus: I am employed by the
+Honorable Captain De Courcy to perform a particular duty, which is of
+the distinct nature of a trust; that trust, whose importance I do not
+seek to extenuate in the slightest, I fail in. I will not plead the
+strong temptation of a race and a great spectacle. I will not allege, as
+perhaps I might, the example of my companions, then revelling in all the
+pleasures of the day. I will simply say that no one fact can be adduced
+to favor the suspicion of a meditated robbery; and that my conduct, so
+palpably open and public, rejects the least assumption of the kind, and
+at the utmost can establish nothing beyond what I am willing to plead
+guilty to,--a breach of trust."
+
+"Listen to the Attorney-General! By the hokey, it's himself they 've in
+the dock!" said one.
+
+"That's the chap can give them chapter and varse!" cried another.
+
+"Silence there! Keep silence in the court!" said the justice, now really
+warm with passion. "I'd have you to know, sirrah," said he, addressing
+me, "that your pettifogging shrewdness is anything but favorable to you
+in the unfortunate position in which you stand. I shall commit you
+for trial, and would advise you--it is the only piece of advice I
+'ll trouble you with--to charge some more skilful advocate with your
+defence, and not intrust it to the knavish flippancy of conceit and
+chicanery."
+
+"I mean to have counsel, your worship," said I, resolutely; for my blood
+was up, and I would have argued with the twelve judges. "I mean to
+have one of the first and most eminent at the bar for my defence. Mr.
+Mansergh, of Merrion Square, will not refuse my brief when he sees the
+fee I can offer him."
+
+A regular roar of laughter filled the court; the impudence of my speech,
+and my thus introducing the name of one of the very first men at the
+bar, as likely to concern himself for such a miserable case and object,
+was too much for any gravity; and when the magistrate turned to comment
+upon my unparalleled assurance and impertinence to Captain De Courcy, he
+discovered that the honorable captain had left his place.
+
+Such was the fact! The dashing aide-de-camp was at that moment standing
+in earnest converse with myself beside the dock.
+
+"May I speak with this boy in another room, your worship?" said he,
+addressing the court.
+
+"Certainly, Captain De Courcy! Sergeant Biles, show Captain De Courcy
+into my robing-room."
+
+The honorable captain did not regain his composure immediately on
+finding himself alone with me; on the contrary, his agitation was such
+that he made two or three efforts before he could utter the few words
+with which he first addressed me.
+
+"What did you mean by saying that Mr. Mansergh would defend you? and
+what was the fee you alluded to?" were the words.
+
+"Just what I said, sir," said I, with the steady assurance a confidence
+of victory gives. "I thought it was better to have able counsel; and as
+I know I have the means of recompensing him, the opportunity was lucky."
+
+"You don't pretend that you could afford to engage one like him, my
+lad?" said he, affecting, but very poorly, an air of easy composure.
+"What could you give him?"
+
+"A note, sir; and although it never issued from the Bank, one not
+without value!"
+
+The captain became deadly pale; he made one step towards the door, and
+in a low voice of ill-restrained anger said, "I'll have you searched,
+sirrah! If anything belonging to me is found upon you--"
+
+"No fear, sir," said I, composedly; "I have taken precautions against
+that; the note is safe!"
+
+He threw himself upon a chair, and stared at me steadily for some
+minutes without a word. There we were, each scanning the other, and
+inwardly calculating how to win the game we were playing.
+
+"Well," said he, at last; "what are your terms? You see I give in."
+
+"And so best," said I; "it saves time. I ask very little from your
+honor,--nothing more, in fact, than to have this charge dismissed. I
+don't mean to wear rags all my life, and consort with vagabonds, and
+so I dislike to have it said hereafter that I was ever arraigned or
+committed for an offence like this. You must tell the justice that
+it was some blunder or mistake of your orders to me; some accidental
+circumstance or other,--I don't much care what, or how; nor will he,
+if the explanation comes from _you!_ This done, I 'll place the note in
+your hand within half an hour, and we need never see much more of each
+other."
+
+"But who is to secure me that you keep your promise?"
+
+"You must trust to me," said I, carelessly; "I have no bail to give."
+
+"Why not return now, with the policeman, for the note, before I speak to
+the justice?"
+
+"Then who is to go bail for _you?_" said I, smiling.
+
+"You are a cool fellow, by Jove!" cried he, at the steady impudence
+which I maintained in the discussion.
+
+"I had need be," replied I, in a voice very different from the feigned
+hardihood of my assumed part. "The boy who has neither a home nor
+a friend in the world has little else to rely on, save the cold
+recklessness of what may befall him!"
+
+I saw a curl of contempt upon the captain's lip at the energy of this
+speech; for now, when, for the first time between us, a single genuine
+sentiment broke from me, he deemed it "cant."
+
+"Well!" cried he, "as you wish; I'll speak to the justice, and you shall
+be free."
+
+He left the room as he spoke, but in a few moments reentered it, saying,
+"All is right! You are discharged! Now for _your_ share of the bargain."
+
+"Where will your honor be in half an hour?"
+
+"At the Club, Foster Place."
+
+"Then I 'll be there with the note," said I.
+
+
+
+He nodded, and walked out. I watched him as he went; but he neither
+spoke to a policeman, nor did he turn his head round to see what became
+of me. There was something in this that actually awed me. It was a trait
+so unlike anything I had ever seen in others that I at once perceived it
+was "the gentleman's" spirit, enabling him to feel confidence even in a
+poor ragged street wanderer as I was. The lesson was not lost on me. My
+life has been mainly an imitative one, and I have more than once seen
+the inestimable value of "trusting."
+
+No sooner was I at large than I speeded to Betty's, and was back
+again long before the half-hour expired. I had to wait till near five,
+however, before he appeared; so sure was he of my keeping my word that
+he never troubled himself about me. "Ha!" said he, as he saw me, "long
+here?"
+
+"Yes, sir, about an hour;" and I handed him the note as I spoke.
+
+He thrust it carelessly into his sabretache, and, pulling out a crown
+piece, chucked it towards me, saying, "Good-bye, friend; if they don't
+hang you, you 'll make some noise in the world yet."
+
+"I mean it, sir," said I, with a familiar nod; and so, genteelly
+touching my cap in salute, I walked away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. A QUIET CHOP AT 'KILLEEN'S' AND A GLANCE AT A NEW
+CHARACTER
+
+I looked very wistfully at my broad crown piece as it lay with its
+honest platter face in the palm of my hand, and felt, by the stirring
+sensations it excited within me, some inklings of his feelings who
+possesses hundreds of thousands of them. Then there arose in my mind the
+grave question how it was to be spent; and such a strange connection is
+there between what economists call supply and demand, that, in place
+of being, as I esteemed myself a few minutes back, "passing rich," I at
+once perceived that I was exceeding poor, since to effect any important
+change in my condition, five shillings was a most inadequate sum. It
+would not buy me more than a pair of shoes; and what use in repairing
+the foundation of the edifice, when the roof was in ruin?--not to speak
+of my other garments, to get into which, each morning, by the same
+apertures as before, was a feat that might have puzzled a harlequin.
+
+I next bethought me of giving an entertainment to my brethren at
+Betty's; but, after all, they had shown little sympathy with me in my
+late misfortune, and seemed rather pleased to be rid of a dangerous
+professional rival. This, and a lurking desire to leave the fraternity,
+decided me against this plan.
+
+Then came the thought of entertaining myself, giving myself a species
+of congratulatory dinner on my escape; and, in fact, commemorating the
+event by anticipating the most fashionable mode now in use.
+
+I canvassed the notion with all the skill and fairness I could summon,
+starting the various objections against it, and answering them with what
+seemed to myself a most judicial impartiality.
+
+"Who does a man usually entertain," said I, "but his intimate friends?"
+Those whose agreeability is pleasing to him, or whose acquaintance is
+valuable from their station and influence. Now, with whom had I such
+an unrestrained and cordial intercourse as myself? Whose society never
+wearied, whose companionship always interested me? My own! And who, of
+all the persons I had ever met with, conceived a sincere and heartfelt
+desire for my welfare, preferring it to all others? "Con Cregan, it is
+you," said I, enthusiastically. "In you my confidence is complete. I
+believe you incapable of ever forgetting me. Come, then, and let us
+pledge our friendship over a flowing bowl."
+
+Where, too, was the next doubt? With a crown to spend, I was not going
+to descend to some subterranean den among coalheavers, newsvenders,
+and umbrella-hawkers. But how was I to gain access to a better-class
+ordinary,--that was the difficulty,--who would admit the street-runner,
+in his rags, into even a brief intimacy with his silver forks and
+spoons? And it was precisely to an entertainment on such a scale as a
+good tavern could supply that I aspired. It was to test my own feelings
+under a new stimulant,--just as I have often since seen grave people
+experiment upon themselves with laughing-gas and magnetism and the fumes
+of ether.
+
+"It may be too much for you, Con," said I, as I went along; "there's no
+knowing what effect it may have on your nerves.
+
+"Remember that your system is not attuned to such variations. Your
+vagaries may prove extravagant, and the too sudden elevation may disturb
+your naturally correct judgment." Against these doubts I pleaded the
+necessity of not being ungrateful to myself, not refusing a very proper
+acknowledgment of my own skill and astuteness; and, lastly, I suggested
+a glancing kind of hope that, like those famed heroes who dated their
+great fortune to having gone to sleep beneath the shadow of some charmed
+tree, or near the ripple of a magic fountain, that I, too, should arise
+from this banquet with some brilliant view of life, and see the path to
+success, bright and clear before me, through the hazy mists of fancy.
+
+As I reasoned thus, I passed various ordinaries, stopping with a kind
+of instinct at each, to gaze at the luscious rounds of beef so daintily
+tricked out with sprigs of parsley; the appetizing cold sirloins, so
+beautifully stratified with fat and lean; with hams that might tempt
+a rabbi; not to speak of certain provocative little paragraphs about
+"Ox-tail and Gravy ready at all hours." "Queer world it is," said I;
+"and there are passing at every instant, by tens and twenties, men
+and women and children, famishing and hungry, who see all these things
+separated from them by a pane of window-glass; and yet they only gather
+their rags more closely together, clench their thin lips tighter, and
+move on. Not that alone; but here am I, with means to buy what I want,
+and yet I must not venture to cross that threshold, as though my rags
+should be an insult to their broadcloth." "Move on, youngster," quoth a
+policeman at this moment, and thus put an end to my soliloquy.
+
+Wearied with rambling, and almost despairing of myself, I was about
+to cross Carlisle Bridge, when the blazing effulgence of a great
+ruby-colored lamplight attracted my attention, over which, in bright
+letters, ran the words, "Killeen's Tavern and Chop House," and beneath:
+"Steak, potatoes, and a pint of stout, one shilling and fourpence."
+Armed with a bold thought, I turned and approached the house.
+
+Two or three waiters, in white aprons, were standing at the door, and
+showed little inclination to make way for me as I advanced.
+
+"Well," cried one, "who are you? Nobody sent for you."
+
+"Tramp, my smart fellow," said the other; "this an't your shop."
+
+"Is n't this Killeen's?" said I, stoutly.
+
+"Just so," said the first, a little surprised at my coolness.
+
+"Well, then, a young gentleman from the college sent me to order dinner
+for him at once, and pay for it at the same time."
+
+"What will he have?"
+
+"Soup, and a steak, with a pint of port," said I; just the kind of
+dinner I had often heard the old half-pay officers talking of at the
+door of the Club in Foster Place.
+
+"What hour did he say?"
+
+"This instant. He's coming down; and as he starts by the mail at seven,
+he told me to have it on the table when he came."
+
+"All right; four-and-six," said the waiter, holding out his hand for the
+money.
+
+I gave him my crown piece; and as he fumbled for the sixpence I
+insinuated myself quietly into the hall.
+
+"There's your change, boy," said the waiter; "you need n't stop."
+
+"Will you be so good, sir," said I, "to write 'paid' on a slip of paper
+for me, just to show the gentleman?"
+
+"Of course," said he, taken possibly by the flattering civility of my
+address; and he stepped into the bar, and soon reappeared with a small
+scrap of paper, with these words: "Dinner and a pint of port, 4s.
+6d.--paid."
+
+"I'm to wait for him here, sir," said I, most obsequiously.
+
+"Very well, so you can," replied he, passing on to the coffee-room.
+
+I peeped through the glass door, and saw that in one of the little
+boxes into which the place was divided, a table was just spread, and a
+soup-tureen and a decanter placed on it. "This," thought I, "is for
+me;" for all the other boxes were already occupied, and a great buzz of
+voices and clashing of plates and knives going on together.
+
+"Serve the steak, sir," said I, stepping into the room and addressing
+the head-waiter, who, with a curse to me to "get out of that," passed
+on to order the dish; while I, with an adroit flank movement, dived into
+the box, and, imitating some of the company, spread my napkin like a
+breastplate across me. By a great piece of fortune the stall was the
+darkest in the room, so that when seated in a corner, with an open
+newspaper before me, I could, for a time at least, hope to escape
+detection.
+
+"Anything else, sir?" cried a waiter, as he uncovered the soup, and
+deposited the dish of smoking beef-steak.
+
+"Nothing," responded I, with a voice of most imposing sternness, and
+manfully holding up the newspaper between us.
+
+The first three or four mouthfuls I ate with a faint heart; the fear
+of discovery, exposure, and expulsion almost choked me. A glass of
+port rallied, a second one cheered, and a third emboldened me, and I
+proceeded to my steak in a spirit of true ease and enjoyment. The
+port was most insidious; place it wherever I would on the table, it
+invariably stole over beside me, and, in spite of me, as it were, the
+decanter would stand at my elbow. I suppose it must be in reality a very
+gentlemanlike tipple; the tone of sturdy self-reliance, the vigorous air
+of command, the sense of absolutism it inspires, smack of Toryism;
+and as I sipped, I felt myself rising above the low prejudices I once
+indulged in against rank and wealth, and insensibly comprehending the
+beauty of that system which divides and classifies mankind.
+
+The very air of the place, the loud, overbearing talk, the haughty
+summons to the waiter, the imperious demand for this or that requisite
+of the table, all conspired to impress me with the pleasant sensation
+imparted to him who possesses money. Among the various things called
+for on every side, I remarked that mustard seemed in the very highest
+request. Every one ate of it; none seemed to have enough of it. There
+was a perpetual cry, "Mustard! I say, waiter, bring me the mustard;"
+while one very choleric old gentleman, in a drab surtout and a red
+nose, absolutely seemed bursting with indignation as he said, "You don't
+expect me to eat a steak without mustard, sir?"--a rebuke at which the
+waiter grew actually purple.
+
+Now, this was the very thing I had myself been doing,--actually eating
+"a steak without mustard!" What a mistake, and for one who believed
+himself to be in every respect conforming to the choicest usages of high
+life! What was to be done? The steak had disappeared; no matter, it was
+never too late to learn, and so I cried out, "Waiter, the mustard here!"
+in a voice that almost electrified the whole room.
+
+I had scarcely concealed myself beneath my curtain,--"The Times,"--when
+the mustard was set down before me, with a humble apology for
+forgetfulness. I waited till he withdrew, and then helping myself to the
+unknown delicacy, proceeded to eat it, as the phrase is, "neat." In my
+eagerness, I swallowed two or three mouthfuls before I felt its effects;
+and then a sensation of burning and choking seized upon me. My tongue
+seemed to swell to thrice its size; my eyes felt as if they would
+drop out of my head; while a tingling sensation, like "frying," in my
+nostrils, almost drove me mad; so that after three or four seconds of
+silent agony, during which I experienced about ten years of torture,
+unable to endure more, I screamed out that "I was poisoned," and, with
+wide-open mouth and staring eyes, ran down the coffee-room.
+
+Never was seen such an uproar! Had an animal from a wild-beast menagerie
+appeared among the company, the consternation could scarce be greater;
+and in the mingled laughter and execrations might be traced the
+different moods of those who resented my intrusion. "Who is this fellow?
+How did he get in? What brought him here? What's the matter with him?"
+poured in on all sides,--difficulties the head-waiter thought it better
+to deal with by a speedy expulsion than by any lengthened explanation.
+
+"Get a policeman, Bob!" said he to the next in command; and the order
+was given loud enough to be heard by me.
+
+"What the devil threw him amongst us?" said a testy-looking man in green
+spectacles.
+
+"I came to dine, sir," said I; "to have my steak and my pint of wine, as
+I hoped, in comfort, and as one might have it in a respectable tavern."
+
+A jolly burst of laughter stopped me, and I was obliged to wait for its
+subsidence to continue.
+
+"Well, sir! I paid for my dinner--"
+
+"Is that true, Sam?" said a shrewd-looking man to the waiter.
+
+"Quite true, sir! he paid four-and-sixpence, saying that the dinner was
+for a College gentleman."
+
+"I have been in College," said I, coolly; "but no matter, the thing
+is simple enough: I am here in a house of public entertainment, the
+proprietors of which have accepted my money for a specific purpose;
+and putting aside the question whether they can refuse admission to any
+well-conducted individual (see Barnes _versus_ MacTivell, in the 8th
+volume Term Reports; and Hobbes against Blinkerton, Soaker, and others,
+in the Appendix), I contend that my presence here is founded upon
+contract."
+
+Another and still louder roar of mirth again stopped me, and before I
+could resume, the company had gathered round me, in evident delight at
+my legal knowledge; and in particular, he of the spectacles, who was a
+well-known attorney of the Court of Conscience.
+
+"That fellow's a gem!" said he. "Hang me if he's not equal to Bleatem!
+Sam, take care what you do; he 's the chap to have his action against
+you! I say, my man, come and sit down here, and let us have a little
+chat together."
+
+"Most willingly, sir," responded I. "Waiter, bring my wine over to this
+table." This was the signal for another shout, of which I did not deign
+to take the slightest notice.
+
+"I'll wager a hundred oysters," exclaimed one of the party, among whom I
+now seated myself, "that I have seen him before! Tell me, my lad,
+didn't you ride over the course yesterday, and cut out the work for Mr.
+Beatagh?"
+
+I bowed an assent. "Who the devil is he?" cried two or three together;
+and my appearance and manner did not check the audible expression of
+this sentiment.
+
+"A few words will suffice, gentlemen," said I, "on that head. My father
+was an estated gentleman, of small, but unincumbered fortune, which he
+lost by an unfortunate speculation; he accordingly went abroad--"
+
+"To Norfolk Island!" suggested one, with a wink.
+
+"Exactly," responded I, "a Colonial appointment; leaving me, like
+Norval, not exactly on the Grampian Hills, but in a worse place, in the
+middle of the bog of Allen; my sole dependence being in certain legal
+studies I had once made, and a natural taste for getting forward
+in life; which, with a most enthusiastic appreciation of good
+company,"--here I bowed politely all round,--"are, I flatter myself, my
+chief characteristics."
+
+After a little, but most good-humored, quizzing about my present
+occupation and future prospects, they, with far more politeness than
+might be expected, turned the conversation upon other matters,
+and kindly permitted me to throw in from time to time my
+observations,--remarks which I could see, from their novelty, at least,
+seemed often to surprise them.
+
+At length the hour of separating arrived, and I arose to bid the company
+good-night, which I performed with a very fair imitation of that quiet
+ease I had often studied in the young guardsmen about town.
+
+"What do you bet that he has neither home to shelter him, nor bed to
+sleep on, this night?" whispered one to his neighbor.
+
+"What are you writing there, Cox?" said another, to the keen-eyed man,
+who was pencilling something on a card.
+
+"There, that's my address, my boy,--12, Stafford Street: Jeremiah Cox.
+Come to me about ten to-morrow."
+
+Another, while he was speaking, made an effort to slip a half-crown into
+my hand,--a measure I felt it becoming to decline with a prompt, but
+courteous, refusal. Indeed, I had so identified myself with the part I
+was performing that I flung down my only sixpence on the table for the
+waiter, and, with a last salutation to the honorable company, walked
+out. I have a perfect memory of every circumstance of the evening, and
+I recollect that my swaggering exit was as free from any semblance of
+concern or care as though a carriage waited for me outside to convey me
+to a luxurious home!
+
+It has often been a fancy of mine through life to pass the entire of a
+summer night out of door; to wander either through the moonlit roads
+of some picturesque country, or in the still more solitary streets of
+a great city. I have always felt on these occasions as though one were
+"stealing a march" upon the sleeping world,--gaining so many more hours
+of thought and reflection, which the busy conflict of life renders so
+often difficult.
+
+The hours of the night seem to typify so many stages of existence,--only
+reversing the natural order of age, and making the period of deep
+reflection precede the era of sanguine hope; for if the solemn closing
+in of the darkness suggests musing, so do the rosy tints and fresh air
+of breaking day inspire the warm hopefulness of youth. If "the daylight
+sinking" invites the secret communing of the heart, "the dawning of
+morn" glows with energetic purpose and bold endeavor.
+
+To come back to myself. I left the tavern without a thought whither I
+should turn my steps. It was a calm night, with a starry sky and a mild,
+genial air, so that to pass the hours until morning without shelter was
+no great privation. One only resolve I had formed,--never to go back to
+Betty's. I felt that I had sojourned over long in such companionship; it
+was now time some other, and more upward, path should open before me.
+
+Following the course of the Liffey, I soon reached the quay called the
+North Wall, and at last arrived at the bluff extremity which looks out
+upon the opening of the river into the Bay of Dublin. The great expanse
+was in deep shadow, but so calm the sea that the two lighthouses were
+reflected in long columns of light in the tranquil water. The only sound
+audible was the low, monotonous plash of the sea against the wall, or
+the grating noise of a chain cable, as the vessel it held surged slowly
+with the tide. The sounds had something plaintive in them, that soon
+imparted a tone of sadness to my mind; but it was a melancholy not
+unpleasing; and I sat down upon a rude block of stone, weaving strange
+fancies of myself and my future.
+
+As I sat thus, my ear, grown more acute by habit, detected the light
+clank of a chain, and something like a low thumping sound in the water
+beneath me; and on peering down, I discovered the form of a small boat,
+fastened to a ring in the wall, and which from time to time grated
+against the strong masonry. There it lay, with a pair of light oars
+run under the thwarts, and its helm flapping to and fro, inert and
+purposeless, like myself! So at least I fancied it; and soon began
+conceiving a strange parallel between it and me. I was suddenly startled
+from these musings by the sound of feet rapidly approaching.
+
+I listened, and could hear a man coming towards me at full speed. I sat
+down beneath the shadow of the wall, and he passed me unnoticed, and
+then, springing up on the parapet, he gave a loud, shrill whistle,
+waiting a few seconds as if for the reply. He was silent, and then
+repeated it; but still in vain,--no answer came. "Blast them!" muttered
+he, "the scoundrels will not show a light!" A third time did he whistle;
+but though the sounds might be heard a mile off, neither sight nor sound
+ever responded to them. "And that rascal, too, to have left the boat at
+such a moment!" Just as he uttered these words, he sprang down from
+the wall, and caught sight of me, as I lay, affecting sleep, coiled up
+beneath it.
+
+With a rude kick of his foot on my side he aroused me, saying, "D--n the
+fellow! is this a time for sleeping? I told you to keep a sharp look-out
+for me here! What! who are you?" cried he, as I stood upright before
+him.
+
+"A poor boy, sir, that has no roof to shelter him," said I, plaintively.
+
+He bent his head and listened; and then, with a horrible curse,
+exclaimed, "Here they are! here they come! Can you pull an oar, my lad?"
+
+"I can sir," answered I.
+
+"Well, jump down into the punt there, and row her round the point to
+the stairs. Be quick! down with you! I have cut my hand, and cannot help
+you. There, that 's it, my lad! catch the ring; swing yourself a little
+more to the right; her gunwale is just beneath your foot; all right now!
+well done! Be alive now! give way, give way!" And thus encouraging me,
+he walked along the parapet above me, and in a few minutes stood fast,
+calling out, but in a lower and more cautious voice, "There! close in,
+now a strong pull--that 's it!" and then, hastily descending a narrow
+flight of steps, he sprang into the boat, and seated himself in the
+stern. "Hush! be still!" cried he; "do not stir! they'll never see us
+under the shadow of the wall!"
+
+As he spoke, two dark figures mounted the wall, straight above our
+heads, and stood for some seconds as it were peering into the distance.
+
+"I 'll swear I saw him take this way," cried one, in a deep low voice.
+
+"If he were the Devil himself, he could not escape us here," said the
+other, with an accent of vindictive passion.
+
+"And he is the Devil," said the former speaker.
+
+"Pooh, nonsense, man! any fellow who can win at dice, or has a steady
+finger with a pistol, is a marvel for you. Curses on him! he has given
+us the slip somehow."
+
+"I'd not wonder, Harry, if he has taken the water; he swims like a
+duck!"
+
+"He could not have sprung from a height like that without a plash, and
+we were close enough upon his heels to hear it; flash off some powder in
+a piece of paper: it is dark as pitch here."
+
+While the men above were preparing their light, I heard a slight stir
+in the stern of the boat. I turned my head, and saw my companion coolly
+fitting a cap on his pistol; he was doing it with difficulty, as he was
+obliged to hold the pistol between his knees, while he adjusted the cap
+with his left hand; the right hand he carried in the breast of his coat.
+Nothing could be more calm and collected than his every movement, up to
+the instant when, having cocked the weapon, he lay back in the boat, so
+as to have a full stare at the two dark figures above us.
+
+At last, the fuse was ready, and, being lighted, it was held for a few
+seconds in the hand, and then thrown into the air. The red and lurid
+glare flashed full upon two savage-looking faces, straight above our
+heads, and for an instant showed their figures with all the distinctness
+of noonday. I saw them both, as if by a common impulse, lean over the
+parapet and peer down into the dark water below, and I could have almost
+sworn that we were discovered; my companion evidently thought so too,
+for he raised his pistol steadily, and took a long and careful aim. What
+a moment was that for me, expecting at every instant to hear the report,
+and then the heavy fall of the dead man into the water! My throat was
+full to bursting. The bit of burning paper of the fuse had fallen on my
+companion's pistol-hand; but though it must have scorched him, he never
+stirred, nor even brushed it off. I thought that by its faint flicker,
+also, we might have been seen. But no, it was plain they had not
+perceived us; and it was with a delight I cannot describe that I saw
+one and then the other descend from the wall, while I heard the words,
+"There's the second time above five hundred pounds has slipped from us.
+D--n the fellow! but if I hang for him, I'll do it yet!"
+
+"Well, you've spoiled his hand for hazard for a while, anyhow, Harry!"
+said the other. "I think you must have taken his fingers clean off!"
+
+"The knife was like a razor," replied the other, with a laugh; "but he
+struck it out of my hand with a blow above the wrist; and, I can tell
+you, I 'd as soon get the kick of a horse as a short stroke of the same
+closed fist."
+
+They continued to converse as they moved away, but their words only
+reached me in broken, unconnected sentences. From all I could glean,
+however, I was in company with one of enormous personal strength and
+a most reckless intrepidity. At last, all was still; not a sound to be
+heard on any side; and my companion, leaning forward, said, "Come, my
+lad, pull me out a short distance into the offing; we shall soon see a
+light to guide us!"
+
+In calm, still water I could row well. I had been boat-boy to the priest
+at all his autumn fishing excursions on the Westmeath lakes, so that I
+acquitted myself creditably, urged on, I am free to confess, by a very
+profound fear of the large figure who loomed so mysteriously in the
+stern. For a time we proceeded in deep silence, when at last he said,
+"What vessel do you belong to, boy?"
+
+"I was never at sea, sir," replied I.
+
+"Not a sailor! How comes it, then, you can row so well?"
+
+"I learned to row in fresh water, sir."
+
+"What are you? How came you to be here to-night?"
+
+"By merest chance, sir. I had no money to pay for a bed. I have neither
+home nor friends. I have lived, by holding horses, and running errands,
+in the streets."
+
+"Picking pockets occasionally, I suppose, too, when regular business was
+dull!"
+
+"Never!" said I, indignantly.
+
+"Don't be shocked, my fine fellow," said he, jeeringly; "better men than
+ever you 'll be have done a little that way. I have made some lighter
+this evening myself, for the matter of that!"
+
+This confession, if very frank, was not very reassuring; and so I made
+no answer, but rowed away with all my might.
+
+"Well!" said he, after a pause, "luck has befriended me twice to-night;
+and sending you to sleep under that wall was not the worst turn of the
+two. Ship your oars there, boy, and let us see if you are as handy a
+surgeon as you are a sailor! Try and bind up these wounded fingers of
+mine, for they begin to smart with the cold night air."
+
+"Wait an instant," cried he; "we are safe now, so you may light this
+lantern;" and he took from his pocket a small and most elegantly
+fashioned lantern, which he immediately lighted.
+
+I own it was with a most intense curiosity I waited for the light to
+scan the features of my singular companion; nor was my satisfaction
+inconsiderable when, instead of the terrific-looking fellow--half bravo,
+half pirate--I expected, I perceived before me a man of apparently
+thirty-one or two, with large but handsome features and gentlemanly
+appearance. He had an immense beard and moustache, which united at
+either side of the mouth; but this, ferocious enough to one unaccustomed
+to it, could not take off the quiet regularity and good-humor of his
+manly features. He wore a large-brimmed slouched felt hat that shaded
+his brows, and he seemed to be dressed with some care, beneath the rough
+exterior of a common pilot-coat,--at least, he wore silk stockings and
+shoes, as if in evening-dress. These particulars I had time to
+note, while he unwound from his crippled hand the strips of a silk
+handkerchief which, stiffened and clotted with blood, bespoke a deep and
+severe wound.
+
+If the operation were often painful even to torture, he never winced, or
+permitted the slightest expression of suffering to escape him. At last
+the undressing was completed, and a fearful gash appeared, separating
+the four fingers almost entirely from the hand. The keenness of the cut
+showed that the weapon must have been, as the fellow averred, sharp as
+a razor. Perhaps the copious loss of blood had exhausted the vessels,
+or the tension of the bandage had closed them; for there was little
+bleeding, and I soon succeeded, with the aid of his cravat, in making a
+tolerable dressing of the wound, and by filling up the palm of the hand
+as I had once seen done by a country surgeon in a somewhat similar case.
+The pain was relieved by the gentle support afforded.
+
+"Why, you are a most accomplished vagrant!" said he, laughing, as he
+watched the artistic steps of my proceeding. "What's your name?--I mean,
+what do you go by at present? for of course a fellow like you has a
+score of aliases."
+
+"I have had only one name up to this," said I,--"Con Cregan."
+
+"Con Cregan! sharp and shrewd enough it sounds too!" said he. "And what
+line of life do you mean to follow, Master Con? for I suspect you have
+not been without some speculations on the subject."
+
+"I have thought of various things, sir; but how is a poor boy like me to
+get a chance? I feel as if I could pick up a little of most trades; but
+I have no money, nor any friends."
+
+"Money--friends!" exclaimed he, with a burst of bitterness quite unlike
+his previous careless humor. "Well, my good fellow, I had both one and
+the other,--more than most people are supposed to have of either; and
+what have they brought me to?" He held up his maimed and blood-clotted
+hand as he spoke this with a withering scorn in every accent.
+
+"No, my boy; trust one who knows something of life,--the lighter you
+start, the easier your journey! He that sets his heart on it, can always
+make money; and friends, as they are called by courtesy, are still more
+easily acquired."
+
+This was the first time I had ever heard any one speak of the game of
+life as such; and I cannot say what intense pleasure the theme afforded
+me. I am certain I never stopped to consider whether his views were
+right or not, whether the shrewd results of a keen observer, or the
+prejudices of a disappointed man. It was the subject, the matter
+discussed, delighted me.
+
+My companion appeared to feel that he had a willing listener, and went
+freely on, canvassing the various roads to success, and with a certain
+air of confidence in all he said that to me seemed quite oracular.
+"What a fellow am I," said he at last, "to discourse in this strain to
+a street urchin whose highest ambition is to outrun his ragged
+competitors, and be first 'in,' for the sixpence of some cantering
+cornet! Pull ahead, lad, there's the light at last; and hang me if
+they're not two miles out."
+
+The contemptuous tone of the last few words effectually repressed
+any desire I might have had for further colloquy; and I rowed away in
+silence, putting forth all my strength and skill, so that the light
+skiff darted rapidly and steadily through the water.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. SIR DUDLEY BROUGHTON
+
+Steadily, and with all the vigor I could command, I pulled towards
+the light. My companion sat quietly watching the stars, and apparently
+following out some chain of thought to himself; at last he said, "There,
+boy, breathe a bit; there's no need to blow yourself; we 're all safe
+long since; the 'Firefly' is right ahead of us, and not far off either.
+Have you never heard of the yacht?"
+
+"Never, sir."
+
+"Nor of its owner, Sir Dudley Broughton?"
+
+"No, sir, I never heard the name."
+
+"Well, come," cried he, laughing, "that is consolatory. I 'm not half so
+great a reprobate as I thought myself! I did not believe till now that
+there was an urchin of your stamp living who could not have furnished at
+least some anecdotes for a memoir of me! Well, my lad, yonder, where you
+see the blue light at the peak, is the 'Firefly,' and here, where I sit,
+is Sir Dudley Broughton. Ten minutes more will put us alongside, so, if
+you're not tired, pull away."
+
+"No, Sir Dudley," said I, for I was well versed in the popular tact of
+catching up a name quickly, "I am able to row twice as far."
+
+"And now, Master Con," said he, "we are going to part. Are you too young
+a disciple of your craft for a glass of grog; or are you a follower of
+that new-fangled notion of pale-faced politicians, who like bad coffee
+and reason better than whiskey and fun?"
+
+"I'll take nothing to drink, Sir Dudley," said I. "I have dined and
+drunk well to-day, and I'll not venture further."
+
+"As you please; only I say you 're wrong not to victual the ship
+whenever you stand in-shore. No matter; put your hand into this vest
+pocket,--you 'll find some shillings there: take them, whatever they be.
+You'll row the boat back with one of my people; and all I have to say
+is, if you do speak of me, as no doubt you will and must, don't say
+anything about these smashed fingers; I suppose they'll get right one of
+these days, and I 'd rather there was no gossip about them."
+
+"I 'll never speak of it--I--"
+
+"There, now, that's enough; no swearing, or I know you'll break your
+promise. Back water a little; pull the starboard oar,--so; here we are
+alongside."
+
+Sir Dudley had scarce done speaking when a hoarse voice from the yacht
+challenged us. This was replied to by a terrific volley of imprecations
+on the stupidity of not sooner showing the light, amid which Sir Dudley
+ascended the side and stood upon the deck. "Where's Halkett?" cried
+he, imperiously. "Here, sir," replied a short, thickset man, with a
+sailor-like shuffle in his walk. "Send one of the men back with the
+gig, and land that boy. Tell the fellow, too, he's not to fetch Waters
+aboard, if he meets him: the scoundrel went off and left me to my fate
+this evening; and it might have been no pleasant one, if I had not found
+that lad yonder."
+
+"We have all Sam Waters' kit on board, Sir Dudley," said Halkett; "shall
+we send it ashore?"
+
+"No. Tell him I'll leave it at Demerara for him; and he may catch the
+yellow fever in looking after it," said he, laughing.
+
+While listening to this short dialogue I had contrived to approach a
+light which gleamed from the cabin window, and then took the opportunity
+to count over my wealth, amounting, as I supposed, to some seven or
+eight shillings. Guess my surprise to see that the pieces were all
+bright yellow gold,--eight shining sovereigns!
+
+I had but that instant made the discovery, when the sailor who was to
+put me on shore jumped into the boat and seated himself.
+
+"Wait one instant," cried I. "Sir Dudley--Sir Dudley Broughton!"
+
+"Well, what's the matter?" said he, leaning over the side.
+
+"This money you gave me--"
+
+"Not enough, of course! I ought to have known that," said he,
+scornfully. "Give the whelp a couple of half-crowns, Halkett, and send
+him adrift."
+
+"You 're wrong, sir," cried I, with passionate eagerness; "they are gold
+pieces,--sovereigns."
+
+"The devil they are!" cried he, laughing; "the better luck yours. Why
+did n't you hold your tongue about it?"
+
+"You bid me take some shillings, sir," answered I.
+
+"How d--d honest you must be! Do you hear that, Halkett? The fellow had
+scruples about taking his prize-money! Never mind, boy, I must pay for
+my blunder,--you may keep them now."
+
+"I have pride, too," cried I; "and hang me if I touch them."
+
+He stared at me, without speaking, for a few minutes, and then said, in
+a low, flat voice, "Come on deck, lad." I obeyed; and he took a lighted
+lantern from the binnacle, and held it up close to my face, and then
+moved it so that he made a careful examination of my whole figure.
+
+"I 'd give a crown to know who was your father," said he, dryly.
+
+"Con Cregan, of Kilbeggan, sir."
+
+"Oh, of course, I know all that. Come, now, what say you to try a bit of
+life afloat? Will you stay here?"
+
+"Will you take me, sir?" cried I, in ecstasy.
+
+"Halkett, rig him out," said he, shortly. "Nip the anchor with the ebb,
+and keep your course down channel." With this he descended the cabin
+stairs and disappeared, while I, at a signal from Halkett, stepped down
+the ladder into the steerage. In the mean while it will not be deemed
+digressionary if I devote a few words to the singular character into
+whose society I was now thrown, inasmuch as to convey any candid
+narrative of my own career I must speak of those who, without
+influencing the main current of my life, yet certainly gave some impulse
+and direction to its first meanderings.
+
+Sir Dudley Broughton was the only son of a wealthy baronet, who,
+not from affection or overkindness, but out of downright indolent
+indifference, permitted him, first as an Eton boy, and afterwards as
+a gentleman commoner of Christ Church, to indulge in every dissipation
+that suited his fancy. An unlimited indulgence, a free command of
+whatever money he asked for, added to a temper constitutionally
+headstrong and impetuous, soon developed what might have been expected
+from the combination. He led a life of wild insubordination at school,
+and was expelled from Oxford. With faculties above rather than beneath
+mediocrity, and a certain aptitude for acquiring the knowledge most in
+request in society, he had the reputation of being one who, if he had
+not unhappily so addicted himself to dissipation, would have made a
+favorable figure in the world. After trying in vain to interest himself
+in the pursuits of a country life, of which the sporting was the
+only thing he found attractive, he joined a well-known light cavalry
+regiment, celebrated for numbering among its officers more fast men than
+any other corps in the service. His father, dying about the same
+time, left him in possession of a large fortune, which, with all his
+extravagance, was but slightly encumbered. This fact, coupled with his
+well-known reputation, made him popular with his brother officers, most
+of whom, having run through nearly all they possessed, saw with pleasure
+a new Croesus arrive in the regiment. Such a man as Broughton was just
+wanted. One had a charger to get off; another wanted a purchaser for
+his four-in-hand drag. The senior captain was skilful at billiards; and
+every one played "lansquenet" and hazard.
+
+Besides various schemes against his purse, the colonel had a still
+more serious one against his person. He had a daughter, a handsome,
+fashionable-looking girl, with all the manners of society, and a great
+deal of that tact only to be acquired in the very best foreign
+society. That she was no longer in the fresh bloom of youth, nor with a
+reputation quite spotless, were matters well known in the regiment; but
+as she was still eminently handsome, and "the Count Radchoffsky" had
+been recalled by the emperor from the embassy of which he was secretary,
+Lydia Delmar was likely, in the opinions of keen-judging parties,
+to make a good hit with "some young fellow who did n't know town."
+Broughton was exactly the man Colonel Delmar wanted,--good family, a
+fine fortune, and the very temper a clever woman usually contrives to
+rule with absolute sway.
+
+There would be, unfortunately, no novelty in recording the steps by
+which such a man is ruined. He did everything that men do who are bent
+upon testing Fortune to the utmost. He lent large sums to his "friends;"
+he lost larger ones to them. When he did win, none ever paid him, except
+by a good-humored jest upon his credit at Coutts's. "What the devil do
+you want with money, Sir Dudley?" was an appeal he could never reply to.
+He ran horses at Ascot, and got "squeezed;" he played at "Crocky's," and
+fared no better; but he was the favorite of the corps. "We could never
+get on without Dudley," was a common remark; and it satisfied him that,
+with all his extravagance, he had made an investment in the hearts at
+least of his comrades. A few months longer of this "fast" career would,
+in all likelihood, have ruined him. He broke his leg by a fall in a
+steeplechase, and was thus driven, by sheer necessity, to lay up, and
+keep quiet for a season. Now came Colonel Delmar's opportunity; the
+moment the news reached Coventry, he set off with his daughter to
+Leamington. With the steeplechasing, hazard-playing, betting, drinking,
+yachting, driving Sir Dudley, there was no chance of even time for their
+plans; but with a sick man on the sofa, bored by his inactivity, hipped
+for want of his usual resources, the game was open. The Colonel's visit,
+too, had such an air of true kindness!
+
+Broughton had left quarters without leave; but instead of reprimands,
+arrests, and Heaven knows what besides, there was Colonel Delmar, the
+fine old fellow, shaking his finger in mock rebuke, and saying, "Ah,
+Dudley, my boy, I came down to give you a rare scolding; but this sad
+business has saved you!" And Lydia also, against whom he had ever felt a
+dislike,--that prejudice your boisterous and noisy kind of men ever feel
+to clever women, whose sarcasms they know themselves exposed to,--why,
+she was gentle good-nature and easy sisterlike kindness itself! She did
+not, as the phrase goes, "nurse him," but she seldom left the room where
+he lay. She read aloud, selecting with a marvellous instinct the very
+kind of books he fancied,--novels, tales of every-day life, things of
+whose truthfulness he could form some judgment; and sketches wherein the
+author's views were about on a level with his own. She would sit at the
+window, too, and amuse him with descriptions of the people passing in
+the street; such smart shrewd pictures were they of watering-place folks
+and habits, Dudley never tired of them! She was unsurpassed for the
+style with which she could dress up an anecdote or a bit of gossip; and
+if it verged upon the free, her French education taught her the
+nice perception of the narrow line that separates "libertinage" from
+indelicacy.
+
+So far from feeling impatient at his confinement to a sofa, therefore,
+Broughton affected distrust in his renovated limb for a full fortnight
+after the doctor had pronounced him cured. At last he was able to drive
+out, and soon afterwards to take exercise on horseback, Lydia Delmar and
+her father occasionally accompanying him.
+
+People will talk at Leamington, as they do at other places; and so
+the gossips said that the rich--for he was still so reputed in the
+world--the "rich" Sir Dudley Broughton was going to marry Miss Delmar.
+
+Gossip is half-brother to that all-powerful director called "Public
+Opinion;" so that when Sir Dudley heard, some half-dozen times every
+day, what it was reputed he would do, he began to feel that he ought to
+do it.
+
+Accordingly, they were married; the world--at least the Leamington
+section of that large body--criticising the match precisely as it struck
+the interests and prejudices of the class they belonged to.
+
+Fathers and mothers agreed in thinking that Colonel Delmar was a shrewd
+old soldier, and had made an "excellent hit." Young ladies pronounced
+Liddy--for a girl who had been out eight years--decidedly lucky.
+Lounging men at club doors looked knowingly at each other as they joked
+together in half sentences, "No affair of mine; but I did not think
+Broughton would have been caught so easily." "Yes, by Jove!" cried
+another, with a jockey-like style of dress, "he 'd not have made so
+great a mistake on the 'Oaks' as to run an aged nag for a two-year old!"
+
+"I wonder he never heard of that Russian fellow!" said a third.
+
+"Oh, yes!" sighed out a dandy, with an affected drawl; "poor dear Liddy
+did indeed catch a 'Tartar '!"
+
+Remarks such as these were the pleasant sallies the event provoked;
+but so it is in higher and greater things in life! At the launch of a
+line-of-battle ship, the veriest vagrant in Tags fancies he can predict
+for her defeat and shipwreck!
+
+The Broughtons were now the great people of the London season, at least
+to a certain "fast" set, who loved dinners at the Clarendon, high play,
+and other concomitant pleasures. _Her_ equipages were the most perfect;
+_her_ diamonds the most splendid; while _his_ dinners were as much
+reputed by one class, as _her_ toilet by another.
+
+Loans at ruinous interest; sales of property for a tithe of its value;
+bills renewed at a rate that would have swamped Rothschild; purchases
+made at prices proportionate to the risk of non-payment; reckless
+waste everywhere; robbing solicitors, cheating tradesmen, and dishonest
+servants! But why swell the list, or take trouble to show how the ruin
+came? If one bad leak will cause a shipwreck, how is the craft to mount
+the waves with every plank riven asunder?
+
+If among the patriarchs who lend at usury, Broughton's credit was
+beginning to ebb, in the clubs at the West End, in the betting-ring,
+at Crockford's, and at Tattersall's, he was in all the splendor of his
+former fame. Anderson would trust him with half his stable. Howell and
+James would send him the epergne they had designed for a czar. And so
+he lived. With rocks and breakers ahead, he only "carried on" the faster
+and the freer.
+
+
+
+Not that he knew, indeed, the extent, or anything approaching the
+extent, to which his fortune was wrecked. All that he could surmise on
+the subject was founded on the increased difficulty he found in raising
+money,--a circumstance his pliant solicitor invariably explained by
+that happy phrase, the "tightness of the money market." This completely
+satisfied Sir Dudley, who, far from attributing it to his own almost
+exhausted resources, laid all the blame upon some trickery of foreign
+statesmen, some confounded disturbance in Ireland, something that the
+Foreign Secretary had done, or would not do; and that thus the money
+folk would not trust a guinea out of their fingers. In fact, it was
+quite clear that to political intrigue and cabinet scheming all Sir
+Dudley's difficulties might fairly be traced!
+
+It was just at this time that the Count Radchoffsky arrived once more in
+London in charge of a special mission, no longer the mere secretary of
+embassy, driving about in his quiet cab, but an envoy extraordinary,
+with cordons and crosses innumerable. He was exactly the kind of man
+for Broughton's "set," so that he soon made his acquaintance, and was
+presented by him to Lady Broughton as a most agreeable fellow, and
+something very distinguished in his own country.
+
+She received him admirably: remembered to have met him, she thought,
+at Lord Edenbury's but he corrected her by saying it was at the Duke
+of Clifton's,--a difference of testimony at which Broughton laughed
+heartily, saying, in his usual rough way, "Well, it is pretty clear you
+didn't make much impression on each other."
+
+The Russian noble was a stranger to the turf. In the details of
+arranging the approaching race, in apportioning the weights and ages
+and distances, Broughton passed his whole mornings for a month, sorely
+puzzled at times by the apathy of his Northern friend, who actually
+never obtruded an opinion, or expressed a wish for information on the
+subject.
+
+Sir Dudley's book was a very heavy one too. What "he stood to win" was a
+profound secret; but knowing men said that if he lost, it would be such
+a "squeeze" as had not been known at Newmarket since the Duke of York's
+day.
+
+Such an event, however, seemed not to enter into his own calculations;
+and so confident was he of success that he could not help sharing his
+good fortune with his friend Radchoffsky, and giving him something in
+his own book. The count professed himself everlastingly grateful, but
+confessed that he knew nothing of racing matters, and that, above all,
+his Majesty the Emperor would be excessively annoyed if a representative
+of his in any way interfered with the race; in fact, the honor of the
+Czar would be tarnished by such a proceeding. Against such reasonings
+there could be no opposition; and Broughton only took to himself all the
+benefits he had destined for his friend.
+
+At last the eventful day came; and although Sir Dudley had arranged that
+Lady Broughton should accompany him to the course, she was taken with
+some kind of nervous attack that prevented her leaving her bed. Her
+husband was provoked at this ill-timed illness, for he was still vain
+of her appearance in public; but knowing that he could do nothing for
+hysterics, he sent for Doctor Barham, and then with all speed he started
+for the race.
+
+Among the friends who were to go along with him, the count had promised
+to make one; but despatches--that admirable excuse of diplomatists, from
+the great secretary to the humblest unpaid attaché--despatches had
+just arrived; and if he could manage to get through his business early
+enough, "he'd certainly follow."
+
+Scarcely had Sir Dudley reached the ground when a carriage drove up to
+the stand, and a gentleman descended in all haste. It was Mr. Taperton,
+his solicitor,--his trusty man of loans and discounts for many a day,
+"Eh, Tappy!" cried Broughton, "come to sport a fifty on the filly?"
+
+"Walk a little this way, Sir Dudley," said he, gravely; and his voice
+soon convinced the hearer that something serious was in the wind.
+
+"What's the matter, man? You look as if Cardinal was dead lame."
+
+"Sir Dudley, you must start from this at once. Holdsworth has taken
+proceedings on the bills; Lord Corthern has foreclosed; the whole body
+of the creditors are up; and you 'll be arrested before you leave the
+field!"
+
+If the threat had conveyed the ignominious penalty of felony, Broughton
+could not have looked more indignant. "Arrested! You don't mean that we
+cannot raise enough to pay these rascals?"
+
+"Your outstanding bills are above twenty thousand, sir."
+
+"And if they be; do you tell me that with my estate--"
+
+"My dear Sir Dudley, how much of it is unencumbered? What single
+portion, save the few hundreds a year of Lady Broughton's jointure, is
+not sunk under mortgage? But this is no time for discussion; get into
+the chaise with me; we 'll reach London in time for the mail; to-morrow
+you can be in Boulogne, and then we shall have time at least for an
+arrangement."
+
+"The race is just coming off! how can I leave? I'm a steward; besides,
+I have a tremendous book. Do you know how many thousands I stand to win
+here?"
+
+"To lose, you mean," said the solicitor. "You 're sold!" The words
+were whispered so low as to be almost inaudible; but Broughton actually
+staggered as he heard them.
+
+"Sold! how? what? Impossible, man! Who could sell me?"
+
+"Only one man, perhaps, but he has done it! Is it true you have backed
+Calliope?"
+
+"Yes!" said he, staring wildly.
+
+"She was found hamstrung this morning in the stable, then," said
+Taperton; "if you want to hear further particulars, you must ask your
+friend the Count Radchoffsky!"
+
+"The scoundrel! the black-hearted villain! I see it all!" cried
+Broughton. "Come, Taperton, let us start! I'll go with you; by Jove, you
+have found a way to make me eager for the road!"
+
+The lawyer read in the bloodshot eye and flushed face the passion for
+vengeance that was boiling within him, but he never spoke as they moved
+on and entered the carriage.
+
+It was full three hours before the expected time of his return, when the
+chaise in which they travelled drew up at the Clarendon, and Broughton,
+half wild with rage, dashed upstairs to the suite of splendid rooms he
+occupied.
+
+"Oh, dear, Sir Dudley," cried the maid, as she saw him hastening along
+the corridor, "oh, I 'm sure, sir, how you 'll alarm my lady if she sees
+you so flurried!"
+
+"Stand out of the way, woman!" said he, roughly, endeavoring to push
+her to one side, for she had actually placed herself between him and the
+door of the drawing-room.
+
+"Surely, sir, you'll not terrify my lady! Surely, Sir Dudley--"
+
+Despite her cries, for they had now become such, Broughton pushed her
+rudely from the spot, and entered the room.
+
+Great was his astonishment to find Lady Broughton, whom he had left
+so ill, not only up, but dressed as if for the promenade; her face
+was flushed, and her eye restless and feverish; and her whole manner
+exhibited the highest degree of excitement.
+
+Broughton threw down his hat upon the table, and then, returning to the
+door, locked and bolted it.
+
+"Good Heavens, Dudley!" exclaimed she, in a voice of terror, "what has
+happened?"
+
+"Everything!" said he; "utter ruin! The whole crew of creditors are in
+full chase after me, and in a few hours we shall be stripped of all we
+possess."
+
+She drew a long full breath as she listened; and had her husband been in
+a mood to mark it, he might have seen how lightly his terrible tidings
+affected her.
+
+"I must fly! Taperton--he's in the carriage below--says France, at least
+for some weeks, till we can make some compromise or other; but I have
+one debt that must be acquitted before I leave."
+
+There was a terrible significance in the words, and she was sick to the
+heart as she asked, "What, and to whom?"
+
+"Radchoffsky!" cried he, savagely; "that scoundrel whom I trusted like a
+brother!"
+
+Lady Broughton fell back, and for a moment her motionless limbs and
+pallid features seemed like fainting; but with a tremendous effort
+rallying herself, she said, "Go on!"
+
+"He betrayed me,--told every circumstance of my book! And the mare I had
+backed for more than thirty thousand is dying this instant; so that I am
+not only ruined, but dishonored!"
+
+She sat with wide staring eyes and half-open lips while he spoke, nor
+did she seem, in the fearful confusion of her fear, to understand fully
+all he said.
+
+"Have I not spoken plainly?" said he, angrily. "Don't you comprehend
+me when I say that to-morrow I shall be branded as a defaulter at the
+settling? But enough of this. Tell Millar to get a portmanteau ready
+for me. I 'll start this evening; the interval is short enough for all
+I have to do." As he spoke, he hastened to his bedroom, and, providing
+himself with a case containing his duelling-pistols, he hurried
+downstairs, ordering the postilion to drive to the Russian Embassy.
+
+The carriage was scarce driven from the door when Lady Broughton,
+taking a key from her pocket, opened a small door which led from
+the drawing-room into her dressing-room, from which the count walked
+forth,--his calm features unruffled and easy as though no emotion had
+ever stirred them.
+
+"You heard what Broughton said?" whispered she, in an accent of
+faltering agitation.
+
+"Oui, _parbleu_, every word of it!" replied he, laughing gently. "The
+people of the house might almost have heard him."
+
+"And is it true?" asked she, while a cold sickness crept over her, and
+her mouth was shaken convulsively.
+
+"I believe so," said he, calmly.
+
+"Oh, Alexis, do not say so!" cried she, in an agony of grief; "or, least
+of all, in such a voice as that."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders; and then, after a moment's pause, said, "I
+confess myself quite unprepared for this show of affection, madame--"
+
+"Not so, Alexis. It is for _you_ I am concerned; for your honor as a
+gentleman; for your fair fame among men--"
+
+"Pardon, madame, if I interrupt you; but the defence of my honor must be
+left to myself--"
+
+"If I had but thought this of you--"
+
+"It is never too late for repentance, madame. I should be sorry to think
+I could deceive you."
+
+"Oh, it is too late, far too late!" cried she, bursting into tears.
+"Let us go! I must never see him again! I would not live over that last
+half-hour again to save me from a death of torture!"
+
+"Allow me, then," said he, taking her shawl and draping it on her
+shoulders. "The carriage is ready;" and with these words, spoken with
+perfect calm, he presented his arm and led her from the room.
+
+To return to Sir Dudley. On arriving at the Russian Embassy, he could
+learn nothing of the whereabouts of him he sought; a young secretary,
+however, with whom he had some intimacy, drawing him to one side,
+whispered, "Wait here a moment; I have a strange revelation to make
+you,--but in confidence, remember, for it must not get abroad." The
+story was this: Count Radchoffsky had been, on his recall from the
+Embassy, detected in some Polish intrigue, and ordered to absent himself
+from the capital and preserve a life of strict retirement, under police
+"surveillance;" from this, he had managed to escape and reach England,
+with forged credentials of Envoy Extraordinary; the mission being an
+invention of his own, to gain currency in the world and obtain for him
+loans of large sums from various houses in the "City." "As he knows,"
+continued Broughton's informant, "from his former experience, the day of
+our courier's expected arrival, he has up to this lived fearlessly and
+openly; but the despatch having reached us through the French cabinet
+sooner than he expected, his plot is revealed. The great difficulty is
+to avoid all publicity; for we must have no magisterial interference, no
+newspaper or police notoriety; all must be done quietly, and he must be
+shipped off to Russia without a rumor of the affair getting abroad."
+
+Broughton heard all this with the dogged satisfaction of a man who
+did not well know whether to be pleased or otherwise that an object of
+personal vengeance had been withdrawn from him.
+
+But not accustomed to dwell long on any subject where the main interest
+of his own line of action was wanting, he drove home to his hotel
+to hasten the preparations for his departure. On his arrival at the
+Clarendon, a certain bustle and movement in the hall and on the stairs
+attracted his attention, and before he could inquire the cause, a half
+whisper, "There he is; that's Sir Dudley!" made him turn round; the same
+instant a heavy hand was laid on his shoulder, and a man said, "I arrest
+you, Sir Dudley Broughton, at the suit of Messrs. Worrit and Sneare,
+Lombard Street."
+
+"Be calm; don't make any resistance," whispered Taperton in his ear;
+"come upstairs." They passed on, and entered the drawing-room, where
+everything appeared in disorder. As for Broughton, he was bewildered
+and stupefied by all he had gone through, and sat in a chair staring
+vacantly at the groups around him, evidently unable, through the haze
+of his disordered faculties, to see clearly how, and in what, he was
+interested in the affair.
+
+"Where's my lady?" whispered Taperton to the valet, who stood almost as
+spell-bound as his master.
+
+"Gone, sir; she's gone," said the man, in a faint voice.
+
+"Gone where, scoundrel?" said Sir Dudley, jumping up and seizing him by
+the throat with both hands, while he roared out the words with a savage
+vehemence that startled all the room.
+
+"Gone away, Sir Dudley," said the half-choking man; "I saw her drive off
+in a chaise and pair with Count Radchoffsky."
+
+Broughton let go his hold, and fell heavily upon his face to the ground.
+A surgeon was called in, who at once perceived that the attack was one
+of apoplexy. For that night and part of the next day his recovery
+was almost hopeless; for, though repeatedly bled, he gave no signs of
+returning animation, but lay heaving, at intervals, long, heavy sighs,
+and respiring with an effort that seemed to shake the strong frame in
+convulsions.
+
+Youth and bold remedies, however, favored him, and on the third morning
+he awoke, weak and weary, like one who had just reached convalescence
+after a long and terrible fever. His features, his gestures, his very
+voice, were all altered; there was a debility about him--mental and
+physical--that seemed like premature decay; and they who knew the bold,
+high-spirited man of a few days before could never have recognized him
+in the simple-looking, vacant, and purposeless invalid who sat there, to
+all seeming, neither noticing nor caring what happened around him. It is
+true, indeed, few essayed the comparison. Of those who visited him,
+the greater number were creditors curious to speculate on his recovery;
+there were a couple of reporters, too, for gossiping newspapers desirous
+of coining a paragraph to amuse the town; but no friends,--not a man of
+those who dined, and drank, and drove, and played with him. In fact his
+fate was soon forgotten even in the very circles of which he had been
+the centre; nor did his name ever meet mention, save in some stale
+report of a bankruptcy examination, or a meeting of creditors to arrange
+for the liquidation of his debts.
+
+The wasteful, heedless extravagance of his mode of living was urged even
+to vindictiveness by his creditors, so that for three years he remained
+a prisoner in the Fleet; and it was only when they saw he had no feeling
+of either shame or regret at his imprisonment that an arrangement was
+at last agreed to, and he was liberated,--set free to mix in a world in
+which he had not one tie to bind, or one interest to attach him!
+
+From that hour forth none ever knew how far his memory retained the
+circumstances of his past life; he never certainly mentioned them to
+any of those with whom he formed companionship, nor did he renew
+acquaintance with one among his former friends. By great exertions on
+the part of his lawyers, almost a thousand a year was secured to him
+from the wreck of his great fortune,--the proceeds of a small estate
+that had belonged to his mother.
+
+On this income he lived some time in total seclusion, when, to the
+astonishment of all, he was again seen about town, in company with men
+of the most equivocal character,--noted gamblers at hells, "Legs of
+Newmarket," and others to whom report attributed bolder and more
+daring feats of iniquity. While it was a debated point among certain
+fashionables of the clubs how far he was to be recognized by them, he
+saved them all the difficulty, by passing his most intimate friends
+without a bow or the slightest sign of recognition. A stern, repulsive
+frown never left his features; and he whose frank, light-hearted
+buoyancy had been a proverb, was grave and silent, rarely admitting
+anything like an intimacy, and avoiding whatever could be called a
+friendship.
+
+After a while he was missed from his accustomed haunts, and it was said
+that he had purchased a yacht and amused himself by sea excursions.
+Then there came a rumor of his being in the Carlist insurrection in
+Spain,--some said with a high command; and afterwards he was seen in
+a French voltigeur regiment serving in Africa. From all these varied
+accidents of life he came back to London, frequenting, as before, the
+same play resorts, and betting sums whose amount often trenched upon the
+limits of the bank. If, in his early life, he was a constant loser, now
+he invariably won; and he was actually the terror of hell-keepers, whose
+superstitious fears of certain "lucky ones" are a well-known portion of
+their creed.
+
+As for himself, he seemed to take a kind of fiendish sport in following
+up this new turn of fortune. It was like a Nemesis on those who had
+worked his ruin. One man in particular, a well-known Jew money-lender
+of great wealth, he pursued with all the vindictive perseverance of
+revenge. He tracked him from London to Brighton, to Cheltenham, to
+Leamington, to Newmarket, to Goodwood; he followed him to Paris, to
+Brussels; wherever in any city the man opened a table for play, there
+was Broughton sure to be found.
+
+
+
+At last, by way of eluding all pursuit, the Jew went over to Ireland,--a
+country where of all others fewest resources for his traffic presented
+themselves; and here again, despite change of name and every precaution
+of secrecy, Broughton traced him out; and, on the night when I first met
+him, he was on his return from a hell on the Quays where he had broken
+the bank and arisen a winner of above two thousand pounds.
+
+The peculiar circumstances of that night's adventure are easily told.
+He was followed from the play table by two men, witnesses of his good
+fortune, who saw that he carried the entire sum on his person; and from
+his manner,--a feint I found he often assumed,--they believed him to be
+drunk. A row was accordingly organized at the closing of the play, the
+lights were extinguished, and a terrible scene of tumult and outrage
+ensued, whose sole object was to rob Broughton of his winnings.
+
+After a desperate struggle, in which he received the wound I have
+mentioned, he escaped by leaping from a window into the street,--a
+feat too daring for his assailants to imitate. The remainder is already
+known; and I have only again to ask my reader's indulgent pardon for
+this long episode, without which, however, I felt I could not have asked
+his companionship on board the "Firefly."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. THE VOYAGE OUT
+
+The crew of the "Firefly" consisted of twelve persons, natives of almost
+as many countries. Indeed, to see them all muster on deck, it was like a
+little congress of European rascality,--such a set of hang-dog, sullen,
+reckless wretches were they; Halkett, the Englishman, being the only
+one whose features were not a criminal indictment, and he, with his
+nose split by the slash of a cutlass, was himself no beauty. The most
+atrocious of all, however, was a Moorish boy, about thirteen years of
+age, called El Jarasch (the fiend), and whose diabolical ugliness did
+not belie the family name. His functions on board were to feed and take
+care of two young lion whelps which Sir Dudley had brought with him from
+an excursion in the interior of Africa. Whether from his blood or the
+nature of his occupation, I know not, but I certainly could trace in his
+features all the terrible traits of the creatures he tended. The
+wide, distended nostrils, the bleared and bloodshot eyes, the large,
+full-lipped mouth, drawn back by the strong muscles at its angles, and
+the great swollen vessels of the forehead, were developed in him, as
+in the wild beasts. He imitated the animals, too, in all his gestures,
+which were sudden and abrupt; the very way he ate, tearing his food and
+rending it in fragments, like a prey, shewed the type he followed.
+His dress was handsome, almost gorgeous; a white tunic of thin muslin
+reached to the knees, over which he wore a scarlet cloth jacket,
+open, and without sleeves: this was curiously slashed and laced, by a
+wonderful tissue of gold thread so delicately traceried as to bear the
+most minute examination; a belt of burnished gold, like a succession of
+clasps, supported a small scimitar, whose scabbard of ivory and gold was
+of exquisite workmanship, the top of the handle being formed by a single
+emerald of purest color; his legs were bare, save at the ankles, where
+two rings of massive gold encircled them; on his feet he wore a kind of
+embroidered slippers, curiously studded with precious stones. A white
+turban of muslin, delicately sprigged with gold, covered his head,
+looped in front by another large emerald, which glared and sparkled like
+an eye in the centre of his forehead.
+
+This was his gala costume; but his every-day one resembled it in
+everything, save the actual value of the material. Such was El Jarasch,
+who was to be my companion and my messmate,--a fact which seemed to
+afford small satisfaction to either of us.
+
+Nothing could less resemble his splendor than the simplicity of my
+costume. Halkett, when ordered to "rig me out," not knowing what precise
+place I was to occupy on board, proceeded to dress me from the kit of
+the sailor we had left behind in Dublin; and although, by rolling up the
+sleeves of my jacket, and performing the same office for the legs of my
+trousers, my hands and feet could be rendered available to me, no such
+ready method could prevent the clothes bagging around me in every absurd
+superfluity, and making me appear more like a stunted monster than a
+human being. Beside my splendidly costumed companion I made, indeed, but
+a sorry figure, nor was it long dubious that he himself thought so; the
+look of savage contempt he first bestowed on me, and then the gaze of
+ineffable pleasure he accorded to himself afterwards, having a wide
+interval between them. Neither did it improve my condition, in his
+eyes, that I could lay claim to no distinct duty on board. While I was
+ruminating on this fact, the morning after I joined the yacht, we
+were standing under easy sail, with a bright sky and a calm sea, the
+southeastern coast of Ireland on our lee; the heaving swell of the blue
+water, the fluttering bunting from gaff and peak, the joyous
+bounding motion, were all new and inspiriting sensations, and I was
+congratulating myself on the change a few hours had wrought in my
+fortune, when Halkett came to tell me that Sir Dudley wanted to speak
+with me in his cabin. He was lounging on a little sofa when I entered,
+in a loose kind of dressing-gown, and before him stood the materials
+of his yet untasted breakfast. The first effect of my appearance was
+a burst of laughter; and although there is nothing I have ever loved
+better to hear than a hearty laugh, his was not of a kind to inspire
+any very pleasant or mirthful sensations. It was a short, husky, barking
+noise, with derision and mockery in every cadence of it.
+
+"What the devil have we here? Why, boy, you'd disgrace a stone lighter
+at Sheerness. Who rigged you in that fashion?"
+
+"Mr. Halkett, sir."
+
+"Halkett, if you please; I know no 'misters' among my crew. Well, this
+must be looked to; but Halkett might have known better than to send you
+here in such a guise."
+
+I made no answer; and, apparently, for some minutes, he forgot all about
+me, and busied himself in a large chart which covered the table. At last
+he looked up; and then, after a second or two spent in recalling me to
+his recollection, said, "Oh, you 're the lad I took up last night; very
+true. I wanted to speak with you. What can you do, besides what I have
+seen; for I trust surgery is an art we shall seldom find use for,--can
+you cook?"
+
+I was ashamed to say that I could boil potatoes and fry rashers, which
+were all my culinary gifts, and so I replied that "I could not."
+
+"Have you never been in any service, or any kind of employment?"
+
+"Never, sir."
+
+"Always a vagabond?"
+
+"Always, sir."
+
+"Well, certes, I have the luck of it!" said he, with one of his low
+laughs. "It is, perhaps, all the better. Come, my boy, it does not seem
+quite clear to me what we can make of you; we have no time, nor, indeed,
+any patience, for making sailors of striplings,--we always prefer the
+ready-made article; but you must pick up what you can, keep your watches
+when on board, and when we go ashore anywhere, you shall be my scout;
+therefore don't throw away your old rags, but be ready to resume them
+when wanted,--you hear?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"So far! Now, the next thing is,--and it is right you should know
+it,--though I keep a yacht for my pleasure and amusement, I sometimes
+indulge myself in a little smuggling,--which is also a pleasure and
+amusement; and, therefore, my people are liable, if detected, to be
+sentenced to a smart term of imprisonment,--not that this has yet
+happened to any of them, but it may, you know; so it is only fair to
+warn you."
+
+"I 'll take my chance with the rest, sir."
+
+"Well said, boy! There are other little ventures, too, I sometimes make;
+but you 'd not understand them, so we need not refer to them. Now, as
+to the third point,--discipline. So long as you are on board, I expect
+obedience in everything; that you agree with your messmates, and never
+tell a lie. On shore, you may cut each other's throats to your heart's
+content. Remember, then; the lesson is easy enough: if you quarrel with
+your comrades, I 'll flog you; if you ever deceive me by an untruth,
+I'll blow your brains out!" The voice in which he spoke these last few
+words grew harsher and louder, and at the end it became almost a shout
+of angry denunciation.
+
+"For your private governance, I may say, you'll find it wise to be
+good friends with Halkett, and, if you can, with Jarasch. Go now; I 've
+nothing more to say."
+
+I was about to retire, when he called me back.
+
+"Stay! you've said nothing to me, nor have I to you, about your wages."
+
+"I want none, sir. It is enough for me if I am provided in all money
+could buy for me."
+
+"No deceit, sir! No trickery with _me!_" cried he, fiercely, and he
+glared savagely at me.
+
+"It is not deceit, nor trick either," said I, boldly; "but I see, sir,
+it is not likely you 'll ever trust one whom you saw in the humble
+condition you found me. Land me, then, at the first port you put in to.
+Leave me to follow out my fortune my own way."
+
+"What if I take you at your word," said he, "and leave you among the red
+Moors, on the coast of Barbary?"
+
+I hung my head in shame and dismay.
+
+"Ay, or dropped you with the Tongo chiefs, who'd grill you for
+breakfast?"
+
+"But we are nigh England now, sir."
+
+"We shall not long be so," cried he, joyfully. "If this breeze last,
+you 'll see Cape Clear by sunrise, and not look on it again at sunset.
+There, away with you! Tell Halkett I desire that you should be mustered
+with the rest of the fellows, learn the use of a cutlass, and to load a
+pistol without blowing your fingers off."
+
+He motioned me now to leave, and I withdrew, if I must own it, only
+partially pleased with my new servitude. One word here to explain my
+conduct, which perhaps in the eyes of some, may appear inconsistent or
+improbable. It may be deemed strange and incomprehensible why I, poor,
+friendless, and low-born, should have been indifferent, even to the
+refusal of all wages. The fact is this: I had set out upon my "life
+pilgrimage" with a most firm conviction that one day or other, sooner or
+later, I should be a "gentleman;" that I should mix on terms of equality
+with the best and the highest, not a trace or a clew to my former
+condition being in any respect discoverable. Now, with this one
+paramount object before me, all my endeavors were gradually to conform,
+so far as might be, all my modes of thought and action to that sphere
+wherein yet I should move; to learn, one by one, the usages of gentle
+blood, so that, when my hour came I should step into my position ready
+suited to all its requirements and equal to all its demands. If this
+explanation does not make clear the reasons of my generosity, and my
+other motives of honorable conduct, I am sorry for it, for I have none
+other to offer.
+
+I have said that I retired from my interview with Sir Dudley not at all
+satisfied with the result. Indeed, as I pondered over it, I could
+not help feeling that gentlemen must dislike any traits of high and
+honorable motives in persons of my own station, as though they were
+assuming the air of their betters. What could rags have in common with
+generous impulses; how could poverty and hunger ever consort with high
+sentiments or noble aspirations? They forgive us, thought I, when we
+mimic their dress and pantomime their demeanor, because we only make
+_ourselves_ ridiculous by the imitation; but when we would assume the
+features that regulate their own social intercourse, they hate us, as
+though we sullied with our impure touch the virtues of a higher class of
+beings.
+
+The more I thought over this subject, the more strongly was I satisfied
+that I was correct in my judgment; and, sooth to say, the less did I
+respect that condition in life which could deem any man too poor to be
+high-minded.
+
+Sir Dudley's anticipations were all correct. The following evening at
+sunset the great headlands of the south of Ireland were seen, at first
+clear, and at last like hazy fogbanks; while our light vessel scudded
+along, her prow pointing to where the sun had just set behind the
+horizon; and then did I learn that we were bound for North America.
+
+Our voyage for some weeks was undistinguished by any feature of unusual
+character. The weather was uniformly fine; steady breezes from the
+northeast, with a clear sky and a calm sea, followed us as we went, so
+that, in the pleasant monotony of our lives, one day exactly resembled
+another. It will, therefore, suffice if, in a few words, I tell how
+the hours were passed. Sir Dudley came on deck after breakfast, when I
+spread out a large white bear's skin for him to lie upon; reclined
+on which, and with a huge meerschaum of great beauty in his hand,
+he smoked, and watched the lions at play. These gambols were always
+amusing, and never failed to assemble all the crew to witness them.
+Jarasch, dressed in a light woollen tunic, with legs, arms, and neck
+bare, led them forth by a chain; and, after presenting them to Sir
+Dudley, from whose hands they usually received a small piece of sugar,
+they were then set at liberty,--a privilege they soon availed themselves
+of, setting off at full speed around the deck, sometimes one in pursuit
+of the other, sometimes by different ways, crossing and recrossing each
+other; now with a bold spring, now with cat-like stealthiness, creeping
+slowly past. The exercise, far from fatiguing, seemed only to excite
+them more and more, since all this time they were in search of the
+food which Jarasch, with a cunning all his own, knew how, each day, to
+conceal in some new fashion. Baffled and irritated by delay, the eyes
+grew red and lustrous, the tails stiffened, and were either carried
+high over the back or extended straight backwards; they contracted their
+necks too, till the muscles were gathered up in thick massive folds, and
+then their great heads seemed actually fastened on the fore part of the
+trunk. When their rage had been sufficiently whetted by delay, Jarasch
+would bring forth the mess in a large "grog tub," covered with a massive
+lid, on which seating himself, and armed with a short stout bludgeon, he
+used to keep the beasts at bay. This, which was the most exciting part
+of the spectacle, presented every possible variety of combat. Sometimes
+he could hold them in check for nigh half-an-hour, sometimes the
+struggle would scarce last five minutes. Now, he would, by a successful
+stroke, so intimidate one of his assailants that he could devote all his
+energies against the other. Now, by a simultaneous attack, the savage
+creatures would spring upon and overthrow him, and then, with all the
+semblance of ungovernable passion, they would drag him some distance
+along the deck, mouthing him with frothy lips, and striking him about
+the head with their huge paws, from which they would not desist till
+some of the sailors, uncovering the mess, would tempt them off by the
+savor of the food. Although, in general, these games passed off with
+little other damage than a torn tunic or a bruise more or less severe,
+at others Jarasch would be so sorely mauled as to be carried off
+insensible; nor would he again be seen for the remainder of the day.
+That the combat was not quite devoid of peril was clear, by the fact
+that several of the sailors were always armed, some with staves, others
+with cutlasses, since, in the event of a bite, and blood flowing,
+nothing but immediate and prompt aid could save the boy from being
+devoured. This he knew well, and the exercises were always discontinued
+whenever the slightest cut, or even a scratch, existed in any part
+of his person. Each day seemed to heighten the excitement of these
+exhibitions; for, as Jarasch became more skilful in his defence, so did
+the whelps in the mode of attack; besides that, their growth advanced
+with incredible rapidity, and soon threatened to make the amusement no
+longer practicable. This display over, Sir Dudley played at chess with
+Halkett, while I, seated behind him, read aloud some book,--usually
+one of voyages and travels. In the afternoon he went below, and studied
+works in some foreign language of which he appeared most eager to
+acquire a knowledge, and I was then ordered to copy out into a book
+various extracts of different routes in all parts of the world:
+sometimes, the mode of crossing a Syrian desert; now the shortest and
+safest way through the wild regions on the shores of the Adriatic. At
+one time the theme would be the steppes of Tartary or the snowy plains
+of the Ukraine; at another, the dangerous passes of the Cordilleras or
+the hunting-grounds of the Mandaus. What delightful hours were these to
+me; how full of the very highest interest! The wildest adventures were
+here united with narratives of real events and people, presenting human
+life in aspects the strangest and most varied. How different from my old
+clerkship with my father, with the interminable string of bastard and
+broken law Latin! I believe that in all my after-life, fortunate as it
+has been in so many respects, I have never passed hours more happy than
+these were.
+
+In recompense for my secretarial functions, I was free of the middle
+watch; so that, instead of turning into my berth at sundown to snatch
+some sleep before midnight, I could lounge about at will,--sometimes
+dropping into the steerage to listen to some seaman's "yarn" of storm
+and shipwreck, but far oftener, book in hand, taking a lesson in French
+from the old cook, for which I paid him in being "aide-de-cuisine;" or,
+with more hardy industry, assisting our fat German mate to polish up
+his Regensburg pistols, by which I made some progress in that tongue of
+harsh and mysterious gutturals.
+
+Through all these occupations the thought never left me,--what could be
+the object of Sir Dudley's continued voyaging? No feature of pleasure
+was certainly associated with it; as little could it be attributed to
+the practice of smuggling,--the very seas he had longest cruised in
+forbade that notion. It must be, thought I, that other reason to which
+he so darkly alluded on the day he called me to his cabin; and what
+could that be? Never was ingenuity more tortured than mine by this
+ever-recurring question; since it is needless to tell the reader I was
+not then, nor indeed for a very long time afterwards, acquainted with
+those particulars of his history I have already jotted down. This
+intense curiosity of mine would doubtless have worn itself out at last,
+but for a slight circumstance occurring to keep it still alive within
+me. The little state-room in which I used to write lay at one side of
+the cabin, from which it was entered,--no other means of getting to it
+existing; a heavy silk curtain supplied the place of a door between the
+two; and this, when four o'clock came, and my day's work was finished,
+was let down till the following morning, when it was drawn aside, that
+Sir Dudley, from time to time, might see, and, if needful, speak with
+me. Now, one day, when we had been about three weeks at sea, the weather
+being intensely hot and sultry, Sir Dudley had fallen asleep in his
+cabin while I sat writing away vigorously within. Suddenly, I heard a
+shout on deck: "The whales! a shoal of whales ahead!" and immediately
+the sudden scuffling of feet, and the heavy hum of voices, proclaimed
+the animation and interest the sight created. I strained myself to peep
+through the little one-paned window beside me, but all I could see was
+the great blue heaving ocean as, in majestic swell, it rolled along.
+Still the noise continued; and, by the number and tone of the speakers,
+I could detect that all the crew were on deck,--every one, in fact, save
+myself. What a disappointment! full as my mind was of every monster of
+land and water, burning to observe some of the wonderful things I had
+read so much about, and now destined actually to be denied a sight
+on which my comrades were then gazing! I could endure the thought
+no longer; and although my task was each morning allotted to me, and
+carefully examined the next day by Sir Dudley, I stepped lightly out on
+tiptoe, and letting fall the curtain so that if he awoke I should not be
+missed, I stole up the "companion," and reached the deck.
+
+What a sight was there! the whole sea around us was in motion with the
+great monsters, who, in pursuit of a shoal of herrings, darted at speed
+through the blue water,--spouting, blowing, and tossing in all the
+wildest confusion; here, every eye was bent on a calm still spot in the
+water, where a whale had "sounded," that is, gone down quite straight
+into the depths of the sea; here, another was seen scarcely covered
+by the water, his monstrous head and back alternately dipping below or
+emerging above it; harpoons and tackle were sought out, firearms loaded,
+and every preparation for attack and capture made, but none dared to
+venture without orders, nor was any hardy enough to awake him and
+ask for them. Perhaps the very expectancy on our part increased the
+interest, for certainly the excitement of the scene was intense,--so
+much so that I actually forgot all about my task, and, without a thought
+of consequences, was hanging eagerly over the taffrail in full enjoyment
+of the wild scene, when the tinkle of the captain's bell startled me,
+and, to my horror, I remembered it was now his dinner hour, and that,
+for the rest of the day, no opportunity would offer of my reaching the
+state-room to finish my writing.
+
+I was so terrified that I lost all interest in the spectacle, whereof,
+up to that time, my mind was full. It was my first delinquency, and had
+all the poignancy of a first fault. The severity I had seen practised
+on others for even slight infractions of duty was all before me, and
+I actually debated with myself whether it would not be better to jump
+overboard at once than meet the anger of Sir Dudley. With any one else,
+perhaps, I should have bethought me of some cunning lie to account for
+my absence; but he had warned me about trying to deceive him, and I well
+knew he could be as good as his word. I had no courage to tell any of
+the sailors my fault, and ask their advice; indeed, I anticipated what
+would be the result: some brutal jest over my misfortune, some coarse
+allusion to the fate they had often told me portended me, since "no
+younker had ever gone from land to land with Sir Dudley without tasting
+his hemp fritters." I sat down, therefore, beside the bowsprit, where
+none should see me, to commune alone with my grief, and, if I could, to
+summon up courage to meet my fate.
+
+Night had closed in some time, and all was tranquil on board, when I
+saw Halkett, as was his custom, going aft to the cabin, where he always
+remained for an hour or more each evening. It was just then, I know not
+how the notion occurred, but it struck me that if I could lower myself
+over the side, I might be able to creep through the little window into
+the state-room, and carry away the paper to finish it before morning. I
+lost little time in setting about my plot; and having made fast a rope
+to one of the clews, I lowered myself fearlessly over the gunwale, and
+pushing open the little sash, which was unfastened, I soon managed to
+insert my head and shoulders, and, without any difficulty dragging my
+body slowly after, entered the state-room. So long as the danger of the
+enterprise and its difficulty lasted, so long my courage was high and
+my heart fearless; but when I sat down in the little dark room, scarcely
+venturing to breathe, lest I should be overheard, almost afraid to touch
+the papers on the table, lest their rustling noise should betray me, how
+was this terror increased when I actually heard the voices of Sir Dudley
+and Halkett as plainly as though I were in the cabin beside them!
+
+"And so, Halkett," said Sir Dudley, "you think this expedition will be
+as fruitless as the others?"
+
+"I do, sir," said the other, in a low, dogged tone.
+
+"And yet you were the very man who encouraged me to make it!"
+
+"And what of that? Of two things, I thought it more likely that he
+should be the leader of a band to a regiment in Canada than be a Faquino
+on the Mole of Genoa. A fellow like him could scarcely fall so low as
+that."
+
+"He shall fall lower, by Heaven, if I live!" said Sir Dudley, in a voice
+rendered guttural with deep passion.
+
+"Take care you fall not with him, sir," said Halkett, in a tone of
+warning.
+
+"And if I should,--for what else have I lived these three last years? In
+that pursuit have I perilled health and life, satisfied to lose both if
+I but succeed at last."
+
+"And how do you mean to proceed? For, assuredly, if he be attached
+to the regiment at Kingstown, he 'll hear of you, from some source or
+other. You remember when we all but had him at Torlosk, and yet he
+heard of our coming before we got two posts from Warsaw; and again,
+at 'Forli,' we had scarce dropped anchor off Rimini when he was up and
+away."
+
+"I 'll go more secretly to work this time, Halkett; hitherto I have been
+slow to think the fellow a coward. It is so hard to believe anything so
+base as a man bereft of every trait of virtue: now I see clearly that he
+is so. I 'll track him, not to offer him the chances of a duel, but to
+hunt him down as I would a wild beast. I 'll proceed up the river in the
+disguise of an itinerant merchant,--one of those pedler fellows of which
+this land is full,--taking the Irish dog along with me."
+
+"Of whom, remember, you know nothing, sir," interposed Halkett.
+
+"Nor need to know," said he, impatient at the interruption. "Let him
+play me false, let me only suspect that he means it, and my reckoning
+with him will be short. I have watched him closely of late, and I see
+the fellow's curiosity is excited about us: he is evidently on the alert
+to learn something of our object in this voyage; but the day he gains
+the knowledge, Tom, will be his last to enjoy it. It is a cheap process
+if we are at sea,--a dark night and an eighteen-pound shot! If on shore,
+I 'll readily find some one to take the trouble off my hands."
+
+It may be imagined with what a sensation of terror I heard these words,
+feeling that my actual position at the moment would have decided my
+fate, if discovered; and yet, with all this, I could not stir, nor make
+an effort to leave the spot; a fascination to hear the remainder of the
+conversation had thoroughly bound me as by a spell; and in breathless
+anxiety I listened, as Sir Dudley resumed:
+
+"You, with Heckenstein and the Greek, must follow, ready to assist me
+when I need your aid; for my plan is this: I mean to entice the fellow,
+on pretence of a pleasure excursion, a few miles from the town, into
+the bush, there to bind him hand and foot, and convey him, by the forest
+tracks, to the second 'portage,' where the batteaux are stationed, by
+one of which--these Canadian fellows are easily bribed--we shall drop
+down to Montreal. There the yacht shall be in waiting all ready for sea.
+Even without a wind, three days will bring us off the Island of Orleans,
+and as many more, if we be but fortunate, to the Gulf. The very worst
+that can happen is discovery and detection; and if that ensue, I 'll
+blow his brains out."
+
+"And if we succeed in carrying him off, Sir Dudley, what then?"
+
+"I have not made up my mind, Halkett, what I'll do. I 've thought of a
+hundred schemes of vengeance; but, confound it, I must be content with
+one only, though fifty deaths would not satisfy my hate."
+
+"I'd put a bullet through his skull, or swing him from the yardarm, and
+make an end of it," said Halkett, roughly.
+
+"Not I, faith! He shall live; and, if I can have my will, a long life
+too. His own government would take charge of him at 'Irkutsk,' for that
+matter, at the quicksilver mines; and they say the diseased bones, from
+the absorption of that poison, is a terrible punishment. But I have a
+better notion still. Do you remember that low island off the east shore
+of the Niger, where the negro fellows live in log huts, threshing the
+water all day to keep the caymans from the rice-grounds?"
+
+"The devil!" exclaimed Halkett; "you'll not put him there?"
+
+"I have thought of it very often," said Sir Dudley, calmly. "He 'd
+see his doom before him every day, and dream of it each night too. One
+cannot easily forget that horrid swamp, alive and moving with those
+reptiles! It was nigh two months ere I could fall asleep at night
+without starting up in terror at the thought of them." Sir Dudley arose
+as he said this, and walked the cabin with impatient steps; sometimes as
+he passed his arm would graze the curtain and shake its folds, and then
+my heart leaped to my mouth in very terror. At last, with an effort that
+I felt as the last chance of life, I secured the papers in my bosom,
+and, standing up on the seat, crept through the window, and, after a
+second's delay to adjust the rope, clambered up the side, and gained
+the deck unobserved. It could not have been real fatigue, for there
+was little or no exertion in the feat; but yet such was my state of
+exhaustion that I crept over to the boat that was fastened midships,
+and, lying down in her, on a coil of cable, slept soundly till morning.
+If my boyish experiences had familiarized my mind with schemes of
+vengeance as terrible as ever fiction fabricated, I had yet to learn
+that "gentlemen" cherished such feelings; and I own the discovery
+gave me a tremendous shock. That some awful debt of injury was on Sir
+Dudley's mind was clear enough, and that I was to be, in some capacity
+or other, an aid to him in acquitting it, was a fact I was more
+convinced of than pleased at. Neither did I fancy his notions of summary
+justice,--perhaps it was my legal education had prejudiced me in favor
+of more formal proceedings; but I saw with a most constitutional horror
+the function of justice, jury, and executioner in the hands of one
+single individual.
+
+So impressed was I with these thoughts that had I not been on the high
+seas, I should inevitably have run for it. Alas, however, the banks of
+Newfoundland--which, after all I had heard mentioned on our voyage, I
+imagined to be grassy slopes glittering with daisies, and yellow with
+daffodils--are but sand heaps some two hundred fathoms down in "the
+ocean blue;" and all one ever knows of them is the small geological
+specimens brought up on the tallowed end of the deep-sea lead. Escape,
+therefore, was for the present out of the question; but the steady
+determination to attempt it was spared me by a circumstance that
+occurred about a week later.
+
+After some days of calm, common enough in these latitudes, a slight but
+steady breeze set in from the northeast, which bore us up the Gulf with
+easy sail till we came in sight of the long, low island of Anticosti,
+which, like some gigantic monster, raises its dark, misshapen beach
+above the water. Not the slightest trace of foliage or verdure to give
+it a semblance to the aspect of land. Two dreary-looking log-houses,
+about eighteen miles apart, remind one that a refuge for the shipwrecked
+is deemed necessary in this dangerous channel; but, except these, not a
+trace exists to show that the foot of man had trod that dreary spot.
+
+The cook's galley is sure to have its share of horrors when a ship
+"lies to" near this gloomy shore; scarcely a crew exists where some
+one belonging to it has not had a messmate wrecked there; and then, the
+dreadful narratives of starvation, and strife, and murders, were too
+fearful to dwell on. Among the horrors recorded on every hand all agreed
+in speaking of a terrible character who had never quitted the island for
+upwards of forty years. He was a sailor who had committed a murder under
+circumstances of great atrocity, and dared not revisit the mainland, for
+fear of the penalty of his guilt. Few had ever seen him; for years back,
+indeed, he had not been met with at all, and rumor said that he was
+dead. Still, no trace of his body could be found, and some inclined to
+the opinion that he might at last have made his escape.
+
+He was a negro, and was described as possessing the strength of three or
+four men; and although the proverbial exaggeration of sailors might, and
+very probably did, color these narratives, the sad fate of more than one
+party who had set out to capture him, gave the stories a terrible air
+of truth. The fear of him was such that although very liberal terms
+had been offered to induce men to take up their abode in the island to
+succor the crews of wrecked vessels, none could be found to accept the
+post; and even at the period when I visited these seas, and after a long
+lapse of years since the Black Boatswain had been seen, no one would
+venture.
+
+The story went that his ghost still wandered there, and that at night,
+when the storm was high, and the waves of the Gulf sent the spray over
+that low and dreary island, his cries could be heard, calling aloud to
+"shorten sail," to "brace round the yards, close the hatchways," mingled
+with blasphemies that made the very hair stand on end.
+
+If the reader, armed with the triple mail of incredulity, so snugly
+ensconced in his easy-chair, before a sea-coal fire, can afford to
+scoff at such perils, not so did I, as I sat in a corner of the galley,
+gathering with greedy ears the horrors that fell on every side, and now
+and then stealing out to cast a glance over the bulwarks at the long low
+bank of sand, which seemed more like an exhalation from the water than a
+solid mass of rock and shingle.
+
+I have said that a feeling of rivalry existed between the Moorish boy,
+El Jarasch, and myself; and although I endured the scoffs and sneers
+at first with a humility my own humble garb and anomalous position
+enforced, I soon began to feel more confidence in myself, and that
+species of assurance a becoming dress seems somehow to inspire; for
+I was now attired like the rest of the crew, and wore the name of
+the yacht in gold letters on my cap, as well as on the breast of my
+waistcoat.
+
+The hatred of El Jarasch increased with every day, and mutual scoffs and
+gibes were the only intercourse between us. More than once, Halkett,
+who had always befriended me, warned me of the boy, and said that his
+Moorish blood was sure to make his vengeance felt; but I only laughed at
+his caution, and avowed myself ready to confront him when and however he
+pleased. Generosity was little wasted on either side, so that when one
+day, in a fierce encounter with the lions, El Jarasch received a fall
+which broke one of his ribs, and was carried in a state of insensibility
+to his berth, I neither pitied him nor regretted his misfortune. I
+affected even to say that his own cowardice had rendered the creatures
+more daring, and that had he preserved a bolder front the mischance
+would have never occurred. These vauntings of mine, coupled with an
+avowed willingness to take his place, came to Sir Dudley's ears on the
+third evening after the accident, and he immediately sent for me to his
+cabin.
+
+"Is it true, sirrah," said he, in a harsh, unpleasant voice, "that you
+have been jesting about Jarasch, and saying that you were ready to take
+charge of the whelps in his stead?"
+
+"It is," said I, answering both questions together.
+
+"You shall do so to-morrow, then," replied he, solemnly; "take care that
+you can do something as well as boast!" and with this he motioned me to
+leave the cabin.
+
+I at once repaired to the steerage to report my interview to the men,
+who were all more friendly with me than with the "Moor." Many were the
+counsels I received about how I should conduct myself the next morning;
+some asserting that, as it was my first time, I could not be too gentle
+with the animals, avoiding the slightest risk of hurting them, and even
+suffering their rough play without any effort to check it. Others, on
+the contrary, advised me at once to seek the mastery over the beasts,
+and by two or three severe lessons to teach them caution, if not
+respect. This counsel, I own, chimed in with my own notions, and also
+better accorded with what, after my late vauntings, I felt to be my
+duty.
+
+It was altogether a very anxious night with me, not exactly through
+fear, because I knew, as the men were always ready with their arms
+loaded, life could not be perilled, and I did not dread the infliction
+of a mere sprain or fracture; but I felt it was an ordeal wherein my
+fame was at stake. Were I to acquit myself well, there would be an
+end forever of those insulting airs of superiority the Moorish boy had
+assumed towards me. Whereas if I failed, I must consent to bear his
+taunts and sarcasms without a murmur.
+
+In one point only the advice of all the crew agreed, which was, that the
+female cub, much larger and more ferocious than the male, should more
+particularly demand my watchfulness. "If she scratch you, boy, mind that
+you desist," said an old Danish sailor, who had been long on the African
+coast. This caution was re-echoed by all; and, resolving to follow its
+dictates, I "turned in" to my hammock, to dream of combats and battles
+till morning.
+
+I was early astir,--waking with a sudden start. I had been dreaming of a
+lion-hunt, and fancied I heard the deep-mouthed roaring of the beasts in
+a jungle; and, true enough, a low, monotonous howl came from the place
+where the animals lay, for it was now the fourth morning of their being
+confined without having been once at liberty.
+
+I had just completed my dressing,--the costume was simply a short pair
+of loose trousers, hands, arms, and feet bare, and a small Fez cap on my
+head,--when Halkett came down to me to say that he had been speaking
+to Sir Dudley about the matter, and that as I had never yet accustomed
+myself to the whelps, it was better that I should not begin the
+acquaintance after they had been four days in durance. "At the same
+time," added Halkett, "he gives you the choice; you can venture if you
+please."
+
+"I've made up my mind," said I. "I'm sure I'm able for anything the
+black fellow can do."
+
+"My advice to you, boy," said he, "is to leave them alone. Those Moorish
+chaps are the creatures' countrymen, and have almost the same kind of
+natures,--they are stealthy, treacherous, and cruel. They never trust
+anything, man or beast!"
+
+"No matter," said I. "I'm as strong as he is, and my courage is not
+less."
+
+"If you will have it so, I have nothing to say,--indeed, I promised Sir
+Dudley I'd give you no advice one way or other; so now get the staff
+from Jarasch, and come on deck."
+
+The staff was a short thick truncheon of oak, tipped with brass at each
+end, and the only weapon ever used by the boy in his encounters.
+
+"So you're going to take my place!" said the black fellow, while his
+dark eyes were lighted up like coals of fire, and his white teeth
+glanced between his purple lips. "Don't hurt my poor pet cubs; be gentle
+with them."
+
+"Where's the staff?" said I, not liking the tone in which he spoke, or
+well knowing if he affected earnest or jest.
+
+"There it is," said he; "but your white hands will be enough without
+that. You'll not need the weapon the coward used!" and as he spoke, a
+kind of shuddering convulsion shook his frame from head to foot.
+
+"Come, come," said I, stretching out my hand, "I ought not to have
+called you a coward, Jarasch,--that you are not! I ask you to forgive
+me; will you?"
+
+He never spoke, but nestled lower down in the hammock, so that I could
+not even see his face.
+
+"There, they 're calling me already. I must be off! Let us shake hands
+and be friends this time at least. When you're well and up, we can fight
+it out about something else!"
+
+"Kiss me, then," said he; and though I had no fancy for the embrace, or
+the tone it was asked in, I leaned over the hammock, and while he placed
+one arm round my neck, and drew me towards him, I kissed his forehead,
+and he mine, in true Moorish fashion; and not sorry to have made my
+peace with my only enemy, I stepped up the ladder with a light heart and
+a firm courage.
+
+I little knew what need I had for both! When Jarasch had put his arm
+around my neck, I did not know that he had inserted his hand beneath the
+collar of my shirt, and drawn a long streak of blood from his own vein
+across my back between my shoulders. When I arrived on deck, it was to
+receive the congratulations of the crew, who were all struck with my
+muscular arms and legs, and who unanimously pronounced that I was far
+fitter to exercise the whelps than was the Moor.
+
+Sir Dudley said nothing. A short nod greeted me as I came towards
+him, and then he waved me back with his hand,--a motion which, having
+something contemptuous in it, pained me acutely at the moment. I had not
+much time, however, to indulge such feelings. The whelps were already on
+deck, and springing madly at the wooden bars of their cage for liberty.
+Eager as themselves, I hastened to unbolt the door and set them free.
+
+No sooner were they at large than they set off down one side of the
+deck and up the other, careering at full speed, clearing with a bound
+whatever stood in their way; and when by any chance meeting each
+other, stopping for an instant to stare with glaring eyes and swelling
+nostrils; and then, either passing stealthily and warily past, or one
+would crouch while the other cleared him at a spring, and so off again.
+In all this I had no part to play. I could neither call them back, like
+Jarasch, whose voice they knew, nor had I his dexterity in catching them
+as they went, and throwing all manner of gambols over and upon them, as
+he did.
+
+I felt this poignantly, the more as I saw, or thought I saw, Sir
+Dudley's eyes upon me more than once, with an expression of disdainful
+pity. At last, the great tub which contained the creatures' food
+was wheeled forward; and no sooner had the men retired than the
+quick-scented animals were on the spot,--so rapidly, indeed, that I
+had barely time to seat myself, cross-legged, on the lid, when they
+approached, and with stately step walked round the vessel, staring as it
+were in surprise at the new figure who disputed their meal with them.
+
+At last, the male placed one paw on the lid, and with the other tapped
+me twice or thrice on the shoulder with the kind of gentle, pattering
+blow a cat will sometimes use with a mouse. It was a sort of mild
+admonition to "leave that," nothing of hostility whatever being
+announced.
+
+I replied by imitating the gesture, so far as a half-closed fist would
+permit, and struck him on the side of the head. He looked grave at this
+treatment, and, slowly descending from his place, he lay down about a
+yard off. Meanwhile the female, who had been smelling and sniffing round
+and round the tub, made an effort to lift the lid with her head, and,
+failing, began to strike it in sharp, short blows with her paw; the
+excitement of her face, and the sturdy position of her hind legs,
+showing that her temper was chafed at the delay. To increase her rage,
+I pushed the lid a few inches back; and as the savory steam arose, the
+creature grew more eager, and at last attracted the other to the spot.
+
+It was quite clear that hunger was the passion uppermost with them,
+and that they had not yet connected me with the cause of their
+disappointment; for they labored by twenty devices to insert a paw or to
+smash the lid, but never noticed me in the least. Wearied of my failures
+to induce them to play, and angry at the indifference they manifested to
+me, I sprang from the lid, and, lifting it from the tub, flung it back.
+In an instant they had each their heads in the mess; the female had even
+her great paw in the midst of the tub, and was eating away with that
+low, gurgling growl peculiar to the wild beast.
+
+Dashing right between them, I seized one by the throat with both hands,
+and hurled him back upon the deck. A shout of "Bravo!" burst from the
+crew at the boldness of the feat, and with a bound the fellow made at
+me. I dropped suddenly on one knee as he came, and struck him with the
+staff on the fore legs. Had he been shot, he could not have fallen more
+rapidly; down he went, like a dead mass, on the deck. To spring on his
+back and hold him fast down was the work of a second, while I belabored
+him about the head with my fists.
+
+The stunning effect of his first fall gave me the victory for a moment,
+but he soon rallied, and attacked me boldly. It was now a fair fight;
+for if I sometimes succeeded in making him shake his huge head or drop
+his paw with pain, more than once he staggered me with a blow which, had
+it been only quickly followed, would soon have decided the struggle. At
+last, after a scuffle in which he had nearly vanquished me, he made a
+leap at my throat. I put in a blow of such power with the staff on the
+forehead that he gave a loud roar of pain, and, with drooping tail,
+slunk to hide away himself beneath a boat.
+
+Up to this moment the female had never stirred from the mess of food,
+but continued eating and snarling as though every mouthful was a battle.
+Scarcely, however, had the roar of the other cub been heard than
+she lifted her head, and, slowly turning round, stared at me with an
+expression which, even now, my dreams will recall.
+
+I had not yet recovered from the exhaustion of my late encounter,
+and was half sitting, half kneeling on the deck, as the whelp stood
+glowering at me, with every vein in her vast forehead swollen, and her
+large, red eyes seeming to dilate as she looked. The attitude of the
+creature must have been striking, for the crew cheered with a heartiness
+that showed how much they admired her.
+
+So long as I sat unmoved she never stirred; but when I prepared to
+arise, she gave one bound, and, striking me with her head, hurled me
+back upon the deck: her own impulse had carried her clean over me, and
+when she returned, I was already up, on my knees, and better prepared to
+receive her. Again she tried the same manoeuvre; but this time I leaped
+to my feet, and, springing on one side, struck her a heavy blow on the
+top of the head. Twice or thrice the same attack, with the same result,
+followed; and at each blow a gallant cheer from the men gave me fresh
+courage.
+
+
+
+The beast was now excited to a dreadful degree; but her very passion
+favored me, for her assaults were wilder and less circumspect than at
+first. At length, just as I was again making the side leap by which I
+had escaped, my foot slipped, and I fell. I was scarcely down ere she
+was upon me, not, as before, to strike with her paws, but with a rude
+shock she threw herself across me, as if to crush me by her weight;
+while her huge head and terrific mouth, frothy and steaming, lay within
+a few inches of my face.
+
+Halkett and two others advanced to my rescue; but I bade them go back
+and leave me to myself, for I was only wearied, not conquered. For some
+minutes we lay thus; when at length, having recovered strength once
+more, I grasped the whelp's throat with both hands, and then by a
+tremendous effort threw her back, and rolled myself uppermost. She soon
+shook herself free, however, and turned upon me: I was now on my knees,
+and with the staff I dealt her a fierce blow on the leg. A terrific howl
+followed, and she closed with me in full fury. Seizing my shirt, she
+tore it away from my breast, and with her paw upon the fragment, ripped
+it in a hundred pieces. I endeavored to catch her by the throat once
+more, but failed, and rolled over on my face, and in doing so, disclosed
+the bloody streak between my shoulders; she saw it, and at the same
+instant sprang on me. I felt her teeth as they met in my neck, while her
+terrible cry, the most appalling ears ever heard, rang through my brain.
+
+"Save him! Save him! She's killing him!" were now heard on every side;
+but none dared to fire for fear of wounding me, and the terrible rage
+of the animal deterred all from approaching her. The struggle was now
+a life-and-death one; and alternately falling and rolling, we fought--I
+cannot tell how, for the blood blinded me as it came from a wound in my
+forehead; and I only felt one firm purpose in my heart: "If I fall, she
+shall not survive me." Several of the sailors came near enough to strike
+her with their cutlasses; but these wounds only increased her rage, and
+I cried to them to desist.
+
+"Shoot her! put a bullet through her!" cried Halkett. "Let none dare
+to shoot her!" cried Sir Dudley, loudly. I just heard these words, as,
+after a fierce struggle, in which she had seized me by the shoulder, I
+fell against the bulwark. With a last effort I staggered to my knees,
+flung open the gangway, and then, with an exertion that to myself
+seemed my very last on earth, I seized her by the throat and hurled her
+backwards into the sea. On hands and knees I leaned forward to see her
+as the rapid Gulf-stream, hurrying onward to the ocean, bore her away;
+and then, as my sight grew fainter, I fell back upon the deck, and
+believed I was dying.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. MEANS AND MEDITATIONS
+
+It was the second evening after my lion adventure, and I was stretched
+in my hammock in a low, half-torpid state, not a limb nor a joint in all
+my body that had not its own peculiar pain; while a sharp wound in my
+neck, and another still deeper one in the fleshy part of my shoulder,
+had just begun that process called "union,"--one which, I am bound
+to say, however satisfactory in result, is often very painful in its
+progress. The slightest change of position gave me intolerable anguish,
+as I lay, with closed eyes and crossed hands, not a bad resemblance of
+those stone saints one sees upon old tombstones.
+
+My faculties were clear and acute, so that, having abundant leisure for
+the occupation, I had nothing better to do than take a brief retrospect
+of my late life. Such reviews are rarely satisfactory, or rather, one
+rarely thinks of making them when the "score of the past" is in
+our favor. Up to this moment it was clear I had gained little but
+experience; I had started light, and I had acquired nothing, save a
+somewhat worse opinion of the world and a greater degree of confidence
+in myself. I had but one way of balancing my account with Fortune, which
+was by asking myself, "Would I undo the past, if in my power? Would I
+wish once more to be back in my 'father's mud edifice,' now digging a
+drain, now drawing an indictment,--a kind of pastoral pettifogger, with
+one foot in a potato furrow, and the other in petty sessions?" I stoutly
+said, "No!" a thousand times "no!" to this question.
+
+I could not ask myself as to my preference for a university career,
+for my college life had concluded abruptly, in spite of me; but still,
+during my town experiences I saw enough to leave me no regrets at
+having quitted the muses. The life of a "skip," as the Trinity men have
+it,--_vice_ gyp., for the Greek word signifying a "vulture,"--is only
+removed by a thin sheet of silver paper from that of a cabin boy in a
+collier; copious pummelling and short prog being the first two articles
+of your warrant; while in some respects the marine has a natural
+advantage over him on shore. A skip is invariably expected to invent
+lies "at discretion" for his master's benefit, and is always thrashed
+when they are either discovered or turn out adverse. On this point his
+education is perfectly "Spartan;" but, unhappily too, he is expected to
+be a perfect mirror of truth on all other occasions. This is somewhat
+hard, inasmuch as it is only in a man's graduate course that he learns
+to defend a paradox, and support by good reasons what he knows to be
+false.
+
+Again a "skip" never receives clothes, but is flogged at least once
+a week for disorders in his dress, and for general untidiness of
+appearance; this, too, is hard, since he has as little intercourse with
+soap as he has with conic sections.
+
+Thirdly, a good skip invariably obtains credit for his master at
+"Foles's" chop-house; while, in his own proper capacity, he would not
+get trust for a cheese-paring.
+
+Fourthly, a skip is supposed to be born a valet, as some are born
+poets,--to have an instinctive aptitude for all the details of things
+he has never seen or heard of before; so that when he applies Warren's
+patent to French leather boots, polishes silver with a Bath brick,
+blows the fire with a quarto, and cuts candles with a razor, he finds
+it passing strange that he should be "had up" for punishment. To be fat
+without food, to be warm without fire, to be wakeful without sleep, to
+be clad without clothes, to be known as a vagabond, and to pass current
+for unblemished honesty, to be praised as a liar, and then thrashed for
+lying,--is too much to expect at fifteen years of age.
+
+Lastly, as to Betty's I had no regrets. The occupation of horse-boy,
+like the profession of physic, has no "avenir." The utmost the most
+aspiring can promise to himself is to hold more horses than his
+neighbors, as the Doctor's success is to order more "senna." There
+is nothing beyond these; no higher path opens to him who feels the
+necessity for an "upward course." It is a ladder with but one round to
+it! No, no; I was right to "sell out" there.
+
+My steeplechase might have led to something,--that is, I might have
+become a jockey; but then, again, one's light weight, like a "contralto"
+voice, is sure to vanish after a year or two; and then, from the heyday
+of popularity, you sink down into a bad groom or a fourth-rate tenor,
+just as if, after reaching a silk gown at the bar, a man had to begin
+life again as crier in the Exchequer! Besides, in all these various
+walks I should have had the worst of all "trammels," a patron. Now, if
+any resolve had thoroughly fixed itself in my mind, it was this: never
+to have a patron, never to be bound to any man who, because he had once
+set you on your legs, should regulate the pace you were to walk through
+a long life. To do this, one should be born without a particle of
+manhood's spirit,--absolutely without volition; otherwise you go through
+life a living lie, talking sentiments that are not yours, and wearing a
+livery in your heart as well as on your back!
+
+Why do we hear such tirades about the ingratitude of men, who, being
+once assisted by others,--their inferiors in everything save gold,--soar
+above the low routine of toadyism, and rise into personal independence?
+Let us remember that the contract was never a fair one, and that a whole
+life's degradation is a heavy sum to pay for a dinner with his Grace,
+or a cup of tea with her Highness. "My Lord," I am aware, thinks
+differently; and it is one of the very pleasant delusions of his
+high station to fancy that little folk are dependent upon him,--what
+consequence they obtain among their fellows by his recognition in
+public, or by his most careless nod in the street. But "my Lord" does
+not know that this is a paper currency that represents no capital,
+that it is not convertible at will, and is never a legal tender; and
+consequently, as a requital for actual _bona fide_ services, is about as
+honest a payment as a flash note.
+
+It was no breach of my principle that I accepted Sir Dudley's offer. Our
+acquaintance began by my rendering him a service; and I was as free
+to leave him that hour, and, I own, as ready to do so, if occasion
+permitted, as he could be to get rid of me; and it was not long before
+the occasion presented itself for exercising these views.
+
+As I lay thus, ruminating on my past fortunes, Halkett descended the
+steerage-ladder, followed by Felborg, the Dane; and, approaching my
+hammock, held a light to my face for a few seconds. "Still asleep?" said
+Halkett. "Poor boy! he has never awoke since I dressed his wound this
+morning. I 'm sure it's better; so let us leave him so."
+
+"Ay, ay," said the Dane, "let him sleep; bad tidings come soon enough,
+without one's being awoke to hear them. But do you think he 'll do it?"
+added he, with lower and more anxious tone.
+
+"He has said so; and I never knew him fail in his promise when it was a
+cruel one."
+
+"Have you no influence over him, Halkett? Could you not speak for the
+boy?"
+
+"I have done all I could,--more than perhaps it was safe to do. I told
+him I could n't answer for the men, if he were to shoot him on board;
+and he replied to me short, 'I 'll take the fellow ashore with me alone;
+neither you nor they have any right to question what you are not to
+witness.'"
+
+"Well, when I get back to Elsinore, it's to a prison and heavy irons I
+shall go for life, that's certain; but I 'd face it all rather than live
+the life we've done now for twenty months past."
+
+"Hush! speak low!" said the other. "I suppose others are weary of it as
+well as you. Many a man has to live a bad life just because he started
+badly."
+
+"I 'm sorry for the boy!" sighed the Dane; "he was a bold and fearless
+fellow."
+
+"I am sorry for him too. It was an evil day for him when he joined us.
+Well, well, what would he have become if he had lived a year or two on
+board!"
+
+"He has no father nor mother," said the Dane, "that's something. I lost
+mine, too, when I was nine years old; and it made me the reckless devil
+I became ever after. I was n't sixteen when the crew of the 'Tre-Kroner'
+mutinied, and I led the party that cut down the first lieutenant. It
+was a moonlight night, just as it might be now, in the middle watch, and
+Lieutenant Oeldenstrom was sitting aft, near the wheel, humming a tune.
+I walked aft, with my cutlass in one hand, and a pistol in the other;
+but just as I stepped up the quarter-deck my foot slipped, and the
+cutlass fell with a clank on the deck.
+
+"'What's that?' cried the lieutenant.
+
+"'Felborg, sir, mate of the watch,' said I, standing fast where I was.
+'It's shoaling fast ahead, sir.'
+
+"'D--n!' said he, 'what a coast!'
+
+"'Could n't you say a bit of something better than that?' said I,
+getting nearer to him slowly.
+
+"'What do you mean?' said he, jumping up angrily; but he was scarce on
+his legs when he was down again at his full length on the plank, with a
+bullet through his brain, never to move again!"
+
+"There, there, avast with that tale; you've told it to me every night
+that my heart was heavy this twelvemonth past. But I 've hit on a way to
+save the lad,--will you help me?"
+
+"Ay, if my help does n't bring bad luck on him; it always has on every
+one I befriended since--since--"
+
+"Never mind that. There 's no risk here, nor much room for luck, good or
+bad." He paused a second or two, then added,--
+
+"I 'm thinking we can't do better than shove him ashore on the island
+yonder."
+
+"On Anticosti!" said Felborg, with a shudder.
+
+"Ay, why not? There's always a store of biscuit and fresh water in the
+log-houses, and the cruisers touch there every six or seven weeks to
+take people off. He has but to hoist the flag to show he 's there."
+
+"There's no one there now," said the Dane.
+
+"No. I saw the flag-staff bare yesterday; but what does that matter? A
+few days or a few weeks alone are better than what's in store for him
+here."
+
+"I don't think so. No! Beym alia Deyvelm! I 'd stand the bullet at three
+paces, but I 'd not meet that negro chap alone."
+
+"Oh, he's dead and gone this many a year," said Halkett. "When the
+'Rodney' transport was wrecked there, two years last fall, they searched
+the island from end to end, and could n't find a trace of him. They were
+seven weeks there, and it's pretty clear if he were alive--"
+
+"Ay, just so,--if he were alive!"
+
+"Nonsense, man! You don't believe those yarns they get up to frighten
+the boys in the cook's galley?"
+
+"It's scarce mercy, to my reckoning," said Felborg, "to take the lad
+from a quick and short fate, and leave him yonder; but if you need my
+help, you shall have it."
+
+"That's enough," said Halkett; "go on deck, and look after the boat.
+None of our fellows will betray us; and in the morning we 'll tell Sir
+Dudley that he threw himself overboard in the night, in a fit of frenzy.
+He'll care little whether it's true or false."
+
+"I say, Con--Con, my lad," said Halkett, as soon as the other had
+mounted the ladder. "Wake up, my boy; I've something to tell you."
+
+"I know it," said I, wishing to spare time, which I thought might be
+precious; "I've been dreaming all about it."
+
+"Poor fellow, his mind is wandering," muttered Halkett to himself.
+"Come, my lad, try and put on your clothes,--here's your jacket;" and
+with that he lifted me from my hammock, and began to help me to dress.
+
+"I was dreaming, Halkett," said I, "that Sir Dudley sent me adrift in
+the punt, and fired at me with the swivel, but that you rowed out and
+saved me."
+
+"That's just it!" said Halkett, with an energy that showed how the
+supposed dream imposed upon him.
+
+"You put me ashore on Anticosti, Halkett," said I; "but wasn't that
+cruel!--the Black Boatswain is there."
+
+"Never fear the Black Boatswain, my lad, he 's dead years ago; and it
+strikes me you 'll steer a course in life where old wives' tales never
+laid down the soundings."
+
+"I can always be brave when I want it, Halkett," said I, letting out a
+bit of my peculiar philosophy; but I saw he didn't understand my speech,
+and I went on with my dressing in silence.
+
+Halkett meanwhile continued to give me advice about the island, and
+the log-houses, and the signal-ensign; in fact, about all that could
+possibly concern my safety and speedy escape, concluding with a warning
+to me, never to divulge that anything but a mere accident had been the
+occasion of my being cast away. "This for your own sake and for mine
+too, Con," said he; "for one day or other he,"--he pointed to the
+after-cabin,--"he'd know it, and then it would fare badly with some of
+us."
+
+"Why not come too, Halkett?" said I; "this life is as hateful to you as
+to myself."
+
+"Hush, boy; no more of that," said he, with a degree of emotion which I
+had never witnessed in him before. "Make yourself warm and snug, for you
+mustn't take any spare clothes, or you 'd be suspected by whoever takes
+you off the island; here's my brandy-flask and a tinder-box; that's a
+small bag of biscuit,--for you 'll take six or seven hours to reach the
+log-house,--and here is a pistol, with some powder and ball. Come along,
+now, or shall I carry you up the ladder?"
+
+"No, I'm able enough now," said I, making an effort to seem free from
+pain while I stepped up on deck.
+
+I was not prepared for the affectionate leave-taking which met me here;
+each of the crew shook my hand twice or thrice over, and there was not
+one did not press upon me some little gift in token of remembrance.
+
+At last the boat was lowered, and Halkett and three others, descending
+noiselessly, motioned to me to follow. I stepped boldly over the side,
+and, waving a last good-bye to those above, sat down in the stern to
+steer, as I was directed.
+
+It was a calm night, with nothing of a sea, save that rolling heave ever
+present in the Gulf-stream; and now the men stretched to their oars, and
+we darted swiftly on, not a word breaking the deep stillness.
+
+Although the island lay within six miles, we could see nothing of it
+against the sky, for the highest point is little more than twelve feet
+above the water-level.
+
+I have said that nothing was spoken as we rowed along over the dark and
+swelling water; but this silence did not impress me till I saw ahead of
+us the long low outline of the dreary island shutting out the horizon;
+then a sensation of sickening despair came over me. Was I to linger
+out a few short hours of life on that melancholy spot, and die at last
+exhausted and broken-hearted? "Was this to be the end of the brilliant
+dream I had so often revelled in?" "Ah, Con!" said I, "to play the game
+of life, a man must have capital to stand its losses,--its runs of evil
+fortune; but you are ruined with one bad deal!"
+
+"Run her in here, in this creek!" cried Halkett to the men; and the boat
+glided into a little bay of still water under the lee of the land, and
+then, after about twenty minutes' stout rowing, her keel grated on the
+rugged, shingly shore of Anticosti.
+
+"We cannot land you dry-shod, Con," said Halkett; "it shoals for some
+distance here."
+
+"No matter," said I, trying to affect an easy, jocular air, my choking
+throat and swelling heart made far from easy; "for me to think of wet
+feet would be like the felon at the drop blowing the froth off the
+porter because it was unwholesome!"
+
+"I 've better hopes of you than that comes to, lad!" said he; "but
+good-bye! good-bye!" He shook my hand with a grasp like a vice, and sat
+down with his back towards me; the others took a kind farewell of me;
+and then, shouldering my little bag of biscuit, I pressed my cap down
+over my eyes, and stepped into the surf. It was scarcely more than over
+mid-leg, but the clay-like, spongy bottom made it tiresome walking.
+I had only gone a few hundred yards, when a loud cheer struck me; I
+turned: it was the boat's crew, giving me a parting salute. I tried to
+answer it, but my voice failed me; the next moment they had turned the
+point, and I saw them no more!
+
+I now plodded wearily on, and in about half an hour reached the land;
+and whether from weariness, or some strange instinct of security on
+touching shore, I know not, but I threw myself heavily down upon the
+shingly stones, and slept soundly,--ay, and dreamed too! dreamed of fair
+lands far away, such as I have often read of in books of travels, where
+bright flowers and delicious fruits were growing, and where birds and
+insects of gaudiest colors floated past with a sweet murmuring song that
+made the air tremble.
+
+Who has not read "Robinson Crusoe;" and who has not imagined himself
+combating with some of the difficulties of his fortune, and pictured to
+his mind what his conduct might have been under this or that emergency?
+
+No speculations are pleasanter, when indulged at our own fireside, in an
+easy-chair, after having solaced our "material" nature by a good dinner,
+and satisfied the "moral" man by the "City Article," which assures us
+that the Three per Cents are rising, and that Consols for the Account
+are in a very prosperous state. Then, indeed, if our thoughts by any
+accident stray to the shipwrecked sailor, they are blended with
+a wholesome philanthropy, born of good digestion and fair worldly
+prospects; we assure ourselves that we should have made precisely the
+same exertions that he did, and comported ourselves in all the varied
+walks of carpenter, tailor, hosier, sail-maker, and boat-builder exactly
+like him. The chances are, too, that if accidentally out of temper with
+our neighbors, we cordially acknowledge that the retirement was not
+the worst feature in his history; and if provoked by John Thomas, the
+footman, we are ready to swear that there was more gratitude in Friday's
+little black finger than in the whole body corporate of flunkeys, from
+Richmond to Blackwall.
+
+While these very laudable sentiments are easy enough in the
+circumstances I have mentioned, they are marvellously difficult to
+practise at the touch of stern reality. At least I found them so, as
+I set out to seek the "Refuge" on Anticosti. It was just daybreak as,
+somewhat stiffened with a sleep on the cold beach, and sore from my
+recent bruises, I began my march. "Nor'-west and by west" was Halkett's
+vague direction to me; but as I had no compass, I was left to the
+guidance of the rising sun for the cardinal points. Not a path nor track
+of any kind was to be seen; indeed, the surface could scarcely have
+borne traces of footsteps, for it was one uniform mass of slaty shingle,
+with here and there the backbone of a fish, and scattered fragments
+of seaweed, washed up by the storms, on this low bleak shore. I
+cannot fancy desolation more perfect than this dreary spot; slightly
+undulating, but never sufficient to lose sight of the sea; not a
+particle of shelter to be found; not a rock, nor even a stone large
+enough to sit upon when weary. Of vegetation, no trace could be met
+with; even a patch of moss or a lichen would have been a blessing to
+see; but there were neither. At last, as I journeyed on, I wandered
+beyond the sound of the sea as it broke upon the low strand, and then
+the silence became actually appalling. But a few moments back, and the
+loud booming of the breakers stunned the ear; and now, as I stopped
+to listen, I could hear my own heart as in full, thick beat it smote
+against my ribs. I could not dismiss the impression that such a
+stillness, thus terrible, would prevail on the day of judgment, when,
+after the graves had given up their millions of dead, and the agonizing
+cry for mercy had died away, then, as in a moment of dread suspense, the
+air would be motionless, not a leaf to stir, not a wing to cleave it.
+Such possession of me did this notion take that I fell upon my knees and
+sobbed aloud, while, with trembling and uplifted hands, I prayed that I
+too might be pardoned.
+
+So powerful is the influence of a devotional feeling, no matter how
+associated with error, how alloyed by the dross of superstition, that I,
+who but an instant back could scarcely drag my wearied limbs along for
+very despair, became of a sudden trustful and courageous. Life seemed no
+longer the worthless thing it did a few minutes before; on the contrary,
+I was ready to dare anything to preserve it; and so, with renewed vigor
+I again set forward.
+
+At each little swell of the ground, I gazed eagerly about me, hoping to
+see the log-hut, but in vain; nothing but the same wearisome monotony
+met my view. The sun was now high, and I could easily see that I was
+following out the direction Halkett gave me, and which I continued to
+repeat over and over to myself as I went along. This and watching my
+shadow--the only one that touched the earth--were my occupations. It may
+seem absurd, even to downright folly; but when from any change in the
+direction of my course the shadow did not fall in front of me, where I
+could mark it, my spirits fell, and my heavy heart grew heavier.
+
+When, however, it did precede me, I was never wearied watching how
+it dived down the little slopes, and rose again on the opposite bank,
+bending with each swell of the ground. Even this was companionship,--its
+very motion smacked of life.
+
+At length I came upon a little pool of rain-water, and, although
+far from clear, it reflected the bright blue sky and white clouds so
+temptingly that I sat down beside it to make my breakfast. As I sat
+thus, Hope was again with me, and I fancied how--in some long distant
+time, when favored by fortune, and possessed of every worldly gift, with
+rank, and riches, and honor--I should remember the hour when, a poor,
+friendless outcast, I ate my lonely meal on Anticosti. I fancied even,
+how friends would listen almost incredulously to the tale, and with what
+traits of pity or of praise they would follow me in my story.
+
+I felt I was not doomed to die in that dreary land, that my own courage
+would sustain me; and, thus armed, I again set out.
+
+Although I walked from daybreak to late evening, it was only a short
+time before darkness closed in that I saw a bulky mass straight before
+me, which I knew must be the log-house. I could scarcely drag my legs
+along a few moments before; but now I broke into a run, and with many
+a stumble, and more than one fall,--for I never turned my eyes from the
+hut,--I at last reached a little cleared spot of ground, in the midst of
+which stood the "Refuge-house."
+
+What a moment of joy was that as, unable to move farther, I sat down
+upon a little bench in front of the hut! All sense of my loneliness, all
+memory of my desolation, was lost in an instant. There was my home; how
+strange a word for that sad-looking hut of pine-logs, in a lone island,
+uninhabited! No matter, it would be my shelter and my refuge till better
+days came round; and with that stout resolve I entered the great roomy
+apartment, which in the settling gloom of night seemed immense.
+
+Striking a light, I proceeded to take a survey of my territory, which I
+rejoiced to see contained a great metal stove and an abundant supply
+of bed-clothing,--precautions required by the frequency of ships being
+ice-bound in these latitudes. There were several casks of biscuits,
+some flour, a large chest of maize, besides three large tanks of water,
+supplied by the rain. A few bags of salt and some scattered objects
+of clothing completed the catalogue, which, if not very luxurious,
+contained nearly everything of absolute necessity.
+
+I lighted a good fire in the stove, less because I felt cold, for it
+was still autumn, than for the companionship of the bright blaze and the
+crackling wood. This done, I proceeded to make myself a bed on one of
+the platforms, arranged like bed-places round the walls, and of which
+I saw the upper ones seemed to have a preference in the opinion of my
+predecessors, since, in these, the greater part of the bed-clothing
+was to be found,--a choice I could easily detect the reason of, in
+the troops of rats which walked to and fro, with a most contemptuous
+indifference to my presence; some of them standing near me while I made
+my bed, and looking, as doubtless they felt, considerably surprised
+at the nature of my operations. Promising myself to open a spirited
+campaign against them on the morrow, I trimmed and lighted a large lamp,
+which from its position had defied their attempt on the oil it still
+contained; and then, a biscuit in hand, betook myself to bed, watching
+with an interest not, I own, altogether pleasant, the gambols of these
+primitive natives of Anticosti.
+
+From my earliest years I had an antipathy to rats,--so great that it
+mastered all the instincts of my courage. I feared them with a fear I
+should not have felt in presence of a wild beast, and I was confident
+that had I been attacked vigorously by even a single rat, the natural
+disgust would have rendered me unable to cope with him. When very young,
+I remembered hearing the story of an officer who, desirous of visiting
+the vaults under St. Patrick's Church, in Dublin, descended into them
+under the escort of the sexton. By some chance they separated from
+each other, and the sexton, after in vain seeking and calling for his
+companion for several hours, concluded that he had already returned to
+the upper air; and so he returned also, locking and barring the heavy
+door, as was his wont. The following day the officer's friends, alarmed
+at his absence, proceeded to make search for him through the city, and
+at last, learning that he had visited the cathedral, went thither,
+and even examined the vaults, when what was their horror to discover
+a portion of the brass ornament of his shako and a broken sword in the
+midst of several hundreds of rats, dead and dying,--the terrible remains
+of a combat that must have lasted for hours. This story, for the truth
+of which some persons yet living will vouch, I heard when a mere child;
+and perhaps to its influence may I date a species of terror that has
+always been too much for either my reason or my courage.
+
+If I slept, then, it was more owing to my utter weariness and exhaustion
+than to that languid frame of mind; and although too tired to dream, my
+first waking thought was how to commence hostilities against the rats.
+As to any personal hand-to-hand action, I need scarcely say I declined
+engaging in such; and, my supply of gunpowder being scanty, the method
+I hit upon was to make a species of grenade, by inserting a quantity
+of powder with a sufficiency of broken glass into a bottle, leaving an
+aperture through the cork for a fuse; then, having smeared the outside
+of the bottle plentifully with oil, of which I discovered a supply in
+bladders suspended from the ceiling, I retired to my berth, with the
+other extremity of the fuse in my hand, ready to ignite when the moment
+came.
+
+I had not long to wait; my enemies, bold from long impunity, came
+fearlessly forward, and surrounded the bottle in myriads; it became a
+scene like an election row, to witness their tumbling and rolling over
+each other. Nor could I bring myself to cut short the festivity, till
+I began to entertain fears for the safety of the bottle, which already
+seemed to be loosened from its bed of clay. Then at last I applied
+a match to my cord, and almost before I could cover my head with the
+blanket, the flask exploded, with a crash and a cry that showed me its
+success. The battle-field was truly a terrible sight, for the wounded
+were far more numerous than the dead, and I, shame to say, had neither
+courage nor humanity to finish their sufferings, but lay still, while
+their companions dragged them away in various stages of suffering.
+
+I at first supposed that this was an exploit that could only succeed but
+once, and that the well-known sagacity of the creatures would have
+made them avoid so costly a temptation. Nothing of the kind; they were
+perfect Scythians in their love of oil; and as often as I repeated my
+experiment, they were ready to try their fortunes. Or perhaps they had
+some of the gambler's element in their nature, and each felt that he
+might win where others lost.
+
+I had made Halkett a promise that for a couple of days, at least, I
+would not hoist the signal-flag, lest any accident should induce Sir
+Dudley to suspect my place of refuge, so that I was completely reduced
+to my campaign against the rats for occupation and amusement. So far
+as I could discover, the little island, traverse it how I would, never
+varied, the same rise and swell of surface, clad with loose stone, lay
+on every side; and so depressing had this mournful uniformity become to
+me that I rarely ventured out of the hut, or, when I did, it was to sit
+upon the little bench outside the door, from which a sea view extended
+over the wide waters of the Gulf.
+
+To sit here and try to decipher the names cut into the wood was my
+constant occupation. What histories, too, did I weave of those who
+carved these letters; and how did they fix themselves in my mind,
+each name suggesting an identity, till I felt as if I had known them
+intimately. Some seemed the precious work of weeks; and it was easy
+to see that after the letters were cut, the sculptor had gone on
+embellishing and ornamenting his work for very lack of labor. Others,
+again, were mere initials, and one was a half-finished name, leaving me
+to the perpetual doubt whether he had been rescued from his captivity,
+or died ere it was completed.
+
+Between my hours spent here and the little duties of my household, with
+usually three or four explosions against my rats, the day went over,--I
+will not say rapidly, but pass it did; and each night brought me nearer
+to the time when I should hoist my signal, and hope--ay, that was the
+great supporter through all--hope for rescue.
+
+It was now the third night of my being on the island, and I sat at my
+fire trying to invent some new mode for the destruction of my enemies,
+for my last charge of powder had been expended. I had nothing remaining,
+save the loading in my pistol. It was true that I had succeeded to a
+great extent; the creatures no longer appeared with their former air of
+assurance, nor in large bodies. Their army was evidently disorganized;
+they no longer took the field in battalions, but in scattered guerilla
+parties, without discipline or courage. Even had my ammunition lasted,
+it is more than doubtful that my tactics would have continued to have
+the same success; they had begun to dread the bottle, like a reformed
+drunkard. Often have I seen them approach within a few feet of it,
+and wait patiently till some younger and more adventurous spirit would
+venture nearer, and then, at the slightest stir,--the least rustling of
+my bed-clothes,--away they went in full career. It was evident that the
+secret, like most great mysteries of the same kind, had had its day.
+This was consolatory, too, as I had no longer the means of continuing my
+siege operations; while the caution and reserve of the enemy suggested
+a system of defence of the simplest, but most effectual kind, which was,
+to place a certain number of bottles at different parts of the hut, the
+very sight of which inspired terror; and if followed by any noise, was
+certain to secure me, for some time at least, from all molestation.
+
+Shall I tell the reader how this stratagem first occurred to me? It was
+simply thus: In one of the early but unrecorded years of my history, I
+used to act as driver to the Moate and Kilbeggan caravan,--not, indeed,
+as the recognized coachee of that very rickety and most precarious
+conveyance, but as a kind of "deputy assistant" to the paid official,
+who, having a wife at Kilbeggan, usually found some excuse for stopping
+at Clara, and sending me forward with the passengers,--a proceeding, I
+am bound to own, not over consistent with humanity to "man or beast."
+Many were the misadventures of that luckless conveniency, and the
+public were loud in their denunciations of it; but as nobody knew the
+proprietors, nor did the most searching scrutiny detect the existence of
+a "way-bill," the complaints were uttered to the wind, and I was at
+full liberty "to do my stage" in three hours, or one half the time, as I
+fancied.
+
+The passengers at length learned this valuable fact, and found that
+greasing my palm was a sure method of oiling the wheels. All complaints
+gradually subsided; in fact, the dumb animals were the only ones who had
+any right to make them. I drove them at a very brisk pace,--a thriving
+trade; the caravan became popular, and my fame rose as the horses'
+condition declined. At last the secret was discovered; and instead of my
+imposing whip of four yards and a half of whipcord, they reduced me to
+a stunted bit of stick, with a little drooping lash that would n't reach
+the tail of my one leader. My receipts fell off from that hour; in fact,
+instead of praises and sixpences, I now got nothing but curses and hard
+names; and at one hill, near "Horse-leap," which I used in my prosperous
+days to "go at" in a slashing canter, amid a shower of encomiums, I was
+now obliged to stagger slowly up, with four-and-twenty small farmers,
+and maybe a priest, in full cry at my sulkiness, laziness, incivility,
+and other good gifts; and all this, ay, and more, for lack of a bit of
+whipcord.
+
+I have been told that very great people will stoop to low alliances
+when hard pressed; even cabinet ministers, I believe, have now and
+then acknowledged very dubious allies. Let not Con Cregan, then, be
+reproached if he called in the help of a little bare-footed boy who
+used to beg on the hill of Horse-leap, and who, at the sound of the
+approaching caravan, sallied forth with a long branch of an ash-tree,
+and belabored the team into some faint resemblance to a canter. Through
+this auxiliary I recovered in part my long-lost popularity, and was
+likely to be again reinstated in public favor, when my assistant caught
+the measles, and I was once more reduced to my own efforts.
+
+In this emergency I had nothing for it but a stratagem; and so, as the
+conveyance arrived at the foot of the hill, and the horses, dropping
+their heads, were gradually subsiding into the little shuffling amble
+that precedes a slow walk, I used to scream out at the top of my
+voice all my accustomed exhortations to the boy. "Ah, hit him again,
+Tommy,--into him, boy,--under the traces, my lad!--give him enough
+of it!--welt him well. Ha! there!" exclamations that, from old
+associations, always stimulated the wretched beasts into a canter; and
+under the impression of this salutary terror, we used to reach the top
+almost as speedily as in the old days of the penal code.
+
+The same device now aided me against the rats of Anticosti; and if
+any one will say to what end this narrative of an encounter so
+insignificant, my answer is, that whether in the St. Lawrence or in
+St. Stephen's, rats are far more formidable than their size or
+strength would seem to imply; and whether they nibble your rags or your
+reputation, their success is invariably the same.
+
+Four days had now elapsed, and I concluded that the yacht must ere this
+have been miles on her voyage up the river. The next morning, then, I
+should venture to hoist the signal, and thus apprise the passing ships
+that one deserted and forlorn creature, at least, still lingered on the
+miserable island.
+
+I sat at my fire till a late hour. I was lower in spirits than usual. I
+had watched the Gulf from sunrise to sunset, and without seeing one sail
+upon its surface. A light breeze was blowing from the northward, and on
+this I supposed many of the outward vessels would be borne along; but
+not one appeared. From time to time a fleeting cloud, resting for a
+moment on the horizon, would assume the semblance of a ship; but at
+length I grew accustomed to these deceptions, and suffered little or no
+disappointment when a second glance at the spot failed to detect them.
+
+Once or twice the thought crossed my mind that I might never leave the
+island, that winter might close in, and the Gulf be frozen before I
+could make my escape; and I actually shuddered at the very notion of a
+fate so terrible. I cowered nearer to the fire as the flame subsided,
+and was sitting with my hands outstretched over the blaze, when the
+sudden crash of one of the bottles behind startled me. Were the rats
+already regaining courage in anticipation of the time when I could no
+longer resist them? With this idea, I turned my head round. The flame
+threw a long ray of light upon the floor as I moved, and in the midst
+of this I beheld, at a distance of about three yards off, a large black
+head, with two immense and bloodshot eyes glaring fixedly at me. It
+seemed to rise out of the earth, above which it rose scarcely more than
+a foot in height.
+
+Paralyzed by terror, I could not stir, I could scarcely breathe, as with
+a slow and nodding motion the large black face came nearer; and now I
+could see that it was a man--a negro,--who on hands and knees was slowly
+creeping towards me. Overwhelmed by fear as I was, I noted the features
+as marked by age and worn by want; they resembled those of a wild
+beast rather than of a human creature. More from the force of a mere
+mechanical impulse than with any notion of defence, for which my terror
+totally incapacitated me, I had drawn my pistol from my bosom, and held
+it pointed towards him. "No fire!--no fire!" cried the creature, in a
+low, faint voice; and at the same time, while resting on one hand, he
+held up with the other a long bright knife in an attitude of menace.
+
+"No nearer, then!" screamed I, as I fell back beside the stove, and
+still kept my eyes fixed upon him whom now I knew to be the Black
+Boatswain; and thus we remained, each watching the other, while the fire
+flickered and threw its fitful glare over the gloomy space around us. As
+we were thus, I saw, or I thought I saw, the negro stealthily drawing up
+his legs, as if for a spring, and in my terror I believe I should have
+pulled the trigger, when suddenly the knife dropped from his hand, and
+pointing with his finger to his dry, cracked lips, he said, "A boire,
+"--water.
+
+The look of earnest, almost passionate entreaty of the poor creature's
+face, the expression of want and misery, struggling with a faint hope,
+as he uttered these words, routed all fears for myself; and filling a
+cup from the tank with water, I emptied the last remaining drops of my
+brandy-flask into it, and held it to his mouth.
+
+
+
+He swallowed it greedily; and then, clasping my wrist with his gaunt
+and bony fingers, held me fast for a few seconds while he recovered his
+breath; at last, with an effort that seemed almost convulsive, he said
+some words in Spanish which I could not understand. I shook my head to
+show him my ignorance of the language, and then, fixing his eye full
+upon me, he said, "Alone, here? boy alone?"
+
+Understanding that this referred to myself, I answered at once that I
+was alone, and had been deserted by my companions.
+
+"Bad men, white men!" cried he, gnashing his teeth savagely; while again
+he pointed to his lips, and muttered, "Water!" I endeavored to free
+myself from his grasp to fill the cup once more; but he held me firmly,
+and showed by a sign that he wished me to assist him to reach the tank.
+I accordingly stooped down to help him, and now perceived that he could
+do little more than drag his legs forward and support himself on the
+knees; being either wholly or in part paralyzed from his hips downwards.
+"Ah, foco!" cried he, twice or thrice, and then changed to the word
+"Feu!" "Le feu!" on which his gaze was fixed with a horrid earnestness.
+
+It was not without labor and much exertion that I succeeded in
+dragging him near the embers of the fire; but having done so, I quickly
+replenished the dying flame, and, fanning it with my hat, soon succeeded
+in making a cheerful blaze once more. "Buono! goot! goot!" said he,
+several times, as he held his shrivelled and wasted fingers almost into
+the fire.
+
+"Are you hungry?" said I, bending down to make myself heard.
+
+He nodded twice.
+
+"Can you eat biscuit? I have nothing else," said I; for I half feared
+that the hard, dry food would be impracticable for his almost toothless
+jaws.
+
+He said something about "Guisado," once or twice; and at last made a
+sign that I understood to mean that the biscuit might be softened in
+water for him. And with that I placed a pot of water on the fire, and
+soon saw by the expression of his eye that I had divined his meaning.
+
+As I continued to blow the fire, and occasionally examined the water to
+see if it boiled, I could mark that the negro's eyes never once quitted
+me, but, with a restless activity, followed me wherever I went, or
+whatever I did; and although from his age, and the dreadful infirmity
+he labored under, I felt I should prove his equal in any struggle, I own
+that I cast many a sidelong look towards him, lest he should take me by
+surprise. That he was the notorious Black Boatswain of whom I had heard
+so much, I had no doubt whatever; and I felt not a little vain of my own
+courage and presence of mind as I saw myself so possessed and collected
+in such company.
+
+"Give! give!" cried he, impatiently, as I examined the mess of steeping
+biscuit, and for which he seemed ravenously eager; and at length I
+removed it from the fire, and placed it before him. Such voracity as his
+I never witnessed, save in the case of Sir Dudley's lions; he crammed
+the food with both hands into his mouth, and devoured it with all the
+savage earnestness of a wild beast. Twice was I obliged to replenish the
+mess; and each time did it vanish with the same despatch.
+
+He now lay back on one arm, and, half closing his eyes, appeared as if
+he was going asleep; but at the least stir or movement on my part, I saw
+that his wild, red-streaked eyes followed me at once.
+
+Halkett had given me a little bag of tobacco at parting, saying that
+although I was no smoker, I should soon learn to become one in my
+solitude. This I now produced, and offered him a handful.
+
+The dark features were immediately lighted up with an almost frantic
+expression of pleasure, as he clutched the precious weed; and tearing
+off a fragment of the paper, he rolled it into the shape of a cigarette.
+
+"No smoke?" asked he, as I sat watching his preparations.
+
+I shook my head. "Ah!" cried he, laying down the tobacco before him.
+"Tehoka, here," said he, pointing to it.
+
+"I don't understand," said I; "what is Tehoka?"
+
+"Bad! bad!" said he, shaking both hands; "weed make negro so------,
+so------," and he opened his mouth wide, and dropped his arms heavily
+backwards, to represent sickness, or perhaps death.
+
+"No, no," said I; "this is good, a friend gave it to me."
+
+"Smoke," said he, pushing it over towards me; and I saw now that my
+abstaining had excited his suspicions.
+
+"If you like, I will smoke," said I, setting to work to manufacture a
+cigar like his own.
+
+He sat eying me all the while; and when I proceeded to fill it with
+tobacco, he leaned over to see that I did not attempt any sleight of
+hand to deceive him.
+
+"Will that do?" said I, showing him the little paper tube.
+
+"Smoke," said he, gravely.
+
+It was only after watching me for several minutes that he took courage
+to venture himself; and even then he scrutinized the tobacco as keenly
+as though it demanded all his acuteness to prevent stratagem. At length
+he did begin; and certainly never did anything seem to effect a more
+powerful and more immediate influence. The fiery, restless eyes grew
+heavy and dull; the wide-distended nostrils ceased to dilate with their
+former convulsive motion. His cheek, seamed with privation and passion,
+lay flaccid and at rest, and a look of lethargic ease stole over all the
+features one by one, till at last the head fell forward on his
+chest, his arm slipped softly from beneath him, and he rolled heavily
+back,--sunk in the deepest sleep.
+
+I soon abandoned my tobacco now, which had already begun to produce
+a feeling of giddiness and confusion very unfavorable to cool
+determination,--sensations which did not subside so readily as I could
+have wished; for as I sat gazing on my swarthy companion, fancies the
+wildest and most absurd associated themselves with the strange reality.
+The terrible tales I once listened to about the "Black Boatswain"
+came to mingle with the present. The only remnant of right reason left
+prompted me to keep up my fire; a certain terror of being alone and in
+the dark with the negro predominating over every other thought.
+
+By the bright blaze, which soon arose, I could now mark the enormous
+figure, which, in all the abandonment of heavy slumber, lay outstretched
+before me. Although it was evident he was very old, the gigantic limbs
+showed what immense strength he must have possessed; while in the
+several white cicatrices that marked his flesh, I could reckon a great
+number of wounds, some of them of fearful extent. The only covering he
+wore was a piece of sailcloth wrapped round his body; over this he had
+a blanket, through a round hole in which his head issued, like as in
+a Mexican poncho, leaving his sinewy limbs perfectly naked. A bit of
+ragged, worn bunting--part, as it seemed, of an old union-jack--was
+bound round his head, and, in its showy colors, served to enhance the
+stern expression of his harsh features.
+
+As my senses became clearer, I began to imagine how it happened that
+he came to the hut, since in all the narratives I had heard of him, the
+greatest doubt existed that he was still living, so effectually did he
+manage his concealment. At last, and by dint of much thought, I hit upon
+what I suspected to be the real solution of the difficulty, which was,
+that he was accustomed to venture hither whenever the signal-flag was
+not hoisted; and as I had not done so, that he was under the belief that
+he was the only living man on the island.
+
+That he must have contrived his hiding-place with great success was
+clear enough; for whether the allegations against him were true or
+false, they were so universally believed by sailors that if he had been
+discovered they would unquestionably have carried him off to Quebec.
+It was now in _my_ power "to do the state this service;" and I began to
+canvass with myself all the reasons for and against it. If, on the one
+hand, it reminded me of the old legends I used to read about striplings
+that led captive huge giants or fierce dragons, on the other, I felt
+it would be a species of treachery to one who had eaten bread from my
+hands. Besides, to what end--even supposing him guilty to any extent--to
+what end bring him now to justice, when a few days, or hours, perhaps,
+would close a life whose suffering was manifest enough? And, lastly,
+was I so certain of escape myself that I already plotted carrying away
+a prisoner with me? The last reflection saved me the trouble of thinking
+much more on the others; and so I fell a pondering over myself and my
+destitution.
+
+Not long was I permitted to indulge in such reveries; for the negro
+now began to dream, and talk aloud with a rapidity of utterance and
+vehemence very different from the monosyllabic efforts he had favored me
+with. As the language was Spanish, I could catch nothing of his meaning;
+but I could see that some fearful reminiscence was agitating his mind,
+by the working of his fingers and the violent contortions of his face.
+
+In the struggle of his paroxysm--for it was really little less--he
+tore open the coarse rag of canvas that he wore, and I could perceive
+something fastened round his neck by a piece of spun-yarn. At first I
+thought it one of those charms that seamen are so fond of carrying
+about them,--amulets against Heaven knows what kind of dangers: but, on
+stooping down, I perceived it was an old leather pocket-book which once
+had been red, but by time and dirt was almost black.
+
+More than once he clutched this in his hand, with a wild energy, as if
+it was his heart's treasure; and then the great drops of sweat would
+start out upon his forehead, and his parted lips would quiver with
+agony. In one of these struggles he tore the book from the cord,
+and, opening it, seemed to seek for something among its contents.
+The rapidity of the movement, and the seeming collectedness of every
+gesture, made me believe that he was awake; but I soon saw that his
+great and staring eyeballs were not turned to the spot, but were fixed
+on vacancy.
+
+His motions were now more and more hurried; at one time his fingers
+would turn over the papers in the pocket-book, at another he would grope
+with his hand along the ground, and pat the earth down with his palm, as
+if, having buried something in the earth, he would conceal every trace
+of it from discovery; and at these moments the Spanish word _oro_, gold,
+would escape him in a half-sigh; and this and the word "Guajaqualla"
+were the only ones I could catch; but my mind retained both for many a
+day after.
+
+At last he crushed the papers hurriedly together and closed the
+pocket-book; but in doing so, a single slip of paper fell to the ground.
+I leaned over, and caught it; and by the light of the fire I read the
+following lines, which were in print, and apparently cut from the column
+of a newspaper:--
+
+
+                  ONE  THOUSAND DOLLARS  REWARD.
+
+     Any one will be entitled to the above reward who may detect
+     or give such information as may lead to the detection of
+     Menelaus Crick, a negro slave, aged forty-eight; he stands
+     six feet two high; broad chest and shoulders, the right
+     higher than the left; has marks of the lash on back, and two
+     cutlass scars on the face; the great toe of the left foot
+     is wanting, and he walks occasionally with difficulty, from
+     a gunshot wound in the spine.
+
+     As he is a fellow of resolute character and great strength,
+     all persons are hereby warned not to attempt his capture,
+     save in sufficient numbers. He was last seen at San Luis,
+     and is supposed to have gone in the direction of
+     Guajaqualla, where it is said he worked once as a gold-
+     washer.
+
+     Address: The Office of the "Picayune "--Letter--T. G--
+     B--.   New Orleans.
+
+There were a few words in Spanish scrawled on the back.
+
+"Here is the man!" said I, looking down on the sleeping figure; "who
+would have thought a thousand dollars could be made of him?" Not,
+indeed, that I speculated on such an unholy gain. No, the very offer
+enlisted my sympathies in favor of the poor wretch; besides, how many
+years ago must that advertisement have appeared? He was forty-eight at
+that time, and now his age might be nigh eighty. My curiosity became
+intense to see the contents of the pocket-book, from which I could fancy
+abundant materials to eke out the negro's history. I am afraid that
+nothing but the terror of discovery prevented my stealing it. I even
+planned how it might be done without awaking him; but the long bright
+knife which glistened in the strap of his blanket admonished me to
+prudence, and I abstained.
+
+My fire waxed fainter as the dawn drew nigh, and as I was afraid of
+sleep coming over me, I stepped noiselessly from the hut, and gained the
+open air. My first occupation was to hoist the signal; and as it rose
+into the air, I watched its massive folds unfurling, with a throb of
+hope that gave me new courage. The standard was very lofty, and stood
+upon a mound of earth; and as the flag itself was large, I had every
+reason to think it could not escape notice. Scarcely, indeed, had I made
+fast the halyard than I beheld on the very verge of the horizon what
+seemed to be a vessel. The moment of sunrise, like that of sunset, is
+peculiarly favorable to distinct vision; and as the pink line of dawn
+sheeted over the sea, the dark object stood out clear and sharp; but the
+next moment the glare of brighter day covered sky and water together,
+and I could no longer see the ship.
+
+In my anxiety to try and catch sight of it from another spot, I hastened
+down to the shore; but already a rosy tint was spread over the wide sea,
+and nothing was discernible except the heaving waves and the streaked
+sky above them.
+
+I sat upon a rock straining my eyes, but to no purpose; and at last the
+cold raw air pierced through me, and I remembered that I had left my
+jacket in the hut. But for this, indeed, I would not have returned to
+it,--for, without absolute fear of the negro, his repulsive features and
+scowling look made his companionship far from pleasurable. His suspicion
+of me, too, might have led him to some act of violence; and therefore
+I determined, if I were even to seek shelter in the Refuge-house at the
+other end of the island, I would not go back to this one.
+
+It was some time before I could summon courage to venture back again;
+and even when I had reached the door, it was not without a struggle with
+myself that I dared to enter. The daylight was now streaming in, across
+the long and dreary chamber, and, encouraged by this, I stepped across
+the threshold. My first glance was towards the stove, where I had left
+him lying asleep. The fire had burned out, and the negro was gone! With
+cautious steps, and many a prying glance around, I ventured forward, my
+heart thumping with a fear I cannot explain,--since his very presence
+had not caused such terror; but nowhere was he to be found,--not a trace
+of him remained. Indeed, were it not for the scrap of printed paper,
+which I had carefully preserved, I should have believed the whole events
+of the night to be the mere fancies of a dream.
+
+Twice was I obliged to take it from my pocket and read it over, to
+assure myself that I was not pursuing some hallucination of sleep;
+and if I felt convinced that the events were real, and had actually
+happened, I will frankly own that the reality inspired me with a sense
+of fear which no memory of a mere vision could have inspired.
+
+Daylight is a bold companion, however, and where night would make the
+heart beat fast and the cheek pale, the sun will give a strong pulse and
+a ruddy face. This I could not help feeling, as I acknowledged to myself
+that had it been yet dark, I had rather have perished with cold than
+sought for my jacket within the hut.
+
+At last, grown bolder, I had even courage to seek for the negro on every
+side. I examined the berths along the walls; I searched the recesses
+beside the biscuit-casks; I removed planks and turned over sails; but
+without success. The difficulty with which he moved made this seem
+doubly strange, and satisfied me that his place of concealment could
+not be far off,--nay, possibly, at that very moment he might be actually
+watching me, and waiting for a favorable instant to pounce upon me.
+This dread increased as my search continued to be fruitless; so that
+I abandoned the pursuit, assured that I had done everything that could
+have been asked either of my courage or humanity; nor was I sorry to
+assure myself that I had done enough.
+
+My interest in the subject was soon superseded by one nearer to my
+heart; for as I left the hut I beheld, about four miles off, a large
+three-masted vessel bearing up the Gulf, with all her canvas spread.
+Forgetting the distance, and everything save my longing to be free, I
+ascended a little eminence, and shouted with all my might, waving my
+handkerchief back and forward above my head. I cannot describe the
+transport of delight I felt, at perceiving that a flag was hoisted to
+the main peak, and soon after lowered,--a recognition of the signal
+which floated above me. I even cried aloud with joy; and then, in the
+eagerness of my ecstasy, I set off along the shore, seeking out the best
+place for a boat to run in.
+
+Never did a ship appear so glorious an object to my eyes; her spars
+seemed more taper, her sails more snowy, her bearing prouder, than
+ever a vessel owned before; and when at length I could distinguish the
+figures of men in the rigging, my heart actually leaped to my mouth with
+delight.
+
+At last she backed her topsail, and now I saw shooting out from beneath
+her tall sides a light pinnace, that skimmed the water like a sea-bird.
+As if they saw me, they headed exactly towards where I stood, and ran
+the craft into a little bay just at my feet. A crew of four sailors and
+coxswain now jumped ashore, and advanced towards me.
+
+"Are there many of you?" said the coxswain, gruffly, and as though
+nothing were a commoner occurrence in life than to rescue a poor forlorn
+fellow-creature from an uninhabited rock.
+
+"I am alone, sir," said I, almost bursting into tears, for mingled joy
+and disappointment; for I was, I own it, disappointed at the want of
+sympathy for my lone condition.
+
+"What ship did you belong to, boy?" asked he, as shortly as before.
+
+"A yacht, sir,--the 'Firefly.'"
+
+"Ah, that 's it; so they shoved you ashore here. That's what comes of
+sailing with gentlemen, as they calls 'em."
+
+"No, sir; we landed--a few of us--during a calm--"
+
+"Ay, ay," he broke in, "I know all that,--the old story; you landed to
+shoot rabbits, and somehow you got separated from the others; the wind
+sprung up meantime; the yacht fired a gun to come off--eh, is n't that
+it! Come, my lad, no gammon with me. You 're some infernal young scamp
+that was 'had up' for punishment, and they either put you ashore here
+for the rats, or you jumped overboard yourself, and floated hither on
+a spare hencoop. But never mind,--we 'll give you a run to Quebec; jump
+in."
+
+I followed the order with alacrity, and soon found myself on board the
+"Hampden" transport, which was conveying the --th Regiment of Foot to
+Canada.
+
+"No one but this here boy, sir," said the coxswain; shoving me before
+him towards the skipper, who, amidst a crowd of officers in undress, sat
+smoking on the after-deck.
+
+A very significant grunt seemed to imply that the vessel's way was lost
+for very slight cause.
+
+"He says as how he belonged to a yacht, sir," resumed the coxswain.
+
+"Whose yacht, boy?" asked one of the officers.
+
+"Sir Dudley Broughton's, sir; the 'Firefly,'" said I.
+
+"Broughton! Broughton!" said an old, shrewd-looking man, in a
+foraging-cap; "don't you know all about him? But, to be sure, he was
+before _your_ day;" and then, changing his discourse to French,--with
+which language, thanks to my kind old friend Father Rush, I was
+sufficiently acquainted to understand what was said,--he added, "Sir
+Dudley was in the Life Guards once; his wife eloped with a Russian or a
+Polish Count,--I forget which,--and he became deranged in consequence.
+Were you long with Sir Dudley, boy?" asked he, addressing me in English.
+
+"Not quite two months, sir."
+
+"Not a bad spell with such a master," resumed he, in French, "if the
+stories they tell of him be true. How did you happen to be left on
+Anticosti?"
+
+"No use in asking, Captain!" broke in the skipper. "You never get a word
+of truth from chaps like that; go for'ard, boy."
+
+And with this brief direction I was dismissed. All my fancied
+heroism--all my anticipated glory--vanishing at once; the only thought
+my privations excited being that I was a young scamp, who, if he told
+truth, would confess that all his sufferings and misfortunes had been
+but too well merited.
+
+This was another lesson to me in life, and one which perhaps I could not
+have acquired more thoroughly than by a few days on Anticosti.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. A GLIMPSE OF ANOTHER OPENING IN LIFE
+
+Although only a few hundred miles from Quebec, our voyage still
+continued for several days; the "Hampden" like all transport-ships, was
+only "great in a calm," and the Gulf-stream being powerful enough to
+retard far better sailers.
+
+To those who, like myself, were not pressed for time, or had no very
+pleasing vista opening to them on shore, the voyage was far from
+disagreeable. As the channel narrowed, the tall mountains of Vermont
+came into view, and gradually the villages on the shore could be
+detected,--small, dark clusters, in the midst of what appeared
+interminable pine forests. Here and there less pleasant sights presented
+themselves, in the shape of dismasted hulks, being the remains of
+vessels which had got fastened in the ice of the early "fall," and were
+deserted by the crews.
+
+On the whole, it was novelty, and novelty alone, lent any charm to the
+picture; for the shores of the Gulf, until you come within two days'
+journey of Quebec, are sadly discouraging and dreary. The Log-house is
+itself a mournful object; and when seen standing alone in some small
+clearing, with blackened stumps studding the space, through which two
+or three figures are seen to move, is inexpressibly sad-looking and
+solitary.
+
+Now and then we would pass some little town, with a humble imitation of
+a harbor for shipping, and a quay; and in the midst a standard, with
+a flag, would denote that some Government official resided there,--the
+reward, doubtless, of some gallant deed, some bold achievement afloat;
+for I heard that they were chiefly lieutenants in the navy, who, having
+more intimacy with French grape and canister than with "First Lords,"
+were fain to spend the remnant of their days in these gloomiest of
+exiles.
+
+The absence of all signs of life and movement in the picture cannot fail
+to depress the spectator. No team of oxen draws the loaded wagon along;
+not a plough is seen. There are no gatherings of people in the open
+places of the towns; no cattle can be descried on the hills. The
+settlements appear like the chance resting-places of men travelling
+through the dark forests, and not their homes for life. At times a
+single figure would be seen on some high cliff above the sea, standing
+motionless, and, to all seeming, watching the ship. I cannot say how
+deeply such a sight always affected me; and I could not help fancying
+him some lone emigrant, following with beating heart the track he was
+never again to travel.
+
+Apparently, these things made a deeper impression on me than upon most
+others on board. As for the soldiers, they were occupied with getting
+their arms and equipments in order, to make a respectable appearance on
+landing. It was one eternal scene of soap and pipeclay all day long;
+and creatures barely able to crawl, from sea-sickness and debility, were
+obliged to scour and polish away as if the glory of England depended
+upon the show the gallant--th would make, the day we should set foot on
+shore. The skipper, too, was bent on making an equally imposing show to
+the landsmen; his weather topmasts were stowed away, and in their place
+were hoisted some light and taper spars, not exactly in accordance
+with the lubberly hull beneath. Pitch and white paint were in great
+requisition too; and every day saw some half-dozen of the crew suspended
+over the side, either scraping or painting for the very life. Many a
+shirt dangled from the boom, and more than one low-crowned hat received
+a fresh coat of glistening varnish; all were intent on the approaching
+landing, even to the group of lounging officers on the poop, who
+had begun to reduce their beards and whiskers to a more "regulation"
+standard, and who usually passed the morning inspecting epaulettes and
+sword-knots, shakos, gorgets, and such like, with the importance of men
+who felt what havoc among the fair Canadians they were soon about to
+inflict.
+
+My services were in request among this section of the passengers, since
+I had become an expert hand at cleaning arms and equipments with Sir
+Dudley; besides that, not wearing his Majesty's cloth, the officers were
+at liberty to talk to me with a freedom they could not have used with
+their men. They were all more or less curious to hear about Sir Dudley,
+of whom, without transgressing Halkett's caution, I was able to relate
+some amusing particulars. As my hearers invariably made their comments
+on my narratives in French, I was often amused to hear them record their
+opinions of myself, expressed with perfect candor in my own presence.
+The senior officer was a Captain Pike, an old, keen-eyed, pock-marked
+man, with a nose as thin as a sheet of parchment. He seemed to read me
+like a book; at least, so far as I knew, his opinions perfectly divined
+my true character.
+
+"Our friend Con," he would say, "is an uncommonly shrewd varlet, but he
+is only telling us some of the truth; he sees that he is entertaining
+enough, and won't produce 'Lafitte' so long as we enjoy his
+'Ordinaire.'"
+
+"Now, what will become of such a fellow as that?" asked another. "Heaven
+knows! such rascals turn out consummate scoundrels, or rise to positions
+of eminence. Never was there a more complete lottery than the life of a
+young rogue like that."
+
+"I can't fancy," drawled out a young subaltern, "how an ignorant cur,
+without education, manners, and means, can ever rise to anything."
+
+"Who can say whether he has not all these?" said the captain, quietly.
+"Trust me, Carrington, you'd cut a much poorer figure in _his_ place
+than would he in _yours_."
+
+The ensign gave a haughty laugh, and the captain resumed: "I said it
+were not impossible that he had each of the three requisites you spoke
+of, and I repeat it. He may, without possessing learning, have picked
+up that kind of rudimentary knowledge that keenness and zeal improve on
+every day; and as for tact and address, such fellows possess both as a
+birthright. I have a plan in my head for the youngster; but you must all
+pledge yourselves to secrecy, or I'll not venture upon it."
+
+Here a very general chorus of promises and "on honors" broke forth;
+after the subsidence of which, Captain Pike continued, still, however,
+in French; and although being far from a proficient in that tongue, I
+was able to follow the tenor of his discourse, and divine its meaning,
+particularly as from time to time some of the listeners would propound
+a question or two in English, by the aid of which I invariably contrived
+to keep up with the "argument."
+
+"You know, lads," said the captain, "that our old friend Mrs. Davis, who
+keeps the boarding-house in the Upper Town, has been always worrying us
+to bring her out what she calls a first-rate man-servant from England;
+by which she means a creature capable of subsisting on quarter rations,
+and who, too far from home to turn restive, must put up with any wages.
+The very fact that he came out special, she well knows, will be a puff
+for the 'Establishment' among the Canadian Members of Parliament and the
+small fry of officials who dine at the house; and as to qualifications,
+who will dare question the 'London footman '?"
+
+"Pooh, pooh!" broke in Carrington; "that fellow don't look like a London
+footman."
+
+"Who says he does?" retorted the captain. "Who ever said brass buttons
+and blue beads were gold and turquoise? But they pass for the same in
+villages not fifty miles from where we are sailing. Mother Davis was
+wife of a skipper in the timber trade who died harbor-master here; she
+is not a very likely person to be critical about a butler or footman's
+accomplishments."
+
+"By Jove," cried another, "Pike is all right! Go on with your plan."
+
+"My plan is this: we'll dress up our friend Con, here, give him a few
+lessons about waiting at table, delivering a message, and so forth,
+furnish him with a jolly set of characters, and start him on the road of
+life with Mother Davis."
+
+A merry roar of approving laughter broke forth from the party at this
+brief summary of Captain Pike's intentions; and indeed it was not
+without great difficulty I avoided joining in it.
+
+"He looks so devilish young!" said Carrington; "he can't be fifteen."
+
+"Possibly not fourteen," said Pike; "but we'll shave his head and
+give him a wig. I'll answer for the 'make up;' and as I have had some
+experience of private theatricals, rely on 't he'll pass muster."
+
+"How will you dress him, Pike?"
+
+"In livery,--a full suit of snuff-brown, lined with yellow; I 'll devote
+a large cloak I have to the purpose, and we 'll set the tailor at work
+to-day."
+
+"Is he to have shorts?"
+
+"Of course; some of you must 'stand' silk stockings for him, for we
+shall have to turn him out with a good kit."
+
+A very generous burst of promises here broke in, about shirts, vests,
+cravats, gloves, and other wearables, which, I own it, gave the whole
+contrivance a far brighter coloring in my eyes than when it offered to
+be a mere lark.
+
+"Will the rogue consent, think you?" asked Carrington.
+
+"Will he prefer a bed and a dinner to nothing to eat and a siesta under
+the planks on the quays of Quebec?" asked Pike, contemptuously. "Look
+at the fellow! watch his keen eyes and his humorous mouth when he's
+speaking to you, and say if he would n't do the thing for the fun of it?
+Not but a right clever chap like him will see something besides a joke
+in the whole contrivance.
+
+"I foresee he 'll break down at the first go-off," said Carrington,
+who through all the controversy seemed impressed with the very humblest
+opinion of my merits.
+
+"I foresee exactly the reverse," said Pike. "I've seldom met a more
+acute youngster, nor one readier to take up your meaning; and if the
+varlet does n't get spoilt by education, but simply follows out the bent
+of his own shrewd intelligence, he'll do well yet."
+
+"You rate him more highly than I do," said Carrington, again.
+
+"Not impossible either; we take our soundings with very dissimilar
+lead-lines," said Pike, scoffingly. "My opinion is formed by hearing the
+boy's own observations about character and life when he was speaking of
+Broughton; but if you were ten times as right about him, and I twice as
+many times in the wrong, he 'll do for what I intend him."
+
+The others expressed their full concurrence in the captain's view of
+the matter, voted me a phoenix of all young vagabonds, and their
+brother-officer Carrington a downright ass,--both being my own private
+sentiments to the letter.
+
+And now for an honest avowal! It was the flattery of my natural
+acuteness--the captain's panegyric on my aptitude and smartness--that
+won me over to a concurrence in the scheme; for, at heart, I neither
+liked the notion of "service," nor the prospect of the abstemious
+living he had so pointedly alluded to. Still, to justify the favorable
+impression he had conceived of me, and also with some half hope that I
+should see "life"--the ruling passion of my mind--under a new aspect, I
+resolved to accept the proposition so soon as it should be made to me;
+nor had I long to wait that moment.
+
+"Con, my lad," said the captain, "you may leave that belt there; come
+aft here,--I want to speak to you. What are your plans when you reach
+Quebec? Do you mean to look after your old master, Sir Dudley, again?"
+
+"No, sir; I have had enough of salt water for a time,--I 'll keep my
+feet on dry land now."
+
+"But what line of life do you propose to follow?"
+
+I hesitated for the answer, and was silent.
+
+"I mean," resumed he, "is it your intention to become a farm-servant
+with some of the emigrant families, or will you seek for employment in
+the town?"
+
+"Or would you like to enlist, my lad?" broke in another.
+
+"No, thank you, sir; promotion is slow from the ranks, and I 've a
+notion one ought to move 'up,' as they move 'on,' in life."
+
+"Listen to the varlet now," said Pike, in French; "the fellow's as cool
+with us as if we were exactly his equals, and no more. I 'll tell you
+what it is, lads," added he, seriously, "when such rogues journey the
+road of life singly, they raise _themselves_ to station and eminence;
+but when they herd together in masses, these are the fellows who pull
+_others_ down, and effect the most disastrous social revolutions.--So
+you 'll not be a soldier Con?" added he, resuming the vernacular; "well,
+what are your ideas as to the civil service?"
+
+"Anything to begin with, sir."
+
+"Quite right, lad,--well said; a fair start is all you ask?"
+
+"Why, sir, I carry no weight, either in the shape of goods or character;
+and if a light equipment gives speed, I 've a chance to be placed well."
+
+The captain gave a side-glance at the others as though to say, "Was
+I correct in my opinion of this fellow?" and then went on: "I have a
+thought in my head for you, Con: there is a lady of my acquaintance at
+Quebec wants a servant; now, if you could pick up some notion of the
+duties, I 've no doubt you'd learn the remainder rapidly."
+
+"I used to wait on Sir Dudley, sir, and am therefore not entirely
+ignorant."
+
+"Very true; and as these gentlemen and myself will put you into training
+while the voyage lasts, I hope you 'll do us credit in the end."
+
+"Much will depend on my mistress, sir," said I, determining to profit
+by what I had overheard, but yet not use the knowledge rashly or
+unadvisedly. "Should she not be very exacting and very particular,
+but have a little patience with me, accepting zeal for skill, I 've no
+doubt, sir, I 'll not discredit your recommendation."
+
+"That's the very point I'm coming to, Con," said the captain, lowering
+his voice to a most confidential tone.
+
+"The true state of the case is this: "--and here he entered upon an
+explanation which I need not trouble the reader by recapitulating, since
+it merely went the length I have already related, save that he added, in
+conclusion, this important piece of information:--
+
+"Your golden rule, in every difficulty, will then be, to assure Mrs.
+Davis that you always did so, whatever it may be, when you were living
+with Lord George, or Sir Charles, or the Bishop of Drone. You understand
+me, eh?"
+
+"I think so, sir," said I, brightening up, and at the same time stealing
+an illustration from my old legal practices. "In Mrs. Davis's court
+there are no precedents."
+
+"Exactly, Con; hit the nail on the very head, my boy!"
+
+"It will not be a very difficult game, sir, if the guests are like the
+mistress."
+
+"So they are, for the most part; now and then you'll have a military and
+naval officer at table, and you'll be obliged to look out sharp, and
+not let them detect you; but with the skippers of merchantmen, dockyard
+people, storekeepers, male and female, I fancy you can hold your own."
+
+"Why, sir, I hope they'll be satisfied with the qualification that
+contented my former titled masters," said I, with a knowing twinkle of
+the eye he seemed to relish prodigiously, and an assumed tone of voice
+that suited well the part I was to play.
+
+"Come down below, now, and we 'll write your characters for you;" and so
+he beckoned the others to accompany him to the cabin, whither I followed
+them.
+
+An animated debate ensued as to the number and nature of the
+certificates I ought to possess, some being of opinion that I should
+have those of every kind and degree; others alleging that my age forbade
+the likelihood of my having served in more than two or three situations.
+
+"What say you to this, lads?" said Pike, reading from a rough and
+much-corrected draft before him:--
+
+
+     The bearer, Cornelius Cregan, has lived in my service ten
+     months as a page; he is scrupulously honest, active, and
+     intelligent, well acquainted with the duties of his station,
+     and competent to discharge them in the first families. I now
+     dismiss him at his own request.
+     Cecilia Mendleshaw.
+
+"Gad! I'd rather make him start as what they call in his own country a
+'Tay-boy,'" said Carrington,--"one of those bits of tarnished gold-lace
+and gaiters seen about the outskirts of Dublin."
+
+"Your honor is right, sir," said I, glad to show myself above any absurd
+vanity on the score of my early beginning; "a 'Tay-boy' on the Rathmines
+road, able to drive a jaunting-car and wait at table."
+
+"That's the mark, I believe," said Pike. "Suppose, then, we say: 'Con
+Cregan has served me twelve months, waited at table, and taken care of a
+horse and car.'"
+
+"Ah, sir!" said I, "sure an Irish gentleman with a 'Tay-boy' would be
+finer spoken than that. It would be: 'I certify that Cornelius Cregan,
+who served in my establishment as under-butler, and occasionally
+assisting the coachman, is a most respectable servant, well-mannered and
+respectful, having always lived in high situations, and with the most
+distinguished individuals.'"
+
+"Ah, that's it," broke in Carrington; "'understands lamps, and is
+perfectly competent to make jellies, soups, and preserves.'"
+
+"Confound it, man! you 're making him a cook."
+
+"By Jove, so I was! It's so hard to remember what the fellow is."
+
+"I think we may leave it to himself," said Pike; "he seems to have a
+very good notion of what is necessary. So, Master Con, write your
+own biography, my lad, and we 'll give it all the needful currency of
+handwriting and seal."
+
+"It's a pity you're a Papist," said another, "or you could have such a
+recommendation from a 'serious family' I know of in Surrey."
+
+"Never mind," rejoined the captain; "one signed 'P. O. Dowdlum, Bishop
+of Toronia,' will do even better in the Lower Province."
+
+"Exactly, sir; and, as I used to serve mass once, I can 'come out
+strong' about my early training with 'his Grace'!"
+
+"Very well," said Pike; "tell the tailor to take your measure for the
+livery, and you'll wait on us to-day at table." With this order I
+was dismissed, to con over my fictitious and speculate on my true
+"character."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. QUEBEC
+
+As viewed from Diamond Harbour, a more striking city than Quebec is
+seldom seen.
+
+The great rock rising above the lower town, and crowned with its
+batteries, all bristling with guns, seemed to my eyes the very
+realization of impregnability. I looked from the ship that lay
+tranquilly on the water below, and whose decks were thronged with blue
+jackets, to the Highlander who paced his short path as sentry, some
+hundred feet high upon the wall of the fortress; and I thought to
+myself, with such defenders as these, that standard yonder need never
+carry any other banner.
+
+The whole view is panoramic. The bending of the river shuts out the
+channel by which you have made your approach, giving the semblance of a
+lake, on whose surface vessels of every nation lie at anchor, some with
+the sails hung out to dry, gracefully drooping from the taper spars;
+others refitting again for sea, and loading the huge pine-trunks,
+moored as vast rafts to the stern. There were people everywhere; all
+was motion, life, and activity. Jolly-boats with twenty oars, man-of-war
+gigs bounding rapidly past them with eight; canoes skimming by without
+a ripple, and seemingly without impulse, till you caught sight of the
+lounging figure who lay at full length in the stern, and whose red
+features were scarce distinguishable from the copper-colored bark of his
+boat. Some moved upon the rafts, and even on single trunks of trees,
+as, separated from the mass, they floated down on the swift current,
+boat-hook in hand, to catch at the first object chance might offer them.
+The quays, and the streets leading down to them were all thronged; and
+as you cast your eye upwards, here and there above the tall roofs might
+be seen the winding flight of stairs that lead to the upper town, alike
+dark with the moving tide of men. On every embrasure and gallery, on
+every terrace and platform, it was the same. Never did I behold such a
+human tide!
+
+Now, there was something amazingly inspiriting in all this, particularly
+when coming from the solitude and monotony of a long voyage. The very
+voices that ye-hoed, the hoarse challenge of the sentinels on the rock,
+the busy hum of the town, made delicious music to my ear; and I could
+have stood and leaned over the bulwark for hours to gaze at the scene.
+I own no higher interest invested the picture, for I was ignorant of
+Wolfe; I had never heard of Montcalm; the plains of "Abra'm" were to
+me but grassy slopes, and "nothing more." It was the life and stir;
+the tide of that human ocean on which I longed myself to be a
+swimmer,--these were what charmed me. Nor was the deck of the old
+"Hampden" inactive all the while, although seldom attracting much of my
+notice. Soldiers were mustering, knapsacks packing, rolls calling,
+belts buffing, and coats brushing on all sides; men grumbling; sergeants
+cursing; officers swearing; half-dressed invalids popping up their heads
+out of hatchways, answering to wrong names, and doctors ordering them
+down again with many an anathema; soldiers in the way of sailors,
+and sailors always hauling at something that interfered with the
+inspection-drill: every one in the wrong place, and each cursing his
+neighbor for stupidity.
+
+At last the shore-boats boarded us, as if our confusion wanted anything
+to increase it. Red-faced harbor-masters shook hands with the skipper
+and pilot, and disappeared into the "round-house" to discuss grog and
+the late gales. Officers from the garrison came out to welcome their
+friends, for it was the second battalion we had on board of a regiment
+whose first had been some years in Canada; and then what a rush of
+inquiries were exchanged. "How's the Duke?" "All quiet in England?" "No
+signs of war in Europe?" "Are the 8th come home?" "Where's Forbes?" "Has
+Davern sold out?"--with a mass of such small interests as engage men who
+live in coteries.
+
+Then there were emissaries for newspapers, eagerly hunting for spicy
+rumors not found in the last journals; waiters of hotels, porters,
+boatmen, guides, Indians with moccasins to sell, and a hundred other
+functionaries bespeaking custom and patronage; and, although often
+driven over the side most ignominiously at one moment, certain to
+reappear the next at the opposite gangway.
+
+How order could ever be established in this floating Babel, I knew not;
+and yet at last all got into train somehow.
+
+First one large boat crammed with men, who sat even on the gunwales,
+moved slowly away; then another and another followed; a lubberly thing,
+half lighter, half jolly-boat, was soon loaded with baggage, amid which
+some soldiers' wives and a scattering population of babies were seen;
+till by degrees the deck was cleared, and none remained of all that vast
+multitude, save the "mate" and the "watch," who proceeded to get things
+"ship-shape,"--pretty much in the same good-tempered spirit servants are
+accustomed to put the drawing-rooms to rights, after an entertainment
+which has kept them up till daylight, and allows of no time for sleep.
+Till then I had not the slightest conception of what a voyage ended
+meant, and that when the anchor dropped from the bow, a scene of bustle
+ensued, to which nothing at sea bore any proportion. Now, I had no
+friends; no one came to welcome me,--none asked for _my_ name. The
+officers, even the captain, in the excitement of arriving, had forgotten
+all about me; so that when the mate put the question to me, "why I
+didn't go ashore?" I had no other answer to give him than the honest
+one, "that I had nothing to do when I got there." "I suppose you know
+how to gain a livin' one way or t' other, my lad?" said he, with a very
+disparaging glance out of the corner of his eye.
+
+"I am ashamed to say, sir, that I do not."
+
+"Well, I never see'd Picaroons starve,--that's a comfort you have; but
+as we don't mean to mess you here, you 'd better get your kit on deck,
+and prepare to go ashore."
+
+Now, the kit alluded to was the chest of clothes given to me by the
+captain, which, being bestowed for a particular purpose, and with an
+object now seemingly abandoned or forgotten, I began to feel scruples as
+to my having any claim to. Like an actor whose engagement had been for
+one part, I did not think myself warranted in carrying away the wardrobe
+of my character; besides, who should tell how the captain might resent
+such conduct on my side? I might be treated as a thief,--I, Con Cregan,
+who had registered a solemn vow in my own heart to be a "gentleman"!
+Such an indignity should not be entertained, even in thought. Yet was it
+very hard for one in possession of such an admirable wardrobe to want
+a dinner; for one so luxuriously apparelled on the outside, to be so
+lamentably unprovided within. From the solution of this knotty question
+I was most fortunately preserved by the arrival of a corporal of
+the--th, who came with an order from Captain Pike that I should at once
+repair to his quarters in the Upper Town.
+
+Not being perhaps in his captain's confidence, nor having any very clear
+notion of my precise station in life,--for I was dressed in an old cloak
+and a foraging-cap,--the corporal delivered his message to me with a
+military salute, and a certain air of deference very grateful to my
+feelings.
+
+"Have you a boat alongside, Corporal?" said I, as I lounged listlessly
+on the binnacle.
+
+"Yes, sir; a pair of oars,--will that do?"
+
+"Yes, that will do," replied I, negligently. "See my traps safe on
+board, and tell me when all's ready."
+
+The corporal saluted once more, and went to give the necessary
+directions; meanwhile the mate, who had been a most amazed spectator of
+the scene, came over and stood right opposite me, with an expression
+of the most ludicrous doubt and hesitation. It was just at that moment
+that, in drawing the cloak round me, I discovered in a pocket of it an
+old cigar-case. I took it out with the most easy _nonchalance_, and,
+leisurely striking a light, began smoking away, and not bestowing even a
+glance at my neighbor.
+
+Astonishment had so completely gotten the better of the man that he
+could not utter a word; and I perceived that he had to look over the
+side, where the boat lay, to assure himself that the whole was reality.
+
+"All right, sir," said the corporal, carrying his hand to his cap.
+
+I arose languidly from my recumbent position, and followed the soldier
+to the gangway; then, turning slowly around, I surveyed the mate from
+head to foot, with a glance of mild but contemptuous pity, while I said,
+"In your station, my good man, the lesson is perhaps not called for,
+since you may rarely be called on to exercise it; but I would wish to
+observe that you will save yourself much humiliation and considerable
+contempt by not taking people for what they seem by externals." With
+this grave admonition, delivered in a half-theatrical tone of voice, I
+draped my "toga" so as to hide any imperfection of my interior costume,
+and descended majestically into the boat.
+
+When we reached the barrack, which was in the Upper Town, the captain
+was at mess, but had left orders that I should have my dinner, and be
+ready at his quarters, in my full livery, in the evening.
+
+I dined, very much to my satisfaction, on some of the "débris" of the
+mess, and, under the auspices of the captain's servant, arrayed myself
+in my new finery, which, I am free to confess, presented what artists
+would call "a flashy bit of color;" being far more in the style of
+Horace Vernet than Van Dyke. Had the choice been given me, I own I
+should have preferred wooing Fortune in more sombre habiliments; but
+this was a mere minor consideration, and so I felt as I found myself
+standing alone in the captain's sitting-room, and endeavoring to
+accustom myself to my own very showy identity, as reflected in a large
+cheval glass, which exhibited me down to the very buckles of my shoes.
+
+I will not affirm it positively, but only throw it out as a hint, that
+the major part of a decanter of sherry, which I discussed at dinner,
+aided in lifting me above the paltry consideration of mere appearance,
+and made me feel what I have often heard ragged vagabonds in the streets
+denominate "the dignity of a man." By degrees, too, I not only grew
+reconciled to the gaudy costume, but began--strange accommodation of
+feeling--actually to enjoy its distinctive character.
+
+"There are young gentlemen, Con," said I, in soliloquy, "many are there
+who would look absurd merry-andrews if dressed in this fashion. There
+are fellows to whom this kind of thing would be a sore test! These
+bright tints would play the very devil with their complexion,--not to
+mention that every one's legs could n't afford such publicity! But Con,
+my friend, you have a natural aptitude for every shade of color, and for
+every station and condition. Courage, my boy! although in the rear rank
+at present, you 'll march in the van yet. Nature has been gracious with
+you, Mr. Cregan!" said I, warming with the subject, while, with my hands
+deep down in my coat-pockets, I walked backward and forward before
+the glass, stealing sidelong glances at myself as I passed; "there are
+fellows who, born in your station, would have died in it, without a bit
+more influence over their fate in this life than a Poldoody oyster;
+they 'd vegetate to the end of existence, and slip out of the world as
+a fellow shirks out of a shebeen-house when he has n't tu' pence for
+another 'dandy' of punch. Not so with you, Con Cregan! You have hydrogen
+in you,--you have the buoyant element that soars above the vulgar herd.
+These are not the partial sentiments of a dear friend, Con, they are the
+current opinions of the world about you. How soon the 'Captain' saw what
+stuff you were made of! How long was old Pike in detecting the latent
+powers of your intellect?" What a shout of laughter followed these
+words! It came from half-a-dozen officers, who, having entered the room
+during my apostrophe, had concealed themselves behind a screen to listen
+to the peroration.
+
+
+
+They now rushed out in a body, and, throwing themselves into chairs and
+upon sofas, laughed till the very room rang with the clamor, the captain
+himself joining in the emotion with all his heart. As for me, however
+self-satisfied but one moment back, I was humbled to the very earth
+now; the vauntings by which I had been soothing my vanity were suddenly
+turned into scorns and sneers at my self-conceit, and I actually looked
+to see if I could not leap out of the window, and never be seen by
+one of the party again. The window, however, was barred, the door was
+unapproachable, there was a fire in the grate; and so, as escape was
+denied me, I at once abandoned a plan which I saw unfeasible, and, with
+a quickness to which I owe much in life, immediately adopted an opposite
+tactic. Assuming a deferential position, I drew back towards the wall,
+to be laughed at as long as the honorable company should fancy it.
+
+"So, Mr. Cregan," cried one, drying his eyes with his handkerchief,
+"modesty is one of those invaluable gifts with which nature has favored
+you?"
+
+"I sincerely trust it may be no bar to your advancement," said another.
+
+"Rather cruel," added a third, "to be balked for such a mere trifle."
+
+"I say, Pike," added another, "I rather envy you the insinuated flattery
+of your discrimination. It would seem that you detected the precious
+metal here at once."
+
+"What country do you come from, boy?" said a hard-featured old officer
+who had laughed less than the others.
+
+"How can you ask, Chudleigh?" said another. "There's only one land rears
+that plant."
+
+"There's a weed very like it in Scotland, M'Aldine," said the captain,
+with a grin which the last speaker did not half relish.
+
+"You're Hirish, ain't you?" said a very boyish-looking ensign, with sore
+eyes.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Very much so, I fancy," said he, laughing as though he had been very
+droll.
+
+"I always heard your countrymen had wings; what has become of them?"
+
+"I believe we used to have, sir; but the English plucked us," said I,
+with a look of assumed simplicity.
+
+"And what is all that about the Blarney stone?" said another; "is n't
+there some story or other about it?"
+
+"It's a stone they kiss in _my_ country, sir, to give us a smooth
+tongue."
+
+"I don't see the great use of that," rejoined he, with a stupid look.
+
+"It's mighty useful at times, sir," said I, with a half glance towards
+Captain Pike.
+
+"You're too much, gentlemen, far too much for my poor friend Con," said
+the captain; "you forget that he's only a poor Irish lad. Come, now, let
+us rather think of starting him in the world, with something to keep the
+devil out of his pocket." And, with this kind suggestion, he chucked
+a dollar into his cap, and then commenced a begging tour of the room,
+which, I am ready to confess, showed the company to be far more generous
+than they were witty.
+
+"Here, Master Con," said he, as he poured the contents into my two
+hands, "here is wherewithal to pay your footing at Mrs. Davis's. As a
+traveller from the old country, you 'll be expected to entertain the
+servants' hall,--do it liberally; there's nothing like a bold push at
+the first go off."
+
+"I know it, sir; my father used to say that the gentleman always won his
+election who made most freeholders drunk the first day of the poll."
+
+"Your father was a man of keen observation, Con."
+
+"And is, sir, still, with your leave, if kangaroo meat has n't disagreed
+with him, and left me to sustain the honors of the house."
+
+"Oh, that's it, Con, is it?" said Captain Pike, with a sly glance.
+
+"Yes, sir, that's it," said I, replying more to his look than his words.
+
+"Here's the letter for Mrs. Davis: you'll present it early to-morrow; be
+discreet, keep your own counsel, and I 've no doubt you 'll do well."
+
+"I'd be an ungrateful vagabond if I made your honor out a false
+prophet," said I; and, bowing respectfully to the company, I withdrew.
+
+"What a wonderful principle of equilibrium exists between one's heart
+and one's pocket!" thought I as I went downstairs. "I never felt the
+former so light as now that the latter is heavy."
+
+I wandered out into the town, somewhat puzzled how to dispose of
+myself for the evening. Had I been performing the part of a "walking
+gentleman," I fancied I could have easily hit upon some appropriate and
+becoming pastime. A theatre,--there was one in the "Lower Town,"--and a
+tavern afterwards, would have filled the interval before it was time to
+go to bed. "Time to go to bed! "--strange phrase, born of a thousand and
+one conventionalities. For some, that time comes when the sun has
+set, and with its last beams of rosy light reminds labor of the coming
+morrow. To some, it is the hour when wearied faculties can do no more,
+when tired intellect falters "by the way," and cannot keep the "line of
+march." To others, it comes with dawning light, and when roses and rouge
+look ghastly; and to others, again, whose "deeds are evil," it is the
+glare of noonday.
+
+Now, as for me, I was neither wearied by toil nor pleasure; no sense of
+past fatigue, no anticipation of coming exertion, invited slumber,--nay,
+I was actually more wakeful than I had been during the entire evening,
+and I felt a most impulsive desire for a little social enjoyment,--that
+kind of intercourse with strangers which I always remarked had the
+effect of eliciting my own conversational qualities to a degree that
+astonished even myself.
+
+In search of some house of entertainment, some public resort, I paced
+all the streets of the Upper Town, but to no purpose. Occasionally,
+lights in a drawing-room, and the sound of a piano, would tell where
+some small evening party was assembled; or now and then, from a
+lower story, a joyous roar of laughter, or the merry chorus of a
+drinking-song, would bespeak some after-dinner convivialities; but
+to mingle in scenes like these, I felt that I had yet a long road to
+travel,--ay, to pass muster in the very humblest of those circles, what
+a deal had I to learn! How much humility, how much confidence; what
+deference, and what self-reliance; what mingled gravity and levity; what
+shades and gradations of color, so nicely balanced and proportioned,
+too, that, unresolved by the prism, they show no preponderating
+tint,--make up that pellucid property men call "tact!" Ay, Con, that is
+your rarest gift of all,--only acquire that, and you may dispense with
+ancestry, and kindred, and even wealth itself; since he who has "tact"
+participates in all these advantages, "_among his friends_."
+
+As I mused thus, I had reached the "Lower Town," and found myself
+opposite the door of a tavern, over which a brilliant lamp illuminated
+the sign of "The British Grenadier,"--a species of canteen in high favor
+with sergeants and quartermasters of the garrison. I entered boldly, and
+with the intention of behaving generously to myself; but scarcely had I
+passed the threshold than I heard a sharp voice utter in a half-whisper,
+"Dang me if he an't in livery!"
+
+I did not wait for more. My "tact" assured me that even there I was not
+admissible; so I strolled out again, muttering to myself, "When a
+man has neither friend nor supper, and the hour is past midnight, the
+chances are it is 'time to go to bed;'" and with this sage reflection, I
+wended my way towards a humble lodging-house on the quay, over which, on
+landing, I read the words, "The Emigrant's Home."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. HOW I 'FELL IN' AND 'OUT' WITH THE WIDOW DAVIS
+
+For the sake of conciseness in this veracious history, I prefer making
+the reader acquainted at once with facts and individuals, not by the
+slow process in which the knowledge of them was acquired by myself,
+but in all the plenitude which intimate acquaintance now supplies; and
+although this may not seem to accord with the bit-by-bit and day-by-day
+narrative of a life, it saves a world of time, some patience, and mayhap
+some skipping too. Under this plea, I have already introduced Sir Dudley
+Broughton to the reader; and now, with permission, mean to present Mrs.
+Davis.
+
+Mrs. Davis, relict of Thomas John Davis, was a character so associated
+with Quebec that to speak of that city without her would be like writing
+an account of Newfoundland and never alluding to the article "cod-fish."
+For a great number of years her house had been the rendezvous of
+everything houseless, from the newly come "married" officer to the flash
+commercial traveller from the States; from the agent of an unknown
+land company to the "skipper" of a rank pretentious enough to dine at
+a boarding-house. The establishment--as she loved to style it--combined
+all the free-and-easy air of domesticity with the enjoyment of society.
+It was an "acted newspaper," where paragraphs, military and naval,
+social, scandalous, and commercial, were fabricated with a speed no
+"compositor" could have kept up with. Here the newly arrived subaltern
+heard all the pipeclay gossip, not of the garrison, but of the Province;
+here the bagman made contracts and took orders; here the "French Deputy"
+picked up what he called afterwards in the Chamber "l'opinion publique;"
+and here the men of pine-logs and white deal imbibed what they fervently
+believed to be the habits and manners of the "English aristocracy." "To
+invest the establishment with this character," to make it go forth
+to the world as the mirror of high and fashionable life, had been
+the passion of Mrs. D.'s existence. Never did monarch labor for the
+safeguard that might fence and hedge round his dynasty more zealously;
+never did minister strive for the guarantees that should insure the
+continuance of his system. It was the moving purpose of her life; in
+it she had invested all her activity, both of mind and body; and as
+she looked back to the barbarism from which her generous devotion
+had rescued hundreds, she might well be pardoned if a ray of
+self-glorification lighted up her face. "When I think of Quebec when
+T. J."--her familiar mode of alluding to the defunct Thomas John--"and
+myself first beheld it," would she say, "and see it now, I believe I may
+be proud." The social habits were indeed at a low ebb. The skippers--and
+there were few other strangers--had a manifest contempt for the use of
+the fork at dinner, and performed a kind of sword-exercise while
+eating, of the most fearful kind. Napkins were always misconstrued,--the
+prevailing impression being that they were pocket-handkerchiefs. No man
+had any vested interest in his own wine-glass; while thirsty souls even
+dispensed with such luxuries, and drank from the bottle itself.
+
+Then sea-usages had carried themselves into shore life. The company were
+continually getting up to look out of windows, watching the vessels that
+passed, remarking on the state of the tide, and then, resuming their
+places with a muttering over the "half ebb," and that the wind was
+"northing-by-west," looked for change. All the conversation smacked of
+salt-water; every allusion had an odor of tar and seaweed about it.
+
+Poor Mrs. Davis! How was she to civilize these savages; how invest
+their lives with any interest above timber? They would not listen to the
+polite news of "Government House;" they would not vouchsafe the least
+attention to the interesting paragraphs she recited as table-talk,--how
+the Prince of Hohenhumbughousen had arrived at Windsor on a visit to
+Majesty, nor how Royalty walked in "The Slopes," or sat for its picture.
+
+Of the "Duke of Northumberland," they only knew a troopship of the
+name, and even that had been waterlogged! The "Wellington" traded to
+Mirimachi, and the "Robert Peel" was a barque belonging to Newfoundland,
+and employed in general traffic, and not believed very seaworthy.
+
+Some may make the ungracious remark that she might have spared herself
+this task of humanizing; that she could have left these "ligneous
+Christians," these creatures of tar and turpentine, where she found
+them. The same observation will apply equally to Cooke, to Franklin, to
+Brooke of Borneo, and a hundred other civilizers: so Mrs. D. felt
+it, and so she labored to make T. J. feel it; but he would n't. The
+ungrateful old bear saw the ordinary grow daily thinner; he perceived
+that Banquo might have seated himself at any part of the table, and he
+actually upbraided his wife with the fact. Every day he announced some
+new defection from the list of their old supporters. Now it was old Ben
+Crosseley, of the "Lively Biddy," that would n't stand being ordered to
+shake out his canvas--that is, to spread his napkin--when he was
+taking in sea store; then it was Tom Galket grew indignant at not being
+permitted to beat "to quarters" with his knuckles at every pause in the
+dinner. Some were put out by being obliged to sit with their legs under
+the table, being long habituated to dine at a cask with a plank on it,
+and of course keeping their limbs "stowed away" under the seat; and one,
+an old and much-respected river pilot, was carried away insensible
+from table, on hearing that grog was not a recognized table beverage
+throughout the British dominions.
+
+The banishment of lobscouse and sea-pie, pork, with its concomitant
+cataplasm of peas, and other similar delicacies from the bill of fare,
+completed the defection; and at last none remained of the "once goodlie
+company," save an old attenuated Guernsey skipper too much in debt to
+leave, but who attributed his fealty to the preference he entertained
+for "les usages de la bonne société et la charmante Mde. Davis." T. J.
+could never hold up his head again; he moped about the docks and quays,
+like the restless spirit of some Ancient Mariner. Every one pitied
+him; and he grew so accustomed to condolence--so dependent, in fact,
+on commiseration--that he spent his days in rowing from one ship to the
+other in the harbor, drinking grog with the skippers, till, by dint of
+pure sympathy, he slipped quietly into his grave, after something like a
+two years' attack of delirium tremens.
+
+The same week that saw T. J. descend to the tomb saw his widow ascend
+to the "Upper Town,"--the more congenial locality for aspirations like
+hers. If no eulogistic inscription marked _his_ resting-place, a very
+showy brass plate adorned _hers_. From that hour she was emancipated;
+it seemed, indeed, as if she had turned a corner in life, and at once
+emerged from gloom and darkness into sunshine. It chanced that the
+barracks were at that very moment undergoing repair, and several
+officers were glad to find, at a convenient distance, the comforts and
+accommodations which a plausible advertisement in the "Quebec Messenger"
+assured them were to be obtained for one pound one shilling weekly.
+
+There are people who tell you that we live in a heartless, selfish,
+grabbing, grasping age, where each preys upon his neighbor, and where
+gain is the spirit of every contract; and yet, in what period of the
+world was maternal tenderness, the comforts of a home, the watchful
+anxieties of parental love, to be had so cheaply? Who ever heard of
+bachelors being admitted into families, where music and the arts formed
+the evening's recreation, in the Middle Ages? Does Herodotus inform
+us that "young and attractive ladies would take charge of a widower's
+household, and superintend the care of his family"? Not a bit of it! On
+this point, at least, the wisdom of our ancestors has no chance with
+us. There is not a wish of the heart, there is not a yearning of the
+affections, that a three-and-sixpenny advertisement in the "Times" will
+not evoke a remedy for. You can make love, or a book, or a speech,
+by deputy; for every relative you lose, there are fifty kind-hearted
+creatures to supply the place; and not only may you travel over half the
+globe without more personal exertion than it costs you to go to bed, but
+you can be measured either for a wife or a suit of clothes without ever
+seeing the lady or the tailor.
+
+The "Hotel Davis," so said the newspaper, "was situated in the most airy
+and healthful locality of the Upper Town." No one ever rung the bell of
+the hall-door from the first of October to May, but would acknowledge
+the truth of the first epithet. The society, for admission to which
+the most particular references are required, embraces all that is
+intellectual, high-bred, and refined. The table, where preside the
+'feast of reason and the flow of soul,' combines the elegance and
+delicacy of the French, with the less sophisticated succulence of
+English cookery. Intellectual resources,--the humanizing influences
+of song and poetry,--the varied pleasures of cultivated and kindred
+spirits, which have won for this establishment the epithet of the
+Davisian Acropolis, continue to make it the chosen retreat of gentlemen
+connected with civil and military pursuits, who are lodged and boarded
+for one guinea weekly.
+
+"Receptions every Thursday. Balls, during the winter, on the first
+Monday of each month."
+
+Such was one among many--I select it as the shortest--announcements of
+this cheap Elysium; and now, two words about Mrs. D. herself. She was a
+poor, thin, shrivelled-up little woman, with a rugged, broken-up face,
+whose profile looked like a jagged saw. Next to elegance of manner, her
+passion was personal appearance,--by which she meant the adventitious
+aid of false hair, rouge, and cosmetics; and these she employed with
+such ever-varying ingenuity that her complexion changed daily from
+classic pallor to Spanish richness, while the angle of incidence of her
+eyebrows took in everything, from forty-five degrees to the horizontal.
+Her style was "sylph," and so she was gauzy and floating in all her
+drapery. A black veil to the back of her head, a filmy, gossamer kind
+of scarf across her shoulders, assisted this deception, and when she
+crossed the room, gave her the air of a clothes'-line in a high wind.
+
+Black mittens, over fingers glowing in all the splendor of imitation
+rings, and a locket, about the size of a cheese-plate, containing the
+hair--some said the scalp--of the late T. J., completed a costume
+which Mrs. D. herself believed Parisian, but to which no revolution,
+democratic or social, could reduce a Frenchwoman.
+
+She borrowed her language as well as her costume from the "Grande
+Nation," and with this comfortable reflection, that she was not likely
+to be asked to restore the loan. Her French was about as incongruous
+as her dress; but Quebec, fortunately, was not Paris, and she drove her
+coach-and-six through "Adelow," with a hardihood that outstripped, if it
+did not defy, criticism.
+
+By the military and naval people she was deemed the best "fun" going;
+her pretension, her affectation, her shrewdness, and her simplicity,
+her religious homage to fashion, her unmerciful tyranny towards what
+she thought vulgarity, made her the subject of many a joke and much
+amusement. The other classes, the more regular _habitués_ of the
+"house," thought she was a princess in disguise; they revered her
+opinions as oracles, and only wondered how the court-end could spare one
+so evidently formed to be the glass of fashion.
+
+If I have been too prolix in my sketch, kind reader, attribute it to
+the true cause,--my anxiety to serve those who are good enough to place
+themselves under my guidance. Mrs. D. still lives; the establishment
+still survives; at five o'clock each day--ay, this very day, I have
+no doubt--her table is crowded by "the rank and fashion" of the Quebec
+world; and the chances are, if you yourself, worthy reader, should visit
+that city, that you may be glad to give your blank days to the fare of
+Madam Davis.
+
+It was ten o'clock in the forenoon as I arrived at her door, and sent
+in Captain Pike's letter, announcing my arrival. I found Mrs. D. in
+what she called her own room,--a little den of about eleven feet square,
+shelved all round, and showing an array of jars and preserve-pots
+that was most imposing,--the offerings of skippers from the West India
+Islands and Madeira, who paid a kind of black-mail in preserved ginger,
+guavas, yams, pepper-pots, chili, and potted crabs that would have given
+liver complaints to half the Province.
+
+Mrs. D. was standing on a step-ladder, arranging her treasures by the
+aid of a negro boy of about twelve years old, as I entered; and not
+feeling that I was of consequence sufficient to require a more formal
+audience, she took a steady and patient observation of me, and then
+resumed her labors. The little window, about six feet from the ground,
+threw a fine Rembrandt light upon me as I stood in my showy habiliments,
+endeavoring, by an imposing attitude, to exhibit myself to the best
+advantage.
+
+"Forty-seven; Guava jelly, Sambo!--where is forty-seven?"
+
+"Me no see him," said Sambo; "missus eat him up, perhaps."
+
+"Monsonze! you filthy creature; look for it, sirrah!" So saying, Mrs.
+Davis applied her double eye-glass to her eyes, and again surveyed me
+for some seconds.
+
+"You are the"--she hesitated--"the young person my friend Pike brought
+out, I believe?"
+
+"Yes, my lady," said I, bowing profoundly.
+
+"What's your name? The captain has not written it clearly."
+
+"Cregan, my lady,--Con Cregan."
+
+"Con--Con," repeated she twice or thrice; "what does Con mean?"
+
+"It's the short for Cornelius, my lady."
+
+"Ah, the abbreviation for Cornelius! And where have you lived,
+Cornelius?"
+
+"My last place, my lady, was Sir Miles O'Ryan's, of Roaring Water."
+
+"What are you doing, you wretch? Take your filthy fingers out of that
+pot this instant!" screamed she, suddenly.
+
+"Me taste him, an' he be dam hot!" cried the nigger, dancing from one
+foot to the other, as his mouth was on fire from tasting capsicum pods.
+
+I thought of my own mustard experience, and then, turning a glance of
+ineffable contempt upon my black friend, said, "Those creatures, my
+lady, are _so_ ignorant, they really do not know the nature of the
+commonest condiments."
+
+"Very true, Cornelius. I would wish, however, to observe to you
+that although my family are all persons of rank, I have no title
+myself,--that is to say," added she, with a pleasing smile, "I do not
+assume it here; therefore, until we return to England, you need n't
+address me as ladyship."
+
+"No, my lady,--I beg your ladyship's pardon for forgetting; but as I
+have always lived in high families, I 've got the habit, my lady, of
+saying, 'my lady.'"
+
+"I am Madam, plain Madam Davis. There, I knew you 'd do it, you nasty
+little beast, you odious black creature!" This sudden apostrophe was
+evoked by the nigger endeavoring to balance a jam-pot on his thumb,
+while he spun it round with the other hand,--an exploit that ended in a
+smash of the jar, and a squash of the jam all over my silk stockings.
+
+"It's of no consequence, my lady; I shall change them when I dress for
+dinner," said I, with consummate ease.
+
+"The jam is lost, however. Will you kindly beat him about the head with
+that candlestick beside you?"
+
+I seized the implement, as if in most choleric mood. But my black was
+not to be caught so easily; and with a dive between my legs he bolted
+for the door, whilst I was pitched forward against the step-ladder,
+head foremost. In my terror, I threw out my hands to save myself,
+and caught--not the ladder, but Madam Davis's legs; and down we went
+together, with a small avalanche of brown jars and preserve-pots
+clattering over us.
+
+As I had gone headforemost, my head through the ladder, and as Mrs.
+Davis had fallen on the top of me,--her head being reversed,--there we
+lay, like herrings in a barrel, till her swoon had passed away. At last
+she did rally; and, gathering herself up, sat against the wall, a most
+rueful picture of bruises and disorder, while I, emerging from between
+the steps of the ladder, began to examine whether it were marmalade or
+my brains that I felt coming down my cheek.
+
+
+
+"You'll never mention this shocking event, Cornelius," said she, trying
+to adjust her wig, which now faced over the left shoulder.
+
+"Never, my lady. Am I to consider myself engaged?"
+
+"Yes, on the terms of Captain Pike's note,--ten pounds--, no wine nor
+tea-money, no passage-fare out, no livery, no--" I was afraid she was
+going to add, "No prog;" but she grew faint, and merely said, "Bring me
+a glass of water."
+
+"I'll put you in charge of the lamps and plate tomorrow," said she,
+recovering.
+
+"Very well, madam," said I, aloud; while to myself I muttered, "They
+might easily be in better hands."
+
+"You'll wait at table to-day."
+
+"Yes, my lady--madam, I mean."
+
+"Soup always goes first to Mrs. Trussford,--black velvet, and very fat;
+then to the lady in blue spectacles; afterwards Miss Moriarty. Ah, I
+'m too weak for giving directions; I 'm in what they call 'un état de
+fuillete;'" and with these words Mrs. Davis retired, leaving me to the
+contemplation of the battle-field and my own bruises.
+
+My next care was to present myself below stairs; and although some may
+smile at the avowal, I had far more misgivings about how I should pass
+muster with the underlings than with the head of the department. Is the
+reader aware that it was a farrier of the Emperor Alexander's guard who
+first predicted the destruction of the "grand army" in Russia? A
+French horseshoe was shown to him, as a curiosity; and he immediately
+exclaimed, "What! not yet frost-roughed? These fellows don't know the
+climate; the snows begin to-morrow!" So is it: ignorance and pretension
+are infallibly discovered by "routine" people; they look to details, and
+they at once detect him who mistakes or overlooks them.
+
+Resolving, at all events, to make my "Old World" habits stand my part in
+every difficulty, and to sneer down everything I did not understand, I
+put on a bold face, and descended to the lower regions.
+
+Great people, "Ministers" and Secretaries for the "Home" and "Foreign,"
+little know how great their privilege is that in taking office they
+are spared all unpleasant meetings with their predecessors. At least,
+I conclude such to be the case, and that my Lord Palmerston, "stepping
+in," does not come abruptly upon Lord Aberdeen "going out," nor does an
+angry altercation arise between him who arrives to stay and he who is
+packing his portmanteau to be off. I say that I opine as much, and that
+both the entrance and the departure are conducted with due etiquette
+and propriety; in fact, that Lord A. has called his cab and slipped away
+before Lord P. has begun to "take up" the "spoons,"--not a bad metaphor,
+by the way, for an entrance into the Foreign Office.
+
+No such decorous reserve presides over the change of a domestic
+ministry. The whole warfare of opposition is condensed into one angry
+moment, and the rival parties are brought face to face in the most
+ungracious fashion.
+
+Now, my system in life was that so well and popularly known by the
+name of M. Guizot, "la paix à tout prix;" and I take pride to myself
+in thinking that I have carried it out with more success. With a firm
+resolve, therefore, that no temptation should induce me to deviate from
+a pacific policy, I entered the kitchen, where the "lower house" was
+then "in committee,"--the "cook in the chair"!
+
+"Here he com, now!" said Blackie; and the assembly grew hushed as I
+entered.
+
+"Ay, here he comes!" said I, re-echoing the speech; "and let us see if
+we shall not be merry comrades."
+
+The address was a happy one; and that evening closed upon me in the very
+pinnacle of popularity.
+
+I have hesitated for some time whether I should not ask of my reader to
+enroll himself for a short space as a member of "the establishment,"
+or even to sojourn one day beneath a roof where so many originals
+were congregated; to witness the very table itself, set out with its
+artificial fruits and flowers, its pine-apples in wax, and its peaches
+of paper,--all the appliances by which Mrs. D., in her ardent zeal,
+hoped to propagate refinement and abstemiousness; high-breeding and low
+diet being, in her esteem, inseparably united. To see the company,
+the poor old faded and crushed flowers of mock gentility,--widows
+and unmarried daughters of tax-collectors long "gathered;" polite
+storekeepers, and apothecaries to the "Forces," cultivating the Graces
+at the cost of their appetites, and descending, in costumes of twenty
+years back, in the pleasing delusion of being "dressed" for dinner;
+while here and there some unhappy skipper, undergoing a course
+of refinement, looked like a bear in a "ballet," ashamed of his
+awkwardness, and even still more ashamed of the company wherein he found
+himself; and, lastly, some old Seigneur of the Lower Province,--a poor,
+wasted, wrinkled creature, covered with hair-powder and snuff, but yet,
+strangely enough, preserving some "taste of his once quality," and not
+altogether destitute of the graces of the land he sprung from;--curious
+and incongruous elements to make up society, and worthy of the
+presidency of that greater incongruity who ruled them.
+
+Condemned to eat food they did not relish, and discuss themes they did
+not comprehend,--what a noble zeal was theirs! What sacrifices did they
+not make to the genius of "gentility"! If they would sneer at a hash,
+Mrs. D.'s magic wand charmed it into a "ragout;" when they almost
+sneezed at the sour wine, Mrs. D. called for another glass of "La
+Rose." "Rabbits," they were assured, were the daily diet of the Duke of
+Devonshire, and Lady Laddington ate kid every day at dinner. In the
+same way, potatoes were vulgar things, but "pommes de terre à la maître
+d'hôtel" were a delicacy for royalty.
+
+To support these delusions of diet, I was everlastingly referred to.
+"Cregan," would she say,--placing her glass to her eye, and fixing
+on some dish, every portion of which her own dainty fingers had
+compounded,--"Cregan, what is that?"
+
+"Poulet à la George Quatre, madame! "--she always permitted me to
+improvise the nomenclature,--"the receipt came from the Bishop of
+Beldoff's cook."
+
+"Ah, prepared with olives, I believe?"
+
+"Exactly, madame," would I say, presenting the dish, whose success was
+at once assured.
+
+If a wry face or an unhappy contortion of the mouth from any guest
+announced disappointment, Mrs. D. at once appealed to me for the
+explanation. "What is it, Cregan?--Mrs. Blotter, I fear you don't like
+that 'plat'?"
+
+"The truffles were rather old, madame;" or, "the anchovies were too
+fresh;" or, "there was too little caviar;" or something of the kind,
+I would unhesitatingly aver: for my head was stocked with a strong
+catalogue from an old French cookery-book which I used to study each
+morning. The more abstruse my explanation, the more certain of its
+being indorsed by the company,--only too happy to be supposed capable of
+detecting the subtle deficiency; all but the old French Deputy, who on
+such occasions would give a little shake of his narrow head, and mutter
+to himself, "Ah, il est mutin, ce gaillard-là!"
+
+Under the influence of great names, they would have eaten a stewed
+mummy from the Pyramids. What the Marquis of Aeheldown or the Earl of
+Brockmore invariably ordered, could not without risk be despised by
+these "small boys" of refinement. It is true, they often mourned in
+secret over the altered taste of the old country, which preferred
+kickshaws and trumpery to its hallowed ribs and sirloins; but, like the
+folk who sit at the Opera while they long for the Haymarket, and who
+listen to Jenny Lind while their hearts are with Mrs. Keeley, they "took
+out" in fashion what they lost in amusement,--a very English habit, by
+the way. To be sure, and to their honor be it spoken, they wished the
+Queen would be pleased to fancy legs of mutton and loins of veal, just
+as some others are eager for royalty to enjoy the national drama; but
+they innocently forgot, the while, that "they" might have the sirloin,
+and "the others" Shakspeare, even without majesty partaking of either,
+and that a roast goose and Falstaflf can be relished even without such
+august precedent. Dear, good souls they were, never deviating from that
+fine old sturdy spirit of independence which makes us feel ourselves a
+match for the whole world in arms, as we read the "Times" and hum "Rule
+Britannia."
+
+All this devout homage of a class with whom they had nothing in common,
+and with which they could never come into contact, produced in me a very
+strange result; and in place of being ready to smile at the imitators,
+I began to conceive a stupendous idea of the natural greatness of those
+who could so impress the ranks beneath them. "Con," said I to myself,
+"that is the class in life would suit you perfectly. There is no trade
+like that of a gentleman. He who does nothing is always ready for
+everything; the little shifts and straits of a handicraft or a
+profession narrow and confine the natural expansiveness of the
+intellect, which, like a tide over a flat shore, should swell and spread
+itself out, free and without effort. See to this, Master Con; take care
+that you don't sit down contented with a low round on the ladder of
+life, but strive ever upwards; depend on it, the view is best from the
+top, even if it only enable you to look down on your competitors."
+
+These imaginings, as might be easily imagined, led me to form a very
+depreciating estimate of my lords and masters of the "establishment."
+Not only their little foibles and weaknesses, their small pretensions
+and their petty attempts at fine life, were all palpable to my eyes, but
+their humble fortunes and narrow means to support such assumption were
+equally so; and there is nothing which a vulgar mind--I _was_ vulgar at
+that period--so unhesitatingly seizes on for sarcasm as the endeavor of
+a poor man to "do the fine gentleman."
+
+If no man is a hero to his valet, he who has no valet is never a hero at
+all,--is nobody. I conceived, then, the most insulting contempt for the
+company, on whom I practised a hundred petty devices of annoyance. I
+would drop gravy on a fine satin dress, in which the wearer only made
+her appearance at festivals, or stain with sauce the "russia ducks"
+destined to figure through half a week. Sometimes, by an adroit
+change of decanters during dinner, I would produce a scene of almost
+irremediable confusion, when the owner of sherry would find himself
+taking toast-and-water, he of the last beverage having improved the time
+and finished the racier liquid. Such reciprocities, although strictly in
+accordance with "free-trade," invariably led to very warm discussions,
+that lasted through the remainder of the evening.
+
+Then I removed plates ere the eater was satisfied, and that with an air
+of such imposing resolve as to silence remonstrance. When a stingy
+guest passed up his decanter to a friend, in a moment of enthusiastic
+munificence, I never suffered it to return till it was emptied; while to
+the elderly ladies I measured out the wine like laudanum. Every now and
+then, too, I would forget to hand the dish to some one or other of the
+company, and affect only to discover my error as the last spoonful was
+disappearing.
+
+Nor did my liberties end here. I was constantly introducing innovations
+in the order of dinner, that produced most ludicrous scenes of
+discomfiture,--now insisting on the use of a fork, now of a spoon, under
+circumstances where no adroitness could compensate for the implement;
+and one day I actually went so far as to introduce soap with the
+finger-glasses, averring that "it was always done at Devonshire House on
+grand occasions." I thought I should have betrayed myself as I saw the
+efforts of the party to perform their parts with suitable dignity; all I
+could do was to restrain a burst of open laughter.
+
+So long as I prosecuted my reforms on the actual staff of the
+establishment, all went well. Now and then, it is true, I used to
+overhear in French, of which they believed me to be ignorant, rather
+sharp comments on the "free-and-easy tone of my manners; how careless I
+had become," and so on,--complaints, however, sure to be be met by some
+assurance that "my manners were quite London;" that what I did was the
+type of fashionable servitude,--apologies made less to screen me than to
+exalt those who invented them, as thoroughly conversant with high life
+in England.
+
+At last, partly from being careless of consequences, for I was getting
+very weary of this kind of life,--the great amusement of which used to
+be repeating my performances for the ear of Captain Pike, and he was
+now removed with his regiment to Kingstown,--and partly wishing for some
+incidents, of what kind I cared not, that might break the monotony of my
+existence, I contrived one day to stretch my prerogative too far, or,
+in the phrase of the Gulf, I "harpooned a bottle-nose,"--the periphrasis
+for making a gross mistake.
+
+I had been some years at Mrs. Davis's,--in fact, I felt and thought
+myself a man,--when the last ball of the season was announced,--an
+entertainment at which usually a more crowded assemblage used to
+congregate than at any of the previous ones.
+
+It was the choice occasion for the _habitués_ of the house to invite
+their grand friends; for Mrs. D. was accustomed to put forth all her
+strength, and the arrangements were made on a scale of magnificence that
+invariably occasioned a petty famine for the fortnight beforehand. Soup
+never appeared, that there might be "bouillon" for the dancers; every
+one was on a short allowance of milk, eggs, and sugar; meat became
+almost a tradition; even candles waned and went out, in waiting for
+the auspicious night when they should blaze like noonday. Nor did
+the company fail to participate in these preparatory schoolings. What
+frightful heads in curl-papers would appear at breakfast and dinner!
+What buttoned-up coats and black cravats refuse all investigation on the
+score of linen! What mysterious cookings of cosmetics at midnight, with
+petty thefts of lard and thick cream! What washings of kid gloves, that
+when washed would never go on again! What inventions of French-polish
+that refused all persuasions to dry, but continued to stick to and paint
+everything it came in contact with! Then there were high dresses cut
+down, like frigates razeed; frock-coats reduced to dress ones; mock
+lace and false jewelry were at a premium; and all the little patchwork
+devices of ribbons, bows, and carnations, gimp, gauze, and geraniums,
+were put into requisition,--petty acts of deception that each saw
+through in her neighbor, but firmly believed were undetectable in
+herself.
+
+Then what caballings about the invited; what scrutiny into rank and
+station,--"what set they were in," and whom did they visit; with little
+Star-chamber inquisitions as to character, all breaches of which, it is
+but fair to state, were most charitably deemed remediable if the party
+had any pretension to social position; for not only the saint in crape
+was twice a saint in lawn, but the satin sinner was pardonable where the
+"washing silk" would have been found guilty without a "recommendation."
+
+Then there was eternal tuning of the pianoforte, which most perversely
+insisted on not suiting voices that might have sung duets with a
+peacock. Quadrilles were practised in empty rooms; and Miss Timmock was
+actually seen trying to teach Blotter to waltz,--a proceeding, I rejoice
+to say, that the moral feeling of the household at once suppressed. And
+then, what a scene of decoration went forward in all the apartments! As
+in certain benevolent families, whatever is uneatable is always given to
+the poor, so here, all the artificial flowers unavailable for the toilet
+were generously bestowed to festoon along the walls, to conceal tin
+sconces, and to wreathe round rickety chandeliers. Contrivance--that
+most belauded phenomenon in Nature's craft--was everywhere. If necessity
+be the mother of invention, poor gentility is the "stepmother." Never
+were made greater efforts, or greater sacrifices incurred, to make
+Mrs. D. appear like a "West-end" leader of fashion, and to make the
+establishment itself seem a Holderness House.
+
+As for me, I was the type of a stage servant,--one of those creatures
+who hand round coffee in the "School for Scandal." My silk stockings
+were embroidered with silver, and my showy coat displayed a bouquet that
+might have filled a vase.
+
+In addition to these personal graces, I had long been head of my
+department; all the other officials, from the negro knife-cleaner
+upwards, besides all those begged, borrowed, and, I believe I might add,
+stolen domestics of other families, being placed under my orders.
+
+Among the many functions committed to me, the drilling of these gentry
+stood first in difficulty, not only because they were rebellious under
+control, but because I had actually to invent "the discipline during
+parade." One golden rule, however, I had adopted, and never suffered
+myself to deviate from, viz., to do nothing as it had been done
+before,--a maxim which relieved me from all the consequences of
+inexperience. Traditions are fatal things for a radical reformer; and
+I remembered having heard it remarked how Napoleon himself first
+sacrificed his dignity by attempting an imitation of the monarchy. By
+this one precept I ruled and squared all my conduct.
+
+The most refractory of my subordinates was a jackanapes about my own
+age, who, having once waited on the "young gentlemen" in the cock-pit of
+a man-of-war, fancied he had acquired very extended views of life. Among
+other traits of his fashionable experience, he remembered that at
+a _déjeuner_ given by the officers at Cadiz once, the company, who
+breakfasted in the gun-room, had all left their hats and cloaks in the
+midshipman's berth, receiving each a small piece of card with a number
+on it, and a similar one being attached to the property,--a process
+so universal now in our theatres and assemblies that I ask pardon for
+particularly describing it; but it was a novelty at the time I speak of,
+and had all the merits of a new discovery.
+
+Smush--this was my deputy's name--had been so struck with the admirable
+success of the arrangement that he had actually preserved the pieces of
+card, and now produced them, black and ragged, from the recesses of his
+trunk.
+
+"Mr. Cregan"--such was the respectful title by which I was now always
+addressed--"Mr. Cregan can tell us," said he, "if this is not the custom
+at great balls in London."
+
+"It used to be so, formerly," said I, with an air of most consummate
+coolness, as I sat in an arm-chair, regaling myself with a cigar; "the
+practice you allude to, Smush, did prevail, I admit. But our
+fashionable laws change; one day it is all ultra-refinement and Sybarite
+luxury,--the next, they affect a degree of mock simplicity in their
+manners: anything for novelty! Now, for instance, eating fish with the
+fingers--"
+
+"Do they, indeed, go so far?"
+
+"Do they! ay, and fifty things worse. At a race-dinner the same silver
+cup goes round the table, drunk out of by every one. I have seen strange
+things in my time."
+
+"That you must, Mr. Cregan."
+
+"Latterly," said I, warming with my subject, and seeing my auditory
+ready to believe anything, "they began the same system with the soup,
+and always passed the tureen round, each tasting it as it went. This was
+an innovation of the Duke of Struttenham's; but I don't fancy it will
+last."
+
+"And how do they manage about the hats, Mr. Cregan?"
+
+"The last thing, in that way, was what I saw at Lord Mudbrooke's, at
+Richmond, where, not to hamper the guests with these foolish bits of
+card, which they were always losing, the servant in waiting chalked a
+number on the hat or coat, or whatever it might be, and then marked the
+same on the gentleman's back!"
+
+Had it not been for the imposing gravity of my manner, the absurdity of
+this suggestion had been at once apparent; but I spoke like an oracle,
+and I impressed my words with the simple gravity of a commonplace truth.
+
+"If you wish to do the very newest thing, Smush, that's the
+latest,--quite a fresh touch; and, I 'll venture to say, perfectly
+unknown here. It saves a world of trouble to all parties; and as you
+brush it off before they leave, it is always another claim for the
+parting douceur!"
+
+"I'll do it," said Smush, eagerly; "they cannot be angry--"
+
+"Angry! angry at what is done with the very first people in London!"
+said I, affecting horror at the bare thought. The train was now laid; I
+had only to wait for its explosion.
+
+At first, I did this with eager impatience for the result; then, as the
+time drew near, with somewhat of anxiety; and, at last, with downright
+fear of the consequences. Yet to revoke the order, to confess that I was
+only hoaxing on so solemn a subject, would have been the downfall of my
+ascendency forever. What was to be done?
+
+I could imagine but one escape from the difficulty, which was to provide
+myself with a clothes-brush, and, as my station was at the drawing-room
+door, to erase the numerals before their wearers entered. In this way I
+should escape the forfeiture of my credit, and the risk of maintaining
+it.
+
+I would willingly recall some of the strange incidents of that great
+occasion, but my mind can only dwell upon one, as, brush in hand,
+I asked permission to remove some accidental dust,--a leave most
+graciously accorded, and ascribed to my town-bred habits of attention.
+At last--it was nigh midnight, and for above an hour the company had
+received no accession to its ranks; quadrilles had succeeded quadrilles,
+and the business of the scene went swimmingly on,--all the time-honored
+events of similar assemblages happening with that rigid regularity
+which, if evening-parties were managed by steam, and regulated by a
+fly-wheel, could not proceed with more ordinary routine. "Heads of
+houses" with bald scalps led out simpering young boarding-school misses,
+and danced with a noble show of agility, to refute any latent suspicion
+of coming age. There were the usual number of very old people, who vowed
+the dancing was only a shuffling walk, not the merry movement they
+had practised half a century ago; and there were lack-a-daisical young
+gentlemen, with waistcoats variegated as a hearth-rug, and magnificent
+breast-pins like miniature pokers, who lounged and lolled about,
+as though youth were the most embarrassing and wearying infliction
+mortality was heir to.
+
+There were, besides, all the varieties of the class young lady, as seen
+in every land where muslin is sold, and white shoes are manufactured.
+There was the slight young lady, who floated about with her gauzy dress
+daintily pinched in two; then there was the short and dumpling young
+lady, who danced with a duck in her gait; and there were a large
+proportion of the flouncing, flaunting kind, who took the figures of
+the quadrille by storm, and went at the "right and left" as if they were
+escaping from a fire; and there was Mrs. Davis herself, in a spangled
+toque and red shoes, pottering about from place to place, with a
+terrible eagerness to be agreeable and fashionable at the same time.
+
+It was, I have said, nigh midnight as I stood at the half-open door,
+watching the animated and amusing scene within, when Mrs. Davis,
+catching sight of me, and doubtless for the purpose of displaying my
+specious livery, ordered me to open a window, or close a shutter, or
+something of like importance. I had scarcely performed the service, when
+a kind of half titter through the room made me look round, and, to my
+unspeakable horror, I beheld, in the centre of the room, Town-Major
+McCan, the most passionate little man in Quebec, making his obeisances
+to Mrs. Davis, while a circle around were, with handkerchiefs to their
+mouths, stifling, as they best could, a burst of laughter; since exactly
+between his shoulders, in marks of about four inches long, stood the
+numerals "158," a great flourish underneath proclaiming that the roll
+had probably concluded, and that this was the "last man."
+
+
+
+Of the major, tradition had already consecrated one exploit; he had once
+kicked an impertinent tradesman down the great flight of iron stairs
+which leads from the Upper Town to Diamond Harbor,--a feat, to
+appreciate which, it is necessary to bear in mind that the stair
+in question is almost perpendicular, and contains six hundred and
+forty-eight steps! My very back ached by anticipation as I thought of
+it; and as I retreated towards the door, it was in a kind of shuffle,
+feeling like one who had been well thrashed.
+
+"A large party, Mrs. D.; a very brilliant and crowded assembly," said
+the major, pulling out his bushy whiskers, and looking importantly
+around. "Now what number have you here?"
+
+"I cannot even guess, Major; but we have had very few apologies.
+Could you approximate to our numbers this evening, Mr. Cox?" said she,
+addressing a spiteful-looking old man who sat eying the company through
+an opera-glass.
+
+"I have counted one hundred and thirty-four, madam; but the major makes
+them more numerous still!"
+
+"How do you mean, Cox?" said he, getting fiery red.
+
+"If you'll look in that glass yonder, which is opposite the mirror, you
+'ll soon see!" wheezed out the old man, maliciously. I did not wait for
+more; with one spring I descended the first flight; another brought me
+to the hall; but not before a terrible shout of laughter apprised me
+that all was discovered. I had just time to open the clock-case and step
+into it, as Major McCan came thundering downstairs, with his coat on his
+arm.
+
+A shrill yell from Sambo now told me that one culprit at least was "up"
+for punishment. "Tell the truth, you d--d piece of carved ebony! who did
+this?"
+
+"Not me, Massa! not me, Massa! Smush did him!"
+
+Smush was at this instant emerging from the back parlor with a tray of
+colored fluids for the dancers. With one vigorous kick the major sent
+the whole flying; and ere the terrified servitor knew what the assault
+portended, a strong grasp caught him by the throat, and ran him up bang!
+against the clock-case. Oh, what a terrible moment was that for me! I
+heard the very gurgling rattle in his throat, like choking, and felt as
+if when he ceased to breathe that I should expire with him.
+
+"You confess it! you own it, then, you infernal rascal!" said the major,
+almost hoarse with rage.
+
+"Oh, forgive me, sir! oh, forgive me! It was Mr Cregan, sir, the butler,
+who told me! Oh dear, I'm--" What, he couldn't finish; for the major,
+in relinquishing his grasp, flung him backwards, and he fell against the
+stairs.
+
+"So it was Mr.--Cregan,--the--butler,--was it?" said the major, with an
+emphasis on each word as though he had bitten the syllables. "Well! as
+sure as my name is Tony McCan, Mr. Cregan shall pay for this! Turn about
+is fair play; you have marked _me_, and may I be drummer to the Cape
+Fencibles if I don't mark _you!_" and with this denunciation, uttered
+in a tone, every accent of which vouched for truth, he took a hat--the
+first next to him--and issued from the house.
+
+Shivering with terror,--and not without cause,--I waited till Smush had,
+with Sambo's aid, carried downstairs the broken fragments; and then,
+the coast being clear, I stepped from my hiding-place, and opening the
+hall-door, fled,--ay, ran as fast as my legs could carry me. I crossed
+the grass terrace in front of the barrack, not heeding the hoarse "Who
+goes there?" of the sentry; and then, dashing along the battery-wall,
+hastened down the stairs that lead in successive flights to the filthy
+"Lower Town," in whose dingy recesses I well knew that crime or shame
+could soon find a sanctuary.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. AN EMIGRANTS FIRST STEP ON SHORE
+
+If I say that the Lower Town of Quebec is the St. Giles's of the
+metropolis, I convey but a very faint notion indeed of that terrible
+locality. I have seen life in some of its least attractive situations. I
+am not ignorant of the Liberties of Dublin and the Claddagh of Galway;
+I have passed more time than I care to mention in the Isle St. Louis
+of Paris; while the Leopoldstadt of Vienna and the Ghetto of Rome are
+tolerably familiar to me; but still, for wickedness in its most unwashed
+state, I give palm to the Lower Town of Quebec.
+
+The population, originally French, became gradually intermixed with
+emigrants, most of whom came from Ireland, and who, having expended the
+little means they could scrape together for the voyage, firmly believing
+that, once landed in America, gold was a "chimera" not worth troubling
+one's head about, they were unable to go farther, and either became
+laborers in the city, or, as the market grew speedily overstocked, sunk
+down into a state of pauperism, the very counterpart of that they
+had left on the other side of the ocean. Their turbulence, their
+drunkenness, the reckless violence of all their habits, at first shocked
+and then terrified the poor timid Canadians,--of all people the most
+submissive and yielding,--so that very soon, feeling how impossible
+it was to maintain co-partnery with such associates, they left the
+neighborhood, and abandoned the field to the new race. Intermarriages
+had, however, taken place to a great extent; from which, and the daily
+intercourse with the natives, a species of language came to be spoken
+which was currently called French, but which might, certainly with equal
+propriety, be called Cherokee. Of course this new tongue modified itself
+with the exigencies of those who spoke it; and as the French ingredient
+declined, the Milesian preponderated, till at length it became far more
+Irish than French.
+
+Nothing assists barbarism like a dialect adapted to its own wants.
+Slang is infinitely more conducive to the propagation of vice than is
+generally believed; it is the "paper currency" of iniquity, and each
+man issues as much as he likes. If I wanted an evidence of this fact,
+I should "call up" the place I am speaking of, where the very jargon
+at once defied civilization and ignored the "schoolmaster." The
+authorities, either regarding the task as too hopeless, or too
+dangerous, or too troublesome, seemed to slur over the existence of
+this infamous locality. It is not impossible that they saw with
+some satisfaction that wickedness had selected its only peculiar and
+appropriate territory, and that they had left this den of vice, as
+Yankee farmers are accustomed to leave a spot of tall grass to attract
+the snakes, by way of preventing them scattering and spreading over a
+larger surface.
+
+As each emigrant ship arrived, hosts of these idlers of the Lower Town
+beset the newly landed strangers, and by their voice and accent imposed
+upon the poor wanderers. The very tones of the old country were a magic
+the new-comers could not withstand, after weeks of voyaging that seemed
+like years of travel. Whatever reminded them of the country they had
+quitted, ay,--strange inconsistency of the human heart!--of the land
+they had left for very hopelessness, touched their hearts, and moved
+them to the very tenderest emotions. To trade on this susceptibility
+became a recognized livelihood; so that the quays were crowded with
+idle vagabonds who sought out the prey with as much skill as a West-end
+waiter displays in detecting the rank of a new arrival.
+
+This filthy locality, too, contained all the lodging-houses resorted to
+by the emigrants, who were easily persuaded to follow their "countryman"
+wherever he might lead. Here were spent the days--sometimes, unhappily,
+the weeks--before they could fix upon the part of the country to which
+they should bend their steps; and here, but too often, were wasted
+in excess and debauchery the little hoards that had cost years to
+accumulate, till farther progress became impossible; and the stranger
+who landed but a few weeks back full of strong hope, sunk down into the
+degraded condition of those who had been his ruin,--the old story, the
+dupe become blackleg.
+
+It were well if deceit and falsehood, if heartless treachery and
+calculating baseness, were all that went forward here. But not so;
+crimes of every character were rife also, and not an inhabitant of the
+city, with money or character, would have, for any consideration, put
+foot within this district after nightfall. The very cries that broke
+upon the stillness of the night were often heard in the Upper Town;
+and whenever a shriek of agony arose, or the heartrending cry for help,
+prudent citizens would close the window, and say, "It is some of the
+Irish in the Lower Town,"--a comprehensive statement that needed no
+commentary.
+
+Towards this pleasant locality I now hastened, with a kind of
+instinctive sense that I had some claims on the sanctuary. It
+chanced that an emigrant ship which had arrived that evening was just
+disembarking its passengers; mingling with the throng of which, I
+entered the filthy and narrow lanes of this Alsatia. The new arrivals
+were all Irish, and, as usual, were heralded by parties of the resident
+population, eagerly canvassing them for this or that lodging-house. Had
+not my own troubles been enough for me, I should have felt interested
+in the strange contrast between the simple peasant first stepping on a
+foreign shore, and the shrewd roguery of him who proposed guidance, and
+who doubtless had himself once been as unsuspecting and artless as those
+he now cajoled and endeavored to dupe.
+
+I soon saw that single individuals were accounted of little consequence;
+the claim of the various lodging-houses was as family hotels, perhaps;
+so that I mixed myself up with a group of some eight or ten, whose
+voices sounded pleasant, for, in the dark, I had no other indication to
+suggest a preference.
+
+I was not long in establishing a footing, so far as talking went, with
+one of this party,--an old, very old man, whose greatest anxiety was
+to know, first, if "there was any Ingins where we were going," and,
+secondly, if I had ever heard of his grandson, Dan Cullinane. The first
+doubt I solved for him frankly and freely, that an Indian would n't
+dare to show his nose where we were walking; and as to the second, I
+hesitated, promising to refer to "my tablets" when I came to the light,
+for I thought the name was familiar to me.
+
+"He was a shoemaker by trade," said the old man, "and a better never
+left Ireland; he was 'prentice to ould Finucane in Ennis, and might have
+done well, if he had n't the turn for Americay."
+
+"But he'll do better here, rely upon it," said I, inviting some further
+disclosures; "I'm certain he's not disappointed with having come out."
+
+"No, indeed; glory be to God! he's doing finely; and 't was that
+persuaded my son Joe to sell the little place and come here; and a
+wonderful long way it is!"
+
+After expending a few generalities on sea voyages in general, with a
+cursory glance at naval architecture, from Noah's "square" stern, down
+to the modern "round" innovation, we again returned to Dan, for whom I
+already conceived a strong interest.
+
+"And is it far to New Orleans from this?" said the old man, who, I
+perceived, was struck by the air of sagacity in my discourse.
+
+"New Orleans! why that's in the States, a thousand miles away!"
+
+"Oh, murther, murther!" cried the old fellow, wringing his hands; "and
+ain't we in the States?"
+
+"No," said I; "this is Canada."
+
+"Joe, Joe!" cried he, pulling his son by the collar, "listen to this,
+acushla. Oh, murther, murther! we're kilt and destroyed intirely!"
+
+"What is it, father?" said a tall, powerfully built man, who spoke in a
+low but resolute voice; "what ails you?"
+
+"Tell him, darlint, tell him!" said the old man, not able to utter his
+griefs.
+
+"It seems," said I, "that you believed yourselves in the States; now,
+this is not so. This is British America,--Lower Canada."
+
+"Isn't it 'Quaybec'?" said he, standing full in front of me.
+
+"It is Quebec--, but still, that is Canada."
+
+"And it's ten thousand miles from Dan!" said the old fellow, whose cries
+were almost suffocating him.
+
+"Whisht, father, and let me talk," said the son; "do you know New
+Orleans?"
+
+"Perfectly.--every street of it," said I, with an effrontery the
+darkness aided considerably.
+
+"And how far is't from here?"
+
+"Something like thirteen or fourteen hundred miles, at a rough guess."
+
+"Oh, th' eternal villain! if I had him by the neck!" cried Joe, as he
+struck the ground a blow with his blackthorn which certainly would not
+have improved the human face divine; "he towld me they were a few miles
+asunder,--an easy day's walk!"
+
+"Who said so?" asked I.
+
+"The chap on Eden Quay, in Dublin, where we took our passage."
+
+"Don't be down-hearted, anyway," said I; "distance is nothing here: we
+think no more of a hundred miles than you do in Ireland of a walk before
+breakfast. If it's any comfort to you, I'm going the same way myself."
+This very consolatory assurance, which I learned then for the first time
+also, did not appear to give the full confidence I expected, for Joe
+made no answer, but, with head dropped and clasped hands, continued
+to mutter some words in Irish that, so far as sound went, had not the
+"clink" of blessings.
+
+"He knows Dan," said the old man to his son, in a whisper which, low as
+it was, my quick ears detected.
+
+"What does he know about him?" exclaimed the son, savagely; for the
+memory of one deception was too strong upon him to make him lightly
+credulous.
+
+"I knew a very smart young man,--a very promising young fellow
+indeed,--at New Orleans," said I, "of the name you speak of,--Dan
+Cullinane."
+
+"What part of Ireland did he come from?" asked Joe.
+
+"The man I mean was from Clare, somewhere in the neighborhood of Ennis."
+
+"That's it!" said the old man.
+
+"Whisht!" said the son, whose caution was not so easily satisfied; and,
+turning to me, added, "What was he by trade?"
+
+"He was a shoemaker, and an excellent one,--indeed, I've no hesitation
+in saying, one of the best in New Orleans."
+
+"What was the street he lived in?"
+
+Here was a puzzler; for, as my reader knows, I was at the end of my
+information, and had not the slightest knowledge of New Orleans or its
+localities. The little scrap of newspaper I had picked up on Anticosti
+was the only thing having any reference to that city I ever possessed in
+my life. But, true to my theory to let nothing go to loss, I remembered
+this now, and, with an easy confidence, said, "I cannot recall
+the street, but it is just as you turn out of the street where the
+'Picayune' newspaper-office stands."
+
+"Right!--all right, by the father of Moses!" cried Joe, stretching out
+a brawny hand, and shaking mine with the cordiality of friendship. Then,
+stepping forward to where the rest of the party were walking, with two
+most loquacious guides, he said, "Molly! here's a boy knows Dan! Biddy!
+come here, and hear about Dan!"
+
+Two young girls, in long cloth cloaks, turned hastily round, and drew
+near, as they exclaimed in a breath, "Oh, tell us about Dan, sir!"
+
+"T is betther wait till we 're in a house," said the old man, who was,
+however greedy for news, not a little desirous of a fire and something
+to eat. "Sure, you 'll come with us, and take yer share of what 's
+going," said he to me,--an invitation which, ere I could reply to, was
+reiterated by the whole party.
+
+"Do you know where we're going here?" asked Joe of me, as we continued
+our way through mazes of gloomy lanes that grew gradually less and less
+frequented.
+
+"No," said I, in a whisper, "but 'tis best be on our guard here: we are
+in a bad neighborhood."
+
+"Well, there's three boys there," said he, pointing to his sons, who
+walked in front, "that will pay for all they get. Will you ax the
+fellows how far we 're to go yet, for they don't mind me."
+
+"Are we near this same lodging-house?" said I, bluntly, to the guides,
+and using French, to show that I was no unfledged arrival from beyond
+the seas.
+
+"Ah!" cried one, "a gaillard from the battery."
+
+"Where from, à la gueule de loup, young mounsieur?" said the other,
+familiarly catching me by the lapel of my coat.
+
+"Because I am not afraid of his teeth," said I, with an easy effrontery
+my heart gave a flat lie to.
+
+"Vrai?" said he, with a laugh of horrible meaning.
+
+"Vrai!" repeated I, with a sinking courage, but a very bold voice.
+
+"I wish we were in better company," whispered I to Joe; "what directions
+did you give these fellows?"
+
+"To show us the best lodging-house for the night, and that we 'd pay
+well for it."
+
+"Ah!" thought I, "that explains something."
+
+"Here we are, mounseers," said one, as, stopping at the door of a
+two-storied house, he knocked with his knuckles on the panel.
+
+"Nous filions, slick, en suite, here," said the other, holding out his
+hand.
+
+"They are going!" whispered I; "they want to be paid, and we are well
+rid of them."
+
+"It would be manners to wait and see if they 'll let us in," said Joe,
+who did not fancy this summary departure, while he fumbled in his pocket
+for a suitable coin.
+
+"Vite!--quick!--sharp time!" cried one of the fellows, who, as the sound
+of voices was heard from within, seemed impatient to be off; and so,
+snatching rather than taking the shilling which still lingered in Joe's
+reluctant fingers, he wheeled about and fled, followed rapidly by the
+other.
+
+"Qui va!" cried a sharp voice from within, as I knocked for the second
+time on the door-panel with a stone.
+
+"Friends," said I; "we want a lodging and something to eat."
+
+The door was at once opened, and, by the light of a lantern, we saw the
+figure of an old woman, whose eyes, bleared and bloodshot, glared at us
+fixedly.
+
+"'Tis a lodgen' yez want?" said she, in an accent that showed her to be
+Irish. "And who brought yez here?"
+
+"Two young fellows we met on the quay," said Joe; "one called the other
+'Tony.'"
+
+"Ay, indeed!" muttered the hag; "I was sure of it: his own son! his own
+son!"
+
+These words she repeated in a tone of profound sorrow, and for a time
+seemed quite unmindful of our presence.
+
+"Are we to get in at all?" said the old man, in an accent of impatience.
+
+"What a hurry yer in; and maybe 'tis wishing yerself out again ye 'd be,
+after ye wor in!"
+
+"I think we'd better try somewhere else," whispered Joe to me; "I don't
+like the look of this place." Before I could reply to this, a loud yell
+burst forth from the end of the street, accompanied by the tramp of many
+people, who seemed to move in a kind of regulated step.
+
+"Here they are! Here they come!" cried the old woman; "step in quick,
+or ye 'll be too late!" and she dragged the young girls forward by the
+cloak into the hall; we followed without further question. Then, placing
+the lantern on the floor, she drew a heavy chain across the door, and
+dropped her cloak over the light, saying in a low, tremulous voice,
+"Them's the 'Tapageers!'"
+
+The crowd now came closer, and we perceived that they were singing in
+chorus a song, of which the air, at least, was Irish.
+
+The barbarous rhyme of one rude verse, as they sung it in passing, still
+lingers in my memory:
+
+
+     "No bloody agint here we see,
+     Ready to rack, distrain, and saze us;
+     Whatever we ax, we have it free,
+     And take at hand, whatever plaze us.
+     Row, row, row, Will yez show me, now,
+     The polis that 'll dare to face us!"
+
+"There they go! 'tis well ye wor safe!" said the old hag, as the sounds
+died away, and all became silent in the street without.
+
+"Who or what are they?" said I, my curiosity being stimulated by fear.
+
+"Them 's the 'Tapageers '! The chaps that never spared man or woman
+in their rounds. 'T is bad enough, the place is; but they make it far
+worse!"
+
+"Can we stop here for the night?" said Joe, growing impatient at the
+colloquy.
+
+"And what for wud ye stop here?" asked the crone, as she held up the
+lantern the better to see him who made the demand.
+
+"We want our supper, and a place to sleep," said the old man; "and we
+'re able and willin' to pay for both."
+
+"'T is a nice place ye kem for either!" said she; and she leaned back
+against the wall and laughed with a fiend-like malice that made my blood
+chill.
+
+"Then I suppose we must go somewhere else," said Joe. "Come, boys; 't is
+no use losing our time here!"
+
+"God speed you!" said she, preparing to undo the chain that fastened the
+door. "Ye have bould hearts, any way! There they go! d' ye hear them?"
+This was said in a half-whisper, as the wild yells of the "Tapageers"
+arose without; and soon after, the noise and tumult of a scuffle,--at
+least we could hear the crashing of sticks, and the shouting of a fray;
+from which, too, piercing cries for help burst forth.
+
+"What are ye doin'? Are ye mad? Are ye out of your sinses?" cried the
+hag, as Joe endeavored to wrest open the chain, the secret of which he
+did not understand.
+
+"They're murdering some one without there!" said he. "Let me free, or
+I'll kick down your old door this minute!"
+
+"Kick away, honey!" said the hag; "as strong men as yourself tried that
+a'ready; and--d'ye hear?--it's done now; it 's _over!_" These terrible
+words were in allusion to a low kind of sobbing sound, which grew
+fainter and fainter, and then ceased altogether.
+
+"They 're taking the body away," whispered she, after a pause of
+death-like stillness.
+
+"Where to?" said I, half breathless with terror.
+
+"To the river! the stream runs fast, and the corpse will be down below
+Goose Island,--ay, in the Gulf, 'fore morning!"
+
+The two young girls, unable longer to control their feelings, here burst
+out a crying; and the old man, pulling out a rosary, turned to the wall
+and began his prayers.
+
+"'Tis a bloody place; glory be to God!" said Joe, at last, with a sigh,
+and clasped his hands before him, like one unable to decide on what
+course to follow.
+
+I saw, now, that all were so paralyzed by fear that it devolved upon me
+to act for the rest; so, summoning my best courage, I said, "Will you
+allow us to stay here for the night, since we are strangers, and do not
+know where to seek shelter?" She shook her head, not so much with the
+air of refusing my request as to convey that I had asked for something
+scarce worth the granting.
+
+"We only want a shelter for the night--"
+
+"And a bit to eat," broke in the old man, turning round from his
+prayers. "Sanctificatur in sec'la,--if it was only a bit of belly bacon,
+and--Tower of Ivory, purtect us--with a pot of praties, and--Matthew,
+Mark, Luke, and John--"
+
+"Is he a friar?" said the hag to me, eagerly; "does he belong to an
+'ordher'?"
+
+"No," said I;" he's only a good Catholic."
+
+She wrung her hands, as if in disappointment; and then, taking up the
+lantern once more, said, "Come along! I 'll show yez where ye can stay."
+
+We followed, I leading the others, up a narrow and rickety stair,
+between two walls streaming with damp and patched with mould. When she
+reached the landing she searched for a moment for a key, which having
+found, she opened the door of a long low room, whose only furniture
+was a deal table and a few chairs; a candle stuck in a bottle, and some
+drinking-vessels of tin, were on the table, and a piece of newspaper
+containing some tobacco.
+
+"There," said she, lighting the candle, "you may stay here; 't is all I
+'m able to do for yez, is to give ye shelter."
+
+"And nothing to eat?" ejaculated the old man, sorrowfully.
+
+"Hav' n't you a few potatoes?" said Joe.
+
+"I did n't taste food since yesterday morning," said the hag; "and
+that's what's to keep life in me to-morrow!" and as she spoke, she held
+out a fragment of blackened sea-biscuit such as Russian sailors call
+"rusk."
+
+"Well, by coorse, there's no use in talking," said Joe, who always
+seemed the first to see his way clearly. "Tis worse for the girls, for
+_we_ can take a draw of the pipe. Lucky for us we have it!"
+
+Meanwhile, the two girls had taken off their cloaks, and were busy
+gathering some loose sticks together, to make a fire,--a piece of
+practical wisdom I at once lent all aid to.
+
+The hag, apparently moved by the ready compliance to make the best
+of matters, went out, and returned with some more wood,--fragments of
+ship-timber,--which she offered us, saying, "'T is all I can give yez.
+Good night to yez all!"
+
+"Well, father," said Joe, as soon as he had lighted his pipe, and taken
+a seat by the fire, "ye wor tired enough of the ship, but I think ye
+wish yerself back again there, now."
+
+"I wish more nor that," said the old man, querulously; "I wish I never
+seen the same ship; nor ever left ould Ireland!"
+
+This sentiment threw a gloom over the whole party, by awakening, not
+only memories of home and that far-away land, but also by the confession
+of a sense of disappointment which each was only able to struggle
+against while unavowed. The sorrow made them silent, and at last sleepy.
+At first, the three "boys," great fellows of six feet high, stretched
+themselves full-length on the floor, and snored away in concert; then
+the two girls, one with her head on the other's lap, fell off; while
+the old man, sitting directly in front of the fire, nodded backwards
+and forwards, waking up, every half hour or so, to light his pipe; which
+done, he immediately fell off into a doze once more, leaving Joe and
+myself alone, waking and watchful.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. A NIGHT IN THE LOWER TOWN
+
+Joe's eyes were bent upon me, as I sat directly opposite him, with a
+fixedness that I could easily see was occasioned by my showy costume;
+his glances ranged from my buckled shoes to my white cravat, adorned
+with a splendid brooch of mock amethyst; nay, I almost fancied once that
+he was counting the silver clocks on my silk stockings! It was a look of
+most undisguised astonishment,--such a look as one bestows upon some
+new and singular animal, of whose habits and instincts we are lost in
+conjecture.
+
+Now, I was "York too,"--that is to say, I was Irish as well as himself;
+and I well knew that there was no rank nor condition of man for which
+the peasant in Ireland conceives the same low estimate as the "Livery
+Servant." The class is associated in his mind with chicanery, impudence,
+falsehood, theft, and a score of similar good properties; not to add
+that, being occasionally, in great families, a native of England, the
+Saxon element is united to the other "bitters" of the potion.
+
+Scarcely a "tenant" could be found that would not rather face a mastiff
+than a footman,--such is the proverbial dislike to these human lilies
+who neither toil nor spin. Now, I have said I knew this well: I had
+been reared in the knowledge and practice of this and many similar
+antipathies, so that I at once took counsel with myself what I should
+do to escape from the reproach of a mark so indelibly stamped upon me
+by externals. "La famille Cullinane" suited _me_ admirably; they were
+precisely the kind of people _I_ wanted; my care, therefore, was that
+they should reciprocate the want, and be utterly helpless without _me_.
+Thus reflecting, I could not help saying to myself, how gladly would
+I have parted with all these gauds for a homely, ay, or even a ragged,
+suit of native frieze. I remembered the cock on the dunghill who would
+have given his diamond for one single grain of corn; and I felt that
+"Æsop" was a grand political economist.
+
+From these and similar mental meanderings I was brought back by Joe,
+who, after emptying the ashes from his pipe, said, and with a peculiarly
+dry voice, "Ye 'r in a service, young man?"
+
+Now, although the words are few, and the speaker did not intend that his
+manner should have given them any particular significance, yet the tone,
+the cautious slowness of the enunciation, coupled with the stern, steady
+stare at my "bravery," made them tingle on my ears, and send the blood
+rushing to my cheeks with shame. It was like a sharp prick of the spur;
+and so it turned out.
+
+"In a service!" said I, with a look of offended dignity. "No, I flatter
+myself not that low yet. What could have made you suppose so? Oh, I see!
+"--here I burst out into a very well-assumed laugh. "That is excellent,
+to be sure! ha, ha, ha! so it was these"--and I stretched forth my
+embroidered shins--"it was these deceived you! And a very natural
+mistake, too. No, my worthy friend,--not but, indeed, I might envy many
+in that same ignoble position." I said this with a sudden change of
+voice, as though overcast by some sad recollection.
+
+"'Twas indeed your dress," said Joe, with a modest deference in his
+manner, meant to be a full apology for his late blunder. "Maybe 'tis the
+fashion here."
+
+"No, Cullinane," said I, using a freedom which should open the way to
+our relative future standing; "no, not even that." Here I heaved a heavy
+sigh, and became silent. My companion, abashed by his mistake, said
+nothing; and so we sat, without interchanging a word, for full five
+minutes.
+
+"I have had a struggle with myself, Cullinane," said I, at last, "and
+I have conquered. Ay, I have gained the day in a hard-fought battle
+against my sense of shame. I will be frank with you, therefore. In this
+dress I appeared to-night on the boards of the Quebec theatre."
+
+"A play actor!" exclaimed Joe, with a face very far from expressing any
+high sense of the histrionic art.
+
+"Not exactly," said I, "only a would-be one. I am a gentleman by birth,
+family, and fortune; but taking it into my head, in a foolish hour,
+that I should like the excitement of an actor's life, I fled from home,
+quitted friends, relatives, affluence, and ease, to follow a strolling
+company. At another time I may relate to you all the disguises I assumed
+to escape detection. Immense sums were offered for my apprehension--why
+do I say _were?_--ay, Cullinane, are offered. I will not deceive you. It
+is in your power this instant, by surrendering me to my family, to earn
+five thousand dollars!"
+
+"Do ye think I'd be--"
+
+"No, I do not. In proof of my confidence in you, hear my story. We
+travelled through the States at first by unfrequented routes till we
+reached the North, when, gaining courage, I ventured to take a high
+range of characters, and, I will own it, with success. At last we came
+to Canada, in which country, although the reward had not been announced,
+my father had acquainted all the principal people with my flight,
+entreating them to do their utmost to dissuade me from a career so far
+below my rank and future prospects. Among others, he wrote to an old
+friend and schoolfellow, the Governor-General, requesting his aid in
+this affair. I was always able, from other sources, to learn every
+step that was taken with this object; so that I not only knew this, but
+actually possessed a copy of my father's letter to Lord Poynder, wherein
+this passage occurred: 'Above all things, my dear Poynder, no publicity,
+no exposure! Remember the position Cornelius will one day hold, and let
+him not be ashamed when he may meet you in after-life. If the silly boy
+can be induced, by his own sense of dignity, to abandon this unworthy
+pursuit, so much the better; but coercion would, I fear, give faint hope
+of eradicating the evil.' Now, as I perceived that no actual force was
+to be employed against me, I did not hesitate to appear in the part for
+which the bills announced me. Have you ever read Shakespeare?"
+
+"No, sir," said Joe, respectfully.
+
+"Well, no matter. I was to appear as Hamlet,--this is the dress of that
+character,--little suspecting, indeed, how the applause I was accustomed
+to receive was to be changed. To be brief. In the very centre of the
+dress-circle was the Governor himself, he came with his whole staff, but
+with out any previous intimation. No sooner had I made my entrance on
+the scene,--scarcely had I begun that magnificent soliloquy, 'Show me
+the thief that stole my fame,'--when his Excellency commenced hissing!
+Now, when the Governor-General hisses, all the staff hiss; then the
+President of the Council and all his colleagues hiss; then come
+the bishop and the inferior clergy, with the judges and the
+Attorney-General, and so on; then all the loyal population of the house
+joined in, with the exception of a few in the galleries that hated the
+British connection, and who cried out, 'Three cheers for Con Cregan and
+the independence of Canada!' In this way went on the first act; groans
+and yells and cat-calls overtopping all I tried to say, and screams for
+the manager to come out issuing from every part of the house. At last
+out he did come. This for a while made matters worse; so many directions
+were given, questions asked, and demands made that it was clearly
+impossible to hear any one voice; and there stood the manager, swinging
+his arms about like an insane telegraph, now running to the stage-box at
+one side, then crossing over to the other, to maintain a little
+private conversation by signs, till the sense of the house spoke out by
+accidentally catching a glimpse of me in the side-scenes.
+
+"'Is it your pleasure, my lords, ladies, and gentlemen, that this actor
+should not appear again before you?'
+
+"'Yes--yes. No--no--no,'were shouted from hundreds of voices.
+
+"' What am I to understand?' said he, bowing, with his arms crossed
+submissively before him. 'I submit myself to your orders. If Mr. Cregan
+does not meet your approbation--'
+
+"'Throw him into the dock!--break his neck!--set him adrift on a
+log down the Gulf-stream!--chip him up for bark!--burn him for
+charcoal!'--and twenty other like humane proposals burst forth together;
+and so, not waiting to see how far the manager's politeness would carry
+him, I fled from the theatre. Yes, Cullinane, I fled with shame and
+disgust from that fickle public, who applaud with ecstasy today that
+they may condemn with infamy to-morrow. Nor was I deceived by the vain
+egotism of supposing that _I_ was the object of their ungenerous anger.
+Alas! my friend, the evil lay deeper,--it was my Irish name and family
+they sought to insult! The old grudge that they bear us at home, they
+carry over the seas with them. How plain it is: they never can forgive
+our superiority. It is this they seek revenge upon wherever they find
+us."
+
+I own that in giving this peculiar turn to my narrative I was led by
+perceiving that my listener had begun to show a most lamentable want
+of sympathy for myself and my sufferings; so I was driven to try what
+a little patriotism might do in arousing his feelings; and I was right.
+Some of Cullnane's connections had been Terrys,--or Blackfeet, or
+White-feet, or some one or other of these pleasant fraternities who
+study ball-practice, with a landlord for the bull's-eye. He at once
+caught up the spirit of my remarks, and even quoted some eloquent
+passages of Mr. O'Connell about the width of our shoulders and the
+calves of our legs, and other like personal advantages, incontestably
+showing as they do that we never were made to be subject to the Saxon.
+It was the law of the land, however, which had his heartiest abhorrence.
+This, like nine-tenths of his own class in Ireland, he regarded as a
+systematic means of oppression, invented by the rich to give them the
+tyrannical dominion over the poor. Nor is the belief to be wondered at,
+considering how cognizant the peasant often is of all the schemes and
+wiles by which a conviction is compassed; nay, the very adroitness of
+a legal defence in criminal cases,--the feints, the quips, the
+stratagems,--instead of suggesting admiration for those barriers by
+which the life and liberty of a subject are protected, only engendered a
+stronger conviction of the roguish character of that ordeal where craft
+and subtlety could do so much.
+
+It was at the close of a very long diatribe over Irish law and lawyers
+that Cullinane, whose confidence increased each moment, said, with a
+sigh, "Ay! they wor n't so 'cute in ould times, when my poor grandfather
+was tried, as they are now, or may be he'd have had betther luck."
+
+"What happened to him?" said I.
+
+"He was hanged, acushla!" said he, knocking the ashes out of his pipe as
+leisurely as might be, and then mumbling a scrap of a prayer below his
+breath.
+
+"For what?" asked I, in some agitation; but he didn't hear me, being
+sunk in his own reflections, so that I was forced to repeat my question.
+
+"Ye never heerd of one Mr. Shinane, of the Grove?" said he, after a
+pause. "Of coorse ye did n't,--'tis many years ago now; but he was well
+known oncet, and owned a great part of Ennistymore, and a hard man
+he was. But no matter for that,--he was a strong, full man, with rosy
+cheeks and stout built, and sorra a lease in the country had not his
+life in it!--a thing he liked well, for he used to say, 't 'll be the
+ruin of ye all, if any one shoots me!' Well, my grandfather--rest his
+sowl in glory!--was his driver, and used to manage everything on the
+property for him; and considerin' what a hard thing it is, he was well
+liked by the country round,--all but by one man, Maurice Cafferty by
+name. I never seed him, for it was all 'fore I was born; but the name is
+in my mind as if I knew him well,--I used to hear it every night of my
+life when I was a child!
+
+"There was a dispute about Cafferty's houldin', and my grandfather was
+for turnin' him out, for he was a bad tenant; but Mr. Shinane was afeerd
+of him, and said, 'Leave him quiet, Mat,' says he; 'he's a troublesome
+chap, and we 'll get rid of him in our own good time; but don't drive
+him to extremities: I told him to come up to the cottage, this morning:
+come with me there, and we 'll talk to him.' Now, the cottage was a
+little place about two miles off, in the woods, where the master used to
+dine sometimes in summer, when they were chipping bark; but nobody lived
+there.
+
+"It was remarked by many that morning, as they went along, that my
+grandfather and Mr. Shinane were in high words all the time,--at least,
+so the people working in the fields thought, and even the childer that
+was picking bark said that they were talking as if they were very angry
+with each other.
+
+"This was about eleven o'clock, and at the same time Cafferty, who was
+selling a pig in Ennistymore, said to the butcher, 'Be quick, and tell
+me what you 'll give, for I must go home and clean myself, as I 'm to
+speak to the master today about my lease.' Well, at a little before
+twelve Cafferty came through the wood, and asked the people had they
+seen Mr. Shinane pass by, for that he towld him to meet him at the
+cottage; and the workmen said yes, and more by token that he was
+quarrellin' with Mat Cullinane. 'I'm sorry for that,' says Cafferty,
+'for I wanted him to be in a good humor, and long life to him! 'The
+words was n't well out, but what would they see but my grandfather
+running towards them, at the top of his speed, screeching out like mad,
+'The master's murdered! the master's kilt dead!' Away they all went to
+the cottage, and there upon the floor was the dead body, with an axe
+buried deep in the skull,--so deep that only the thick part of the
+iron was outside. That was the dreadful sight! and, sure enough, after
+looking at the corpse, every eye was turned on my grandfather, who was
+leaning on the dresser, pale and trembling, and his hands and knees
+all covered with blood. 'How did it happen, Mat?' said three or four
+together; but Cafferty muttered, 'It's better ask nothing about it; it's
+not likely _he 'll_ tell us the truth!'
+
+"The same night my grandfather was arrested on suspicion and brought to
+Ennis, where he was lodged in jail; and although there was no witness
+agin' him, nor anything more than I towld ye,--the high words between
+them, the axe being my grandfather's, the blood on his clothes and
+hands, and his dreadful confusion when the people came up,--all these
+went so hard against him, and particularly as the judge said it was good
+to make an example, that he was condemned; and so it was he was hanged
+on the next Saturday in front of the jail!"
+
+"But what defence did he make; what account did he give of the
+circumstance?"
+
+"All he could tell was, that he was standing beside the master at the
+table, talking quietly, when he heard a shout and a yell in the wood,
+and he said, 'They 're stealing the bark out there; they 'll not leave
+us a hundredweight of it yet!' and out he rushed into the copse. The
+shouting grew louder, and he thought it was some of the men cryin' for
+help, and so he never stopped running till he came where they were at
+work felling trees. 'What's the matter?' says he, to the men, as he came
+up panting and breathless; 'where was the screeching?'
+
+"'We heerd nothing,' says the men.
+
+"'Ye heerd nothing! didn't ye hear yells and shouting this minute?'
+
+"'Sorra bit,' says the men, looking strangely at each other, for my
+grandfather was agitated, and trembling, between anger and a kind of
+fear; just as he said afterwards, 'as if there was something dreadful
+going to happen him!' 'Them was terrible cries, anyway!' says my
+grandfather; and with that he turned back to the cottage, and it was
+then that he found the master lying dead on his face, and the axe in his
+skull. He tried to lift him up, or turn him over on his back, and that
+was the way he bloodied his hands and all the front of his clothes. That
+was all he had to say, and to swear before the sight of Heaven that he
+didn't do it!
+
+"No matter! they hanged him for it! Ay, and I have an ould newspaper
+in my trunk this minit, where there 's a great discourse about the
+wickedness of a crayture going out of the world wid a lie on his last
+breath!"
+
+"And you think he was innocent?" said I.
+
+"Sure, we know it! sure, the priest said to my father,--'Take courage,'
+says he, 'your father is n't in a bad place if he 's in purgatory,' says
+he,' he 's not over the broken bridge, where the murderers does be, but
+in the meadows, where the stream is shallow, and stepping-stones in it!
+and every stone costs ten masses--sorra more! 'God help us! but blood
+is a dreadful thing!" And with this reflection, uttered in a voice of
+fervent feeling, the hardy peasant laid down his pipe; and I could
+see, by his muttering lips and clasped hands, that he was offering up a
+prayer for the soul's rest of his unhappy kinsman.
+
+"And what became of Cafferty?" said I, as he finished his devotions.
+
+"'T was never rightly known; for, after he gave evidence on the trial,
+the people did n't like him, and he left the place; some say he went to
+his mother's relations down in Kerry!"
+
+The deep-drawn breathings of the sleepers around us; the unbroken
+stillness of the night; the fast-expiring embers, which only flickered
+at intervals,--contributed their aid to make the story more deeply
+affecting; and I sat pondering over it, and canvassing within my mind
+all the probabilities of the condemned man's guilt or innocence; nor,
+I must own it, were all my convictions on the side of the narrator's
+belief; but even that very doubt heightened the interest considerably.
+As for Cullinane, his thoughts were evidently less with the incidents
+of the characters as they lived, than with that long pilgrimage of
+expiation, in which his imagination pictured his poor relative still a
+wanderer beyond the grave.
+
+The fire now barely flickered, throwing from time to time little jets of
+light upon the sleeping figures around us, and then leaving all in dark
+indistinctness. My companion also, crouching down, hid his face within
+his hands, and either slept or was lost in deep thought, and I alone of
+all the party was left awake, my mind dwelling on the tale I had
+just heard, with a degree of interest to which the place and the hour
+strongly contributed.
+
+I had been for some time thus, when the sound of feet moving heavily
+overhead attracted my attention; they were like the sluggish footsteps
+of age, but passing to and fro with what seemed haste and eagerness. I
+could hear a voice, too, which even in its indistinctness I recognized
+as that of the old woman; and once or twice fancied I could detect
+another, whose accents sounded like pain and suffering. The shuffling
+footsteps still continued, and I heard the old crazy sash of the window
+open, and after an interval shut again, while I distinctly could catch
+the old hag's voice saying, "It 's all dark without; there 's no use
+'trying'!" a low whining sound followed; and then I heard the old woman
+slowly descending the stairs, and, by the motion of her hand along the
+wall, I conjectured that she had no light.
+
+She stopped as she came to the door, and seemed to listen to the
+long-drawn breathing of the sleepers; and then she pushed open the
+door and entered. With a strange dread of what this might mean, I still
+resolved to let the event take its course; and, feigning deepest sleep,
+I lay back against the wall and watched her well.
+
+Guiding herself along by the wall, she advanced slowly, halting every
+second or third step to listen,--a strange precaution, since her own
+asthmatic breathing was enough to mask all other sounds. At last she
+neared the grate; and then her thin and cord-like fingers passed from
+the wall, to rest upon my head. It was with a kind of thrill I felt
+them; for I perceived by the touch that she did not know on what her
+hand was placed. She knelt down now, close beside me, and, stooping
+over, stirred the embers with her fingers till she discovered some faint
+resemblance to fire, amid the dark ashes. To brighten this into flame,
+she blew upon it for several minutes, and, even taking the live embers
+in her hands, tried in every way to kindle them.
+
+With a patience that seemed untirable, she continued at this for a long
+time; now selecting from the hearth some new material to work upon, and
+now abandoning it for another; till, when I had almost grown drowsy in
+watching this monotonous process, a thin bright light sprung up, and I
+saw that she had lighted a little piece of candle that she held in her
+hand. I think even now I have her before me, as, crouched down upon her
+knees, and sheltering the candle from the current air of the room, she
+took a stealthy, but searching, glance at the figures, who, in every
+attitude of weariness, were sleeping heavily around.
+
+It was not without a great effort that she regained her feet, for she
+was very old and infirm; and now she retraced her steps cautiously as
+she came,--stooping at intervals to listen, and then resuming her way
+as before. I watched her till she passed out; and then, as I heard her
+first heavy footstep on the stair, I slipped off my shoes and followed
+her.
+
+My mind throughout the whole of that night had been kept in a state of
+tension that invariably has the effect of magnifying the significance of
+every, even the very commonest, occurrences. It resembles that peculiar
+condition in certain maladies when the senses become preternaturally
+acute; in such moments the reason is never satisfied with drawing only
+from inferences for any fact before it; it seeks for more, and in the
+effort becomes lost in the mazes of mere fancy. I will own that as, with
+stealthy step and noiseless gesture, I followed that old hag, there was
+a kind of ecstasy in my terror which no mere sense of pleasure could
+convey. The light seemed to show ghastly shapes, as she passed, on
+the green and mouldy walls, and her head, with its masses of long and
+straggling gray hair, nodded in shadow like some unearthly spectre.
+
+As she came nigh the top, I heard a weak and whining cry, something too
+deep for the voice of infancy, but seeming too faint for manhood. "Ay,
+ay," croaked the hag, harshly, "I'm coming, I'm coming!" and as she said
+this, she pushed open a door and entered a room, which, by the passing
+gleam of light as she went, I perceived lay next to the roof, for the
+rafters and the tiles were both visible, as there was no ceiling.
+
+I held my breath as I slowly stole along, and then, reaching the door as
+it lay half ajar, I crouched down and peeped in.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. A "SCENE" AND "MY LUCUBRATIONS ON THE ST. LAWRENCE."
+
+When the light of the candle which the old woman carried had somewhat
+dissipated the darkness, I could see the whole interior of the room; and
+certainly, well habituated as I had been from my earliest years to such
+sights, poverty like this I never had seen before! Not a chair nor table
+was there; a few broken utensils for cooking, such as are usually
+thrown away as useless among rubbish, stood upon the cold hearth. A few
+potatoes on one broken dish, and a little meat on another, were the only
+things like food. It was not for some minutes that I perceived in the
+corner a miserable bed of straw confined within a plank, supported by
+two rough stones; nor was it till I had looked long and closely that I
+saw that the figure of a man lay extended on the bed, his stiffened and
+outstretched limbs resembling those of a corpse. Towards this the old
+woman now tottered with slow steps, and, setting the small piece of
+candle upright in a saucer, she approached the bed. "There it is, now;
+look at it, and make yer mind aisy," said she, placing it on the floor
+beside the bed, in such a position that he could see it.
+
+The sick man turned his face round, and as his eyes met the light, there
+came over his whole features a wondrous change. Livid and clammy with
+the death-sweat, the rigid muscles relaxed, and in the staring eyeballs
+and the parted lips there seemed a perfect paroxysm of emotion. "Is that
+it?--are ye sure that's it?" cried he, in a voice to which the momentary
+excitement imparted strength.
+
+"To be sure I am; I seen Father Ned bless it himself, and sprinkle it
+too!" said she.
+
+"Oh, the heavenly--" He stopped, and in a lower voice added, "Say it for
+me, Molly!--say it for me, Molly! I can't say it myself."
+
+"Keep your eyes on the blessed candle!" said the hag, peevishly; "'t is
+a quarter dollar it cost me."
+
+"Wouldn't he come, Molly?--did he say he wouldn't come?"
+
+"Father Ned! arrah, 'tis likely he'd come here at night, with the
+Tapageers on their rounds, and nothing to give him when he kem!"
+
+"Not to hear my last words!--not to take my confession!" cried he, in a
+kind of shriek. "Oh, 'tis the black list of sins I have to own to!"
+
+"Whisht, whisht!" cried the hag. "'T is many a year ago now; maybe it's
+all forgot."
+
+"No, it's not," cried the dying man, with a wild energy he did not seem
+to have strength for. "When you wor away, Molly, he was here, standing
+beside the bed."
+
+The old hag laughed with a horrid sardonic laugh.
+
+"Don't--don't, for the love of--ah--I can't say--I can't say it," cried
+he; and the voice died away in the effort.
+
+"What did he say to ye when he kem?" said she, in a scoffing tone.
+
+"He never spoke a word, but he pressed back the cloth that was on his
+head, and I saw the deep cut in it, down to the very face!"
+
+"Well, I am sure it had time to heal before this time," said the woman,
+with a tone of mockery that at last became palpable to the dying man.
+
+"Where's Dan, Molly,--did he never come back since?"
+
+"Sorra bit; he said he'd go out of the house, and never come back to
+it. You frightened the boy with the terrible things you say in your
+ravings."
+
+"Oh, murther--murther! My own flesh and blood desart me!"
+
+"Then why won't you be raisonable,--why won't you hould your peace about
+what happened long agone?"
+
+"Because I can't," said he, with a peevish eagerness. "Because I'm going
+where it's all known a'ready."
+
+"Faix, and I would n't be remindin' them, anyway!" said the hag, whose
+sarcastic impiety added fresh tortures to the dying sinner.
+
+"I wanted to tell Father Ned all; I wanted to have masses for him that's
+gone,--the man that suffered instead of me! Oh, dear!--Oh, dear!--and
+nobody will come to me."
+
+"If ye cry that loud, I 'll leave you too," said the hag. "They know
+already 'tis the spotted fever ye have, and the Tapageers would burn the
+house under ye, if I was to go."
+
+"Don't go, Molly,--don't leave me," he cried, with heart-rending
+anguish. "Bring the blessed candle nearer; I don't see it well."
+
+"You'll see less of it soon; 'tis nigh out," said she, snuffing the wick
+with her fingers.
+
+The dying man now stretched out his fleshless fingers towards the light,
+and I could see by his lips that he was praying. "They 're calling me
+now," cried he, "Molly,"--and his voice of a sudden grew strong and
+full,--"don't ye hear them? There it is again,--'Maurice Cafferty,
+Maurice Cafferty, yer wantin''."
+
+"Lie down and be at peace," said she, rudely pushing him back on the
+bed.
+
+"The blessed candle, where's the blessed candle?" shrieked he.
+
+"'T is out," said the hag; and as she spoke, the wick fell into the
+saucer, and all was dark.
+
+A wild and fearful cry broke from the sick man and re-echoed through
+the silent house; and ere it died away I had crept stealthily back to my
+place beside my companions.
+
+"'Did ye hear anything, or was I dreamin'?" said Joe to me; "I thought I
+heard the most dreadful scream,--like a man drownin'."
+
+"It was a dream, perhaps," said I, shuddering at the thought of what I
+had just witnessed, while I listened with terrible anxiety for auy sound
+overhead; but none came; and so passed the long hours till day-dawn.
+
+Without revealing to my companion the terrible scene I had been witness
+to, I told him that we were in the same house with a fearful malady,--an
+announcement I well knew had greater terror for none than an Irish
+peasant. He at once decided on departing; and, although day was barely
+breaking, he awoke the others, and a low whispering conversation ensued,
+in which I felt, or imagined, at least, that I was an interested party.
+At last Joe, turning towards me, said, "And you, sir, what do you mean
+to do!"
+
+"The very question," said I, "that I cannot answer. If I were to follow
+my inclination, I 'd turn homeward; if I must yield to necessity, I 'll
+call upon the Governor-General, and remain with him till I hear from my
+friends."
+
+There was a pause; a moment of deliberation seemed to fall upon the
+bystanders, which at length was broken by the old man saying, "Well,
+good luck be with you; any way, 't is the best thing you could do!"
+
+I saw that I had overshot my bolt, and with difficulty concealed my
+annoyance at my own failure. My irritation was, I conclude, sufficiently
+apparent, for Joe quickly said, "We 're very sorry to part with you; but
+if we could be of any use before we go--"
+
+"Which way do you travel?" said I, carelessly.
+
+"That's the puzzle, for we don't know the country. 'T is New Orleans
+we'd like to go to first."
+
+"Nothing easier," said I. "Take the steamer to Montreal, cross over into
+the States, down Lake Champlain to Whitehall, over to Albany, and then
+twenty hours down the Hudson brings you to New York."
+
+"You know the way well!" said Joe, with an undisguised admiration for
+my geography, which, I need not tell the reader, was all acquired from
+books and maps.
+
+"I should think so," said I, "seeing that I might travel it blindfold!"
+
+"Is it dangerous? Are there Injians?" said the old man, whose mind
+seemed very alive to the perils of red men.
+
+"There are some tribes on the way," said I; "but the white fellows you
+meet with are worse than the red ones,--such rogues, and assassins too!"
+
+"The saints presarve us! How will we ever do it?"
+
+"Look out for some smart fellow who knows the way and thoroughly
+understands the people, and who can speak French fluently, for the first
+part of the journey, and who is up to all the Yankee roguery, for the
+second. Give him full power to guide and direct your expedition, and you
+'ll have both a safe journey and a pleasant one."
+
+"Ay, and where will we get him?" cried one.
+
+"And what would he be askin' for his trouble?" said another; while Joe,
+with an assenting nod, reiterated both questions, and seemed to expect
+that answer from me.
+
+"It ought to be easy enough in such a city as this," said I,
+negligently. "Are you acquainted with Forbes and Gudgeon? They are my
+bankers. They could, I am sure, find out your man at once."
+
+"Ah, sir, we know nobody at all!" exclaimed Joe, in an accent of such
+humility that I actually felt shocked at my own duplicity.
+
+"By Jove!" said I, as though a sudden thought had struck me, "very
+little would make me go with you myself." A regular burst of joy from
+the whole party here interrupted me. "Yes, I'm quite in earnest," said
+I, with a dignified air. "This place will be excessively distasteful to
+me henceforth. I have placed myself in what is called a false position
+here, and 'twere far better to escape from it at once."
+
+"That would be the making of us, all out, if ye could come, Mr. Cregan!"
+said Joe.
+
+"Let me interrupt you one moment," said I. "If I should accompany you on
+this journey, there is one condition only upon which I would consent to
+it."
+
+"Whatever you like; only say it," said he, over whom I had established a
+species of magnetic influence.
+
+"It is this, then," said I, "that you treat me on terms of perfect
+equality,--forget my birth and rank in life; regard me exactly as one of
+yourselves. Let me be no longer anything but 'Con Cregan.'"
+
+"That's mighty handsome, entirely!" said the old man,--a sentiment
+concurred in by the whole family in chorus.
+
+"Remember, then," said I, "no more 'Mr. Cregan.' I am 'Con'--nothing
+more!"
+
+Joe looked unutterable delight at the condescension.
+
+"Secondly, I should not wish to go back to my lodgings here, after what
+has occurred; so I 'll write a few lines to have my trunks forwarded to
+Montreal, until which time I 'll ask of you to procure me a change of
+costume, for I cannot bear to be seen in this absurd dress by daylight."
+
+"To be sure; whatever you please!" said Joe, overjoyed at the projected
+arrangement.
+
+After some further discussion on the subject, I inquired where their
+luggage was stored, and learned that it lay at the Montreal Steamer
+Wharf, where it had been deposited the preceding day; and by a bill of
+the packets, which Joe produced, I saw that she was to sail that very
+morning, at eight o'clock. There was then no time to lose; so I advised
+my companions to move silently and noiselessly from the house, and to
+follow me. With an implicit reliance on every direction I uttered, they
+stole carefully down the stairs and issued into the street, which was
+now perfectly deserted.
+
+Although in total ignorance of the locality, I stepped out confidently;
+and first making for the Harbor, as a "point of departure," I at last
+reached the "New Wharf," as the station of the river steamers was
+called. With an air of the most consummate effrontery, I entered the
+office to bargain for our passage; and although the clerks were not
+sparing of their ridicule both on my pretensions and my costume, as the
+conversation was carried on in French, my companions stared in wonder
+at my fluency, and in silent ecstasy at the good fortune that had thrown
+them into such guidance.
+
+It was a busy morning for me; since besides getting their luggage on
+board and procuring them a hearty breakfast, I had also to arrange about
+my own costume, of which I now felt really ashamed at every step.
+
+At length we got under way, and steamed stoutly against the fast-flowing
+St. Lawrence; our decks crowded with a multifarious and motley crew of
+emigrants, all bound for various places in the Upper Province, but with
+as pleasant an ignorance of where they were going, what it was like, and
+how far off, as the most devoted fatalist could have wished for. A few,
+and they were the shrewd exceptions, remembered the name of the city in
+whose neighborhood they were about to settle; many more could only say,
+negatively, that it was n't Lachine, nor it was n't Trois Rivières; some
+were only capable of affirming that it was "beyant Montreal," or "higher
+up than Kingston;" and, lastly, a "few bright spirits" were going, "wid
+the help o' God, where Dan was," or "Peter." They were not downhearted,
+nor anxious, nor fretful for all this; far from it. It seemed as if
+the world before them, in all the attractions of its novelty, suggested
+hope. They had left a land so full of wretchedness that no change could
+well be worse; so they sat in pleasant little knots and groups upon the
+deck "discoorsin!" Ay, just so,--"discoorsin'"! Sassenach that you are,
+I hear you muttering, "What is that?" Well, I'll tell you. "Discoorsin'"
+is not talking, nor chaffing, nor mere conversing. It is not the
+_causerie_ of the French, nor the _conversazione_ of Italy, nor is it
+the _Gespräch's Unterhaltung_ of plodding old Germany; but it is an
+admirable _mélange_ of all together. It is a grand _olla podrida_, where
+all things, political, religious, agricultural, and educational, are
+discussed with such admirable keeping, such uniformity in the tone of
+sentiment and expression, that it would be difficult to detect a change
+in the subject-matter, from the quiet monotony of its handling. The
+Pope; the praties; Molly Somebody's pig and the Priest's pony; Dan
+O'Connell's last installment of hope; the price of oats; the late
+assizes; laments over the past,--the blessed days when there was little
+law and no police; when masses were cheap, and mutton to be had for
+stealing it,--such were the themes in vogue. And though generally one
+speaker "held the floor," there was a running chorus of "Sure enough!"
+"Devil fear ye!" "An' why not?" kept up, that made every hearer a
+sleeping partner in the eloquence. Dissent or contradiction was a thing
+unheard of; they were all subjects upon which each felt precisely alike.
+
+No man's experience pointed to anything save rainy seasons and wet
+potatoes, cheap bacon and high county cess. Life had its one phase
+of monotonous want, only broken in upon by the momentary orgie of an
+election, or the excitement of a county town on the Saturday of an
+execution.
+
+And so it was. Like the nor'-easter that followed them over the seas,
+came all the memories of what they had left behind. They had little care
+for even a passing look at the new and strange objects around them. The
+giant cedar-trees along the banks,--the immense rafts, like floating
+islands, hurrying past on the foaming current, with myriads of
+figures moving on them,--the endless forests of dark pines, the quaint
+log-houses, unlike those farther north, and with more pretension to
+architectural design,--and now and then a Canadian "bateau" shooting
+past like a sword-fish, its red-capped crew saluting the steamer with a
+wild cheer that would wake the echoes many a mile away: if they looked
+at these, it was easy to see that they noted them but indifferently;
+their hearts were far away. Ay, in spite of misery, and hardship, and
+famine, and flood, they were away in the wilds of Erris, in the bleak
+plains of Donegal, or the lonely glens of Connemara.
+
+It has often struck me that our rulers should have perpetuated the names
+of Irish localities in the New World. One must have experienced the
+feeling himself to know the charm of this simple association. The hourly
+recurring name that speaks so familiarly of home, is a powerful antidote
+to the sense of banishment. Well, here I am, prosing about emigrants,
+and their regrets, and wants, and hopes, and wishes, and forgetting the
+while the worthy little group who, with a hot "net" of potatoes (for in
+this fashion each mess is allowed to boil its quota), and a very savory
+cut of ham, awaited my presence in the steerage; they were good and
+kindly souls every one of them. The old grandfather was a fine prosy old
+grumbler about the year '98 and the terrible doings of the "Orangemen."
+Joe was a stout-hearted, frank fellow that only wanted fair play in
+the world to make his path steadily onward. The sons were, in Irish
+parlance, "good boys," and the girls fine-tempered and good-natured,--as
+ninety-nine out of the hundred are in the land they come from.
+
+Now, shall I forfeit some of my kind reader's consideration if I say
+that, with all these excellences, and many others besides, they became
+soon inexpressibly tiresome to me. There was not a theme they spoke on
+that I had not already by heart. Irish grievances, in all their moods
+and tenses, had been always "stock pieces" in my father's cabin, and
+I am bound to acknowledge that the elder Cregan had a sagacity
+of perception, a shrewdness of discrimination, and an aptitude of
+expression not to be found every day. Listening to the Culliuanes after
+him was like hearing the butler commenting in the servants' hall over
+the debate one had listened to in "the House." It was a strange, queer
+sensation that I felt coming over me as we travelled along day by day
+together, and I can even now remember the shriek of ecstasy that escaped
+me one morning when I had hit upon the true analysis of my feelings,
+and, jumping up, I exclaimed, "Con, you _are_ progressing, my boy; you
+'ll be a gentleman yet; you have learned to be '_bored' already!_" From
+that hour I cultivated "my Cullinanes" as people take a course of a Spa,
+where, nauseous and distasteful at the time, one fancies he is to store
+up Heaven knows how many years of future health and vigor.
+
+In a former chapter of these Confessions I have told the reader the
+singular sensations I experienced when first under the influence of port
+wine: how a kind of trausfusion, as it were, of Conservative principles,
+a respect for order, a love of decorum, a sleepy indisposition to see
+anything like confusion going on about me,--all feelings which, I take
+it, are eminently gentleman-like. Well, this fastidious weariness of
+the Cullinanes was evidently the "second round of the ladder." "It is a
+grand thing to be able to look down upon any one!" I do not mean this
+in any invidious or unworthy sense; not for the sake of depreciating
+others, but purely for the sake of one's own self-esteem. I would
+but convey that the secret conviction of superiority is amazingly
+exhilarating. To "hold your stride" beside an intellect that you can
+pass when you like, and yet merely accompany to what is called "make
+a race," is rare fun; to see the other using every effort of whip and
+spur, bustling, shaking, and lifting, while you, well down in your
+saddle, never put the rowel to the flank of your fancy,--this is indeed
+glorious sport! In return for this, however, there is an intolerable
+degree of lassitude in the daily association of people who are satisfied
+to talk forever of the same things in the same terms.
+
+The incidents of our journey were few and uninteresting. At Montreal I
+received a very civil note from Mrs. Davis, accompanying my trunk and my
+purse. In the few lines I had written to her from the packet-office, I
+said that my performance of a servant's character in her establishment
+had been undertaken for a wager, which I had just won; that I begged of
+her, in consequence, to devote the wages owing to me to any charitable
+office she should think fit, and kindly to forward my effects to
+Montreal, together with a certificate, under her hand, that my real rank
+and station had never been detected during my stay in her house: this
+document being necessary to convince my friend Captain Pike that I had
+fulfilled the conditions of our bet.
+
+Mrs. Davis's reply was a gem. "She had heard or read of Conacre, but
+didn't suspect we were the Cregans of that place. She did not know how
+she could ever forgive herself for having subjected me to menial duties.
+She had indeed been struck--as who had not?--with certain traits of my
+manner and address." In fact, poor Mrs. D., what with the material
+for gossip suggested by the story, the surprise, and the saving of the
+wages--for I suspect that, like the Duke in Junius, her charity ended
+where it is proverbially said to begin, at home,--was in a perfect
+paroxysm of delight with me, herself, and the whole human race.
+
+To me, this was a precious document; it was a patent of gentility at
+once. It was a passport which, if not issued by authority, had at least
+the "visa" of one witness to my rank, and I was not the stuff to require
+many credentials.
+
+Before we had decided on what day we should leave Montreal, a kind of
+small mutiny began to show itself among our party. The old man, grown
+sick of travelling, and seeing the America of his hopes as far off as
+ever, became restive, and refused to move farther. The sons had made
+acquaintances on board the steamer, who assured them that "about the
+lakes "--a very vague geography--land was to be had for asking. Peggy
+and Susan had picked up sweethearts, and wanted to journey westward;
+and poor Joe, pulled in these various directions, gave himself up to a
+little interregnum of drink, hoping that rum might decide what reason
+failed in.
+
+As for me, I saw that my own influence would depend upon my making
+myself a partisan; and, too proud for this, I determined to leave them.
+I possessed some thirty dollars, a good kit, but, better than either,
+the most unbounded confidence in myself, and a firm conviction that the
+world was an instrument I should learn to play upon, one day or other.
+There was no use in undeceiving them as to my real rank and station.
+One of the pleasantest incidents of their lives would be, in all
+probability, their having travelled in companionship with a gentleman;
+and so, remembering the story of the poor alderman who never got over
+having learned that "Robinson Crusoe" was a fiction, I left them this
+solace unalloyed, and after a most cordial leave-taking, and having
+written down my father's address at New Orleans, I shook hands with
+the men twice over, kissed the girls ditto, and stepped on board the
+"Kingston" steamer,--for no other reason that I know, except that she
+was the first to leave the wharf that morning.
+
+I have said that I possessed something like thirty dollars: an
+advantageous sale of a part of my wardrobe to a young gentleman about to
+reside at Queenstown as a waiter, "realized" me as much more; and with
+this sum I resolved upon making a short tour of Canada and the States,
+in order to pick up a few notions and increase my store of experiences,
+ere I adopted any fixed career.
+
+We laugh at the old gentleman in the play who, on hearing that his
+son has no want of money, immediately offers him ten pistoles, but who
+obstinately leaves him to starve when he discovers that he is without
+funds. We laugh at this, and we deem it absurd and extravagant; but it
+is precisely what we see the world do in like circumstances. All its
+generosity is reserved for all those who do not require assistance; all
+its denials for those in need. "My Lord" refuses half-a-dozen dinners,
+while the poor devil author only knows the tune of "Roast Beef." These
+reflections forced themselves upon me by observing that as I travelled
+along, apparently in no want of means, a hundred offers were made me by
+my fellow-travellers of situations and places: one would have enlisted
+me as his partner in a very lucrative piece of peripateticism,--viz.,
+knife-grinding; a vocation for which, after a few efforts on board the
+steamer, Nature would seem to have destined me, for I was assured I
+even picked up the sharp-knowing cock of the eye required to examine
+the edge, and the style of my pedal-action drew down rounds of applause:
+still, I did not like it. The endless tramp upon a step which slipped
+from beneath you seemed to emblematize a career that led to nothing;
+while an unpleasant association with what I had heard of a treadmill
+completed my distaste for it.
+
+Another opened to me the more ambitious prospect of a shopman at his
+"store," near Rochester, and even showed me, by way of temptation, some
+of the brilliant wares over whose fortunes I should preside. There were
+ginghams, and taffetas, and cottons of every hue and pattern. But no, I
+felt this was not my walk either; and so I muttered to myself: "No, Con!
+if you meddle with muslin, wait till it's fashioned into a petticoat."
+
+My next proposition came from a barber; and really if I did not take to
+the pole and basin, I own I was flattered at his praises of my skill.
+He pronounced my brush-hand as something bold and masterly as
+Rubens',--while my steel manipulation was more brilliant than bloodless.
+
+Then there was a Jew spectacle-maker, a hawker of pamphlets, an Indian
+moccasin merchant, and twenty other of various walks,--all of whom
+seemed to opine that _their_ craft, whatever it might be, was exactly
+the very line adapted to my faculties. Once only was I really tempted:
+it was by the editor of the Kingston newspaper, "The Ontario Herald,"
+who offered to take me into his office, and in time induct me into
+the gentle pastime of paragraph-writing. I did, I own, feel a strong
+inclination for that free and independent kind of criticism, which,
+although issuing from a garret, and by the light of a "dip," does not
+scruple to remind royalty how to comport itself, and gives kings and
+kaisers smart lessons in good-breeding. For a time, my mind dwelt on all
+these delights with ardor; but I soon felt that he who _acts_ life has
+an incomparable advantage over him who merely _writes_ it, and that even
+a poor performer is better, when the world is his stage, than the best
+critic.
+
+"I'll wait," thought I,--nothing within, no suggestive push from
+conscience, urged me to follow any of these roads; and so I journeyed
+away from Kingston to Fort George, thence to Niagara, where I amused
+myself agreeably for a week, sitting all day long upon the Table Rock,
+and watching the Falls in a dreamy kind of self-consciousness, brought
+on by the din, the crash, the spray, the floating surf, and that
+vibration of the air on every side, which all conspire to make up a
+sensation that ever after associates with the memory of that scene, and
+leaves any effort to describe it so difficult.
+
+From this I wandered into the States by Schenectady, Utica, and Albany,
+down the Hudson to New York, thence--but why recite mere names? It was
+after about three months' travelling, during which my wardrobe shared a
+fate not dissimilar to Æsop's bread-basket, that I found myself at New
+Orleans. Coming even from the varied and strange panorama that so many
+weeks of continual travelling present, I was struck by the appearance
+of New Orleans. Do not be afraid, worthy reader; you're not "in" for any
+description of localities. I 'll neither inflict you with a land view
+nor a sea view. In my company you 'll never hear a word about the
+measurement of a cathedral, or the number of feet in height of a
+steeple. My care and my business are with men and women. They are to me
+the real objects of travel. The checkered board of human life is the map
+whose geography I love to study, and my thoughts are far more with the
+stream that flows from the heart, than with the grandest river that ever
+sought the sea. When I said I was struck with New Orleans, it was then
+with the air of its population. Never did I behold such a mass of
+bold, daring, reckless fellows as swaggered on every side. The fiery
+Frenchman, the determined-looking Yankee, the dark-browed Spaniard,
+the Camanche and the half-caste, the Mulatto, the Texan, the Negro, the
+Cuban, and the Creole, were all here, and all seemed picked specimens of
+their race.
+
+The least acute of observers could not fail to see that it was a land
+where a quick eye, a steady foot, and a strong hand were requisites of
+every-day life. The personal encounters that in other cities are
+left altogether to the very lowest class of inhabitants, were here
+in frequent use among every grade and rank. Every one went armed; the
+scenes which so often occurred, showed the precaution a needful one.
+
+The wide-awake look of the Yankee was sleepy indifference when
+contrasted with the intense keenness of aspect that met you here at
+every step, and you felt at once that you were in company where all
+your faculties would be few enough for self-protection. This, my first
+impression of the people, each day's experience served to confirm.
+Whatever little veils of shame and delicacy men throw over their sharp
+practices elsewhere, here, I am free to confess, they despised such
+hypocrisy. It was a free trade in wickedness. In _their_ game of life
+"cheating was fair." Now, this in nowise suited me nor my plans. I soon
+saw that all the finer traits of my own astuteness would be submerged
+in the great ocean of coarse roguery around me, and I soon resolved upon
+taking my departure.
+
+The how and the whereto--two very important items in the resolve--were
+yet to be solved, and I was trotting along Cliff Street one day, when
+my eyes rested suddenly upon the great board, with large letters on it,
+"Office of the 'Picayune.'" I repeated the word over and over a couple
+of times, and then remembered it was the journal in which the reward for
+the Black Boatswain had been offered.
+
+There was little enough, Heaven knows, in this to give me any interest
+in the paper; but the total isolation in which I found myself, without
+one to speak to or converse with, made me feel that even the "Picayune"
+was an acquaintance; and so I drew near the window where a considerable
+number of persons were reading the last number of the paper, which, in
+a laudable spirit of generosity, was exposed within the glass to public
+gaze.
+
+Mingling with these, but not near enough to read for myself, I could
+hear the topics that were discussed, among which a row at the Congress,
+a duel with revolvers, a steam explosion on the Mississippi, and a few
+smart instances of Lynch-law figured.
+
+"What 's that in the 'Yune print?" said a great raw-boned fellow, with a
+cigar like a small walking-cane in the corner of his mouth.
+
+"It's a Texan go," said another; "sha'n't catch me at that trick."
+
+"Well, I don't know," drawled out a sleek-haired man, with a very Yankee
+drawl; "I see Roarin' Peter, our judge up at New Small-pox, take a
+tarnation deal of booty out of that location."
+
+"Where had he been?" asked the tall fellow.
+
+"At Guayugualla,--over the frontier."
+
+"There _is_ a bit to be done about there," said the other, and, wrapping
+his mantle about him, lounged off.
+
+"Guayugualla!" repeated I; and, retiring a little from the crowd, I took
+from my pocket the little newspaper paragraph of the negro, and read the
+name which had sounded so familiarly to my ears.
+
+I endeavored once more to approach the window, but the crowd had already
+increased considerably; and I had nothing for it but to go in and buy
+the paper, which now had taken a strong hold upon me.
+
+Cheap as was the paper, it cost me that day's dinner; and it was with a
+very great anxiety to test the value of my sacrifice that I hastened to
+the little miserable den which I had hired as my sleeping-place.
+
+Once within, I fastened the door, and, spreading out the journal on
+my bed, proceeded to search for the Texan paragraph. It was headed in
+capitals, and easily found. It ran thus:--
+
+"WANTED--A few downright, go-ahead ones, to join an excursion into the
+One-Star Republic,--the object being to push a way down South, and open
+a new trade-line for home doings. Applicants to address the Office of
+the paper, and rally at Galveston, with rifle, pistols, ammunition,
+horse, pack, and a bowie, on Tuesday, the 8th instant."
+
+I 'm sure I knew that paragraph off by heart before bedtime, but just
+as I have seen a stupid man commit a proposition in Euclid to
+memory,--without ever being able to work it. I was totally at a loss
+what to make of the meaning of the expedition. It was, to say the least,
+somewhat mysterious; and the whole being addressed to "go-ahead ones,"
+who were to come with rifles and bowie-knives, showed that they were not
+likely to be missionaries. There was one wonderful clause about it,--it
+smacked of adventure. There was a roving wildness in the very thought
+which pleased me, and I straightway opened a consultation with myself
+how I could compass the object. My stock of money had dwindled down to
+four dollars; and although I still possessed some of the best articles
+of my wardrobe, the greater portion had been long since disposed of.
+
+Alas! the more I thought over it, the more hopeless did my hope of
+journey appear,--I made every imaginable good bargain in my fancy; I
+disposed of old waistcoats and gaiters as if they had been the honored
+vestments of heroes and sages; I knocked down my shoes at prices that
+old Frederick's boots would n't have fetched; and yet, with all this, I
+fell far short of a sum sufficient to purchase my equipment,--in fact,
+I saw that if I compassed the "bowie-knife," it would be the full extent
+of my powers. I dwelt upon this theme so long that I grew fevered and
+excited: I got to believe that here was a great career opening before
+me, to which one petty, miserable obstacle opposed itself. I was like
+a man deterred from undertaking an immense journey, by the trouble of
+crossing a rivulet.
+
+In this frame of mind I went to bed, but only to rove over my rude
+fancies, and, in a state between sleep and waking, to imagine that
+some tiny hand held me back, and prevented me ascending a path on which
+Fortune kept waving her hand for me to follow. When day broke, I found
+myself sitting at my window, with the newspaper in my hands,--though how
+I came there, or how long I had spent in that attitude, I cannot say; I
+only know that my limbs were excessively cold, and my temples hot, and
+that while my hands were benumbed and swollen, my heart beat faster and
+fuller than I had ever felt it before.
+
+"Now for the 'Picayune,'" said I, starting from my chair; "though I
+never may make the journey, at least I 'll ask the road."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. THE ORDINARY OF ALL NATIONS
+
+Making my way with difficulty through the crowd which filled the hall
+of the house, and which consisted of purchasers, newsvenders, reporters,
+printers' devils, and others interested in the "Picayune," all eagerly
+discussing the news of the day, I reached a small back office, where,
+having knocked timidly twice, I was desired to enter.
+
+A man seated at a coarse deal table was cutting out paragraphs from
+various newspapers, which, as he threw them at either side of him, were
+eagerly caught up by two or three ragged urchins who were in waiting
+behind him. He looked up at me as I entered, and roughly asked what I
+wanted.
+
+"I have seen an advertisement in your paper, headed, 'Expedition to
+Texas '------"
+
+"Upstairs,--No. 3,--two-pair back," said he, and went on with his labor.
+
+I hesitated, hoping he might add something; but seeing that he had said
+all he intended or was likely to say, I slowly withdrew.
+
+"Upstairs, then,--No. 3,--two-pair back," said I to myself, and mounted,
+with the very vaguest notions of what business I had when I got there.
+There was no difficulty in finding the place; many others were hastening
+towards it at the same time; and, in company with some half-dozen very
+ill-favored and meanly clad fellows, I entered a large room, where about
+forty men were assembled, who stood in knots or groups, talking in low
+and confidential tones together.
+
+"Is there a committee to-day?" asked one of those who came in with me.
+
+"Business is over," said another.
+
+"And is the lottery drawn?"
+
+"Ay, every ticket, except one or two."
+
+"Who's won Butcher's mare?"
+
+"Tell us that if you can," said a huge fellow, with a red worsted
+comforter round his throat; "that's exactly what we want to know."
+
+"Well, I'm whipped if it ain't among those numbers," said a pale man
+with one eye, "and I 'll give fifty dollars for one of 'em."
+
+"You would, would you?" said another, jeering. "Lord, how soft you 've
+grown! Why, she's worth five hundred dollars, that 'ere beast!"
+
+"Butcher gave a mustang and two hundred and seventy for her," cried
+another.
+
+"Well, she broke his neck, for all that," growled out he of the red
+neckcloth; "you'll see that some chap will win her that don't want a
+beast, and she 'll be sold for a trifle."
+
+"And there's a free passage to Galveston, grub and liquor, in the same
+ticket," said another,--"an almighty sight of luck for one man!"
+
+"It ain't me, anyhow," said red cravat; and then, with a tremendous
+oath, added: "I've been a putter in at these Texas lotteries for four
+years, and never won anything but a blessed rosary."
+
+"What became of it, Dick?" said another, laughing.
+
+"The beads fitted my rifle-bore, and I fired 'em away when lead was
+scarce."
+
+Various discussions followed about luck and lotteries, with anecdotes
+of all kinds respecting fortunate winners; then came stories of Texan
+expeditions in former times, which I began to perceive were little else
+than speculations of a gambling kind, rarely intended to go farther than
+the quay of New Orleans.
+
+On the present occasion, however, it would seem a real expedition had
+been planned. Some had already sailed, others were to follow the very
+day after the lottery, and only waited to learn who was the fortunate
+winner of Butcher's mare, at that time waiting at Galveston for an
+owner.
+
+I waited a long time, in hope of acquiring something like an insight
+into the scope of the enterprise, but in vain; indeed, it was easy to
+see that, of the company, not a single one, in all likelihood, intended
+to join the expedition. When I left the "Picayune," therefore, I was but
+little wiser than when I entered it; and yet somehow the whole scheme
+had taken a fast hold on my imagination, which readily filled in the
+details of what I was ignorant. The course of reading in which I had
+indulged on board Sir Dudley's yacht was doubtless the reason of this.
+My mind had laid up so many texts for adventurous fancies that on
+the slightest pretext I could call up any quantity of enterprise and
+vicissitude.
+
+A hundred times I asked myself if it were likely that any of these Texan
+adventurers would accept, of my services to wait upon them. I was not
+ignorant of horses, a tolerably fair groom, could cook a little,--that
+much I had learned on board the yacht; besides, wherever my
+qualifications failed, I had a ready witted ingenuity that supplied the
+place almost as well as the "real article."
+
+"Ah!" thought I, "who knows how many are passing at this moment
+whose very hearts would leap with joy to find such a fellow as I am,'
+accustomed to in-door and out, wages no object, and no objection to
+travel! '" Possessed with this notion, I could not help fancying that
+in every look that met mine as I went, I could read something like an
+inquiry, a searching glance that seemed to say, "Bless me! ain't that
+Con? As I live, there's Con Cregan! What a rare piece of fortune to
+chance upon him at this juncture!"
+
+I own it did require a vivid and warm imagination so to interpret the
+expressions which met my eyes at every moment, seeing that the part of
+the town into which I had wandered was that adjoining to the docks,--a
+filthy, gloomy quarter, chiefly resorted to by Jew slop-sellers,
+ship-chandlers, and such like, with here and there a sailors' ordinary
+usually kept by a negro or half-breed.
+
+I had eaten nothing that day, and it was now late in the afternoon, so
+that it was with a very strong interest I peeped occasionally into the
+little dens, where, under a paper lantern with the inscription, "All
+for Twelve Cents," sat a company, usually of sailors and watermen, whose
+fare harmonized most unpleasantly with their features.
+
+The combat between a man's taste and his exchequer is never less
+agreeable than when it concerns a dinner. To feel that you have a soul
+for turtle and truffles, and yet must descend to mashed potatoes and
+herrings; to know that a palate capable of appreciating a salmi des
+perdreaux must be condemned to the indignity of stock fish,--what an
+indignity is that! The whole man revolts at it! You feel, besides, that
+such a meal is unrelieved by those suggestive excursions of fancy which
+a well-served table abounds in. In the one case you eat like the beast
+of the field,--it is a question of supporting nature, and no more; in
+the other, there is a poetry interwoven that elevates and exalts. With
+what discursive freedom does the imagination range from the little
+plate of oysters that preludes your soup, to pearl fishery and the coral
+reefs, "with moonlight sleeping on the breaking surf!" And then your
+soup, be it turtle or mulligatawny, how associated is it with the
+West Indies or the East, bearing on its aromatic vapor thousands of
+speculative reflections about sugar and slavery, pepper-pots, straw
+hats, pickaninnies, and the Bishop of Barbadoes; or the still grander
+themes of elephants, emeralds, and the Indus, with rajahs, tigers,
+punkahs, and the Punjaub!
+
+And so you proceed, dreamily following out in fancy the hints each
+course supplies, and roving with your cutlets to the "cattle upon a
+thousand hills," or dallying with the dessert to the orange-groves of
+Zaute or Sicily.
+
+I do love all this. The bouquet of my Bordeaux brings back the Rhone, as
+the dry muscat of my Johannisberg pictures the vine-clad cliffs of the
+Vaterland, with a long diminuendo train of thought about Metternich
+and the Holy Alliance--the unlucky treaty of '15--Vienna--Madame
+Schrader--and Castelli.
+
+And how pleasantly and nationally does one come back with the port to
+our "ancient ally, Portugal," with a mind-painted panorama of Torres
+Vedras and the Douro,--with Black Horse Square and the Tagus,--"the
+Duke" ever and anon flitting across the scene, and making each glass you
+carry to your lips a heartfelt "long life to him!"
+
+Alas and alas! such prandial delights were not for me; I must dine for
+twelve cents, or, by accepting the brilliant entertainment announced
+yonder, price half-a-dollar, keep Lent the rest of the week.
+
+The temptation to which I allude ran thus:--
+
+
+     Ladies and Gentlemen's Grand Ordinary of all Nations
+
+                   At 5 o'clock precisely.
+
+     Thumbo-rig--Mint julep--and a Ball. The "Half-dollar."
+
+     Monsieur Palamede de Rosanne directs the Ceremonies.
+
+If there was a small phrase in the aforesaid not perfectly intelligible,
+it seemed, upon the principle of the well-known adage, only to heighten
+the inducement. The "Thumbo-rig" above might mean either a new potation
+or a new dance. Still, conceding this unknown territory, there was
+quite sufficient in the remainder of the advertisement to prove a strong
+temptation. The house, too, had a pretentious air about it that promised
+well. There was a large bow-window, displaying a perfect landscape of
+rounds and sirloins, with a tasteful drapery of sausages overhead;
+while a fragrant odor of rum, onions, fresh crabs, cheese, salt cod, and
+preserved ginger made the very air ambrosial.
+
+As I stood and sniffed, my resolution staggered under the assaults made
+on eye, nose, and palate, a very smartly-dressed female figure crossed
+the way, holding up her dress full an inch or so higher than even
+the mud required, and with a jaunty air displayed a pair of very pink
+stockings on very well-turned legs. I believe--I 'm not sure, but
+I fear--the pink stockings completed what the pickled beef began.
+I entered. Having paid my money at the bar, and given up my hat and
+greatcoat, I was ushered by a black waiter, dressed in a striped jacket
+and trousers, as if he had been ruled with red ink, into a large room,
+where a very numerous company of both sexes were assembled, some seated,
+some standing, but all talking away with buzz and confusion that showed
+perfect intimacy to be the order of the day. The men, it was easy
+to see, were chiefly in the "shipping interest." There was a strong
+majority of mates and small skippers, whose varied tongues ranged from
+Spanish and Portuguese to Dutch and Danish; French, English and Russian
+were also heard in the _mêlée_, showing that the Grand Ordinary had a
+world-made repute. The ladies were mostly young, very condescending in
+their manners, somewhat overdressed, and for the most part French.
+
+As I knew no one, I waited patiently to be directed where I should
+sit, and was at last shown to a place between a very fat lady of créole
+tint--another dip would have made her black--and a little brisk man,
+whom I soon heard was Monsieur Palamede himself.
+
+The dinner was good, the conversation easiest of the easy, taking in
+all, from matters commercial to social,--the whole seasoned with the
+greatest good-humor and no small share of smartness. Personal adventures
+by land and sea,--many of the latter recounted by men who made no
+scruple of confessing that they "dealt in ebony,"--the slave-trade.
+Little incidents of life, that told much for the candor of the
+recounter, were heard on all sides, until at length I really felt
+ashamed of my own deficiency in not having even contributed an anecdote
+for the benefit of the company. This preyed upon me the more as I saw
+myself surrounded by persons who really, if their own unimpeachable
+evidence was to be credited, began the world in ways and shapes the
+most singular and uncommon. Not a man or woman of the party that had not
+slipped into existence in some droll, quaint fashion of their own, so
+that positively, and for the first time, I really grew ashamed to think
+that I belonged to "decent people" who had not compromised me in the
+slightest degree. "Voilà un jeune homme qui ne dit pas un mot!" said
+a pretty-looking woman, with fair brown hair and a very liquid pair of
+blue eyes. The speech was addressed to me, and the whole table at once
+turned their glances towards me.
+
+"Ay, very true," said a short, stout little skipper, with an
+unmistakable slash from a cutlass across his nose; "a sharp-looking
+fellow like that has a story if he will only tell it."
+
+"And you may see," cried another, "that we are above petty prejudices
+here; roguery only lies heavy on the conscience that conceals it." The
+speaker was a tall, sallow man, with singularly intelligent features;
+he had been a Jesuit tutor in the family of an Italian noble, and after
+consigning his patron to the Inquisition, had been himself banished from
+Rome.
+
+Pressing entreaties and rough commands, half imperious instances and
+very seductive glances, all were directed towards me, with the object of
+extorting some traits of my life, and more particularly of that part of
+it which concerned my birth and parentage. If the example of the company
+invited the most unqualified candor, I cannot say that it overcame
+certain scruples I felt about revealing my humble origin. I was
+precisely in that anomalous position in life when such avowals are most
+painful. Without ambition, the confession had not cost me any sacrifice;
+while, on the other hand, I had not attained that eminence which has a
+proud boastfulness in saying, "Yes, I, such as you see me now,--great,
+titled, wealthy, and powerful,--I was the son of a newsvender or a
+lamplighter." Such avowals, highly lauded as they are by the world,
+especially when made by archbishops or chancellors, or other great folk,
+at public dinners, are, to my thinking, about as vainglorious bits of
+poor human nature as the most cynical could wish to witness. They are
+the mere victories of vanity over self-esteem. Now, I had no objection
+that the world should think me a young gentleman of the very
+easiest notions of right and wrong, with a conscience as elastic as
+gutta-percha, picking my way across life's stream on the stepping-stones
+made by other men's skulls,--being, as the phrase has it, a very loose
+fish indeed; but I insisted on their believing that I was well-born.
+Every one has his weakness,--this was Con Cregan's; and as these
+isolated fissures in strong character are nearly allied with strength,
+so was it with me: had I not had this frailty, I had never cherished so
+intensely the passion to become a gentleman. This is all digressionary;
+but I 'll not ask pardon of my dear reader for all that. If he be
+reading in his snug, well-cushioned chair, with every appliance of ease
+about him, he'll not throw down these "Confessions" for a bit of prosing
+that invites the sleep that is already hovering round him. If he has
+taken me up in the few minutes before dinner, he 'll not regret the bit
+of meditation which does not involve him in a story. If he be spelling
+me out in a mail-train, he'll be grateful for the "skipping" place,
+which leaves him time to look out and see the ingenious preparations
+that are making by the "down" or the "up" train to run into and smash
+the unhappy convoy of which he forms a part.
+
+"Come, my young lad, out with it. Let us hear a bit about the worthy
+people who took the sin of launching you into the wide ocean. You must
+have had owners one time or other." This was said by a hearty looking
+old man, with hair white as snow, and an enormous pair of eyebrows to
+match.
+
+"Willingly, sir," said I, with an air of the easiest confidence; "I
+should be but too proud if anything in a history humble as mine is could
+amuse this honorable company. But the truth is, a life so devoid of
+interest would be only a tax upon its patience to listen to; and as to
+my birth, I can give little, indeed no, information. The earliest record
+of my existence that I possess is from the age of two days and three
+hours."
+
+"That will do,--do admirably!" chorused the party, who laughed heartily
+at the gravity with which I spoke, and which to them seemed an earnest
+of my extreme simplicity. "We shall be quite satisfied with that," cried
+they again.
+
+"Well, then, gentlemen, thanking you for the indulgence with which you
+consent to overlook my want of accuracy, I proceed. At the tender age I
+have mentioned, I was won in a raffle!"
+
+"Won in a raffle! won in a raffle!" screamed one after the other; and
+amid shouts of laughter the phrase continued to be echoed from end to
+end of the table. "That beats you hollow, Giles!" "By Jove, how scarce
+babies must be in the part you come from, if people take tickets for
+em!" Such were some of the commentaries that broke out amidst the mirth.
+
+
+
+"I move," said a dapper little Frenchman who had been a barber and a
+National Guard once, "I move that the honorable deputy make a statement
+to the Chamber respecting the interesting fact to which he has alluded."
+
+The motion was carried by acclamation, and I was accordingly induced to
+ascend the tribune,--a kind of rude pulpit that was brought specially
+into the room, and stationed at the side of the president's chair; the
+comments on my personal appearance, age, air, and probable rank, which
+were made all the while, evidencing the most candid spirit one can well
+imagine.
+
+"A right-down slick and shrewd 'un, darn me if he ain't!"
+
+"A very wide awake young gemman," quoth number two.
+
+"Il a de 'beaux yeux,' celui-là,"--this was a lady's remark.
+
+"Set that young 'un among the girls 'down east,' and he'll mow 'em down
+like grass."
+
+"A Londoner,--swell-mobbish a bit, I take it."
+
+"Not at all, he a'nt; he's a bank clerk or a post-office fellow bolted
+with a lot of tin."
+
+"Der ist ein echter Schelm," growled out an old Dantzic skipper; "I kenn
+him vehr wohl,--steal your wash wid a leetle scheer,--scissars you call
+him, ha! ha!"
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," said I, assuming a pose of the most dignified
+importance, "before entering upon the circumstance to which you have so
+graciously attached a little interest, let me assure you--not that
+the fact can or ought to have any weight with this distinguished
+company--that I have no claim upon your sympathy with regard to any of
+the pleas whispered around me. I am neither thief, pickpocket, runaway
+postman, burglar, nor highwayman. If I be, as you are pleased to say,
+'wide awake,' I believe it is only a common precaution, considering
+the company I find myself in; and if I really could lay claim to the
+flattering praise of a fair lady on the left, it would be merely from
+accidentally reflecting her own bright glances. I present myself, then,
+with much diffidence before you, for the simple reason that I come in a
+character somewhat strange in these parts,--I am a gentleman!"
+
+The ineffable impertinence of this address succeeded to a miracle. Some
+laughed, some applauded, a few muttered an unintelligible discontent;
+but the majority of the men and all the women were with me, and I saw
+that audacity had gained the day. Ay, and so will it ninety-nine times
+out of the hundred in everything through life! The strategic axiom, that
+no fortress is impregnable, is a valuable worldly lesson, and one ought
+never to forget that a storming-party rarely fails.
+
+"The circumstance to which I alluded a few miuutes back--I dare not
+presume to call it a story--occurred thus :
+
+"There was a large and brilliant party assembled to pass the Christmas
+at the Duke of Y--------'s; you will understand my reserve. The company
+included many of the first persons in fashionable life, and a Royal
+*Duke to boot, a great friend of her Grace, and, some said, an old
+admirer of one of her sisters, who--so went the rumor--showed the
+strength of her attachment to his Royal Highness by never having
+accepted any of the brilliant offers of marriage made her. She was
+remarkably beautiful, and although a little past the first bloom of
+youth, in full possession of her charms at the time I speak of. Old Lord
+K-------- was one of the guests; and I am sure many of the distinguished
+company to whom I now address myself will not need any more particular
+description of the man they must have met a hundred times every London
+season, well known, indeed, as he is, with his light-blue coat and his
+buckskin tights, his wide beaver hat, and his queue; his eccentricities,
+his wealth, and his great avarice are themes all London is acquainted
+with." I paused.
+
+A buzz of acknowledgment and recognition followed, and I resumed:--
+
+"Lord E--------, you are aware, was a great musical amateur ; he was
+the leader of everything of that kind about town, and whenever he could
+prevail upon himself to open his house in Carlton Terrace, it was always
+to Lablache, and Kubini, and Marini, and the reat of them. Well, it was
+just at the period of this Christmas visit--over which I may remark, en
+passant, Lady Blanche's indisposition cast a shade of gloom--that, in
+making some alteration in the mansion, they discovered in a concealed
+press in the wall a mahogany case, on opening which were found the moth
+and worm eaten remains of a violin. A parchment document enclosed in
+a little scroll of brass, and which had escaped the ravages of time,
+explained that this was the instrument of the celebrated Giacomo
+Battesta Pizzicbetoni, the greatest violinist that ever lived,--the
+composer of 'II Diavolo e la sua Moglia' and the 'Balia di Paradise,'
+and many other great works, with which you are all familiar."
+
+The company chorused assent, and I continued: "The party had somehow
+not gone off well; the accustomed spirit aud animation of the scene were
+wanting. Perhaps Lady Blanche's illness had some share in this; in any
+case, every one seemed low aud out of sorts, and the pleasant people
+talked of taking leave, when his Royal Highness proposed, by way of
+doing something, that they should have a raffle for this wonderful
+fiddle, of which, though only seen by the host and another, every one
+was talking.
+
+"Even this much of stir was hailed with enthusiasm, the secrecy and
+mystery increasing the interest to a high degree.
+
+The tickets were two guineas each ; and Lord E--------, dying to possess
+'a real Pizzichetoni,' took twenty of them. The number was limited to a
+hundred; but such was the judicious management of those who directed
+the proceedings that the shares were at a 'high premium' on the day of
+drawing, his Royal Highness actually buying up several at five guineas
+apiece. The excitement, too, was immense ; encyclopedias were ransacked
+for histories of the violin, and its great professors and proficients.
+The 'Conversations Lexicon' opened of itself at the letter P., and
+Pizzichetoni's name turned up in every corner and on every theme, fifty
+times a day. What a time I have heard that was! nothing talked of but
+bow-action, shifting, bridging, double fingering, and the like, from
+morning to night. Lord E-------- became, in consequence of this run
+about a favorite subject, a personage of more than ordinary importance;
+instead of being deemed, what he was commonly called at the clubs, the
+Great 'Borassus,' he was listened to with interest and attention;
+and, in fact, from the extent of his knowledge of the subject, and his
+acquaintance with every detail of its history, each felt that to his
+Lordship ought by right to fall the fortunate ticket.
+
+"So did it, in fact, turn out. After much vacillation, with the last two
+numbers remained the final decision. One belonged to the Royal Duke, the
+other to Lord E------.
+
+"'You shall have a hundred guineas for your chance, E------,' said the
+Duke; 'what say you?'
+
+"'Your Ruyal Highness's wish is a command,' said he, bowing and
+blushing; 'but were it otherwise, and to any other than your Royal
+Highness, I should as certainly say nay.'
+
+"'Then "nay" must be the answer to me also; I cannot accept of such a
+sacrifice: and, after all, you are much more worthy of such a treasure
+than I am,--I really only meant it for a present to Mori.'
+
+"'A present, your Royal Highness!' cried he, horrified; 'I would n't
+give such a jewel to anything short of St. Cecilia,--the violin, you are
+aware, was her instrument.'
+
+"'Now, then, for our fortunes!' cried the Duke, as he drew forth his
+ticket. 'I believe I 'm the lucky one: this is number 2000.'
+
+"'Two thousand and one!' exclaimed Lord E------, holding up his, and, in
+an ecstasy of triumph, sat down to recover himself.
+
+"'Here is the key, my Lord,' said one of the party, advancing towards
+him.
+
+"He sprang up, and thrust it into the lock; in his agitation he shook
+the box, and a slight, soft cadence, like a faint cry, was heard.
+
+"'The soul of music hovers o'er it still,' he exclaimed theatrically,
+and, flinging back the lid, discovered--Me! Yes, ladies and gentlemen,
+in a very smart white robe, with very tasty embroidery, and a lace cap
+which I am assured was pure Valenciennes, there I lay! I am not aware
+whether my infantine movements were peculiarly seductive or not; but
+I have been told that I went through my gamut at a key that even
+overtopped the laughter around me.
+
+"'A very bad jest--a _mauvaise plaisanterie_ of the worst taste, I must
+say,' said Lord E------turning away, and leaving the room.
+
+
+
+"I never rightly knew how the matter was afterwards made up, but
+certainly it was by his lordship's directions, and at his charge, that
+I was nursed, reared, and educated. My expenses at Eton and Oxford, as
+well as the cost of my commission, came from him; and it was only a few
+days ago, on learning his death, that I also learned the termination
+of my good fortune in life. He bequeathed me what he styled my 'family
+mansio,'--the fiddle-case; thus repaying by this cruel jest the
+practical joke passed upon himself so many years before."
+
+"What name did they give you, sir?"
+
+"'I was called after the celebrated violinist of Cremona who lived
+in the seventh century, who was named Cornelius Crejanus, or, as some
+spell, Creganus; and, in compliance with modern usages, they anglicized
+me into Con Cregan."
+
+"I have the honor to propose Con Cregan's health," said the president;
+"and may he see many happy years ere he next goes to sleep in a wooden
+box!"
+
+This very gratifying toast was drunk with the most flattering
+acclamations, and I descended from the tribune the "man of the evening."
+
+If some of the company who put credence in my story did not hesitate to
+ascribe a strong interest in me to the Royal Duke himself, others, who
+put less faith in my narrative, thought less of my parentage, and more
+of myself; so that what I lost on one hand, I gained on the other.
+
+There was a discretion, a certain shadowy prudery about certain portions
+of my story, of which I have not attempted to convey any notion here,
+but which I saw had "told" with the fair part of my audience, who,
+possibly not over rigid in many of their opinions, were well pleased
+with the delicate reserve in which I shrouded my direct allusion to my
+parentage. A rough, red-whiskered skipper, indeed, seemed disposed to
+pour a broadside into this mystery, by asking "If his Royal Highness
+never took any notice of me?" but the refined taste of the company
+concurred in the diplomatic refusal to answer a question of which the
+"hon. gentleman on the straw chair" had given "no notice."
+
+The pleasures of the table,--a very luscious bowl of the liquid which
+bore the mysterious epithet of "Thumbo-rig," and which was a concoction
+of the genus punch, spiced, sugared, and iced to a degree that concealed
+its awful tendency to anti-Mathewism; bright eyes that were no churls
+of their glances; merry converse; and that wondrous "magnetism of the
+board" which we call good fellowship,--made the time pass rapidly.
+Toasts and sentiments of every fashion went round, and we were
+political, literary, arbitrary, amatory, sentimental, and satiric by
+turns. They were pleasant varlets! and in their very diversity of humors
+there was that clash and collision of mind and metal that tell more
+effectively than the best packed party of choice wits who ever sat and
+watched each other.
+
+Then, there was a jolly jumbling up of bad English, bad Dutch, bad
+French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, that would drive a sober
+listener clean mad. Stories begun in one tongue merged into another;
+and so into a third; while explanations, mistakes, and corrections ran
+alongside of the narrative, often far more amusing than the story to
+which they were attached. Personalities, too, abounded, but with a most
+unqualified good temper; and, on the whole, I never beheld a merrier
+set.
+
+M. Palamede alone did not relish the scene. He himself was nobody at
+such a moment, and he longed for the ballroom and the dance; and it
+was only after repeated summonses of his bell that we at last arose and
+entered the saloon, where we found him standing, fiddle in hand, while,
+rapping smartly a couple of times with his bow, he called out,--
+
+"Places! places! Monsieur le Duc de Gubbins, to your place. Ladies, I
+beg attention. Madame la Marquise, dans la bonne société on ne donne
+jamais un soufflet."
+
+"Ah, here's old Rosin again!" cried several of the party, who, with all
+this familiarity, appeared to view him with no small respect.
+
+"Shall I find you a partner, Monsieur de Congreganne?" said he to me.
+
+"Thanks," said I; "but, with your permission, I'll not dance just yet."
+
+"As you please, it is but a contre-danse," said he shrugging his
+shoulders, while he moved away to arrange the figures.
+
+I had not perceived before that a kind of orchestra, consisting of two
+fiddles, a flute, and a tambourine, was stationed in a long gallery
+over the door by which we entered; Monsieur Palamede being, however,
+director, not alone of the music, but of the entire entertainment. The
+band now struck up a well-known English country-dance, and away went the
+couples, flying down the room to the merry measure; Monsieur de
+Rosanne arranging the figures, beating the time, preserving order, and
+restraining irregularities, with the energy of one possessed.
+
+"Ah, Monsieur le Capitaine de Cocks, c'en est trop. Mademoiselle de
+Spicer, pas si haut! de arms graceful! Ladies, no keep your hands under
+* your--what ye call him--jupe--apron--ha! ha! Black man--negro--no talk
+so loud when you make punch!"
+
+"Chassez--balancez! La grace! Madame la Marquise, la grace!" Then, as
+he passed me, he muttered with a voice guttural from anger, "Quel
+supplice!"
+
+As I continued to gaze on the scene, I could not help being struck with
+the extreme diversity of look and expression; for while there were some
+faces on which iniquity had laid its indelible stamp, there were others
+singularly pleasing, and some actually beautiful. Among the men, the
+same character prevailed throughout,--a rude, coarse good-humor,--the
+sailor-type everywhere; but a few seemed persons of a higher class,
+and on these a life of vice and debauchery had produced the most marked
+change, and you could still see, amid the traces of nights of riot and
+abandonment, the remnant of finer features, the expression they had worn
+before their "fall." If I was surprised at the good looks of many of
+the women, still more was I by a gracefuluess of carriage and an air
+of deportment that seemed as much out of place as they were unsuited to
+such companionship. One young fellow appeared to be a general favorite
+with the company. He was tall, well-made, and had that indescribably
+rakish character about his very gesture that is rarely a bad indication
+of the possessor's mode of life. I had no difficulty in learning
+his name, for every one called him by it at each instant, and "Fred
+Falkoner" was heard on all sides. It was he who selected the music for
+the dance; his partner, for the time being, was the belle of the room,
+and he lounged about supreme. Nor was his title a bad one,--he was the
+great entertainer of the whole assembly. The refreshments were almost
+entirely of his ordering, and the clink of his dollars might be heard
+keeping merry time with the strains of the violins. I watched him
+with some interest; I thought I could see that, in descending to such
+companionship, there was a secret combat between his self-respect and a
+strange passion for seeing life in low places, which, when added to
+the flattery such a man invariably obtains from his inferiors, is a
+dangerous and subtle temptation. The more I studied him, the stronger
+grew this conviction,--nay, at times, the expression of scorn upon his
+handsome features was legible even to the least remarking. It was
+while I still continued to watch him that he passed me, with a dark,
+Spanish-looking girl upon his arm, When he turned round suddenly, and,
+staring at me fixedly a few seconds, said, "We met once before, to-day."
+
+"I am not aware of it," said I, doubtingly.
+
+"Yes, yes. I never forget a face, least of all when it resembles yours.
+I saw you this morning at the 'Picayune.'"
+
+"True, I was there."
+
+"What a precious set of rascals those fellows were! You supposed that
+they were going to join the expedition. Not a bit of it. Some were
+gamblers; the greater number thieves and pickpockets. I know them all;
+and, indeed, I was going to warn you about them, for I saw you were a
+stranger, but I lost sight of you in the crowd. But there's the music.
+Will you have a partner?"
+
+"With all my heart," said I, glad to encourage our further acquaintance.
+
+"You speak Spanish?"
+
+"Not a word."
+
+"Well, no matter. If you did, you should have mine here. But what say
+you to Mademoiselle Héloïse, yonder?--a bit faded or so; but I remember
+her second 'Ballarina' at the Havana, only two years back."
+
+I made the suitable acknowledgment; and the next moment saw me whirling
+away in a waltz, at least in such an approximation to that measure as
+my Quebec experience suggested, with a very highly rouged and
+black-eyebrowed "danseuse." My French was better than my dancing; and
+so Mademoiselle Héloïse was satisfied to accept my arm, while we paraded
+the room, discussing the company after the most approved fashion.
+
+The French have a proverb, "Bête comme une danseuse;" and I must say
+that my fair friend did not prove an exception. Her whole idea of life
+was limited to what takes place in rehearsal of a morning, or on the
+night of representation. She recounted to me her history from the time
+she had been a "Rat,"--such is the technical term at the Grand Opera of
+Paris,--flying through the air on a wire, or sitting perilously perched
+upon a pasteboard cloud. Thence she had advanced to the state of Fairy
+Queen, or some winged messenger of those celestials who wear muslin
+trousers with gold stars, and always stand in the "fifth position."
+Passing through the grade of Swiss peasant, Turkish slave, and
+Neapolitan market-girl, she had at last arrived at the legitimate drama
+of "legs," yclept "ballet d'action;" and although neither her beauty
+nor abilities had been sufficient to achieve celebrity in Paris, she
+was accounted a Taglioni in the "provinces," and deemed worthy of
+exportation to the colonies.
+
+"Non contingit cuique ad ire Corinthum!" we cannot all have our "loges"
+at the "Grand Opéra;" and happy for us it is so, or what would become of
+the pleasure we derive from third, fourth, and fifth rate performances
+elsewhere? True, indeed, if truffles were a necessary of life, there
+would be a vast amount of inconvenience and suffering. Now, Mademoiselle
+Héloïse, whose pirouettes were no more minded in Paris, nor singled out
+for peculiar favor, than one of the lamps in the row of footlights, was
+a kind of small idol in the Havana. She had the good fortune to live in
+an age when the heels take precedence of the head, and she shared in
+the enthusiasm by which certain people in our day would bring back the
+heathen mythology for the benefit of the corps de ballet.
+
+Alas for fame! in the very climax of her glory she grew fat! Now, flesh
+to a danseuse is like cowardice to a soldier, or shame to a lawyer,--it
+is the irreconcilable quality. The gauzy natures who float to soft
+music must not sup. Every cutlet costs an "entrechat"! Hard and terrible
+condition of existence, and proving how difficult and self-denying a
+thing it is to be an angel, even in this world!
+
+So much for Mademoiselle Héloise; and if the reader be weary of her, so
+was I.
+
+"You'll have to treat her to a supper," whispered Falkoner, as he passed
+me.
+
+"I've not a cent in my purse," said I, thinking it better to tell the
+truth than incur the reproach of stinginess.
+
+"Never mind, take mine," said he, as he dropped a very weighty purse
+into my coat-pocket, and moved away before I could make any answer.
+
+Perhaps the greatest flattery an individual can receive is to win some
+acknowledgment of confidence from an utter stranger. To know that by the
+chance intercourse of a few minutes you have so impressed another, who
+never saw you before, that he is impelled at once to befriend you,
+your self-esteem, so pleasantly gratified, immediately re-acts upon
+the cause, and you are at a loss whether most to applaud your own
+good gifts, or the ready wittedness of him who appreciated them so
+instantaneously.
+
+I was still hesitating, revolving, doubtless, the pleasant sense of
+flattery aforesaid, when Falkoner came flying past with his partner.
+"Order supper for four," cried he, as he whizzed by.
+
+"What does he say, mon cher Comte?" said my partner.
+
+I translated his command, and found that the notion pleased her vastly.
+
+The dining-room by this time had been metamorphosed into a kind of
+coffee-room, with small supper-tables, at which parties were already
+assembling; and here we now took our places, to con over the bill of
+fare, and discuss scalloped oysters, cold lobster, devilled haddock, and
+other like delicacies.
+
+Falkoner soon joined us, and we sat down, the merriest knot in the room.
+I must have been brilliant! I feel it so, this hour; a kind of warm glow
+rushes to my cheeks as I think over that evening, and how the guests
+from the different parts of the room drew gradually nearer and nearer to
+listen to the converse at our table, and hear the smart things that came
+pattering down like hail! What pressing invitations came pouring in
+upon me! The great Mastodon himself could not have eaten a tithe of
+the breakfasts to which I was asked, nor would the grog-tub of a
+seventy-four contain all the rum-and-water I was proffered by skippers
+lying "in dock."
+
+Falkoner, however, pleased me more than the rest. There was something in
+his cordiality that did not seem like a passing fancy; and I could not
+help feeling that however corrupted and run to waste by dissipation,
+there was good stuff about him. He interested me, too, on another score:
+he had formerly made one of a Texan excursion that had penetrated even
+to the Rio del Norte, and his escapes and adventures amused me highly.
+The ladies, I believe, at last found us very ungallant cavaliers; for
+they arose, and left us talking over prairie life and the wild habits of
+the chase, till day began to shine through the windows.
+
+"The 'Christobal' sails to-morrow," said he, "for Galveston; but even
+she, smart sailer that she is, will scarce arrive in time to catch these
+fellows. Here we are at the fifth of the month: the eighth was to be the
+start; then that, supposing you to reach Galveston by the seventh, gives
+you no time to get your kit ready, look after arms, and buy a nag. What
+say you, then, if we make a party of our own,--charter one of these
+small craft?--a hundred dollars or so will do it. We can then take our
+time to pick up good cattle, look out for a couple of mules for our
+baggage, and a spare mustang or so, if a horse should knock up."
+
+I concurred at once; the plan was fascination itself. Adventure,
+liberty, novelty, enterprise, and a dash of danger to heighten all!
+Falkoner talked of dollars as if they macadamized the road to St. Louis;
+and I, glowing with punch and pride together, spoke of the expense as a
+mere trifle. To this hour, I cannot say whether I had really mystified
+myself into the notion that I possessed ample means, or was merely
+indulging the passing pleasure of a delightful vision. So was it,
+however; I smiled at the cheapness of everything, could scarcely fancy
+such a thing as a Mexican pony for eighty dollars, and laughed--actually
+laughed--at the price of the rifle, when all my worldly substance, at
+the moment, would not have purchased copper caps for it.
+
+"Don't go too expensively to work, Cregan," cried he, "and, above
+all, bring no European servant. A Mexican fellow--or, better still, a
+half-breed--is the thing for the prairies. You have to forget your Old
+World habits, and rough it."
+
+"So I can," said I, laughing good-humoredly; "I 'm in a capital mind for
+a bit of sharp work too. Just before I left the 90th, we made a forced
+march from St. John's through the forest country, and I feel up to
+anything."
+
+"You'll not like the cattle at first, I'm afraid," said he. "They have
+that racking action the Yankees are fond of. There is a capital mare
+at Galveston, if we could get her. These fellows will snap her up, most
+likely."
+
+"Butcher's mare," said I, hazarding a guess.
+
+"Ah, you 've been looking after her already," said he, surprised.
+"Well, to tell you the truth, that was one of my objects in coming here
+to-night. I heard that some of these skipper fellows had got the winning
+ticket: I paid twenty dollars to the office-clerk to see the number,
+and determine to buy it up. Here it is. Can you read these figures? for,
+hang me if the punch, or the heat, or the dancing, has not made me quite
+dizzy."
+
+"Let me see: Number 438," said I, repeating it a couple of times over.
+
+"Yes, that is it. If I could have chanced on it, I 'd have run down
+to-morrow by the 'Christobal.' She lies about a mile out, and will weigh
+with the ebb, at eight o'clock. That mare--she killed Butcher by a
+down leap over a rock, but never scratched herself--is worth at least a
+thousand dollars."
+
+"I offered eight hundred for her on mere character," said I, sitting
+back, and sipping my liquid with a most profound quietude.
+
+Falkoner was evidently surprised with this announcement; but more so
+from the rakish indifference it betrayed about money, than as bespeaking
+me rich and affluent. And thus we chatted away till the black waiter
+made his appearance to open the windows and prepare for the work of the
+day.
+
+"Where are you stopping?" said Falkoner, as we arose from the table.
+
+"At Condor House," said I, boldly giving the name of a very flash hotel.
+"But it's too noisy; I don't like it."
+
+"Nor do I. It's confoundedly expensive, too. I wish you would come to
+Herrick's; it is not quite so stylish, perhaps, but I think the cookery
+is better, and you 'd not pay five dollars a bottle for Madeira, and
+eight for Champagne."
+
+"That _is_ smart," said I. "They 've not let me have my bill yet; but I
+fancied they were costly folk."
+
+"Well, come and dine with me at Herrick's to-morrow, and decide for
+yourself."
+
+"Why not try the Condor with me?" said I.
+
+"Another day, with all my heart; but I have a friend to-morrow, so come
+and meet him at six o'clock."
+
+I agreed; and then we chatted on about London and town folks in a way
+that, even with all I had drunk, amazed me for the cool impudence in
+which I indulged.
+
+"You knew De Courcy, of course," said he, after a long run of mutual
+friends had been disposed of.
+
+"Jack?" cried I,--"Jack De Courcy, of the Cold-streams,--yes, I think
+I did. Jack and I were like brothers. The last steeplechase I rode in
+Ireland was for poor Jack De Courcy: a little chestnut mare with a good
+deal of the Arab about her."
+
+"I remember her well,--an active devil, but she could n't go for more
+than half a mile."
+
+"Well, I managed to screw a race out of her."
+
+"You must tell me all about that to-morrow; for I find my unfortunate
+head is like a bell with the vibration of the last stroke of the hammer
+on it. Don't forget,--to-morrow, sharp six. You 'll meet nobody but
+Broughton."
+
+"Dudley,--Sir Dudley Broughton?"
+
+"The same. You know him, then, already? Poor fellow! he's terribly
+cut up; but he 'll be glad to see an old friend. Have you been much
+together?"
+
+"A great deal. I made a cruise with him in his yacht, the 'Firefly.'"
+
+"What a rare piece of fortune to have met you!" cried Falkoner, as he
+shook my hand once more. And so, with the most fervent assurances of
+meeting on the morrow, we parted,--he, to saunter slowly towards his
+hotel; and I, to stand in the middle of the street, and, as I wiped the
+perspiration from my brow, to ask myself, had I gone clean mad.
+
+I was so overwhelmed by the shock of my own impudence that I stood where
+Falkoner left me, for full five minutes, motionless and spell-bound.
+To have boasted of my intimacy with Captain De Courcy, although the
+Atlantic rolled between us, was bad enough, in all conscience; but to
+have talked of Sir Dudley--the haughty, insolent, overbearing Sir Dudley
+Broughton--as "my old friend," was something that actually appalled me.
+How could my vain boastfulness have so far got the better of my natural
+keenness; how could my silly self-sufficiency have carried me so
+far? "Ah," thought I, "it was not the real Con Cregan who spoke
+such ineffable folly; these were the outpourings of that diabolical
+'Thumbo-rig.'"
+
+While, therefore, I entered into a bond with myself to eschew that
+insidious compound in future, I also adopted the far more imminent and
+important resolve, to run away from New Orleans. Another sun must not
+set upon me in that city, come what might. With a shudder, I called to
+mind Sir Dudley's own avowal of his passion as a hater, and I could not
+venture to confront such danger.
+
+I accordingly hastened to my miserable lodging, and, packing up my few
+clothes, now reduced to the compass of a bundle in a handkerchief, I
+paid my bill, and, on a minute calculation of various pieces of strange
+coinage, found myself the possessor of four dollars and a quarter,--a
+small sum, and something less than a cent for every ten miles I was
+removed from my native land. What meant the term "country," after all,
+to such as me? He has a country who possesses property in it, whose
+interests tie him to the soil, where his name is known and his presence
+recognized; but what country belongs to him where no resting-place is
+found for his weary feet, whose home is an inn, whose friends are the
+fellow-travellers with whom he has journeyed? The ties of country, like
+those of kindred, are superstitions,--high and holy ones sometimes, but
+still superstitions. Believe in them if you can, and so much the better
+for you; but in some hour the conviction will come that man is of every
+land.
+
+Thus pondering, I trudged along at a smart pace, my bundle on a stick
+over my shoulder, never noticing the road, and only following the way
+because it seemed to lead out of the city. It was a gorgeous morning;
+the sun glittered on the bright roofs, and lit up the gay terraces of
+the houses, where creepers of every tint and foliage were tastefully
+entwined and festooned, as these people knew so well to dispose.
+Servants were opening windows, displaying handsomely-furnished rooms,
+replete with every luxury, as I passed; busy housemaids were brushing,
+and sweeping, and polishing; and shining niggers were beating carpets
+and shaking hearthrugs, while others were raking the gravel before the
+doors, or watering the rich magnolias and cactuses that stood sentinel
+beneath the windows. Carriages, too, were washing, and high-bred horses
+standing out to be groomed,--all signs of wealth and of the luxuries of
+the rich men, whose close-drawn curtains portended sleep. "Ay," thought
+I, "there are hundreds here, whose weightiest evil would be that they
+awoke an hour earlier than their wont; that their favorite Arab had
+stood on a sharp stone; that some rude branch had scratched the rich
+varnish on their chariot: while I wander along, alone and friendless, my
+worldly substance a few dollars." This disparity of condition of course
+occurs to the mind of every poor man; but it only is a canker to him who
+has had a glimpse, be it ever so fleeting, of a life of luxury and ease.
+For this reason, the servant-class will always be a great source of
+danger to our present social condition; seeing the weakness, the folly,
+and sometimes the worse than folly of those they serve, viewing, from
+a near point, the interior lives of those who, seen from afar, are
+reckoned great and illustrious,--they lose the prestige of respect
+for the distinguishing qualities of station, and only yield it to
+the outward symbols,--the wealth and riches. What Socialists are our
+butlers; what Democrats our footmen; what Red Republicans are our cooks;
+what a Leveller is the gardener! For all your "yellow plush," you are
+Sans-culottes, every man of you.
+
+Now, I deem it a high testimony to my powers of judgment that I never
+entertained these views. On the contrary, I always upheld the doctrine
+that society, like a broken thigh-bone, did best on an "inclined plane,"
+and I repudiated equality with the scorn a man six feet high would feel
+were he told that the human standard was to be four and a half. The only
+grudge I did feel towards the fortunate man of wealth was that I should
+lose so many brilliant years of life in acquiring--for acquire it I
+would--what I would far rather employ in dispensing. A guinea at
+twenty is worth a hundred at thirty, a thousand at forty, a million at
+sixty,--that's the geometrical mean of life. Glorious youth, that only
+needs "debentures" to be divine!
+
+My head became clearer and my brain more unclouded as I walked along in
+the free air of the morning, and I felt that with a cigar I should both
+compose my vagrant fancies, and cheat myself out of the necessity of
+a breakfast. Excellent weed! that can make dulness imaginative, and
+imagination plodding; that renders stupid men companionable to clever
+ones, and gives a meek air of thought to the very flattest insipidity!
+
+I searched my pocket for the little case that contained my Manillas, but
+in vain; I tried another,--like result. How was it? I always carried it
+in my great-coat: had I been robbed? I could not help laughing at the
+thought, it sounded so ineffably comic. I essayed again, alas! with no
+better success. Could I have placed it in the breast-pocket? What! there
+is no breast-pocket! How is this, Con? Has Thumbo-rig its influence over
+you yet? I passed my hand across my brow, and tried to remember if the
+breast-pocket had only been a tradition of another coat, or what had
+become of it. Pockets do not close from being empty, like county banks,
+nor do they dry up, like wells, from disuse.
+
+"No, no; there certainly was once one here." As I said this, what was
+my amazement to find that the pocket for which I had been searching
+had changed sides, and gone from left to right! "Oh, this is too bad!"
+thought I; "with a little more punch, I could have fancied that I had
+put my coat on wrong-sided. Here is a mystery!" said I, "and now, to
+solve it patiently;" and so I sat me down by the wayside, and, laying my
+bundle on the ground, began to reflect.
+
+Reflection, I soon found, was of no use. Habit--the instinct of
+custom--showed me that my pocket had always been to the left; my right
+hand sought the spot with an almost mechanical impulse, whereas my left
+wandered about like a man in search of his newly-taken lodging. As I
+came to this puzzling fact, my fingers, deeply immersed in the pocket,
+came in contact with a small leather case. I drew it forth; it was not
+mine,--I had never seen it before! I opened it; there was nothing within
+but a small piece of card, with the words, "Full Share Ticket," on top,
+and, underneath, the figures, '438."
+
+From the card, my eyes reverted to the coat itself; and now I saw, with
+a surprise I cannot convey, that it was not my own coat, but another
+man's, I was wearing. The negro at the ordinary had assisted me to put
+it on. It was the only one, indeed, remaining, as I came away, and some
+other had carried off mine. So far, it was a fair exchange, of which I
+was not in any way accountable, seeing that I performed a mere passive
+part; taking--and even that unwillingly--what was left me. Certain
+threadbare symptoms about the cuffs, and a missing button or two, also
+showed me that I was no gainer by the barter. Was it worth while to go
+back? Were the chances of recovering my own equal to the risk of being
+myself discovered? I thought not. It was decidedly a shabby investment,
+and, now that I examined it more closely, a very miserable substitute
+for my own. I was vexed at the occurrence, and could not help
+reflecting, in very severe terms, upon the breach of honor such an act
+displayed. "Lie down with dogs, Master Con," says the adage, "and see
+if you don't get up with fleas!" "Such company as you passed the evening
+with were assuredly not above a piece of roguery like this." Falkoner it
+could not be; and I own that I was glad to know that, since he was much
+taller than me; nor could I remember one who was near enough my own size
+to make me suppose him the culprit; and so I ended by attributing the
+knavery to the negro, who probably had kept this ancient vestment for a
+moment of substitution.
+
+It may be inferred, from the difficulty of solution in the case of this
+very simple occurrence, that my faculties were not pre-eminently clear
+and lucid, and that the vapor of the Thumbo-rig still hung heavily over
+me; such, I am bound to own, was the fact. Every event of the previous
+night was as shadowy and imperfect as might be. It was only during the
+last half-hour of my conversation with Falkoner that I was completely
+conscious of all said and done around me. Previous to this, my mind had
+established a kind of Provisional Government over my rebellious ideas,
+and, like most such bodies, its edicts had little force, for they were
+based on but a weak prestige.
+
+Now then came a question of this strange-looking piece of card, with
+the numbers on which, by some wonderful process, I seemed to myself
+perfectly familiar,--nay, I felt that they were, from some hidden cause,
+recorded facts in my memory. All I could remember of the night before
+threw little light upon the matter, and I wondered on, striving to
+pierce the dull mist of uncertainty that enveloped all my thoughts;
+by this time, I had reached the bank of the river, and could perceive,
+about half a mile off, down the stream, a tall-masted smack getting
+ready for sea,--her blue-peter fluttered at the mast-head, and the
+pleasant "yo-ho!" of the sailors kept time with the capstan-bars as
+they heaved at the anchor. The wind was a nor'-wester, and beat with
+impatient gusts the loose canvas that hung ready to be shaken out, while
+the stream rushed rapidly along her sides.
+
+"Would I were to sail in you, wherever your voyage tended!" was my
+exclamation; and I sat down to watch the preparations, which the loud
+commands of the skipper seemed to hasten and press forward. So occupied
+was I with the stir and bustle on board the craft, where everything was
+done with a lightning speed, that I did not remark a boat's crew who
+sat leaning on their oars beside the wall of the stream; and it was only
+when an accidental sound of their voices struck me that I saw them.
+
+"That's a signal to come away, Ben!" said one of the men. "He 'll not
+wait no longer!"
+
+"And why should he lose a tide for any land-lugger of them all? It's not
+every day, besides, we get a nor'-wester like this!"
+
+"Well, what d'ye mean to do?" asked the former speaker.
+
+"Give him ten minutes more, Ben," cried another. "Let's have a chance of
+a dollar apiece, anyhow!"
+
+"There goes a shot!" said the man called Ben, as he pointed to the
+smack, from whose bow-port the smoke was lazily issuing. "I'll not stay
+here any longer; shove her away, lads!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. ON BOARD THE 'CHRISTOBAL'
+
+Without further delay, the men prepared to obey the summons. The boat's
+chain was cast off, and, as she swung out from the wall, I could see a
+small standard at her stern, carrying a little white flag, which, as the
+breeze wafted towards mer showed the enigmatical number 438.
+
+I sprang to my legs and uttered a cry of surprise.
+
+"Well, what is it, master?" said Ben, looking up, and probably expecting
+to see me take a header into the muddy stream.
+
+"That's the number!" cried I, not knowing what I said. "That's the very
+number!"
+
+"Very true, master, so it is, but you ha'n't got the counterpart, I
+guess!"
+
+"Yes, but I have, though!" said I, producing the ticket from the
+pocket-book.
+
+"Why, darn me if that a'n't himself!" cried the men; and they sung out
+three hearty cheers at the discovery.
+
+"Were you there long, old fellow?" said Ben.
+
+"About half an hour," said I.
+
+"Tarnation! and why did ye keep us a-waitin'? didn't you see the tide
+was on the ebb, and that Christy was making signals every five minutes
+or so?"
+
+"I was waiting--waiting--"
+
+"Waiting for what? I 'd like to know."
+
+"Waiting for my baggage," said I, taking a long breath.
+
+"An' it ain't come yet?"
+
+"No; I 'm afraid they missed the road."
+
+"Be that as it may, master, I'll not stay longer. Come along without
+your kit, or stay behind with it, whichever you please."
+
+"Hang the traps!" said I, affecting a bold carelessness; "I've a few
+things there I left out loose, that will do. When shall we be there?"
+This was a leading question, for I did not yet know whither we were
+bound.
+
+"At Galveston? Well, to-morrow evening or by nightfall, I guess, if
+the wind hold. Sit down there and make yourself snug; there's always
+a little splash of a sea in this river. And now, lads, pull away,--all
+together!"
+
+A second shot from the smack announced that her anchor was tripped, and
+we saw her now lurch over as her foresail filled.
+
+The men pulled vigorously, and in about twenty minutes I stood upon the
+deck of the "Christobal," making sundry excuses to her skipper for being
+late, and assuring him, on the faith of a gentleman, that I had utterly
+forgotten all about my voyage till the last moment.
+
+"They only sent me the number from the office late last night," said he,
+"and told me to look out for the gemman about the docks. But I war n't
+goin' to do that, I said. He's got a passage and grub to Galveston,--as
+good as ere a gemman can desire; he's won a nag they says is worth
+seven or eight hundred dollars, with furniture and arms for the new
+expedition; and I take it them things is worth a-looking arter,--so darn
+me blue if I gives myself no trouble about 'em."
+
+These scattered hints were all I wanted. The sea-breeze had restored me
+to my wonted clearness, and I now saw that "438" meant that I had won a
+free passage to Texas, a horse and a rifle when I got there; so far, the
+"exchange of coats" was "with a difference." It was with an unspeakable
+satisfaction that I learned I was the only passenger on board the
+"Christobal." The other "gentlemen" of the expedition had either already
+set out or abandoned the project, so that I had not to undergo any
+unpleasant scrutiny into my past life, or any impertinent inquiry
+regarding my future.
+
+Old Kit Turrel, the skipper, did not play the grand inquisitor on me.
+His life had been for the most part passed in making the voyage to and
+from New Orleans and Galveston, where he had doubtless seen sufficient
+of character to have satisfied a glutton in eccentricity. There was not
+a runaway rogue or abandoned vagabond that had left the coast for years
+back, with whose history he was not familiar. You had but to give him a
+name, and out came the catalogue of his misdeeds on the instant.
+
+These revelations had a prodigious interest for me. They opened the book
+of human adventure at the very chapter I wanted. It was putting a keen
+edge upon the razor to give _me_ the "last fashions in knavery,"--not
+to speak of the greater advantage of learning the success attendant on
+each, since "Kit" could tell precisely how it fared with every one who
+had passed through his hands.
+
+He enlightened me also as to these Texan expeditions, which, to use his
+own phrase, had never been anything better than "almighty swindles,"
+planted to catch young flats from the north country, the Southerns being
+all too "crank" to be done.
+
+"And is there no expedition in reality?" said I, with all the horror
+of a man who had been seduced from home, and family, and friends, under
+false pretences.
+
+"There do be a dash now and then into the Camanche trail when buffaloes
+are plenty, or to bring down a stray buck or so. Mayhap, too, they cut
+off an Injian fellow or two, if he linger too late in the fall; and
+then they come back with wonderful stories of storming villages, and
+destroying war-parties, and the rest of it; but we knows better. Most of
+'em 'ere chaps are more used to picklocks than rifles, and can handle a
+'jemmy' better than a 'bowie-knife.'"
+
+"And in the present case, what kind of fellows are they?"
+
+He rolled a tobacco quid from side to side of his mouth, and seemed to
+hesitate whether he would speak out.
+
+"There is no danger with me, Captain; I am an Englishman, a perfect
+stranger here, and have never seen or heard of a man amongst them."
+
+"I see _that_," said he; "and your friends must be rank green 'uns to
+let you go and join this trail,--that's a fact."
+
+"But what are they?"
+
+"Well, they call 'emselves horse-dealers; but above Austin there, and
+along by Bexar, they call 'em horsestealers!" and he laughed heartily at
+the excessive drollery of the remark.
+
+"And where do they trade with their cattle?"
+
+"They sells 'em here, or up in the States away north sometimes; but they
+picks up the critters along the Chehuhua Line, or down by Aguaverde,
+or San Pueblo. I 've known 'em to go to Mexico too. When they don't get
+scalped, they 've rather good fun of it; but they squable a bit now and
+then among 'emselves; and so there's a Texan proverb that 'buffalo-meat
+in spring is as rare as a mustang merchant with two eyes!'"
+
+"What does that mean?"
+
+"They gouge a bit down there, they do,--that's a fact. I 've known two
+or three join the Redmen, and say Injians was better living with, than
+them 'ere."
+
+"I own your picture is not flattering."
+
+"Yes, but it be, though! You don't know them chaps; but I know 'em,--ay,
+for nigh forty year. I 'm a-livin' on this 'ere passage, and I've seen
+'em all. I knew Bowlin Sam, I did!" From the manner this was said, I saw
+that Bowlin Sam was a celebrity, to be ignorant of whom was to confess
+one's self an utter savage.
+
+"To be sure, I was only a child at the time; but I saw him come aboard
+with the negro fellow that he followed up the Red River trail. They
+were two of the biggest fellows you could see. Sam stood six feet
+six-an'-a-quarter; the Black was six feet four,--but he had a stoop in
+his shoulders. Sam tracked him for two years; and many's the dodge they
+had between 'em. But Sam took him at last, and he brought him all the
+way from Guajaqualle here, bound with his hands behind him, and a log of
+iron-wood in his mouth; for he could tear like a juguar.
+
+"They were both on 'em ugly men,--Sam very ugly! Sam could untwist the
+strongest links of an iron boat-chain, and t' other fellow could bite a
+man-rope clean in two with his teeth. 'The Black' eat nothing from the
+time they took him; and when they put him into the shore-boat, in the
+river, he was so weak they had to lift him like a child. Well, out they
+rowed into the middle of the stream, where the water is roughest among
+the 'snags,' and many a whirlpool dashing around 'atween the bows of
+the 'sawyers.' That's the spot you 're sure to see one of these young
+sharks,--for the big chaps knows better than to look for their
+wittals in dangerous places,--while the water is black, at times, with
+alligators. Well, as I was sayin', out they rowed; and just as they
+comes to this part of the stream, the black fellow gives a spring, and
+drives both his heavy ironed feet bang through the flooring-plank of the
+boat. It was past bailin'; they were half swamped before they could
+ship their oars; the minute after, they were all struggling in the river
+together. There were three besides the nigger; but he was the only one
+ever touched land again. He was an Antigua chap, that same nigger; and
+they knows sharks and caymans as we does dog-fish: but, for all that, he
+was all bloody, and had lost part of one foot, when he got ashore."
+
+"Why had he been captured? What had he done?" "What had n't he done!
+That same black murdered more men as any six in these parts; he it
+was burned down Che-coat's mill up at Brandy Cove, with all the people
+fastened up within. Then he run away to the 'washings' at Guajaqualle,
+where he killed Colonel Rixon, as was over the 'Placer.' He cut him in
+two with a bowie-knife, and never a one guessed how it happened, as the
+juguars had carried off two or three people from the 'washins '; but
+the nigger got drunk one night, and began a-cuttin' down the young
+hemlock-trees, and sayin', 'That's the way I mowed down Buckra'
+Georgy,'--his name was George Rixon. Then he bolted, and was never seen
+more. Ah, he was a down-hard 'un, that fellow Crick!"
+
+"Crick,--Menelaus Crick!" said I, almost springing up with amazement as
+I spoke.
+
+"Just so. You 've heard enough of him 'fore now, I guess."
+
+The skipper went on to talk about the negro's early exploits, and the
+fearful life of crime which he had always pursued; but I heard little of
+what he said. The remembrance of the man himself, bowed down with years
+and suffering, was before me; and I thought how terribly murder is
+expiated, even in those cases where the guilty man is believed to have
+escaped. So is it; the dock, the dungeon, and the gallows can be mercies
+in comparison with the self-torment of eternal fear, the terror of
+companionship, or the awful hell of solitude! The scene at Anticosti and
+the terrific night in the Lower Town of Quebec rose both together to
+my mind, and so absorbed my thoughts that the old skipper, seeing my
+inattention, and believing that I was weary and inclined for sleep, left
+me for the deck; and I lay still, pondering over these sad themes.
+
+At last I roused myself and went on deck. The city had long since
+disappeared from view, and even the low land at the mouth of the river
+had faded in the distance; while, instead or the yellow, polluted
+flood of the Mississippi, the blue waves, shining and sparkling, danced
+merrily past, or broke in foam-sheets at the bow. The white sails were
+bent like boards, firm and immovable before the breeze, and the swift
+vessel darted her way onward as proudly as though her freight were
+something prouder and better than a poor adventurer, without one in the
+wide world who cared whether he won or lost the game with Fortune.
+
+My spirits rose every mile we left New Orleans behind us; I felt,
+besides, that to bring my skill to such a market was but to carry "coals
+to Newcastle;" nor, from the skipper's account, did Texas offer a much
+more favorable field. However, it smacked of adventure; the very name
+had a charm for me; and I thought I should far rather confront actual
+danger than live a life of petty schemes and small expedients. But what
+a strange crucible is the human heart! here was I, placed in a situation
+to which an incident had elevated me,--of a kind which a more scrupulous
+sense of honor would have made some shudder at,--fancying, ay, and
+persuading myself too, that, in the main, I possessed very admirable
+sentiments and most laudable ambitions; that the occasional little
+straits to which I was reduced were only so many practical jokes played
+on me by "Fate," which took, doubtless, a high delight in the ingenuity
+by which I always fell on my feet,--while I felt certain that, were I
+only fairly treated, a more upright, honorable, straightforward young
+gentleman never lived than I should prove!
+
+"Let Dame Fortune only deal me trumps," said I, "and I'll promise never
+'to look into my neighbor's hand.'" Gentle reader, you smile at my
+humility; well, then, it's clear you are neither a secretary of state
+nor a railway director,--that's all.
+
+We dropped anchor off Galveston just as the sun was setting; and the
+evening being calm, and the reflection of the houses and steeples in the
+water sharp and defined, the scene was sufficiently striking. The city
+itself was more important as to size and wealth than I had anticipated,
+and the office of the "Texan Expedition," held at the "Moon," a
+great coffee-house on the Quay, impressed me most favorably with the
+respectability and pretensions of my "Co-expeditionaries." Old Kit
+presented me to the secretary--a very knavish-looking fellow in
+spectacles of black gauze--as the winner of the great prize, which, to
+my excessive mortification, I learned was at Houston, about eighty miles
+farther up the Bay.
+
+I apologized for my careless dress by stating that my baggage had been
+unfortunately left behind at New Orleans, and that in my haste I had
+been obliged to come on board with actually nothing but the few dollars
+I had in my pocket.
+
+"That's a misfortune easily repaired, sir," said the gauze-eyed
+secretary; "you can have your 'credit' cashed here just as liberally as
+at any town in the country."
+
+"I have no doubt of that," responded I, somewhat tartly, for I did not
+fancy this allusion to banks and bankers; "but all my papers are in my
+portmanteau."
+
+"Provoking, certainly," said he, taking a long pinch of snuff,--"ain't
+it, Kit?"
+
+But Kit only scratched his nose, and looked puzzled.
+
+"Are your bankers Vicars and Bull, sir?"
+
+"No," said I, "my credits are all on a Northern house; but I fancy my
+name is tolerably well known. You 've heard of the Cregans, I suppose."
+
+"Cregan--Cregan," repeated he a couple of times; then, opening a
+huge ledger at the letter C, ran his eye down a long column.
+"Crabtree--Crossley--Croxam--Crebell--Creffet--Cregmore. It is not
+Cregmore, sir?"
+
+"No, Cregan is the name."
+
+"Ah, well, there's no Cregan. There was a Cregmore was 'lynched' here,
+I see by the mark in the book, and we have a small trunk waiting to be
+claimed, belonging to him."
+
+"That ain't the fellow as purtended to be winner of the wagon team that
+was lotteried here a twelvemonth since, is it?" said Kit.
+
+"Yes, but it is, though. He made out he had the ticket all right and
+straight, when up comes one Colonel Jabus Harper, and showed the real
+thing; and the chaps took it up hotly, and they lynched Cregmore that
+evening."
+
+"Yes, sir, that's a fact," quoth Kit.
+
+"What was the penalty?" asked I, with a most imposing indifference.
+
+"They hanged him up at Hall's Court yonder. I ain't sure if he be n't
+hanging there still."
+
+"And this packet," said I, for the theme was excessively distasteful,
+"when does she sail?"
+
+"She starts to-night at twelve,--first cabin, two dollars; steerage,
+one-twenty."
+
+"Thank you," said I, touching my hat with the condescending air one
+occasionally employs to humiliate an inferior, by its mingled pride and
+courtesy; and I turned into the street.
+
+"You ain't a-going to Hall's Court, are you?" said Kit, overtaking me.
+
+"Of course not," responded I, indignantly. "Such sights are anything but
+pleasurable."
+
+"He ain't all right, that 'un," said Gauze-eyes, as old Kit re-entered
+the office, and I stepped back to listen.
+
+"Well, I don't know," muttered the other; "I 'm a-think-ing it be
+doubtful, sir. He ha' n't got much clink with him, that's a fact."
+
+"I have half a mind to send Chico up in the boat to-night, just to dodge
+him a bit."
+
+"Well, ye might do it," yawned the other; "but Chico is such an almighty
+villain that he'll make him out a rogue or a swindler, at all events."
+
+"Chico is smart, _that_ I do confess," said the other, with a grin.
+
+"And he do look so uncommon like a vagabond, too; Chico, I don't like
+him."
+
+"He can look like anything he pleases, Chico can. I've seen him pass for
+a Pawnee, and no one ever disciver it."
+
+"He 's a rank coward, for all that," rejoined the skipper; "and he can
+put no disguise upon _that_."
+
+The sound of feet, indicative of leaving, made me hasten from the
+spot, but in a mood far from comfortable. With the fate of my ingenious
+predecessor in "Hall's Court" before me, and the small possibility of
+escaping the shrewd investigations of "Chico," I really knew not what
+course to follow. The more I reflected, however, the less choice was
+there at my disposal; the bold line, as generally happens, being not
+a whit more dangerous than the timid path, since, were I to abandon my
+prize, and not proceed to Houston, the inevitable Chico would only be
+the more certain to discover me.
+
+My mind was made up; and, stepping into a shop, I expended two of my
+four dollars in the purchase of a "revolver,"--second-hand, but an
+excellent weapon, and true as gold. A few cents supplied me with some
+balls and powder; and, thus provided, I took my way towards the
+wharf where the steamer lay, already making some indicative signs of
+readiness.
+
+I took a steerage passage; and, not knowing where or how to dispose of
+myself in the interval before starting, I clambered into a boat on deck,
+and, with my bundle for a pillow, fell into a pleasant doze. It was
+not so much sleep as a semi-waking state that merely dulled and dimmed
+impressions,--a frame of mind I have often found very favorable to
+thought. One is often enabled to examine a question in this wise, as
+they look at the sun through a smoked glass, and observe the glittering
+object without being blinded by its brilliancy. I suppose the time I
+passed in this manner was as near an approach to low spirits as I am
+capable of feeling; for of regular downright depression, I know as
+little as did Nelson of fear.
+
+I bethought me seriously of the "scrape" in which I found myself, and
+reflected with considerable misgivings upon the summary principles
+of justice in vogue around me; and yet the knavery was not of my own
+seeking. Like Falstaff's honor, it was "thrust upon me." I was innocent
+of all plot or device. "Le diable qui se mêle en tout "--never was there
+a truer saying--would have it that I should exchange coats with another,
+and that this confounded ticket should be the compensation for worn
+seams and absent buttons.
+
+I have no doubt, thought I, but that "Honesty is the best policy,"
+pretty much upon the same principle that even a dead calm is better than
+a hurricane. But to him who desires "progress," on whose heart the word
+"onward" is written, the calm is lethargy, while the storm may prove
+propitious. I then tried to persuade myself that even this adventure
+could not turn out ill,--not that I could by any ingenuity devise how it
+should prove otherwise; but I knew that Fortune is as skilful as she is
+kind, and so I left the whole charge to her.
+
+Is it my fault, I exclaimed, that I am not rich, and wellborn, and
+great? Show me any one who would have enjoyed such privileges more. Is
+it my fault that, being poor, ignoble, and lowly in condition, I have
+tastes and aspirations at war with my situation? These ought rather to
+be stimulants to exertion than caprices of Fortune. I like the theory
+better, too; and is it not hard to be condemned for the devices I am
+reduced to employ to combat such natural evils? If the prisoner severs
+his fetters with an old nail, it is because he does not possess the
+luxury of a file or a "cold chisel." As for me, the employment of small
+and insignificant means is highly distasteful; instead of following the
+lone mountain-path on foot, I'd drive "life's high road" four-in-hand,
+if I could.
+
+The furious rush of the escape-steam, the quick coming and going of
+feet, the heavy banging of luggage on the deck, and all the other
+unmistakable signs of approaching departure, aroused me, as I lay
+patiently contemplating the bustle of leave-taking, hand-shaking, and
+embracing, in which I had no share. A lantern at the gangway lit up each
+face that passed, and I strained my eyes to mark one, the only one in
+whom I was interested. As I knew not whether the ingenious Chico were
+young, old, short, slim, fat, or six-foot,--whether brown or fair,
+smooth-faced or bearded,--my observations were necessarily universal,
+and I was compelled to let none escape me.
+
+At first, each passenger appeared to be "him;" and then, after a few
+minutes, I gave up the hope of detection. There were fellows whose
+exterior might mean anything,--large, loose-coated figures, with leather
+overalls and riding-whips, many of them with pistols at their girdles,
+and one or two wearing swords, parading the deck on every side. It
+needed not the accompaniment of horse-gear, saddles, holsters, halters,
+and cavessons to show that they belonged to a fraternity which, in every
+land of the Old World or the New, has a prescriptive claim to knavery.
+Although all of them were natives of the United States, neither in
+their dark-brown complexions, deep mustaches and whiskers, and strange
+gestures, was there any trace of that land which we persist in deeming
+so purely Anglo-Saxon. The prairie and the hunting-ground, the life of
+bivouac and the habit of danger, had imparted its character to their
+looks; and there was, besides, that air of swagger and braggadocio so
+essentially the type of your trafficker in horse-flesh.
+
+If my attention had not been turned to another subject, I would
+willingly have studied a little the sayings and doings of this
+peculiar class, seeing that it might yet be my lot to form one of "the
+brotherhood;" but my thoughts were too deeply interested in discovering
+"Chico," whose presence in the same ship with me actually weighed on my
+mind like the terror of a phantom.
+
+"Can this be him?" was the question which arose to my heart as figure
+after figure passed me near where I lay; but the careless, indolent look
+of the passenger as regularly negatived the suspicion. We were now under
+way, steaming along in still water with all the tremendous power of our
+high-pressure engines, which shook the vessel as though they would rend
+its strong framework asunder. The night was beautifully calm and mild,
+and, although without a moon, the sky sparkled with a thousand stars,
+many of which were of size and brilliancy to throw long columns of light
+across the bay.
+
+The throb of the great sea monster as she cleared her way through the
+water, was the only sound heard in the stillness; for although few had
+"gone below," the groups seated about the deck either smoked in silence,
+or talked in low, indistinct tones.
+
+I lay gazing at the heavens, and wondering within myself which of those
+glittering orbs above me was gracious enough to preside over the life
+and adventures of Con Cregan. "Some dim, indistinct little spangle it
+must be," thought I,--"some forgotten planet of small reputation, I 've
+no doubt it is. I should n't wonder if it were that little sly-looking
+fellow that winks at me from the edge of yonder cloud, and seems to
+say, 'Lie still, Con,--keep close, my lad; there's danger near.'" As I
+half-muttered this to myself, a dark object intervened between me and
+the sky, a large black disk, shutting out completely the brilliant
+fretwork on which I had been gazing. As I looked again, I saw it was
+the huge broad-brimmed hat of a Padre,--one of those felted coalscuttles
+which make the most venerable faces grotesque and ridiculous.
+
+Lying down in the bottom of the boat, I was able to take a deliberate
+survey of the priest's features, while he could barely detect the dark
+outline of _my_ figure. He was thick and swarthy, with jet-black eyes
+and a long-pointed chin. There was something Spanish in the face, and
+yet more of the Indian; at least, the projecting cheek-bones and the
+gaunt, hollow cheeks favored that suspicion.
+
+From the length of time he stood peering at me, I could perceive that it
+was not a passing impulse, but that his curiosity was considerable. This
+impression was scarcely conceived ere proved, as, taking a small lantern
+from the binnacle, he approached the boat, and held it over me.
+
+Affecting a heavy slumber, I snored loudly, and lay perfectly still,
+while he examined my face, bending over me as I lay, and marking each
+detail of my dress and appearance.
+
+As if turning in my sleep, I contrived to alter my position in such a
+manner that, covering my face with my arm, I could watch the Padre.
+
+"Came on board alone, said you?" asked he of a little dirty urchin of a
+cabin-boy, at his side.
+
+"Yes, Father; about two hours before we left the harbor."
+
+"No luggage of any kind?"
+
+"A bundle, Father; that under his head, and nothing more."
+
+"Did he speak to you, or ask any questions?"
+
+"Only at what time we should reach Houston, and if the 'White Hart' was
+near the Quay?"
+
+"And then he lay down in the boat here?"
+
+"Just so; I saw no more of him after."
+
+"That will do," said the Padre, handing the lantern to the boy.
+
+That will do! thought I also. Master Chico, if you know me, I know _you_
+as well!
+
+The game was now begun between us,--at least, so I felt it. I lay
+watching my adversary, who slowly paced backwards and forwards, stopping
+now and then to peep into the boat, and doubtless conning over in his
+own mind his plan of attack.
+
+We were to land some passengers and take in some wood at a little place
+called Fork Island; and here I was half determined within myself that my
+voyage should end. That "Chico" had discovered me, was clear, the Padre
+could be no other than him; and that he would inevitably hunt me down at
+Austin was no less evident. Now, discovery and "lynching" were but links
+of the same chain; and I had no fancy to figure as "No. 2" in Hall's
+Court!
+
+The silence on the deck soon showed that most of the passengers had gone
+below, and, so far as I could see in the uncertain light, "Chico" with
+them. I arose, therefore, from my hard couch to take a little exercise,
+which my cramped limbs stood in need of. A light drizzling rain had
+begun to fall, which made the deck slippery and uncomfortable, and so I
+took my stand at the door of the cook's galley, into which two or three
+of the crew had sought refuge.
+
+As the rain fell the fog thickened, so that, standing close in to shore,
+the skipper slackened our speed, till at last we barely moved through
+the water. Not aware of the reason, I asked one of the sailors for an
+explanation.
+
+"It's the dirty weather, I reckon," said he, sulky at being questioned.
+
+"Impatient, I suppose, to get the journey over, my young friend?" said a
+low, silky voice, which at once reminded me of that I had already heard
+when I lay in the boat. I turned, and it was the Padre, who, with an
+umbrella over him, was standing beside me.
+
+"I 'm not much of a sailor, Father," replied I, saluting him
+respectfully as I spoke.
+
+"More accustomed to the saddle than the poop-deck?" said he, smiling
+blandly.
+
+I nodded assent, and he went on with some passing generalities about sea
+and land life,--mere skirmishing, as I saw, to invite conversation.
+
+Partly weariness, partly a sense of discomfort at the persecution
+of this man's presence, made me sigh heavily. I had not perceived it
+myself, but he remarked it immediately, and said,--
+
+"You are depressed in spirit, my son; something is weighing on your
+heart!"
+
+I looked up at him, and, guided possibly by my suspicion of his real
+character, I saw, or thought I saw, a twinkling glitter of his dark eye,
+as though he was approaching the theme on which he was bent.
+
+"Yes, Father," replied I, with a voice of well-feigned emotion, "my
+heart is indeed heavy; but"--here I assumed a more daring tone--"I must
+not despond, for all that!"
+
+I walked away as I spoke, and, retiring, sat down near the wheel, as
+if to meditate. I judged that the Padre would soon follow me; nor was I
+wrong: I was not many minutes seated ere he stood at my side.
+
+"I see," said he, in a mild voice,--"I see, from the respect of your
+manner, that you are one of our own people,--a good son of the Church.
+What is your native country?"
+
+"Ireland, Father," said I, with a sigh.
+
+"A blessed land indeed!" said he, benignly; "happy in its peaceful
+inhabitants,--simple-minded and industrious!"
+
+I assented, like a good patriot, but not without misgivings that he
+might have been just as happy in another selection of our good gifts.
+
+"I have known many of your countrymen," resumed he, "and they all
+impressed me with the same esteem. All alike frugal, temperate, and
+tranquilly disposed."
+
+"Just so, sir; and the cruelty is, nobody gives them credit for it!"
+
+"Ah, my son, there you are in error. The Old World may be, and indeed I
+have heard that it is, ungenerous; but its prejudices cannot cross the
+ocean. Here we estimate men, not by _our_ prejudices, but by _their_
+merits. Here we recognize the Irishman as Nature has made him,--docile,
+confiding, and single-hearted; slow to anger, and ever ready to control
+his passions!"
+
+"That's exactly his portrait, Father!" said I, enthusiastically.
+"Without a double of any kind,--a creature that does not know a wile or
+a stratagem!"
+
+The priest seemed so captivated by my patriotism and my generous warmth
+that he sat down beside me, and we continued to make Ireland still our
+theme, each vying with the other who could say most in praise of that
+country.
+
+It was at the close of a somewhat long disquisition upon the comparative
+merits of Ireland and the Garden of Eden,--in which, I am bound to say,
+the balance inclined to the former,--that the Padre, as if struck by a
+sudden thought, remarked,--
+
+"You are the very first of your nation I ever met in a frame of mind
+disposed to melancholy! I have just been running over, to myself, all
+the Irishmen I ever knew, and I cannot recall one that had a particle of
+gloom or sorrow about him."
+
+"Nor had I, Father," said I, with emotion; "nor did I know what sorrow
+was, till three days back! I was light-hearted and happy; the world went
+well with me, and I was content with the world. I will not trouble you
+with my story; enough when I say that I came abroad to indulge a
+taste for adventure and enterprise, and that the New World has not
+disappointed my expectations. If I spent money a little too freely, an
+odd grumble or so from 'the governor' was the darkest cloud that shaded
+my horizon. An only son, perhaps I pushed that prerogative somewhat
+too far; but our estate is unencumbered, and my father's habits are
+the reverse of extravagant,--for a man of his class, I might call them
+downright rustic in simplicity. Alas! why do I think of these things? I
+have done with them forever."
+
+"Nay, nay, you must not give way thus. It is very unlikely that one
+young as you are can have any real guilt upon his conscience."
+
+"Not yet, Father," said I, with a shudder,--"not yet; but who can tell
+how it may be with me to-morrow or next day? What a different answer
+should I have to give your question then!"
+
+"This is some fancy,--some trick of a warm and ill-regulated
+imagination, my son."
+
+"It is the language my heart pours from my lips," said I, grasping
+his hand as if with irrepressible emotion. "I have a heavy crime
+here--here!" and I struck my breast violently; "and if it be as yet
+unaccomplished, the shadow of the guilt is on me already."
+
+"Sit still, my son, sit still, and listen to me," said he, restraining
+me, as I was about to rise. "To whom can you reveal these mysterious
+terrors more fittingly than to me? Be candid; tell me what weighs upon
+your heart. It may be that a mere word of mine can give you courage and
+calm."
+
+"That cannot be," said I, firmly; "you speak in kindness, but you know
+not what you promise. I am under a vow, Father,--I am under a vow."
+
+"Well, my son, there are many vows meritorious. There are vows of
+penitence, and of chastity, and of abstinence--"
+
+"Mine is none of these," said I, with a low, guttural utterance, as if I
+was biting each word I spoke.
+
+"Vows of chastisement--"
+
+"Not that, not that either!" cried I; then, dropping my voice to a low
+whisper, I said, "I have sworn a solemn oath to commit a murder! I know
+the full guilt of what is before me, I see all the consequences, both
+here and hereafter: but my word is pledged,--I have taken the oath with
+every ceremony that can give it solemnity; and--I 'll go through with
+it!"
+
+"There is a mystery in all this," said the Padre; "you must recount the
+circumstances of this singular pledge, ere I can give you either comfort
+or counsel."
+
+"I look for neither,--I hope for neither!" said I, wringing my hands;
+"but you shall hear my story,--you are the last to whom I can ever
+reveal it! I arrived at New Orleans about a fortnight ago, on a yacht
+cruise with a friend of mine, of whose name, at least, you may have
+heard,--Sir Dudley Broughton."
+
+"The owner of a handsome schooner, the 'Firefly,'" said the Padre, with
+an animation on the subject not quite in keeping with his costume.
+
+"The same; you are, then, acquainted with him?"
+
+"Oh, no; I was accidentally standing on the wharf when his yacht came up
+the river at New Orleans."
+
+"You did n't remark a young man on the poop in a foraging-cap, with a
+gold band round it?"
+
+"I cannot say I did."
+
+"He carried a key-bugle in his hand."
+
+"I did not perceive him."
+
+"That was me; how different was I then! Well, well, I 'll hasten on. We
+arrived at New Orleans, not quite determined whither next we should bend
+our steps; and hearing by mere accident of this Texan expedition, we
+took it into our heads we would join it. On inquiring about the matter,
+we found that a lottery was in progress, the prizes of which were
+various portions of equipment, horses, mules, baggage, negroes, and so
+on. For this--just out of caprice--we took several tickets; but as, from
+one cause or other, the drawing was delayed, we lingered on, going
+each day to the office, and there making acquaintance with a number of
+fellows interested in the expedition, but whose manner and style, I
+need scarcely say, were not good recommendations to intimacy. Broughton,
+however, always liked that kind of thing; low company, with him, had
+always the charm of an amusement that he could resign whenever he
+fancied. Now, as he grew more intimate with these fellows, he obtained
+admission into a kind of club they held in an obscure part of the town,
+and thither we generally repaired every evening, when too late for any
+more correct society. They were all, or at least they affected to be,
+interested in Texan expeditions; and the conversation never took any
+other turn than what concerned these objects; and if at first our Old
+World notions were shocked at their indifference to life,--the reckless
+disregard of honor and good faith they evinced,--we came by degrees to
+feel that the moral code of the Prairies permitted many things which
+were never sanctioned in more cultivated latitudes.
+
+"Broughton entered into all this with a most extraordinary interest.
+Nothing seemed too wild, too abandoned, and too outrageous for his
+notions; and, I shame to say it, he soon made me a convert to his
+opinions. His constant speech was, 'Be as virtuous as you please,
+my dear fellow, among ladies and gentlemen; but pray fight Choctaws,
+Pawnees, and half-breeds with their own weapons, which are either a
+trick or a tomahawk.' I never liked the theory; but partly from daily
+iteration, partly from a yielding pliancy of disposition, and in great
+measure from being shamed into it, I gave way, and joined him in all the
+pledges he gave, to go through with anything the expedition exacted.
+I must be brief; that light yonder is on Fork Island, where we stop to
+take in wood; and ere we reach it, I must make up my mind to one course
+or other.
+
+"As the time for the starting of the expedition drew nigh, the various
+plans and schemes became the theme of nightly discussion; and we heard
+of nothing but guides and trails, where grass was to be found for the
+cattle, and where water could be had, with significant hints about
+certain places and people who were known or believed to be inimical to
+these excursions. Thus, on the map, were marked certain villages which
+might be put under contribution, and certain log-houses which should be
+made to pay a heavy impost: here, it was a convent to be mulcted; and
+there, a store or a mill to be burned! In fact, the expedition seemed to
+have as many vengeances to fulfil as hopes of gain to gratify; for each
+had a friend who was maltreated, or robbed, or murdered, and whose fate
+or fortunes required an expiation.--But I weary you, Padre, with all
+this?"
+
+"Not at all, my son; I recognize perfectly the accuracy of your account.
+I have heard a good deal about these people."
+
+"There was one individual, however, so universally detested that you
+would suppose he must have been a kind of devil incarnate to have
+incurred such general hate. Every one had a grudge against him, and, in
+fact, there was a kind of struggle who should be allotted to wreak on
+him the common vengeance of the company. It was at last decided that
+his fate should be lotteried, and that whoever won the first prize--this
+mare of which you may have heard--should also win the right to finish
+this wretched man. I gained this infamous distinction; and here am I, on
+my way to claim my prize and commit a murder! Ay, I may as well employ
+the true word,--it is nothing less than a murder! I have not even the
+poor excuse of revenge. I cannot pretend that he ever injured me,--nay,
+I have not even seen him; I never heard of his name till two days
+ago; nor, even now, could I succeed in finding him out, if I were not
+provided with certain clews at Houston, and certain guides by whose aid
+I am to track him. My oath is pledged: I swore it solemnly that, if the
+lot fell upon me, I 'd do the deed, and do it I will; yet, I am equally
+resolved never to survive it."--Here I produced my revolver.--"If this
+barrel be for the unlucky Chico, this other is for myself!"
+
+"What name did you say?" cried he, with a faltering voice, while his
+hand, as he laid it on my arm, shook like ague.
+
+"Chico, the wretch is called," I said, fixing a cap on my pistol.
+
+"And why call him a wretch, my son? Has he ever injured you? How do you
+know that he is not some poor, kindly hearted creature, the father
+of five children, one of them a baby, perhaps? How can you tell the
+difficulties by which he gains his living, and the hazard to which he
+exposes his life in doing so? And is it to injure such a man you will go
+down to your own grave an assassin?"
+
+"I'll do it," said I, doggedly; "I'll keep my oath."
+
+"Such an oath never bound any man; it is a snare of Satan."
+
+"So it may,--I 'll keep it," said I, beating the deck with my foot, with
+the dogged determination of one not to be turned from his purpose.
+
+"Kill in cold blood a man you never saw before?"
+
+"Just so; I am not going to think of him, when I set so little store by
+myself; I only wish the fellow were here now, and I'd show you whether
+I'd falter or not."
+
+"Poor Chico,--I could weep for him!" said he, blubbering.
+
+"Keep your pity for _me_," said I,--"I, that am bound by this terrible
+oath, and must either stamp myself a coward or a murderer. As for Chico,
+I believe a more worthless wretch never existed,--a poor, mean-spirited
+creature, whose trade is to be a spy, and by whose cursed machinations
+many a fine fellow has been ruined."
+
+"You are all wrong, sir," said the Padre, warmly. "I know the man
+myself; he is an amiable, kind-hearted being, that never harmed any
+one."
+
+"He's the fellow to die, then!" said I, roughly.
+
+"He has a small family, unprovided for."
+
+"They have the inheritance of his virtues," said I, scoffingly.
+
+"Can you have the heart for such cruelty?" cried he, almost sobbing.
+
+"Come with me when I land at Houston, and see,--that's all!" said I.
+"A few minutes back, I was hesitating whether I would not land at this
+island and abandon my purpose. The weakness is now over; I feel a kind
+of fiendish spirit growing up within me already; I cannot think of the
+fellow without a sense of loathing and hatred!"
+
+"Lie down, my son, and compose yourself for an hour or two; sleep and
+rest will calm your agitated brain, and you will then listen to my
+counsels with profit: your present excitement overmasters your reason,
+and my words would be of no effect."
+
+"I know it--I feel it here, across my temples--that it is a kind of
+paroxysm; but I never close my eyes that I do not fancy I see the
+fellow, now in one shape, now in another, for he can assume a thousand
+disguises; while in my ears his accursed name is always ringing."
+
+"I pity you from my heart!" said the other; and certainly a sadder
+expression I never saw in any human face before. "But go down below; go
+down, I beseech you."
+
+"I have only taken a deck-passage," said I, doggedly; "I determined that
+I would see no one, speak to no one."
+
+"Nor need you, my son," said he, coaxingly. "They are all sound asleep
+in the after-cabin; take _my_ berth,--I do not want it; I am always
+better upon deck."
+
+"If you will have it so," said I, yielding; "but, for your life, not a
+word of what I have said to you! Do not deceive yourself by any false
+idea of humanity. Were you to shoot me where I stand, you could not save
+him,--_his_ doom is spoken. If _I_ fail, there is Broughton, and, after
+him, a score of others, sworn to do the work."
+
+"Lie down and calm yourself," said he, leading me to the
+companion-ladder; "we must speak of this to-morrow."
+
+I squeezed his hand, and slowly descended to the cabin. At first the
+thought occurred to me that he might give the alarm and have me seized;
+but then this would expose him so palpably to my recognition, should I
+chance to escape, it was unlikely he would do so. The stillness on deck
+showed me I was correct in this latter estimate, and so I turned into
+his comfortable berth, and, while I drew the counterpane over me,
+thought I had made a capital exchange for the hard ribs of the
+"long-boat."
+
+If my stratagem had succeeded in impressing my friend Chico with a most
+lively fear, it did not leave my own mind at perfect tranquillity. I
+knew that he must be a fellow of infinite resources, and that the game
+between us, in all likelihood, had but commenced. In circumstances of
+difficulty, I have constantly made a practice of changing places with my
+antagonist, fancying myself in _his_ position, and asking myself how I
+should act? This taking the "adversary's hand" is admirable practice
+in the game of life; it suggests an immense range of combinations, and
+improves one's play prodigiously.
+
+I now began to myself a little exercise after this fashion: but what
+between previous fatigue, the warmth of the cabin, and the luxury of
+a real bed, Chico and I changed places so often, in my brain, that
+confusion ensued, then came weariness, and, at last sound sleep,--so
+sound that I was only awoke by the steward as he popped his greasy head
+into the berth and said, "I say, master, here we are, standing close in:
+had n't you better get up?"
+
+I did as he advised; and, as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, said,
+"Where's the Padre, steward?--what's become of him?"
+
+"He was took ill last night, and stopped at Fork Island; he 'll go back
+with us to-morrow to Galveston."
+
+"You know him, I suppose?" said I, looking at the fellow with a shrewd
+intelligence that he knew how to construe.
+
+"Well," cried he, scratching his head, "well, mayhap I do guess a bit
+who he is."
+
+"So do I, steward; and when we meet again, he 'll know _me_." said
+I, with a look of such imposing sternness that I saw the fellow was
+recording it. "You may tell him so, steward. I 'll wait for him
+here till I catch him; and if he escape both myself and my friend
+Broughton,--Broughton; don't forget the name,--he is deeper than I give
+him credit for."
+
+As I was about to leave the cabin, I caught sight of the corner of a
+red handkerchief peeping out beneath the pillow of the berth. I drew
+it forth, and found it was Chico's travelling kit, which he preferred
+abandoning to the risk of again meeting me. It contained a small black
+skull-cap such as priests wear, a Romish missal, a string of beads, with
+a few common articles of dress, and eight dollars in silver.
+
+"The spoils of victory," quoth I, embodying the whole in my own bundle:
+"the enemy's baggage and the military chest captured."
+
+"Which is the White Hart?" said I, as I came on deck, now crowded with
+shore folk, porters, and waiters.
+
+"This way, sir,--follow me," said a smart fellow in a waiter's dress;
+and I handed him my bundle and stepped on shore.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. THE LOG-HUT AT BRAZOS
+
+I was all impatience to see my prize: and scarcely had I entered the inn
+than I passed out into the stable-yard, now crowded with many of those
+equestrian-looking figures I had seen on board the steamer.
+
+"Butcher's mare here still, Georgie?" said a huge fellow, with high
+boots of red-brown leather, and a sheepskin capote belted round him with
+a red sash.
+
+"Yes, Master Seth, there she stands. You'll be getting a bargain of her,
+one of these days."
+
+"If I had her up at Austin next week for the fair, she 'd bring a few
+hundred dollars."
+
+"You 'd never think of selling a beast like that at Austin, Seth?" said
+a bystander.
+
+"Why not? Do you fancy I 'll bring her into the States, and see her
+claimed in every town of the Union? Why, man, she's been stolen once
+a month, that mare has, since she was a two-year-old. I knew an old
+general up in the Maine frontier had her last year; and he rid her
+away from a 'stump meeting' in Vermont, in change of his own
+mule,--blind,--and never know'd the differ till he was nigh home. I
+sold her twice, myself, in one week. Scott of Muckleburg stained her
+off fore-leg white, and sold her back, as a new one, to the fellow who
+returned her for lameness; and she can pretend lameness, she can."
+
+A roar of very unbelieving laughter followed this sally, but Seth
+resumed,--
+
+"Well, I'll lay fifty dollars with any gentleman here that she comes out
+of the stable dead lame, or all sound, just as I bid her."
+
+Nobody seemed to fancy this wager; and Seth, satisfied with having
+established his veracity, went on,--
+
+"You 've but to touch the coronet of the off-foot with the point of your
+bowie,--a mere touch, not draw blood,--and see if she won't come out
+limping on the toe, all as one as a dead breakdown in the coffin joint;
+rub her a bit then with your hand,--she 's all right again! It was
+Wrecksley of Ohio taught her the trick; he used to lame her that way,
+and buy her in, wherever he found her."
+
+"Who's won her this time?" cried another.
+
+"I have, gentlemen," said I, slapping my boot with my cane, and
+affecting a very knowing air as I spoke. The company turned round and
+surveyed me some seconds in deep silence.
+
+"You an't a-goin' to ride her, young 'un?" said one, half
+contemptuously.
+
+"No, he an't; the gent's willin' to sell her," chimed in another.
+
+"He's goin' to ax me three hundred dollars," said a third, "an' I an't
+a-goin' to gi' him no more than two hundred."
+
+"You are all wrong, every man of you," said Seth. "He's bringing her to
+England, a present for the Queen, for her own ridin'."
+
+"And I beg to say, gentlemen, that none of you have hit upon the right
+track yet; nor do I think it necessary to correct you more fully. But
+as you appear to take an interest in my concerns, I may mention that
+I shall want a hack for my servant's riding,--a short-legged,
+square-jointed thing, clever to go, and a good feeder, not much above
+fourteen hands in height, or four hundred dollars in price. If you
+chance upon this--"
+
+"I know your mark."
+
+"My roan, with the wall-eye. You don't mind a walleye?"
+
+"No, no! my black pony mare's the thing the gent's a lookin' for."
+
+"I say it's nothing like it," broke in Seth. "He's a-wantin' a half-bred
+mustang, with a down-east cross,--a critter to go through fire and
+water; liftin' the fore-legs like a high-pressure piston, and with a
+jerk of the 'stifle' like the recoil of a brass eight-pounder. An't I
+near the mark?"
+
+"Not very wide of it," said I, nodding encouragingly.
+
+"She 's at Austin now. You an't a-goin' there?"
+
+"Yes," said I; "I shall be in Austin next week."
+
+"Well, never you make a deal till you see my black pony," cried one.
+
+"Nor the roan cob," shouted another.
+
+"He 'd better see 'em 'fore he sees Split-the-wind, then, or he 'd not
+look at 'em arter," said Seth. "You 've only to ask for Seth Chiseller,
+and they 'll look me up."
+
+"You an't a-goin' to let us see Butcher's mare afore we go?" said one to
+the ostler.
+
+"I an't, because I have n't got the key. She's a double-locked, and the
+cap 'n never gives it to no one, but comes a-feedin' time himself, to
+give her corn."
+
+After a few muttered remarks on this caution, the horse-dealers
+sauntered out of the yard, leaving me musing over what I had heard, and
+wondering if this excessive care of the landlord boded any suspicion
+regarding the winner of the prize.
+
+"Jist draw that bolt across the gate, there, will ye," said the ostler,
+while he produced a huge key from his pocket. "I know 'em well, them
+gents. A man must have fourteen eyes in his head, and have 'em back and
+front too, that shows 'em a horse beast! Darn me coarse! if they can't
+gi' 'un a blood spavin in a squirt of tobacco! Let's see your ticket,
+young master, and I 'll show you Charcoal,--. that's her name."
+
+"Here it is," said I, "signed by the agent at Galveston, all right and
+regular."
+
+"The cap'n must see to that. I only want to know that ye have the
+number. Yes, that 's it; now stand a bit on one side. Ye 'll see her
+when she comes out."
+
+He entered the stable as he spoke, and soon re-appeared, leading a tall
+mare, fully sixteen hands high, and black as jet; a single white star on
+her forehead, and a dash of white across the tail, being the only marks
+on her. She was bursting with condition, and both in symmetry and action
+a splendid creature.
+
+
+
+"An't she a streak of lightnin', and no mistake?" said he, gazing on
+her with rapture. "An't she glibber to move nor a wag of a comet's
+tail, when he 's taking a lark round the moon? There's hocks! there's
+pasterns! Show me a gal with ankles like 'em, and look at her, here!
+An't she a-made for sittin' on?"
+
+I entered into all his raptures. She was faultless in every
+point,--save, perhaps, that in looking at you she would throw her eye
+backwards, and show a little bit too much of the white. I remarked this
+to the ostler.
+
+"The only fault she has," said he, shaking his head; "she mistrusts a
+body always, and so she's eternally a lookin' back, and a gatherin' up
+her quarters, and a holdin' of her tail tight in; but for that, she's
+a downright regular beauty, and for stride and bottom there ain't her
+equal nowhere."
+
+"Her late master was unlucky, I've heard," said I, insinuatingly.
+
+"He was so far unlucky that he could n't sit his beast over a torrent
+and a down leap. He would hold her in, and she won't bear it at a
+spring, and so she flung him before she took the leap; and when _she_
+lit, 't other side, with her head high and her hind legs under her, _he_
+was a sittin' with his 'n under his arm, and his neck bruck,--that was
+the way o' it. See now, master, if ever ye do want a great streak out
+of her, leave the head free a bit, press her wi' your calves, and give a
+right down reg'lar halloo,--ha! like a Mexican chap; then she'll do it!"
+
+The ostler found me a willing listener, either when dwelling on the
+animal's perfections, or suggesting hints for her future management; and
+when at last both these themes were tolerably exhausted, he proceeded to
+show me the horse-gear of saddle, and bridle, and halter, and holsters,
+all handsomely finished in Mexican taste, and studded with brass nails
+in various gay devices. At last he produced the rifle,--a regular
+Kentucky one, of Colt's making,--and what he considered a still greater
+prize, a bell-mouthed thing half horse-pistol, half blunderbuss, which
+he called "a almighty fine 'Harper's Ferry tool,' that would throw
+thirty bullets through an oak panel two inches thick."
+
+It was evident that he looked upon the whole equipment as worthy of the
+most exalted possession, and he gazed on me as one whose lot was indeed
+to be envied.
+
+"Seth and the others leave this to-morrow a'ternoon," said he; "but if
+ye be a-goin' to Austin, where the 'Spedeshin' puts up, take my advice,
+and get away before 'em. You 've a fine road,--no trouble to find the
+way; your beast will carry you forty, fifty, if you want it, sixty,
+miles between sunrise and 'down;' and you 'll be snug over the journey
+before they reach Killian's Mill, the half-way. An' if ye want to know
+why I say so, it's just because that's too good a beast to tempt a
+tramper wi', and them's all trampers!"
+
+I gave the ostler a dollar for all his information and civility, and
+re-entered the inn to have my supper. The cap'n had already returned
+home, and after verifying my ticket, took my receipt for the mare, which
+I gave in all form, writing my name, "Con Cregan," as though it were to
+a check for a thousand pounds.
+
+I supped comfortably, and then walked out to the stable to see Charcoal.
+"Get her corn; you'll see if she don't, eat it in less than winkin',"
+said the ostler; "and if she wor my beast, she'd never taste another
+feed till she had her nose in the manger at Croft's Gulley."
+
+"And where is Croft's Gulley?"
+
+"It's the bottoms after you pass the larch wood; the road dips a bit,
+and is heavy there, and it's a good baitin' place, just eighteen miles
+from here."
+
+"On the road to Austin?"
+
+He nodded. "Ye see," he said, "the moon's a risin'; there's no one out
+this time. Ye know what I said afore."
+
+"I'll take the advice, then. Get the traps ready; I'll pack the
+saddle-bags and set out."
+
+If any one had asked me why I was in such haste to reach Austin, my
+answer would have been, "To join the expedition;" and if interrogated,
+"With what object then?" I should have been utterly dumbfoundered.
+Little as I knew of its intentions, they must all have been above the
+range of my ability and means to participate in. True, I had a horse
+and a rifle; but there was the end of my worldly possessions, not to say
+that my title, even to these, admitted of litigation. A kind of vague
+notion possessed me that, once up with the expedition, I should find
+my place "somewhere,"--a very Irish idea of a responsible situation. I
+trusted to the "making myself generally useful" category for employment,
+and to a ready-wittedness never cramped nor restrained by the petty
+prejudices of a conscience.
+
+The love of enterprise and adventure is conspicuous among the springs of
+action in Irish life, occasionally developing a Wellesley or a Captain
+Rock. Peninsular glories and predial outrage have just the same one
+origin,--a love of distinction, and a craving desire for the enjoyment
+of that most fascinating of all excitements,--whatever perils life.
+
+Without this element, pleasure soon palls; without the cracked skulls
+and fractured "femurs," fox-hunting would be mere galloping; a review
+might vie with a battle, if they fire blank cartridge in both! Who 'd
+climb the Peter Bot, or cross the "petit mulets" of Mont Blanc, if it
+were not that a false step or a totter would send him down a thousand
+fathoms into the deep gorge below. This playing hide-and-seek with Death
+seems to have a great charm, and is very possibly the attraction some
+folks feel in playing invalid, and passing their lives amid black
+draughts and blue lotions!
+
+I shrewdly suspect this luxury of tempting peril distinguishes man from
+the whole of the other animal creation; and if we were to examine it
+a little, we should see that it opens the way to many of his highest
+aspirings and most noble enterprises. Now, let not the gentle reader
+ask, "Does Mr. Cregan include horse-stealing in the list of these
+heroic darings?" Believe me, he does not; he rather regarded the act of
+appropriation in the present case in the light some noble lords did when
+voting away church property,--"a hard necessity, but preferable to being
+mulct oneself!" With many a thought like this, I rode out into the now
+silent town, and took my way towards Austin.
+
+It is a strange thing to find oneself in a foreign land, thousands of
+miles from home, alone, and at night; the sense of isolation is almost
+overwhelming. So long as daylight lasts, the stir of the busy world and
+the business of life ward off these thoughts,--the novelty of the scene
+even combats them; but when night has closed in, and we see above us
+the stars that we have known in other lands, the self-same moon by whose
+light we wandered years ago, and then look around and mark the features
+of a new world, with objects which tell of another hemisphere; and then
+think that we are there alone, without tie or link to all around us, the
+sensation is thrilling in its intensity.
+
+Every one of us--the least imaginative, even--will associate the
+strangeness of a foreign scene with something of that adventure of which
+he has read in his childhood; and we people vacancy, as we go, with
+images to suit the spot in our own country. The little pathway along
+the river side suggests the lovers' walk at sunset as surely as the dark
+grove speaks of a woodman's hut or a gypsy camp. But abroad, the scene
+evokes different dwellers: the Sierra suggests the brigand; the thick
+jungle, the jaguar or the rattlesnake; the heavy plash in the muddy
+river is the sound of the cayman; and the dull roar, like wind within a
+cavern, is the cry of the hungry lion. The presence around us of objects
+of which we have read long ago, but never expected to see, is highly
+exciting; it is like taking our place among the characters of a story,
+and investing us with an interest to ourselves, as the hero of some
+unwrought history.
+
+This is the most fascinating of all castle-building, since we have a
+spot for an edifice,--a territory actually given to us.
+
+I thought long upon this theme, and wondered to what I was yet
+destined,--whether to some condition of real eminence, or to move on
+among that vulgar herd who are the spectators of life, but never its
+conspicuous actors. I really believe this ignoble course was more
+distasteful to me from its flatness and insipidity than from its
+mere humility. It seemed so devoid of all interest, so tame and so
+monotonous, I would have chosen peril and vicissitude any day in
+preference. About midnight I reached Croft's Gulley, where, after
+knocking for some time, a very sulky old negro admitted me into a stable
+while I baited my mare. The house was shut up for the night; and even
+had I sought refreshment, I could not have obtained it.
+
+After a brief halt, I again resumed the road, which led through a close
+pine forest, and, however much praised, was anything but a good surface
+to travel on. Charcoal, however, made light of such difficulties, and
+picked her steps over holes and stumps with the caution of a trapper,
+detecting with a rare instinct the safe ground, and never venturing on
+spots where any difficulty or danger existed. I left her to herself, and
+it was curious to see that whenever a short interval of better footway
+intervened, she would, as if to "make play," as the jockeys call it,
+strike out in a long swinging canter, "pulling up" to the walk the
+moment the uneven surface admonished her to caution.
+
+As day broke, the road improved so that I was able to push along at a
+better pace, and by breakfast-time I found myself at a low, poor-looking
+log-house called "Brazos." A picture representing Texas as a young child
+receiving some admirable counsel from a very matronly lady with thirteen
+stars on her petticoat, flaunted over the door, with the motto, "Filial
+Affection, and Candy Flip at all hours."
+
+A large, dull-eyed man, in a flannel pea-jacket and loose trousers to
+match, was seated in a rocking-chair at the door, smoking an enormous
+cigar, a little charmed circle of expectoration seeming to defend him
+from the assaults of the vulgar. A huge can of cider stood beside him,
+and a piece of Indian corn bread. He eyed me with the coolest unconcern
+as I dismounted, nor did he show the slightest sign of welcome.
+
+"This is an inn, I believe, friend?" said I, saluting him.
+
+"I take it to be a hotel," said he, in a voice very like a yawn.
+
+"And the landlord, where is he?"
+
+"Where he ought to be,--at his own door, a smokin' his own rearin'."
+
+"Is there an ostler to be found? I want to refresh my horse, and get
+some breakfast for myself too."
+
+"There an't none."
+
+"No help?"
+
+"Never was."
+
+"That's singular, I fancy."
+
+"No, it an't."
+
+"Why, what do travellers do with their cattle, then?"
+
+"There bean't none."
+
+"No cattle?"
+
+"No travellers."
+
+
+
+"No travellers! and this the high road between two considerable towns!"
+
+"It an't."
+
+"Why, surely this is the road to Austin?"
+
+"It an't."
+
+"Then this is not Brazos?"
+
+"It be Upper Brazos."
+
+"There are two of them, then; and the other, I suppose, is on the Austin
+road?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"What a piece of business!" sighed I; "and how far have I come astray?"
+
+"A good bit."
+
+"A mile or two?"
+
+"Twenty."
+
+"Will you be kind enough to be a little more communicative, and just say
+where this road leads to; if I can join the Austin road without turning
+back again; and where?"
+
+Had I propounded any one of these queries, it is just possible I might
+have had an answer; but, in my zeal, I outwitted myself. I drew my
+check for too large an amount, and consequently was refused payment
+altogether.
+
+"Well," said I, after a long and vain wait for an answer, "what am I to
+do with my horse? There is a stable, I hope?"
+
+"There an't," said he, with a grunt.
+
+"So that I can't bait my beast?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Bad enough! Can I have something to eat myself,--a cup of coffee--?"
+
+A rude burst of laughter stopped me, and the flannel man actually
+shook with the drollery of his own thoughts. "It bean't Astor House, I
+reckon!" said he, wiping his eyes.
+
+"Not very like it, certainly," said I, smiling.
+
+"What o' that? Who says it ought to be like it?" said he, and his fishy
+eyes flared up, and his yellow cheeks grew orange with anger. "I an't
+very like old Hickory, I s'pose! and maybe I don't want to be! I'm a
+free Texan! I an't a nigger nor a blue-nose! I an't one of your old
+country slaves, that black King George's boots, and ask leave to pay his
+taxes! I an't."
+
+"And I," said I, assuming an imitation of his tone, for experiment's
+sake, "I am no lazy, rocking-chair, whittling, tobacco-chewing Texan!
+but a traveller, able and willing to pay for his accommodation, and who
+will have it, too!"
+
+"Will ye? Will ye, then?" cried he, springing up with an agility I could
+not have believed possible; while, rushing into the hut, he reappeared
+with a long Kentucky rifle, and a bayonet a-top of it. "Ye han't long to
+seek yer man, if ye want a flash of powder! Come out into the bush and
+'see it out,' I say!"
+
+The tone of this challenge was too insulting not to call for at least
+the semblance of acceptance; and so, fastening my mare to a huge staple
+beside the door, I unslung my rifle, and cried, "Come along, my friend;
+I'm quite ready for you!"
+
+Nothing daunted at my apparent willingness, he threw back the hammer of
+his lock, and said, "Hark ye, young un! You can't give me a cap or two?
+Mine are considerable rusty!"
+
+The request was rather singular, but its oddity was its success; and so,
+opening a small case in the stock of my rifle, I gave him some.
+
+"Ah, them 's real chaps,--the true 'tin jackets,' as we used to say at
+St. Louis!" cried he, his tongue seeming wonderfully loosened by the
+theme. "Now, lad, let's see if one of your bullets fit this bore; she's
+a heavy one, and carries twenty to the pound; and I 've nothing in her
+now but some loose chips of iron for the bears."
+
+Loose chips of iron for the bears! thought I; did ever mortal hear such
+a barbarian! "You don't fancy, friend, I came here to supply you with
+lead and powder, to be used upon myself, too! I supposed, when you asked
+me to come out into the bush, that you had everything a gentleman ought
+to have for such a purpose."
+
+"Well, I never seed the like of that!" exclaimed he, striking the
+ground with the butt end of his piece. "If we don't stand at four guns'
+length--"
+
+"We 'll do no such thing, friend," said I, shouldering my piece, and
+advancing towards him. "I never meant to offend _you_; nor have you any
+object in wounding, mayhap killing, _me_. Let me have something to eat;
+I 'll pay for it freely, and go my ways."
+
+"What on airth is it, eh?" said he, looking puzzled. "Why, that's one of
+Colt's rifles! you'd have picked me down at two hundred yards, sure as
+my name is Gabriel."
+
+"I know it," said I, coolly; "and how much the better or the happier
+should I have been, had I done so?" I watched the fellow's pasty
+countenance as though I could read what passed in the muddy bottom of
+his mind.
+
+"If it were not for something of this kind," added I, sorrowfully, "I
+should not be here to-day. You know New Orleans?" He nodded. "Well,
+perhaps you know Ebenezer York?"
+
+"The senator?"
+
+"The same!" I made the pantomime of presenting a pistol, and then of a
+man falling. "Just so. His brothers have taken up the pursuit, and so I
+came down into this quarter till the smoke cleared off!"
+
+"He was a plumper at a hundred and twenty yards. I seen him double up
+Gideon Millis, of Ohio."
+
+"Ah, I could recount many a thing of the kind to you," said I, leading
+the way towards the hut, "but my throat is so dry, and I feel so
+confoundedly weary just now--"
+
+"That's cider," said he, pointing to the crock.
+
+I did n't wait for a more formal invitation, but carried it to my lips,
+and so held it for full a couple of minutes.
+
+"Ye _wor_ drouthy,--that's a fact!" said he, peering into the low
+watermark of the vessel.
+
+"You hav'n't got any more bread?" said I, appropriating his own.
+
+"If I had n't, ye 'd not have got that so easy, lad!" said he, with a
+grin.
+
+"And now for my mare; you see she's a good one--"
+
+"Good as if she belonged to a richer master!" said he, with a peculiar
+leer of the eye. "I know her well! knowed her a foal! Ah, Charry, Miss!
+do you forget the way to take off your saddle with your teeth?" and he
+patted the creature with a nearer approach to kindness than I believed
+he was capable of.
+
+I will not dwell upon the little arts I employed to conciliate my friend
+Gabriel, nor stop to say how I managed to procure some Indian corn-meal
+for my horse, and the addition of a very tough piece of dried beef to my
+own meagre breakfast. I conclude the reader will be as eager to escape
+from his society as I was myself; nor had I ever thrown him into such
+unprofitable acquaintanceship, were there other means of explaining
+how first I wandered from the right path, and by what persuasions I was
+influenced in not returning to it.
+
+If Gabriel's history was not very entertaining, it was at least short,
+so far as its catastrophe went. He was a Kentucky "bounty man," who had
+taken into his head to fight a duel with a companion with whom he was
+returning from New York. He killed his antagonist, buried him, and
+was wending his way homeward with the watch and other property of the
+deceased, to restore to his friends, when he was arrested at Little
+Rock, and conveyed to jail. He was tried, found guilty, and sentenced
+to death, but made his escape the night before the execution was to have
+taken place. His adventures from the Arkansas River till the time he
+found himself in Texas were exciting in a high degree, and, even with
+his own telling, not devoid of deep interest. Since his location in the
+One-star Republic, he had tried various things, but all had failed
+with him. His family, who followed him, died off by the dreadful
+intermittents of the bush, leaving him alone to doze through the
+remainder of existence between the half-consciousness of his fall and
+the stupid insensibility of debauch. There was but one theme could
+stir the dark embers of his nature; and when he had quitted _that_, the
+interest of life seemed to have passed away, and he relapsed into his
+dreamy indifference to both present and future.
+
+How he contrived to eke out subsistence was difficult to conceive.
+To the tavern he had been almost the only customer, and in succession
+consumed the little stores his poor wife had managed to accumulate. He
+appeared to feel a kind of semi-consciousness that if "bears did not
+fall in his way" during the winter, it might go hard with him; and he
+pointed to four mounds of earth behind the log-hut, and said that "the
+biggest would soon be alongside of 'em."
+
+As the heat of midday was too great to proceed in, I learned from him
+thus much of his own story, and some particulars of the road to Bexar,
+whither I had now resolved on proceeding, since, according to his
+opinion, that afforded me a far better chance of coming up with the
+expedition than by following their steps to Austin.
+
+"Had you come a few hours earlier to-day," said he, "you could have
+joined company with a Friar who is travelling to Bexar; but you 'll
+easily overtake him, as he travels with a little wagon and a sick woman.
+They are making a pilgrimage to the saints there for her health. They
+have two lazy mules and a half-breed driver that won't work miracles on
+the roads, whatever the Virgin may after! You'll soon come up with them,
+if Charry's like what she used to be."
+
+This intelligence was far from displeasing to me. I longed for some
+companionship; and that of a Friar, if not very promising as to
+amusement, had at least the merit of safety,--no small charm in such a
+land as I then sojourned in. I learned besides that he was an Irishman
+who had come out as a missionary among the Choctaws, and that he was
+well versed in prairie life; that he spoke many of the Indian dialects,
+and knew the various trails of these pathless wilds like any trapper of
+them all.
+
+Such a fellow-traveller would be indeed a prize; and as I saddled my
+mare to follow him, I felt lighter at heart than I had done for a long
+time previous. "And his name?" said I.
+
+"It is half-Mexican by this. They call him Fra Miguel up at Bexar."
+
+"Now then for Fra Miguel!" cried I, springing into my saddle; and with a
+frank "Good-bye," took the road to Bexar.
+
+I rode along with a light heart, my way leading through a forest of
+tall beech and alder trees, whose stems were encircled by the twining
+tendrils of the "Liana," which oftentimes spanned the space overhead,
+and tempered the noonday sun by its delicious shade. Birds of gay
+plumage and strange note hopped from branch to branch, while hares and
+rabbits sat boldly on the grassy road, and scarcely cared to move at
+my approach. The crimson-winged bustard, the swallow-tailed woodpecker,
+with his snowy breast, and that most beautiful of all, the lazuli finch,
+whose color would shame the blue waters of the Adriatic, chirped and
+fluttered on every side. The wild squirrel, too, swung by his tail, and
+jerked himself from bough to bough, in all the confidence of unmolested
+liberty; while even the deer, timid without danger, stood and gazed at
+me as I went, doubtless congratulating themselves that they were not
+born to be beasts of burden.
+
+There was so much novelty to me in all around that the monotonous
+character of the scene never wearied; for, although as far as human
+companionship was concerned, nothing could be more utterly solitary and
+desolate, yet the abundance of animal life, the bright tints of plumage,
+and the strange concert of sound, afforded an unceasing interest.
+
+Occasionally I came upon the charred fragments of firewood, with other
+signs indicative of a bivouac, showing where some hunting-party had
+halted; but these, with a chance wheel-track, were all the evidence that
+travellers had ever passed that way. The instincts of the human heart
+are, after all, linked to companionship, and although it was but a few
+hours since I had parted with "mine host" of Brazos, I began to conceive
+a most anxious desire for the society of a fellow-traveller. I had
+pushed Charcoal for some time, in the hope of overtaking the Friar; but
+not only without success, but even without coming upon any recent tracks
+that should show where the party passed. I could not have mistaken the
+road, since there was but one through the forest; and at last I became
+uneasy lest I should not reach some place of shelter for the night, and
+obtain refreshment for myself and my horse. From the time that these
+thoughts crossed my mind, all relish for the scene and its strange
+associations departed. A scarlet jay might have perched upon my
+saddle-bow unmolested; a "whip-poor-will" might have chanted her note
+from my hat or my holsters unminded; the antlered stags did indeed graze
+me as they went, without my once remembering that I was the owner of
+one of "Colt's sharp bores," so intent I had grown upon the topic of
+personal safety. What if I had gone astray? What if I fell in with the
+Choctaws, who often came within a few miles of Austin? What if Charcoal
+fell lame, or even tired? What if--But why enumerate all the suspicions
+that, when chased away on one side, invariably came back on the other?
+There was not an incident, from a sprained ankle to actual starvation,
+that I did not rehearse; and, like that respected authority who spent
+his days speculating what he should do "if he met a white bear," I threw
+myself into so many critical situations and embarrassing conjectures
+that my head ached with overtaxed ingenuity to escape from them.
+
+Æsop's fables have much to answer for. The attributing the gift of
+speech to animals, by way of characterizing their generic qualities,
+takes a wondrous hold upon the mind; and as for me, I held "imaginary
+conversations" with everything that flew or bounded past. From the green
+lizard that scaled the shining cork-trees, to the lazy toad that flopped
+heavily into the water, I had a word for all,--ay, and thought they
+answered me, too.
+
+Some, I fancied, chirped pleasantly and merrily, as though to say, "Go
+it, Con, my hearty; Charry has stride and wind for many a mile yet!"
+Some, with a wild scream, would seem to utter a cry of surprise at the
+pace, as if saying, "Ruffle my feathers if Con 's not in a hurry!" An
+old owl, with a horseshoe wig, looked shocked at my impetuosity, and
+shook his wise head in grave rebuke; while a fat asthmatic frog nearly
+choked with emotion as I hurled the small pebbles into his bath of
+duck-weed. How strange would life be, reduced to such companionship!
+thought I. Would one gradually sink down to the level of this animal
+existence, such as it appears now, or would one elevate the inferior
+animal to some equality of intelligence?
+
+The solitude which a short time previous had suggested--I know not
+now many!--bright imaginings, presented now the one sad, unvarying
+reflection,--desolation; and it had almost become a doubtful point
+whether I should not at once turn my horse's head and make for Upper
+Brazos and its gruff host of the log-house, rather than brave a night
+"al fresco" in the forest. It was just at the moment that this question
+became mooted in my mind that I perceived the faint track of a wheel on
+the short grass of the pathway. I dismounted and examined it closely,
+and soon discovered its counterpart on the other side of the road; and
+with a little further search I could detect the footmarks of two horses,
+evidently unshod.
+
+Inspired with fresh courage by these signs, I spurred Charry to a
+sharper stride, and for above two hours rode on, each turning of the
+road suggesting the hope of coming up with the Friar, who evidently
+journeyed at a brisker pace than I had anticipated. The sailor's adage
+says that "A stern chase is a long chase;" and so it is, whether it be
+on land or sea,--whether the pursuit be to overtake a flying Frenchman
+or Fortune!
+
+The sun had sunk beneath the tops of the tall trees, and only streamed
+through, in chance lines of light, upon the road, when suddenly I found
+myself upon the verge of an abrupt descent, at the bottom of which ran
+a narrow but rapid river. These great fissures, by which the mountain
+streams descend to join the larger rivers, are very common in Texas and
+throughout the region which borders on the Rocky Mountains, and form one
+of the greatest impediments to travelling in these tracts.
+
+As I gazed upon the steep descent, to have scrambled down which, even on
+foot, would have been dangerous and difficult enough, I remembered that
+I had passed, about half an hour before, a spot where the road "forked"
+off into two separate directions, and at once resumed my march to this
+place, where I had the satisfaction of perceiving that the grass was
+yet rising under the recent passage of a wagon. A short and sharp canter
+down a gentle slope brought me once more in sight of the stream and
+of what was far nearer to my hopes, the long looked-for party with the
+Friar.
+
+The scene I now beheld was sufficiently striking for a picture. About
+fifty feet beneath where I stood, and on the bank of a boiling, foaming
+torrent, was a wagon, drawn by two large horses; a covering of canvas
+formed an awning overhead, and curtains of the same material closed the
+sides. A large, powerful-looking Mexican stood beating the stream with a
+great pole, while the Friar, with his robes tucked up so as to display
+a pair of enormous naked legs, assisted in this singular act of
+flagellation, from time to time addressing a hasty prayer to a small
+image which I perceived he had hung up against the canvas covering.
+The noise of the rushing water and the crashing sound of the sticks
+prevented my hearing the voices, which were most volubly exerted all the
+while, and which, by accustoming myself to the din, I at last perceived
+were used in exhorting the horses to courage. The animals, however, gave
+no token of returning confidence, nor showed the slightest inclination
+to advance. On the contrary, whenever led forward a pace or two, they
+invariably sprang back with a bound that threatened to smash their
+tackle or upset the wagon; nor was it without much caressing and
+encouragement that they would stand quiet again. Meanwhile, the Friar's
+exertions were redoubled at every moment, and both his prayers and his
+thrashings became more animated. Indeed, it was curious to watch with
+what agility his bulky figure alternated from the work of beating the
+water to gesticulating before "the Virgin." Now, as I looked, a small
+corner of the canvas curtain was moved aside, and a hand appeared,
+which, even without the large straw fan it carried, might have been
+pronounced a female one. This, however, was speedily withdrawn on
+some observation from the Friar, and the curtain was closed rigidly as
+before.
+
+All my conjectures as to this singular proceeding being in vain, I
+resolved to join the party, towards whom I perceived the road led by a
+slightly circuitous descent.
+
+Cautiously wending my way down this slope, which grew steeper as I
+advanced, I had scarcely reached the river side when I was perceived by
+the party. Both the Friar and his follower ceased their performance on
+the instant, and cast their eyes upwards to the road with a glance that
+showed they were on "the look-out" for others. They even changed their
+position, to have a better view of the path, and seemed as if unable
+to persuade themselves that I could be alone. To my salutation, which
+I made by courteously removing my hat and bowing low, they offered
+no return, and looked--as I really believe they were--far too much
+surprised at my sudden appearance to afford me any signs of welcome. As
+I came nearer, I could see that the Friar made the circuit of the wagon,
+and, as if casually, examined the curtains; and then, satisfied "that
+all was right," took his station by the head of his beasts, and waited
+for my approach.
+
+"Good day, Señhor Caballero," said the Friar, in Spanish, while the
+Mexican looked at the lock of his long-barrelled rifle, and retired a
+couple of paces, with a gesture of guarded caution.
+
+"Good evening, rather, Father," said I, in English. "I have ridden hard
+to come up with you, for the last twenty miles."
+
+"From the States?" said the Friar, approaching me, but with no peculiar
+evidences of pleasure at hearing his native language.
+
+"From your own country, Fra Miguel," said I, boldly--"an Irishman."
+
+"And how are you travelling here?" said he, still preserving his
+previous air of caution and reserve.
+
+"A mistake of the road!" said I, confidently; for already I had invented
+my last biographical sketch. "I was on the way to Austin, whither I had
+despatched my servants and baggage, when accidentally taking the turn to
+Upper Brazos instead of the lower one, I found myself some twenty miles
+off my track before I knew of it. I should have turned back when I
+discovered my error, but that I heard that a Friar, a countryman, too,
+had just set out towards Bexar. This intelligence at once determined me
+to continue my way, which I rejoice to find has been so far successful."
+
+To judge from the "Padre's" face, the pleasure did not appear
+reciprocal. He looked at me and the wagon alternately, and then he cast
+his eyes towards the Mexican, who, understanding nothing of English, was
+evidently holding himself ready for any measures of a hostile character.
+
+"Going to Austin," at last said the Friar. "You are a merchant, then?"
+
+"No," said I, smiling superciliously; "I am a mere traveller for
+pleasure, my object being to make a tour of the prairies, and by some of
+the Mexican cities, before my return to Europe."
+
+"Heaven guide and protect you," said he, fervently, with a wave of
+his hand like leave-taking. "This is not a land to wander in after
+nightfall. You are well mounted, and a good rider; push on, then, my
+son, and you 'll reach Bexar before the moon sets."
+
+"If that be your road, Father," said I, "as speed is no object with me,
+I 'd rather join company with you than proceed alone."
+
+"Ahem!" said he, looking confused, "I am going to Bexar, it is true,
+Señhor; but my journey is of the slowest: the wagon is heavy, and a sick
+companion whom it contains cannot travel fast. Go, then, 'con Dios!' and
+we may meet again at our journey's end."
+
+"My mare has got quite enough of it," said I, my desire to remain with
+him being trebled by his exertions to get rid of me. "When I overtook
+you, I was determining to dismount and spare my beast; so that _your_
+pace will not in the least inconvenience me."
+
+The Padre, instead of replying to me, addressed some words to the
+Mexican in Spanish, which, whatever they were, the other only answered
+by a sharp slap of his palm on the stock of his rifle, and a very
+significant glance at his girdle, where a large bowie-knife glittered
+in all the freedom of its unsheathed splendor. As if not noticing this
+pantomime, I drew forth my "Harper's Ferry pistol" from the holster, and
+examined the priming,--a little bit of display I had the satisfaction
+to perceive was not thrown away on either the Friar or the layman. At
+a word from the former, however, the latter began once again his
+operations with the pole, the Friar resuming his place beside the cattle
+as if totally forgetful of my presence there.
+
+"May I ask the object of this proceeding, Father?" said I, "which,
+unless it be a 'devotional exercise,' is perfectly unaccountable to me."
+
+The Padre looked at me without speaking; but the sly drollery of his eye
+showed that he would have had no objection to bandy a jest with me, were
+the time and place more fitting. "I perceive," said he, at length, "that
+you have not journeyed in this land, or you would have known that at
+this season the streams abound with caymans and alligators, and that
+when the cattle have been once attacked by them, they have no courage to
+cross a river after. Their instinct, however, teaches them that
+beating the waters insures safety, and many a Mexican horse will not go
+knee-deep without this ceremony being performed."
+
+"I see that your cattle are unusually tired in the present case," said
+I, "for you have been nigh half an hour here, to my own knowledge."
+
+"Look at that black marc's fore-leg, and you ll see why," said he,
+pointing to a deep gash, which laid bare the white tendons for some
+inches in length, while a deep pool of blood flowed around the animal's
+hoof.
+
+A cry from the Mexican here broke in upon our colloquy, as, throwing
+down his pole, he seized his rifle, and dropped upon one knee in the
+attitude of defence.
+
+"What is it, Sancho?" cried the Friar.
+
+A few words of guttural followed, and the Padre said it was a large
+alligator that had just carried off a chiguire--a wild pig--under the
+water with him. This stream is a tributary of the Colloredo, along the
+banks of which these creatures' eggs are found in thousands!
+
+My blood ran cold at the horrid thought of being attacked by such
+animals, and I readily volunteered my assistance at the single-stick
+exercise of my companion.
+
+The Friar accepted my offer without much graciousness, but rather as
+that of an unwelcome guest who could not be easily got rid of.
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI. A NIGHT IN THE FOREST OF TEXAS
+
+The friar ceased his efforts, and, calling the Mexican to one side,
+whispered something in a low, cautious manner. The other seemed to
+demur and hesitate, but, after a brief space, appeared to yield; when,
+replacing the poles beside the wagon, he turned the horses' heads
+towards the road by which they had just come.
+
+"We are about to try a ford some miles farther up the stream," said the
+Padre, "and so we commend you to the Virgin, and wish you a prosperous
+journey."
+
+"All roads are alike to me, holy Father," said I, with a coolness that
+cost me something to assume.
+
+"Then take the shortest, and you'll be soonest at your journey's end,"
+said he, gruffly.
+
+"Who can say that?" rejoined I; "it's no difficult matter to lose one's
+way in a dense forest, where the tracks are unknown."
+
+"There is but one path, and it cannot be mistaken," said he, in the same
+tone.
+
+"It has one great disadvantage, Father," said I.
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"There is no companionship on it; and, to say truth, I have too much of
+the Irishman in me to leave good company for the pleasure of travelling
+all alone."
+
+"Methinks you have very little of the Irishman about you, in another
+respect," said he, with a sneer of no doubtful meaning.
+
+"How so?" said I, eagerly.
+
+"In volunteering your society when it is not sought for, young
+gentleman," said he, with a look of steadfast effrontery,--"at least,
+I can say, such were not the habits of the land as I remember it some
+forty years ago."
+
+"Ah, holy Father, it has grown out of many a barbarous custom since your
+time: the people have given up drinking and faction-fighting, and you
+may travel fifty miles a day for a week together and never meet with a
+friar."
+
+"Peace be with you!" said he, waving his hand, but with a gesture it was
+easy to see boded more passion than patience.
+
+I hesitated for a second what to do; and at last, feeling that another
+word might perhaps endanger the victory I had won, I dashed spurs into
+the mare's flanks, and, with the shout the ostler had recommended,
+rushed her at the stream. Over she went, "like a bird," lighting on the
+opposite bank with her hind-legs "well up," and the next moment plunged
+into the forest.
+
+Scarcely, however, had I proceeded fifty paces than I drew up. The dense
+wood effectually shut out the river from my view, and even masked the
+sounds of the rushing water. A suspicion dwelt on my mind that the Friar
+was _not_ going back, and that he had merely concerted this plan with
+the Mexican the easier to disembarrass himself of my company. The
+seeming pertinacity of _his_ purpose suggested an equal obstinacy of
+resistance on _my_ part. Some will doubtless say that it argued very
+little pride and a very weak self-esteem in Con Cregan to continue to
+impose his society where it had been so peremptorily declined; and
+so had it been, doubtless, had the scene been a great city ruled and
+regulated by its thousand-and-one conventionalities. But the prairies
+are separated by something longer than mere miles from the land of
+kid-gloves and visiting tickets. Ceremonial in such latitudes would be
+as unsuitable as a court suit.
+
+Besides, I argued thus: "A very underdone slice of tough venison, with
+a draught of spring water, constitute in these regions a very appetizing
+meal; and, for the same reason, a very morose friar and a still sulkier
+servant may be accepted as very tolerable travelling companions. Enjoy
+better when it can be had, Con, but prefer even the humblest fare to a
+famine,"--a rule more applicable to mental food than to material.
+
+In a little self-colloquy after this kind, I crept stealthily back,
+leading Charry by the bridle, and halting at intervals to listen. What
+a triumph to my skill in divination as I heard the Friar's loud voice
+overtopping the gushing flood, while he exhorted his beasts in the most
+energetic fashion!
+
+I advanced cautiously till I gained a little clump of brushwood, from
+which I could see the river and the group perfectly. The Friar had
+now mounted the wagon, and held the reins; the Mexican was, however,
+standing in the stream and leading the cattle, who appeared to have
+regained somewhat more of their courage, and were slowly proceeding,
+sniffing timidly as they went, and pawing the water fretfully.
+
+The Mexican advanced boldly, till the water reached nigh the top of
+his great _botas vaqueras_, immense boots of buffalo hide, which, it is
+said, resist the bite of either cayman or serpent; and so far the
+horses went, doubtless from the encouragement. As soon, however, as the
+deepening flood warned the man to mount the wagon, they halted abruptly,
+and stood pawing and splashing the stream, while their ears flattened
+back, and their drawn-in tails evinced the terror that was on them.
+
+Objurgations, entreaties, prayers, curses, menaces, were all in vain,--a
+step farther they would not budge. All that the Spanish contained of
+guttural was hurled at them without success; the cow-hide whip might
+welt their flanks and leave great ridges at every stroke, the huge
+pole of the Mexican might belabor them, with a running accompaniment of
+kicks, but to no purpose. They cared as little for the cow-hide as the
+"calendar;" neither saints nor thrashings could persuade them to move
+on. Saint Anthony and Saint Ursula, Saint Forimund of Cordova, with
+various others, were invoked, to no end. Saint Clement of Capua, to whom
+all poisonous reptiles, from boas to whip-snakes, owe allegiance, was
+called upon to aid the travellers; but the quadrupeds took no heed of
+these entreaties, but showed a most Protestant contempt for the whole
+litany.
+
+There was a pause; wearied with flogging, and tired out with vain
+exhortations, both Friar and Mexican, ceased, and as if in compensation
+to their long pent-up feelings, vented their anger in a very guttural
+round of maledictions upon the whole animal creation, and in particular
+on that part of it who would not be eaten by alligators without signs
+of resistance and opposition. Whether this new turn of events had any
+influence, or that the matter was more owing to "natural causes," I
+cannot say; but, just then, the horse which had been already bitten,
+reared straight up, and with a loud snort plunged forward, carrying with
+him the other. By his plunge he had reached a deep part of the stream,
+where the water came half way up his body. Another spring smashed one of
+the traces, and left him free to kick violently behind him,--a privilege
+he certainly hastened to avail himself of. His fellow, whether from
+sympathy or not, imitated the performance; and there they were, lashing
+and plunging with all their might, while the wagon, against which the
+strong current beat in all its force, threatened at every instant
+to capsize. The Friar struggled manfully, as did his follower; but,
+unfortunately, one of the reins gave way, and by the violent tugging
+at the remaining one, the animals were turned out of their course, and
+dragged round to the very middle of the stream. About twenty yards lower
+down, the river fell by a kind of cascade some ten or twelve feet, and
+towards this spot now the infuriated horses seemed rushing. Had it been
+practicable, a strong man might, by throwing himself into the water,
+have caught the horses' heads and held them back; but the stream swarmed
+with poisonous reptiles, which made such an effort almost inevitable
+death.
+
+It was now a scene of terrible and most exciting interest.
+
+The maddened horses, alternately rising and sinking, writhed and twisted
+in agonies of pain. The men's voices mingled with the gushing torrent
+and the splashing water, which rose higher and higher at each plunge,
+while a shrill shriek from within the wagon topped all, and in its
+cadence seemed to speak a heart torn with terror. As I looked, the sun
+had set; and as speedily as though a curtain had fallen, the soft light
+of evening gave way to a gray darkness. I rode down to the bank, and as
+I reached it, one of the horses, after a terrific struggle to get free,
+plunged head foremost down and disappeared. The other, unable by himself
+alone to resist the weight of the wagon, which already was floating in
+the stream, swung round with the torrent, and was now dragging along
+toward the cataract. The dusky indistinctness even added to the terror
+of the picture, as the white water splashed up on every side, and at
+times seemed actually to cover the whole party in its scattering foam.
+The Friar, now leaning back, tore open one of the curtains, and at
+the same instant I saw a female arm stretch out and clasp him, while a
+shrill cry burst forth that thrilled to my very heart.
+
+They were already within a few yards of the cataract; a moment or two
+more, they must be over it and lost! I spurred Charry forward, and down
+we plunged into the water, without the slightest thought of what was to
+follow. Half swimming, half bounding, I reached the wagon, which now,
+broadside on the falls, tottered with every stroke of the fast rolling
+river. The Mexican was standing on the pole, and endeavoring to hold
+back the horse; while the Friar, ripping the canvas with his knife,
+was endeavoring to extricate the female figure, who, sunk on her knees,
+seemed utterly incapable of any effort for her own safety.
+
+Whether maddened by the bite of some monster beneath the water, or
+having lost his footing, I know not, but the horse went over the falls,
+while the Mexican, vainly endeavoring to hold him, was carried down with
+him; the wagon, reeling with the shock, heeled over to the side, and was
+fast sinking, when I caught hold of the outstretched hand of the woman
+and drew her towards me. "Leap, spring towards him!" cried the Friar;
+and she obeyed the words, and, with a bound, seated herself behind me.
+
+Breasting the water bravely, Charry bounded on, and in less than a
+minute reached the bank, which the Friar, by the aid of a leaping-pole,
+had gained before us.
+
+Having placed the half-lifeless girl on the sward, I hastened to see
+after the poor Mexican. Alas! of him and the horse we never saw trace
+afterwards. We called aloud, we shouted, and even continued along the
+stream for a considerable space; but to no purpose, the poor fellow had
+evidently perished,--perhaps by a death too horrible to think of. The
+Friar wrung his hands in agony, and mingled his thanksgiving for his own
+safety with lamentations for his lost companion; and so intent was he on
+these themes that he never recognized me, nor, indeed, seemed conscious
+of my presence. At last, as we turned our steps towards where the girl
+lay, he said, "Is it possible that you are the caballero we parted with
+before sunset?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "the same. You were loth to accept of my company, but
+you see there is a fate in it, after all; you cannot get rid of me so
+readily."
+
+"Nor shall we try, Señhor," said the girl, passionately, but with a
+foreign accent in her words, as she took my hands and pressed them to
+her lips.
+
+The Friar said something hastily in Spanish, which seemed a rebuke, for
+she drew back at once, and buried her face in her mantle.
+
+"Donna Maria is my niece, Señhor, and has only just left the convent of
+the 'Sacred Heart.' She knows nothing of the world, nor what beseems her
+as a young maiden."
+
+This the Friar spoke harshly, and with a manner that to me sounded far
+more in need of an apology than did the young girl's grateful emotion.
+
+What was to be done became now the question. We were at least thirty
+miles from Bexar, and not a village, nor even a log-hut, between us and
+that city. To go back was impossible; so that, like practical people, we
+at once addressed ourselves to the available alternative.
+
+"Picket your beast, and let us light a fire," said Fra Miguel, with
+the air of a man who would not waste life in vain regrets. "Thank
+Providence, we have both grass and water; and although the one always
+brings snakes, and the other alligators, it is better than to bivouac
+on the Red River, with iron ore in the stream, and hard flints to sleep
+on."
+
+Fastening my beast to a tree, I unstrapped my saddlebags and removed my
+saddle; disposing which most artistically in the fashion of an arm-chair
+for Donna Maria at the foot of a stupendous beech, I set about the
+preparation of a fire. The Friar, however, had almost anticipated me,
+and, with both arms loaded with dead wood, sat himself down to construct
+a species of hearth, placing a little circle of stones around in such a
+way as to give a draught to the blaze.
+
+"We must fast to-night, Senhor," said he; "but it will count to us
+hereafter. Fan the fire with your hat, it will soon blaze briskly."
+
+"If it were not for that young lady," said I, "whose sufferings are far
+greater than ours--"
+
+"Speak not of her, Señhor; Donna Maria de los Dolores was called after
+our Mother of Sorrows, and she may as well begin her apprenticeship
+to grief. She is the only child of my brother, who had sent her to be
+educated at New Orleans, and is now returning home to see her father,
+before she takes the veil of her novitiate."
+
+A very low sigh--so low as only to be audible to myself--came from
+beneath the beech-tree; and I threw a handful of dry chips upon
+the fire, hoping to catch a glimpse of the features of my fair
+fellow-traveller. Fra Miguel, however, balked my stratagem by topping
+the fire with a stout log, as he said, "You are too spendthrift, Señhor;
+we shall need to husband our resources, or we 'll not have enough for
+the night long."
+
+"Would you not like to come nearer to the blaze, Senhora?" said I,
+respectfully.
+
+"Thanks, sir, but perhaps--"
+
+"Speak out, child," broke in the Father, "speak out, and say that you
+are counting your rosary, and would not wish to be disturbed. And you,
+Senhor, if I err not, in your eagerness to aid us have forgotten to
+water your gallant beast: don't lead him to the stream, that would be
+unsafe; take my sombrero: it has often served a like purpose before now.
+Twice full is enough for any horse in these countries." I would have
+declined this offer, but I felt that submission in everything would be
+my safest passport to his good opinion; and so, armed with the "Friar's
+beaver," I made my way to the stream.
+
+Whatever his eulogies upon the pitcher-like qualities of his head-piece,
+to me they seemed most undeserved; for scarcely had I filled it, than
+the water ran through like a sieve. The oftener, too, was the process
+repeated the less chance did there appear of success; for, instead of
+retaining the fluid at all, the material became so saturated that it
+threatened to tear in pieces every time it was filled, and ere I could
+lift it was totally empty. Half angry with the Friar, and still more
+annoyed at my own ineptitude, I gave up the effort, and returned to
+where I had left him, confessing my failure as I came forward.
+
+"Steep your 'kerchief in the stream, then, and wash the beast's mouth,"
+said he, upon his knees, where, with a great string of beads, he was
+engaged with his devotions.
+
+I retired, abashed at my intrusion, and proceeded to do as I was
+directed.
+
+"What if all these cares for my horse, and all these devotional
+exercises, were but stratagems to get rid of my company for a season?"
+thought I, as I perceived that scarcely had I left the spot, than the
+Friar arose from his knees, and seemed to busy himself about something
+in the trees. Full of this impression, I made a little circuit of the
+place; and what was my surprise to observe that he had converted his
+upper robe of coarse blanket-cloth into a kind of hammock for Donna
+Maria, in which, fastened at either end to the bough of a tree, she was
+now swinging to and fro, with apparently all the pleasure of a happy
+child.
+
+"Don't you like it, Uncle, after all?" said she laughing. "It's exactly
+what one has read of in Juan Cordova's stories, to be bivouacking in a
+great forest, with a great fire, to keep away the jaguars."
+
+"Hush! and go to sleep, child. I neither like it for thee nor myself.
+There are more dangerous things than jaguars in these woods."
+
+"Ah, you mean the bears, Uncle?"
+
+"I do not," growled he, sulkily.
+
+"As for snakes, one gets used to them; besides, they go into the tall
+grass."
+
+"Ay, ay, snakes in the grass, just so!" muttered the Friar; "but this
+youth will be back presently, and let him not hear you talk such silly
+nonsense. Good night, good night."
+
+"Good night," sighed she, "but I cannot sleep; I love so to see the
+fireflies dancing through the leaves, and to hear that rushing river."
+
+"Hush! he's coming," said the Friar; and all was still.
+
+When I came up, "the Friar" was again sunk in holy meditation, so that,
+disposing myself beside the fire, with my rifle at one side, and my
+pistols at the other, I lay down to sleep. Although I closed my eyes
+and lay still, I did not sleep. My thoughts were full of Donna Maria, of
+whom I weaved a hundred conjectures. It was evident she was young; her
+voice was soft and musical too, and had that pleasant bell-like cadence
+so indicative of a light heart and a happy nature. Why was she called
+the "Los Dolores"? I asked myself again and again what had she in her
+joyousness to do with grief and care; and why should she enter a
+convent and become a nun? These were questions there was no solving, and
+apparently, if I might judge from the cadence of her now deep sigh, no
+less puzzling to herself than to me. The more my interest became excited
+for her, the stronger grew my dislike to the Friar. That he was a surly
+old tyrant, I perfectly satisfied myself. What a pity that I could not
+rescue her from such cruelty as easily as I saved her from the cataract!
+
+Would that I could even see her! There was something so tormenting in
+the mystery of her concealment, and so, I deemed, must she herself feel
+it. We should be so happy together, journeying along day by day through
+the forest! What tales would I not tell her of my wanderings, and how I
+should enjoy the innocence of her surprise at my travelled wonders! And
+all the strange objects of these wild woods,--how they would interest
+and amuse, were there "two" to wonder at and admire them! How I wished
+she might be pretty; what a disappointment if she were not; what a total
+rout to all my imaginings if she were to have red hair,--how terrible
+if she should squint! These thoughts at last became too tantalizing for
+endurance, and so I tried to fall asleep and forget them; but in vain,
+they had got too firm a hold of me, and I could not shake them off.
+
+It was now about midnight, the fire waxed low, and "the Friar" was sound
+asleep. What connection was there between these considerations and her
+of whom I was thinking? Who knows? I arose and sat up, listening with
+eager ear to the low long breathings of the Friar, who, with his round
+bullet-head pillowed on a pine-log, slept soundly; the gentle hum of the
+leaves, scarcely moved by the night wind, and the distant sound of the
+falling water, were lullabies to his slumber. It was a gorgeous night of
+stars; the sky was studded with bright orbs in all the brilliant lustre
+of a southern latitude. The fireflies, too, danced and glittered on
+every side, leaving traces of the phosphoric light on the leaves as they
+passed. The air was warm and balmy with "the rich odor of the cedar and
+the acacia,"--just such a night as one would like to pass in "converse
+sweet" with some dear friend, mingling past memories with shadowy
+dreams, and straying along from bygones to futurity.
+
+I crept over stealthily to where the Friar lay: a lively fear prevailed
+with me that he might be feigning sleep, and so I watched him long and
+narrowly. No, it was an honest slumber; the deep guttural of his mellow
+throat was beyond counterfeiting. I threw a log upon the fire carelessly
+and with noise, to see if it would awake him; but he only muttered a
+word or two that sounded like Latin, and slept on. I now strained
+my eyes towards the hammock, of which, under the shadow of a great
+sycamore-tree, I could barely detect the outline through the leaves.
+
+Should I be able to discern her features, were I to creep over? What a
+difficult question, and how impossible to decide by mere reasoning upon
+it! What if I were to try? It was a pure piece of curiosity,--curiosity
+of the most harmless kind. I had been, doubtless, just as eager to scan
+the Friar's lineaments, if he had taken the same pains to conceal them
+from me. It was absurd, besides, to travel with a person and not see
+their face. Intercourse was a poor thing without that reciprocity which
+looks convey. I 'll have a peep, at all events, said I, summing up to
+myself all my arguments; and with this resolve I moved cautiously along,
+and, making a wide circuit, came round to the foot of the sycamore, at
+the side most remote from the Friar.
+
+There was the hammock, almost within reach of my hand! It seemed to
+swing to and fro. I cannot say if this were mere deception; and so I
+crept nearer, just to satisfy my doubts. At last I reached the side,
+and peeped in. All I could see was the outline of a figure wrapped in
+a mantle, and a mass of soft silky hair, which fell over and shaded the
+face. It was some time before my eyes grew accustomed to the deep shadow
+of the spot; but by degrees I could perceive the profile of a young and
+beautiful face resting upon one arm, the other hung negligently at one
+side, and the hand drooped over the edge of the hammock. The attitude
+was the very perfection of graceful ease, and such as a sculptor might
+have modelled. What a study, too, that hand, whose dimpled loveliness
+the starlight speckled! How could I help touching it with my lips?--the
+first time, with all the hallowed reverence a worshipper would vouchsafe
+to some holy relic; the second, with a more fervent devotion; the third,
+I ventured to take the hand in mine and slightly press it. Did I dream?
+Could the ecstasy be no more than fancy?--I thought the pressure was
+returned.
+
+She turned gently around, and in a voice of surpassing softness
+whispered, "Tell me your name, Senhor Caballero?" I whispered low, "Con
+Cregan."
+
+"Yes, but what do your sisters call you?"
+
+"I have none, Señhora."
+
+"Your brothers, then?"
+
+"I never had a brother."
+
+"How strange! nor I either. Then how shall I call you?"
+
+"Call me your brother," said I, trying to repossess myself of the hand
+she had gently withdrawn from my grasp.
+
+"And will you call me Maria?" said she, gayly.
+
+"If you permit it, Maria. But how will Fra Miguel think of it?"
+
+"Ah! I forgot that. But what can he say? You saved my life. I should
+have been carried away, like poor Sancho, but for you. Tell me how you
+chanced to be here, and where you are going, and whence you come, and
+all about you. Sit down there, on that stone. Nay, you need n't hold my
+hand while talking."
+
+"Yes, but I 'm afraid to be alone here in the dark, Maria," said I.
+
+"What a silly creature it is! Now begin."
+
+"I 'd rather talk of the future, Maria, dearest. I 'd rather we should
+speak of all the happy days we may spend together."
+
+"But how so? Once at Bexar, I 'm to wait at the monastery till my father
+sends his mules and people to fetch me home; meanwhile, you will have
+wandered away Heaven knows where."
+
+"And where do you call home, Maria?"
+
+"Far away, beyond the Rio Grande, in the gold country, near Aguaverde."
+
+"And why should I not go thither? I am free to turn my steps whither I
+will. Perhaps your father would not despise the services of one who has
+some smattering of knowledge upon many a theme."
+
+"But a Caballero--a real Señhor--turn miner! They are all miners there."
+
+"No matter; Fortune might favor me, and make me rich, and then,--and
+then,--who is to tell what changes might follow? The Caballero might bid
+adieu to the 'Placer,' and the fair 'Donna Maria' wave a good-bye to the
+nunnery--and, by the way, that is a very cruel destiny they intend for
+you."
+
+"Who knows? I was very happy in the 'Sacred Heart.'"
+
+"Possibly, Maria; but you were a child, and would have been happy
+anywhere. But think of the future; think of the time when you will be
+loved, and will love in turn; think of that bright world of which the
+convent-window does not admit one passing glance. Think of the glorious
+freedom to enjoy whatever is beautiful in Nature, and to feel sympathies
+with all that is great and good; and reflect upon the sad monotony of
+the cloister,--its cold and cheerless existence, uncared for, almost
+unfelt."
+
+"And when the Superior is cross!" cried she, holding up her hands.
+
+"And she is always cross, Maria. That austere habit repels every
+generous emotion, as it defies every expansion of the heart. No, no; you
+must not be a nun."
+
+"Well, I will not," said she.
+
+"You promise me this, Maria?"
+
+"Yes, upon one condition,--that you will come to the 'Placer,' and tell
+my father all that you have told to me. He is so good and so kind, he
+'ll never force me."
+
+"But will he receive me? Will your father permit me so to speak?"
+
+"You saved my life, Señhor," said she, half-proudly; "and little as you
+reckon such a service, it is one upon which Don Estavan Olares will set
+some store."
+
+"Ah!" said I, sighing, "how little merit had I in the feat! It did not
+even cause me the slightest injury."
+
+"I am just as gratified as though you had been eaten by an alligator,
+Señhor," said she, laughing with a sly malice that made me half suspect
+that some, at least, of her innocence was assumed.
+
+From this we wandered on to speak of the journey for the morrow, which
+I proposed she should make upon "Charry," while Fra Miguel and myself
+accompanied her on foot. It was also agreed between us that we should
+preserve the most rigid reserve and distance of manner in the Friar's
+presence, rarely noticing or speaking with each other. One only
+difficulty existed, which was by what pretence I should direct my steps
+to Aguaverde. But here again Donna Maria's ready wit suggested the
+expedient, as she said, laughing, "Are you not making a pilgrimage to
+the shrine of Our Lady 'des los Dolores '?"
+
+"So I am," said I. "Shame on me that I should have forgotten it till
+now!"
+
+"Did you never tell me," said she, archly, "that you intended to enter
+'an order'?"
+
+"Certainly," said I, joining the merry humor; "and so will I, on the
+very same day you take the veil."
+
+"And now, holy man," said she, with difficulty repressing a fresh
+burst of laughter, "let us say, 'Good night.' Fra Miguel will awake at
+daybreak, and I see that is already near."
+
+"Good night, sweet sister," said I, once again pressing her fingers to
+my lips, and scarcely knowing when to relinquish them. A heavy sigh
+from the Friar, however, admonished me to hasten away; and I crept to
+my place, and lay down beside the now almost extinguished embers of our
+fire.
+
+"What a good thought was that of the pilgrimage," said I, as I drew my
+cloak around me; and I remembered that "Chico's" beads and his "book
+of offices" were still among my effects in the saddle-bags, and would
+greatly favor my assumption of the pious character. I then tried to
+recall some of my forgotten Latin. From this I reverted to thoughts
+of Donna Maria herself, and half wondered at the rapid strides we had
+accomplished in each other's confidence. At last I fell asleep, to dream
+of every incongruity and încoherency that ever haunted a diseased brain.
+Nunneries, with a crocodile for the Abbess, gave way to scenes in the
+Placers, where Nuns were gold-washing, and Friars riding down cataracts
+on caymans. From such pleasant realities a rough shake of Fra Miguel
+aroused me, as he cried, "When a man laughs so heartily in his sleep,
+he may chance to keep all the grave thoughts for his waking. Rise up,
+Señhor; the day is breaking. Let us profit by the cool hours to make our
+journey."
+
+As day was breaking we set out for Bexar, in the manner I had suggested;
+Donna Maria riding, the Friar and myself, one either side of her,
+on foot. Resolved upon winning, so far as might be, Fra Miguel's
+confidence, I addressed my conversation almost exclusively to him,
+rarely speaking a word to my fair companion, and then only upon the
+commonest questions of the way.
+
+As none of us had eaten since the day previous, nor was there any
+baiting-place till we reached Bexar, it was necessary to make the best
+of our way thither with all speed. The Fra knew the road perfectly, and
+by his skill in detecting the marks on trees, the position of certain
+rocks, and the course of the streams, gave me some insight into the
+acute qualities necessary for a prairie traveller. These themes, too,
+furnished the greater portion of our conversation, which, I am free to
+own, offered many a long interval of dreary silence. The Fra's thoughts
+dwelt gloomily on his late disaster, while Donna Maria and myself were
+condemned to the occasional exchange of a chance remark or some question
+about the road.
+
+Once or twice Fra Miguel questioned me on the subject of my own history;
+but ere I had proceeded any length in detailing my veracious narrative,
+an accidental word or remark would show that he was inattentive to what
+I was speaking, and only occupied by his own immediate reflections.
+
+Why, then, trouble myself with biographical inventions which failed to
+excite any interest? And so I relapsed into a silence plodding and moody
+as his own.
+
+At length the path became too narrow for us all to go abreast, and as
+my duties were to guide Charry by the bridle, I became the companion of
+Maria by force of circumstances; still, Fra Miguel kept up close behind,
+and however abstracted at other times, he now showed himself "wide
+awake" on the subject of our intercourse. Denied the pleasure of talking
+to each other, we could at least exchange glances; and this was a
+privilege no surveillance, however rigid, could deny us. These are small
+and insignificant details, which were of little moment at the time,
+and led to even less for the future; but I record them as the first
+stirrings of love in a heart which might have been deemed too intent
+upon its own cares to admit of others. And here let me observe that the
+taste for stratagem--the little wiles and snares inspired by a first
+passion--are among the strongest incentives to its origin. It was
+the secrecy of our meeting at night, the little difficulties of our
+intercourse by day, the peril of discovery as we spoke together, the
+danger of detection as we exchanged glances, that, by giving us a common
+object, suggested a common feeling. Both engaged in the same warfare,
+how could we avoid sympathizing with each other? Then, there was that
+little "dash of romance" about our first meeting, so auxiliary to the
+tender passion; and, again, we were wandering, side by side, in a silent
+forest, with only one other near us. Would we could have disposed of him
+too! I shame to say it, but, in honest truth. I often wished that he had
+followed the Mexican!
+
+We halted during the great heat of the day, and the Fra once more
+"rigging" out his capote for a hammock, Donna Maria lay down for the
+siesta, while I cut grass for Charry, and rubbed her down. Long fasting
+had made us all more disposed to silence, so that a few monosyllables
+were all that passed. When the time came to resume the road, I am proud
+to say that the Fra bore his privations with less equanimity than did
+we. His sighs grew heavy and frequent; any accidental interruption on
+the road evoked unmistakable signs of irritation; he even expostulated
+with certain saints, whose leaden images decorated his sombrero, as to
+the precise reasons for which his present sufferings were incurred; and
+altogether, as hunger pinched, showed a more rebellious spirit than his
+holy discourses of the preceding evening could have led me to suspect.
+
+One time, he charged his calamities to the score of having eaten turtle,
+which was only half fish, on a Friday; at another, it was upon that
+unlucky day the journey had been begun; then he remembered that the
+Mexican was only a half-breed, who possibly, if baptized at all, was
+only an irregular kind of a Christian, admitted into the fold by some
+stray missionary, more trapper than priest. Then he bethought him that
+his patron, Saint Michel of Pavia, was of an uncertain humor, and often
+tormented his votaries, by way of trying their fidelity. These various
+doubts assumed the form of open grumblings, which certainly inspired
+very different sentiments in Donna Maria and myself than edification. As
+evening closed in, and darkness favored us, these ghostly lamentations
+afforded us many a low, quiet laugh. A soft pressure of the hand,
+which now, by mere accident, of course, she had let fall near me, would
+sometimes show how we concurred in our sentiments, till at length as the
+thicker gloom of night fell around, such was our unanimity that her hand
+remained clasped in my own, without any further attempt to remove it.
+
+If the Fra's gratitude burst forth eloquently as we came in sight of
+some spangled lights glittering through the gloom, our sensations were
+far more akin to disappointment.
+
+"Bexar at last, praised be Saint Michel!" exclaimed he. "It has been
+a long and dreary journey." Here I pressed Donna Maria's hand, and she
+returned the pressure.
+
+"Two days of disaster and sore suffering!" Another squeeze of the
+Señhora's fingers.
+
+"A time I shall never forget," muttered he.
+
+"Nor I," whispered I to my fair companion.
+
+"A season of trouble and distress!" quoth the Fra.
+
+"Of love and happiness!" muttered I.
+
+"And now, my worthy young friend," said he, addressing me, "as we are
+so soon to part,--for yonder is Bexar,--how shall we best show our
+gratitude? Would you like a 'novena' to 'Our Lady of Tears,' whose altar
+is here? or shall we vow a candle to Saint Nicomedè of Terapia?"
+
+"Thanks, holy Father, there is no need for either; mine was a slight
+service, more than requited by the pleasure of travelling in your
+company and that of this pious maiden. I have learned many a goodly
+lesson by the way, and will think over them as I wander on my future
+pilgrimage."
+
+"And whither may that tend, Señhor?"
+
+"To the shrine of 'Our Lady of Sorrows' at Aguaverde, by the help of
+Saint Francis."
+
+"Aguaverde!" exclaimed Fra Miguel, with a voice that bespoke anything
+rather than pleasure; "it is a long and a dangerous journey, young man!"
+
+"The greater the merit, Father!"
+
+"Trackless wastes and deep rivers, hostile Indians and even more cruel
+half-breeds. These are some of the perils," said he, in a voice of
+warning; but a gentle pressure from the Señhora's fingers was more than
+an answer to such terrors.
+
+"You can make your penance here, young man, at the Convent of the
+Missions. There are holy men who will give you all good counsel; and I
+will myself speak to them for you."
+
+I was about to decline this polite intervention, when a quiet gesture
+from Donna Maria arrested my words, and made me accept the offer, with
+thanks.
+
+Thus chatting, we reached the suburbs of Bexar, and soon entered the
+main street of that town. And here let me record a strange feature of
+the life of this land, which, although one that I soon became accustomed
+to, had a most singular aspect to my eyes on first acquaintance. It
+was a hot and sultry night of June, the air as dry and parched as of
+a summer day in our English climate; and we found that the whole
+population had their beds disposed along the streets, and were sleeping
+for the benefit of the cool night air,--al fresco. There was no moon,
+nor any lamplight, but by the glimmering stars we could see this
+strange encampment, which barely left a passage in the middle for the
+mule-carts.
+
+
+
+Some of the groups were irresistibly droll: here was an old lady, with a
+yellow-and-red handkerchief round her head, snoring away, while a negro
+wench waved a plaintan-bough to and fro to keep off the mosquitoes,
+which thronged the spot from the inducement of a little glimmering lamp
+to the Virgin over the bed. There was a thin, lantern-jawed old fellow
+sipping his chocolate before he resigned himself to sleep. Now and
+then there would be a faint scream and a muttered apology as some one,
+feeling his way to his nest, had fallen over the couch of a sleeper.
+Mothers were nursing babies, nurses were singing others to rest; social
+spirits were recalling the last strains of recent convivialities; while
+others, less genially given, were uttering their "Carambas" in all the
+vindictive anger of broken slumber. Now and then a devotional attitude
+might be detected, and even some little glimpses caught of some fair
+form making her toilet for the night, and throwing back her dishevelled
+hair to peer at the passing strangers.
+
+Such were the scenes that even a brief transit presented; a longer
+sojourn and a little more light had doubtless discovered still more
+singular ones.
+
+We halted at the gate of a large, gloomy-looking building which the
+Friar informed me was the "Venta Nazionale," the chief inn of the town;
+and by dint of much knocking, and various interlocutions between Fra
+Miguel and a black, four stories high, the gates were at length opened.
+Faint, hungry, and tired, I had hoped that we should have supped in
+company, and thus recompensed me for my share of the successful issue of
+the journey; but the Fra, giving his orders hastily, wished me an abrupt
+"good night," and led his niece up the narrow stairs, leaving me and my
+mare in the gloomy entrance, like things whose services were no longer
+needed.
+
+"This may be Texan gratitude, Fra Miguel," said I to myself, "but
+certainly you never brought it from your own country." Meanwhile the
+negro, after lighting the others upstairs, returned to where I was, and
+perhaps not impressed by any high notions of my quality, or too sleepy
+to think much about the matter, sat down on a stone bench, and looked
+very much as if about to compose himself to another doze. I was in
+no mood of gentleness, and so, bestowing a hearty kick upon my black
+"brother," I told him to show me the way to the stable at once. The
+answer to this somewhat rude summons was a strange one,--he gave a kind
+of grin that showed all his teeth, and made a species of hissing noise,
+like "Cheet, cheet," said rapidly,--a performance I had never witnessed
+before, nor, for certain reasons, have I any fancy to witness again.
+
+"Do you hear me, black fellow?" cried I, tapping his bullet-head with
+the end of my heavy whip pretty much as one does a tavern-table to
+summon the waiter.
+
+"Cheet, cheet, cheet," cried he again, but with redoubled energy.
+
+"Confound your jargon," said I, angrily; "get up out of that, and lead
+the way to the stable." This speech I accompanied by another admonition
+from my foot, given, I am free to own, with all the irritable impatience
+of a thirty hours' fast.
+
+The words had scarcely passed my lips, ere the fellow sprang to his
+legs, and, with a cry like the scream of an infuriated beast, dashed at
+me. I threw out my arm as a guard, but, stooping beneath it, he plunged
+a knife into my side, and fled. I heard the heavy bang of the great door
+resound as he rushed out, and then fell to the ground, weltering in my
+blood!
+
+I made a great effort to cry out, but my voice failed me; the blood ran
+fast from my wound, and a chill, sickening sensation crept over me, that
+I thought must be "death." "'T is hard to die thus," was the thought
+that crossed me, and it was the last effort of consciousness, ere I
+swooned into insensibility.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII. THE LAZARETTO OF BEXAR
+
+Kind-hearted reader,--you who have sympathized with so many of the
+rubs that Fortune has dealt us; who have watched us with a benevolent
+interest in our warfare with an adverse destiny; who have marked our
+struggles, and witnessed our defeats,--will surely compassionate our sad
+fate when we tell you that when the curtain next rises on our drama, it
+presents us no longer what we had been!
+
+Con Cregan, the light-hearted vagrant, paddling his lone canoe down
+life's stream in joyous merriment, himself sufficing to himself, his
+eyes ever upward as his hopes were onward, his crest an eagle's, and
+his motto "higher," was no more. He had gone,--vanished, been dissipated
+into thin air; and in his place there sat, too weak to walk, a poor
+emaciated creature, with shaven head and shrunken limbs, a very wreck of
+humanity, pale, sallow, and miserable as fever and flannel could paint
+him.
+
+Yes, gentle reader, under the shade of a dwarf fig-tree, in the Leper
+Hospital of Bexar, I sat, attired in a whole suit of flannel, of a pale,
+brown tint, looking like a faded flea, all my gay spirits fled, and
+my very identity merged into the simple fact that I was known as
+"Convalescent, No. 303,"--an announcement which, for memory's sake,
+perhaps, was stamped upon the front of my nightcap.
+
+Few people are fortunate enough not to remember the strange jumble of
+true and false, the incoherent tissue of fact and fancy, which assails
+the first moments of recovery from illness. It is a pitiable period,
+with its thronging thoughts, all too weighty for the light brain that
+should bear them. You follow your ideas like an ill-mounted horseman in
+a hunt; no sooner have you caught a glimpse of the game than it is lost
+again; on you go, wearied by the pace, but never cheered by success;
+often tumbling into a slough, missing your way, and mistaking the object
+of pursuit: such are the casualties in either case, and they are not
+enviable ones.
+
+Now, lest I should seem to be a character of all others I detest, a
+grumbler without cause, let me ask the reader to sit beside me for a
+few seconds on this bench, and look with me at the prospect around him.
+Yonder, that large white building, with grated windows, jail-like and
+sad, is the Leper Hospital of Bexar, an institution originally intended
+for the sick of that one malady, but, under the impression of its
+being contagious, generously extended to those laboring under any other
+disease. The lepers are that host who sit in groups upon the grass, at
+cards or dice, or walk in little knots of two and three. Their
+shambling gait and crippled figures,--the terrible evidence of their
+malady,--twisted limbs, contorted into every horrible variety of
+lameness, hands with deficient fingers, faces without noses, are the
+ordinary symbols. The voices, too, are either husky and unnatural, or
+reduced to a thin, reedy treble, like the wail of an infant. Worse
+than all, far more awful to contemplate, to him exposed to such
+companionship, their minds would appear more diseased than even their
+bodies: some evincing this aberration by traits of ungovernable passion,
+some by the querulous irritability of peevish childhood, and some by
+the fatuous vacuity of idiocy; and here am I gazing upon all this, and
+speculating, by the aid of a little bit of broken looking-glass, how
+long it is probable that I shall retain the "regulation" number of the
+human features.
+
+Ah, you gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease, may smile at
+such miseries; but let me tell you that however impertinent you might
+deem him who told you "to follow your nose," the impossibility of
+compliance is a yet heavier infliction; and it was with a trembling
+eagerness that, each morning as I awoke, I consulted the map of my face,
+to be sure that I was master of each geographical feature.
+
+While all who may break a leg or cut a blood-vessel are reckoned fit
+subjects to expose to the risk of this contagion, the most guarded
+measures are adopted to protect the world without the walls from every
+risk. Not only is every leper denied access to his friends and family,
+but even written communication is refused him, while sentinels are
+stationed at short intervals around the grounds, with orders to fire
+upon any who should attempt an escape.
+
+Here then was I in a jail, with the danger of a horrible disease
+superadded. Algebraically, my case stood thus: letting the letter P
+represent a prison, L the leprosy, and N my nose, P + L--N being equal
+to any given number of deaths by torture. Such was my case, such my
+situation; while of the past, by what chain of events I came to be thus
+a prisoner, I knew nothing. A little memoir at the head of my bed set
+forth that I was "a case of punctured wound in the thorax," with several
+accessory advantages, not over intelligible by my ignorance, but which I
+guessed to imply, that if the doctor didn't finish me off at once, there
+was every chance of my slipping away by a lingering malady,--some one
+of those "chest affections" that make the fortunes of doctors, but
+are seldom so profitable to the patients. One fact was, however, very
+suggestive. It was above four months since the date of my admission
+to the hospital,--a circumstance that vouched for the gravity of my
+illness, as well as showing what a number of events might have occurred
+in the interval.
+
+Four months! and where was Donna Maria now? Had she forgotten
+me,--forgotten the terrible scene on the Collorado; forgotten the
+starlit night in the forest? Had they left me, without any interest in
+my future,--deserted me, wounded, perhaps dying?--a sad return for the
+services I had rendered them! That Fra Miguel should have done this,
+would have caused me no surprise; but the Señhora,--she who sprang by a
+bound into intimacy with me, and called me "brother"! Alas! if this were
+so, what faith could be placed in woman?
+
+In vain I sought information on these points from those around me. My
+Spanish was not the very purest Castilian, it is true; but here, another
+and greater obstacle to knowledge existed: no one cared anything for the
+past, and very little for the future; the last event that held a place
+in their memory was the day of their admission, the fell malady was the
+centre round which all thoughts revolved, and I was regarded as a kind
+of visionary, when asking about circumstances that occurred before I
+entered the hospital. There were vague and shadowy rumors about me
+and my adventure,--so much I could find out; but whatever these were,
+scarcely two agreed on,--not one cared. Some said I had killed a priest;
+others averred it was a negro; a few opined that I had done both; and
+an old mulatto woman, with a face like a target, the bull's-eye being
+represented by where the nose ought to be, related a more connected
+narrative about my having stolen a horse, and being overtaken by a negro
+slave of the owner, who rescued the animal and stabbed _me_.
+
+All the stories tallied in one particular, which was in representing me
+as a fellow of the most desperate character and determination, and who
+cared as little for shedding blood as spilling water,--traits, I am
+bound to acknowledge, which never appeared to lower me in general
+esteem. Of course, all inquiries as to my horse, poor Charry, my
+precious saddle-bags, my rifle, my bowie-knife, and my "Harper's-ferry,"
+would have proved less than useless,--actually absurd. The patients
+would have reckoned such questions as little vagaries of mental
+wandering, and the servants of the house never replied to anything.
+
+My next anxiety was, when I should be at liberty? The doctor, when I
+asked him, gave a peculiar grin, and said, "We cannot spare you, amigo;
+we shall want to look at your pericardium one of these days. _I_ say it
+is perforated; Don Emanuel says not. Time will tell who 's right."
+
+"You mean when I'm dead, Señhor, of course?" cried I, not fancying the
+chance of resolving the difficulties by being carved alive.
+
+"Of course I do," said he. "Yours is a very instructive case; and
+I shall take care that your heart and a portion of the left lung be
+carefully injected, and preserved in the museum."
+
+"May you live a thousand years!" said I, bowing my gratitude, while a
+chill crept over me that I thought I should have fainted.
+
+I have already mentioned that sentries were placed at intervals round
+the walls to prevent escape,--a precaution which, were one to judge
+from the desolate and crippled condition of the inmates, savored of over
+care. A few were able to crawl along upon crutches, the majority were
+utterly helpless, while the most active were only capable of creeping up
+the bank which formed the boundary of the grounds, to look down into the
+moat beneath,--a descent of some twenty feet, but which, to imaginations
+such as theirs, was a gulf like the crater of a volcano.
+
+Whenever a little group, then, would station themselves on the
+"heights," as they were called, and gaze timidly into the depths below,
+the guards, far from dispersing them, saw that no better lesson could
+be administered than what their own fears suggested, and prudently left
+them to the admonitions of their terrors. I remembered this fact, and
+resolved to profit by it. If death were to be my lot, it could not come
+anywhere with more horrors than here; so that, happen what might,
+I resolved to make an effort at escape. The sentry's bullet had few
+terrors for one who saw himself surrounded by such objects of suffering
+and misery, and who daily expected to be one of their number. Were the
+leap to kill me,--a circumstance that in my weak and wounded condition I
+judged far from unlikely,--it was only anticipating a few days; and what
+days were they!
+
+Such were my calculations, made calmly and with reflection. Not that I
+was weary of life; were the world but open to me, I felt I should resume
+all my former zest in its sayings and doings,--nay, I even fancied that
+the season of privation would give a higher color to my enjoyment of
+it; and I know that the teachings of adversity are not the least useful
+accessories of him whose wits must point the road to fortune. True
+is it, the emergencies of life evoke the faculties and develop the
+resources, as the storm and the shipwreck display the hardy mariner. Who
+knows, Con, but good luck may creep in even through a punctured wound in
+the thorax!
+
+As the day closed, the patients were always recalled by a bell, and
+patrol parties of soldiers went round to see if by accident any yet
+lingered without the walls. The performance of duty was, however, most
+slovenly, since, as I have already said, escape never occurred to those
+whose apathy of mind and infirmity of body had made them indifferent to
+everything. I lingered, then, in a distant alley as the evening began
+to fall, and when the bell rung out its dismal summons, I trembled to
+think--was it the last time I should ever hear it! It was a strange
+thrill of mingled hope and terror; Where should I be the next evening at
+that hour? Free, and at liberty,--a wanderer wherever fancy might lead
+me, or the occupant of some narrow bed beneath the earth, sleeping the
+sleep that knows no waking? And, if so, who could less easily be missed
+than he who had neither friend, nor family, nor fortune. I felt that my
+departure, like that of some insignificant guest, would meet notice from
+none: not one to ask what became of him? when did he leave us? to whom
+did he say farewell?
+
+If there was something unspeakably sad in the solitude of such a
+fate, there was that also which nerved the heart by a sense of
+Self-sufficiency,--the very brother of Independence; and this thought
+gave me courage as I looked over the grassy embankment, and peered into
+the gloomy fosse, which now, in the indistinct light, seemed far deeper
+than ever. A low, marshy tract, undrained and uninhabitable, surrounded
+the "Lazaretto" for miles; and if this insalubrious neighborhood
+assisted in keeping up the malaria of fever, it compensated, on the
+other hand, by interposing an unpopulated district between the sick and
+the healthy.
+
+These dreary wastes, pathless and untrodden, were a kind of fabulous
+region among the patients for all kind of horrors, peopled, as the fancy
+of each dictated, by the spirits of departed "Léperos," by venomous
+serpents and cobras, or by escaped galley-slaves, who led a life of
+rapine and murder. The flitting jack-o'-lantern that often skimmed along
+the surface, the wild cry of the plover, the dreary night wind sighing
+over miles of plain, aided these superstitions, and convinced many whose
+stubborn incredulity demanded corroboration from the senses. As for
+myself, if very far from crediting the tales I had so often listened to,
+the theme left its character of gloom upon my mind, and it was with a
+cold shudder that I strained my eyes over the wide distance, from which
+a heavy exhalation was already rising. Determined to derive comfort
+from every source, I bethought me that the misty fog would assist my
+concealment, as if it were worth while to pursue me through a region
+impregnated with all the vapors of disease! The bell had ceased, the
+bang of the great iron wicket had resounded, and all was still. I
+hesitated, I know not why: a moment before, my mind was made up; and
+now, it seemed like self-destruction to go on! Here was life! a sad
+and terrible existence, truly; but was the dark grave better? or, if it
+were, had I the right to make the choice? This was a subtlety that had
+not occurred till now. The dull tramp of the patrol routed my musings,
+as in quick time a party advanced up the alley towards me. They were
+not visible from the darkness, but the distance could not be great, and
+already I could hear the corporal urging them forward, as the mists were
+rising, and a deadly fog gathering over the earth. Any longer delay
+now, and my project must be abandoned forever, seeing that my lingering
+outside the walls would expose me to close surveillance for the future.
+
+I arose suddenly, and advanced to the very edge of the cliff: would that
+I could only have scanned the depth below, and seen where I was about
+to go! Alas! darkness was on all; a foot beneath where I stood, all was
+black and undistinguishable.
+
+The patrol were now about thirty paces from me; another instant, and
+I should be taken! I clasped my hands together convulsively, and, with
+drawn-in breath and clenched lips, I bent my knees to spring. Alas, they
+would not! my strength failed me at this last moment, and instead of
+a leap, my limbs relaxed, and, tottering under me, gave way. I lost my
+balance, and fell over the cliff! Grasping the grassy surface with
+the energy of despair, I tore tufts of long grass and fern as I fell
+down--down--down--till consciousness left me, to be rallied again into
+life by a terrible "squash" into a reedy swamp at the bottom. Up to my
+waist in duck-weed and muddy water, I soon felt, however, that I had
+sustained no other injury than a shock,--nay, even fancied that the
+concussion had braced my nerves; and as I looked up at the dark mass of
+wall above me, I knew that my fall must have been terrific.
+
+Neither my bodily energy nor my habiliments favored me in escaping from
+this ditch; but I did rescue myself at last, and then, remembering that
+I must reach some place of refuge before day broke, I set out over the
+moor, my only pilotage being the occasionally looking back at the lights
+of the hospital, and, in sailor-fashion, using them as my point of
+departure. When creeping along the walks of the Lazaretto, I was barely
+able to move; and now, such a good ally is a strong "will," I stepped
+out boldly and manfully.
+
+As I walked on, the night cleared, a light fresh breeze dissipated the
+vapor, and refreshed me as I went, while overhead, myriads of bright
+stars shone out, and served to guide me on the trackless waste. If I
+often felt fatigue stealing over me, a thought of the Lazaretto and its
+fearful inmates nerved me to new efforts. Sometimes so possessed did I
+become with these fears that I actually increased my speed to a run, and
+thus, exerting myself to the very utmost, I made immense progress, and
+ere day began to break, found myself at the margin of the moor, and the
+entrance to a dense forest, which I remembered often to have seen of a
+clear evening from the garden of the Lazaretto. With what gratitude
+did I accept that leafy shade, which seemed to promise me its refuge! I
+threw my arms around a tree, in the ecstasy of my delight, and felt that
+now indeed I had gained a haven of rest and safety. By good fortune,
+too, I came upon a pathway: a small piece of board nailed to a tree
+bore the name of a village; but this I could not read in the half light;
+still, it was enough that I was sure of a beaten track, and could not be
+lost in the dense intricacies of a pine-forest.
+
+The change of scene encouraged me to renewed exertion. And I began
+to feel that, so far from experiencing fatigue, each mile I travelled
+supplied me with greater energy, and that my strength rose each hour as
+I left the Lazaretto farther behind me.
+
+"Ah, Con, my boy, fortune has not taken leave of you yet!" said I, as I
+discovered that my severe exercise, far from being injurious, as I had
+feared, was already bringing back the glow of health to my frame, and
+spirit to my heart.
+
+There is something unspeakably calming in the solitude of a forest,
+unlike the lone sensations inspired by the sea or the prairie; the
+feeling is one of peaceful quietude. The tempered sunlight stealing
+through the leaves and boughs entangled; the giant trunks that tell
+of centuries ago; the short, smooth, mossy turf through which the tiny
+rivulet runs without a channel; the little vistas opening like alleys,
+or ending in some shady nook, bower-like and retired,--fill the mind
+with a myriad of pleasant fancies. Instead of wandering forth over the
+immensity of space, as when contemplating the great ocean or the desert,
+the heart here falls back upon itself, and is satisfied with the little
+world around it.
+
+Such were my reveries as I lay down beneath a tree, at first to muse,
+and then to sleep; and such a sleep as only a weary foot-traveller
+knows, who, stretched under the shade of a spreading tree, lies
+dreamless and lost. It must have been late ere I awoke; the sunlight
+came slanting obliquely through the leaves, and bespoke the decline of
+day. I rose. At first my limbs were stiff and rigid, and my sensations
+those of debility; but after a little time my strength came back, and
+I strode along freely. Continuing the path, I came, after about three
+hours' fast walking, to a little open spot in the wood, where the
+remains of a hut and the charred fragments of firewood indicated a
+bivouac. Some morsels of black bread strewn about, and a stray piece of
+dried venison, argued that the party who had left them had but recently
+quitted the spot. Very grateful for the negligent abundance of their
+waste, I sat down, and, by the aid of a little spring,--the reason,
+probably, of the selection of the spot for a halt,--made a capital
+supper, some chestnuts that had fallen from the trees furnishing a
+delicious dessert. Night was fast closing in, and I resolved on passing
+it where I was, the shelter of the little hut being too tempting a
+refuge to relinquish easily. The next morning I started early, my mind
+fully satisfied that I was preceded by some foot party, the path not
+admitting of any other, with whom, by exertion, I should be perhaps able
+to come up. I walked from day to dawn with scarcely an interval of rest,
+but, although the tracks of many feet showed me my conjecture was right,
+I did not succeed in overtaking them. Towards evening I again came upon
+their bivouac-ground, which was even more abundantly provided than the
+preceding one. They appeared to have killed a buck; and though having
+roasted an entire side, had contented themselves with some steaks off
+the quarter. Upon this I feasted luxuriously, securing a sufficient
+provision to last me for the next two or three days.
+
+In this way I continued to travel for eight entire days, each successive
+one hoping to overtake the party in advance, and, if disappointed in
+this expectation, well pleased with the good luck that had supplied
+me so far with food, and made my journey safe and pleasant; for it was
+both. A single beast of prey I never met with, nor even a serpent larger
+than the common green snake, which is neither venomous nor bold; and as
+for pleasure, I was free. Was not that alone happiness for him who had
+been a prisoner among the "Léperos" of Bexar?
+
+On the ninth day of my wandering, certain unmistakable signs indicated
+that I was approaching the verge of the forest: the grass became deeper,
+the wood less dense; the undergrowth, too, showed the influence of winds
+and currents of air. These, only appreciable by him who has watched with
+anxious eyes every little change in the aspect of Nature, became at last
+evident to the least observant in the thickened bark and the twisted
+branches of the trees, on which the storms of winter were directed.
+Shall I own it? My heart grew heavy at these signs, boding, as they
+did, another change of scene. And to what? Perhaps the bleak prairie,
+stretching away in dreary desolation! Perhaps some such tract of swampy
+moor, where forests once had stood, but now, lying in mere waste of
+rottenness and corruption; "clearings," as they are called, the little
+intervals which hard industry plants amid universal wildness, I could
+not hope for, since I had often heard that no settlers ever selected
+these places, to which access by water was difficult, and the roads few
+and bad. What, then, was to come next? Not the sea-coast,--_that_
+must be miles away to the eastward; not the chain of the Rocky
+Mountains,--they lay equally far to the west.
+
+While yet revolving these thoughts, I reached the verge of the wood; and
+suddenly, and without anything which might apprise me of this singular
+change, I found myself standing on the verge of a great bluff of land
+overlooking an apparently boundless plain. The sight thus unexpectedly
+presented of a vast prairie--for such it was--was overwhelming in its
+intense interest. My position, from a height of some seven or eight
+hundred feet, gave me an uninterrupted view over miles and miles of
+surface. Towards the far west, a ridge of rugged mountains could
+be seen; but to the south and east, a low flat horizon bounded the
+distance. The surface of this great tract was covered for a short space
+by dry cedars, apparently killed by a recent fire; beyond that, a tall,
+rank grass grew, through which I could trace something like a road. This
+was, as I afterwards learned, a buffalo-trail, these animals frequently
+marching in close column when in search of water. The sun was setting as
+I looked, and gilded the whole vast picture with its yellow glory; but
+as it sunk beneath the horizon, and permitted a clearer view of
+the scene, I could perceive that everything--trees, grass, earth
+itself--presented one uniform dry, burnt-up appearance.
+
+Not a creature of any kind was seen to move over this great plain; not a
+wing cleaved the air above; not a sound broke the stillness beneath. It
+was a solitude the most complete I ever conceived,--grand and imposing!
+How my heart sank within me as I sat and looked, thinking I was there
+alone, without one creature near me, to linger out, perhaps, some few
+days or hours of life, and die unseen, un-watched, uncared for! And to
+this sad destiny had ambition brought me! Were it not for the craving
+desire to become something above my station, to move in a sphere to
+which neither my birth nor my abilities gave me any title, and I should
+be now the humble peasant, living by my daily labor in my native
+land, my thoughts travelling in the worn track those of my neighbors
+journeyed, and I neither better nor worse off than they.
+
+And for this wish--insensate, foolish as it was--the expiation is indeed
+heavy. I hid my head within my hands, and tried to pray, but I could
+not. The mind harassed by various conflicting thoughts is not in the
+best mood for supplication. I felt like the criminal of whom I had once
+read, that, when the confessor came to visit him the night before
+his execution, seemed eager and attentive for a while, but at
+last acknowledged that his thoughts were centred upon one only
+theme,--escape! "To look steadfastly at the next world, you must
+extinguish the light of this one;" and how difficult is that!--how
+hard to close every chink and fissure through which hope may dart a
+ray,--hope of life, hope of renewing the struggle in which we are so
+often defeated, and where even the victory is without value!
+
+"Be it so," sighed I, at last; "the game is up!" and I lay down at the
+foot of a rock to die. My strength, long sustained by expectation, had
+given way at last, and I felt that the hour of release could not be
+distant. I drew my hand across my eyes,--I am ashamed to own there were
+tears there--and just then, as if my vision had been cleared by the act,
+I saw, or I thought I saw, in the plain beneath, the glittering sparkle
+of flame. Was it the reflection of a star, of which thousands were now
+studding the sky, in some pool of rain-water? No! it was real fire,
+which now, from one red spark, burst forth into a great blaze, rolling
+out volumes of black smoke which rose like a column into the air.
+
+Were they Indians who made it, or trappers? or could it be the party in
+whose track I had so long been following; and, if so, by what path had
+they descended? Speculation is half-brother to Hope. No sooner had I
+begun to canvass this proposition than it aroused my drooping energies,
+and rallied my failing courage.
+
+I set about to seek for some clew to the descent, and by the moonlight,
+which was now full and strong, I detected foot-tracks in the clayey soil
+near the verge of the cliff. A little after I found a narrow pathway,
+which seemed to lead down the face of the bluff. The trees were
+scratched, too, in many places with marks familiar to prairie
+travellers, but which to me only betokened the fact that human hands had
+been at work upon them. I gained courage by these, which at least I
+knew were not "Indian signs," no more than the foot-tracks were those of
+Indian feet.
+
+The descent was tedious, and often perilous; the path, stopping abruptly
+short at rocks, from which the interval to the next footing should be
+accomplished by a spring, or a drop of several feet, was increased in
+danger by the indistinct light. In the transit I received many a sore
+bruise, and ere I reached the bottom my flannel drapery was reduced to a
+string of rags which would have done no credit to a scarecrow.
+
+When looking from the top of the cliff, the fire appeared to be
+immediately at its foot; but now I perceived it stood about half a mile
+off in the plain. Thither I bent my steps, half fearing, half hoping,
+what might ensue. So wearied was I by the fatigue of the descent, added
+to the long day's journey, that even in this short space I was often
+obliged to halt and take rest. Exhaustion, hunger, and lassitude weighed
+me down, till I went along with that half-despairing effort a worn-out
+swimmer makes as his last before sinking.
+
+A more pitiable object it would not be easy to picture. The blood oozing
+from my wound, re-opened by the exertion, had stained my flannel dress,
+which, ragged and torn, gave glimpses of a figure reduced almost to a
+skeleton. My beard was long, adding to the seeming length of my gaunt
+and lantern jaws, blue with fatigue and fasting. My shoes were in
+tatters, and gave no protection to my bleeding feet; while my hands
+were torn and cut by grasping the rocks and boughs in my descent.
+Half-stumbling, half-tottering, I came onward till I found myself close
+to the great fire, at the base of a mound--a "Prairie roll," as it is
+called--which formed a shelter against the east wind.
+
+Around the immense blaze sat a party, some of whom in shadow, others
+in strong light, presented a group the strangest ever my eyes beheld.
+Bronzed and bearded countenances, whose fierce expression glowed fiercer
+in the ruddy glare of the fire, were set off by costumes the oddest
+imaginable.
+
+Many wore coats of undressed sheepskin, with tall caps of the same
+material; others had ragged uniforms of different services. One or two
+were dressed in "ponchos" of red-brown cloth, like Mexicans, and some,
+again, had a kind of buff coat studded with copper ornaments,--a
+costume often seen among the half-breeds. All agreed in one feature
+of equipment, which was a broad leather belt or girdle, in which were
+fastened various shining implements, of which a small pickaxe and a
+hammer were alone distinguishable where I stood. Several muskets were
+piled near them, and on the scorched boughs of the cedars hung a little
+armory of cutlasses, pistols, and "bowies," from which I was able to
+estimate the company at some twenty-eight or thirty in number. Packs and
+knapsacks, with some rude cooking utensils, were strewn around; but
+the great carcase of a deer which I saw in the flames, supported by a
+chevaux-de-frise of ramrods, was the best evidence that the cares of
+"cuisine" did not demand any unnecessary aid from "casseroles."
+
+A couple of great earthen pitchers passed rapidly from hand to hand
+round the circle, and, by the assistance of some blackhead, served to
+beguile the time while the "roast" was being prepared.
+
+Creeping noiselessly nearer, I gained a little clump of brushwood
+scarcely more than half-a-dozen paces off, and then lay myself down to
+listen what language they were speaking. At first the whole buzz seemed
+one unmeaning jargon, more like the tongue of an Indian tribe than
+anything else; but as I listened I could detect words of French,
+Spanish, and German. Eager to make out some clew to what class they
+might belong, I leaned forward on a bough and listened attentively. A
+stray word, a chance phrase, could I but catch so much, would be enough;
+and I bent my ear with the most watchful intensity. The spot I occupied
+was the crest of the little ridge, or "Prairie roll," and gave me a
+perfect view over the group, while the black smoke rolling upwards
+effectually concealed me from _them_.
+
+As I listened, I heard a deep husky voice say something in English.
+It was only an oath, but it smacked of my country, and set my heart
+a-throbbing powerfully. I lay out upon the branch to catch what might
+follow, when smash went the frail timber, and, with a cry of terror,
+down I rolled behind them. In a second every one was on his legs, while
+a cry of "The jaguars! the jaguars!" resounded on all sides. The sudden
+shock over, their discipline seemed perfect; for the whole party had
+at once betaken themselves to their arms, and stood in a hollow square,
+prepared to receive any attack. Meanwhile, the smoke and the falling
+rubbish effectually shut me out from view. As these cleared away, they
+caught sight of me, and truly never was a formidable file of musketry
+directed upon a more pitiable object. Such seemed their own conviction;
+for after a second or two passed in steady contemplation of me, the
+whole group burst out into a roar of savage laughter. "What is't?"
+"It's not human!" being the exclamations which, in more than one strange
+tongue, were uttered.
+
+Unable to speak, in part from terror, in part from shock, I sat up on
+my knees, and, gesticulating with my hands, implored their mercy, and
+bespoke my own defencelessness. I conclude that I made a very sorry
+exhibition, for again the laughter burst forth in louder tones than
+before, when one, taking a brand of the burning firewood, came nearer
+to examine me. He threw down his torch, and, springing backward with
+horror, screamed out, a "lépero!" a "lépero!" In a moment every musket
+was again raised to the shoulder, and directed towards me.
+
+"I'm not a lépero--never was!" cried I, in Spanish. "I'm a poor
+Englishman who has made his escape from the Lazaretto." I could not
+utter more, but fell powerless to the earth.
+
+"I know him; we were messmates," cried a gruff voice. "Halt! avast
+there! don't fire! I say, my lad, crawl over to leeward of the fire.
+There, that will do. Dash a bucket of water over him, Perez."
+
+Perez obeyed with a vengeance, for I was soaked to the skin, and at
+the same time exposed to the scorching glare of the great fire, where I
+steamed away like a swamp at sundown.
+
+"A'n't you Cregan, I say?" cried the same English voice which spoke
+before; "a'n't you little Con, as we used to call you?"
+
+"Yes," said I, overjoyed by the recognition, without knowing by whom it
+was made, "I am the little Con you speak of."
+
+"Ah, I remembered your voice the moment I heard it," said he. "Don't you
+remember me?"
+
+"Caramba!" broke in a savage-looking Spaniard; "we 're not going to
+catch a leprosy for the sake of your reminiscences. Tell the fellow to
+move off, or I'll send a bullet through him."
+
+"And I 'll follow you."
+
+"And I; and I," cried two or three more, who, suiting the action to the
+speech, threw back the pan of the flint-muskets to examine the priming.
+
+"And shall I tell you what I 'll do?" said the Englishman. "I'll lay the
+first fellow's skull open with this hanger that fires a shot at him."
+
+"Will you so?" said a thin, athletic fellow, springing to his legs, and
+drawing a long, narrow-bladed knife from his girdle.
+
+"A truce there, Rivas," said another; "would you quarrel with the
+Capitan for a miserable lépero?"
+
+"He's not a Capitan of my making," said Rivas, sulkily.
+
+"I don't care of whose making," said the Englishman, in his broken
+Spanish; "I'm the leader of this expedition: if any one deny it, let him
+stand out and say so. If half a dozen of you deny it, come out one by
+one: I ask nothing better than to show you who's the best man here."
+
+A low muttering followed this speech, but whether it were of admiration
+or anger, I could not determine. Meanwhile my own resolve was formed,
+as, gathering my limbs together, I rolled upon one knee and said,--
+
+"Hear me for one instant, Señhors. It would be unworthy of you to
+quarrel about an object so poor and worthless as I am. Although not a
+lépero, I have made my escape from the Lazaretto, and travelled hither
+on foot, with little clothing and less food: an hour or two more will
+finish what fatigue and starving have all but accomplished. If you will
+be kind enough to throw me a morsel of bread, and give me time to move
+away, I'll try and do it; or, if you prefer doing the humane thing, you
+'ll come a few paces nearer and send a volley into me."
+
+"I vote for the last," shouted one; but, strange to say, none
+seconded his motion. A change had come over them, possibly by the very
+recklessness of my own proposal. At last one called out, "Creep away
+some fifty yards or so, and burn those rags of yours: we 'll give you
+something to wear instead of them."
+
+"Ay, just so," said another; "the poor devil doesn't deserve death for
+what he's done."
+
+"That's spoken like honest fellows and good comrades," said the
+Englishman. "And now, my hearty, move down to leeward there, and put on
+your new toggery, and we 'll see if a hot supper won't put some life in
+you."
+
+I could scarcely credit my own alacrity as this prospect of better
+days inspired me with fresh vigor; I recovered my feet at once, and,
+in something which I intended should resemble a trot, set out in the
+direction indicated, and where already a small bundle of clothes had
+been placed for my acceptance.
+
+A piece of lighted charcoal and some firewood also apprised me of the
+office required at my hands, and which I performed with a most hearty
+good-will; and as I threw the odious rags into the flames, I felt that I
+was saying adieu to the last tie that bound me to the horrible Lazaretto
+of Bexar.
+
+"Let him join us now," said the Englishman; "though I think if the poor
+fellow has walked from Bexar, you might have been satisfied he could n't
+carry the leprosy with him."
+
+"I've known it go with a piece of gun-wadding from Bexar to the Rio del
+Norte," said one.
+
+"I saw a fellow who caught it from the rind of a watermelon a lépero had
+thrown away."
+
+"There was a comrade of ours at Puerta Naval took it from sitting on the
+bench beside a well on the road where a lépero had been resting the day
+before," cried a third.
+
+"Let him sit yonder, then," said the Englishman "You 're more afeard
+of that disease than the bite of a cayman; though you need n't be
+squeamish, most of you, if it 'a your beauty you were thinking of."
+
+And thus amid many a tale of the insidious character of this fell
+disorder, and many a rude jest on the score of precaution against it, I
+was ordered to seat myself at about a dozen or twenty paces distant, and
+receive my food as it was thrown towards me by the others,--too happy at
+this humble privilege to think of anything but the good fortune of such
+a meeting.
+
+"Don't you remember me yet?" cried the Englishman, standing where the
+full glare of the fire lit up his marked features.
+
+"Yes," said I, "you 're Halkett."
+
+"To be sure I am, lad. I 'm glad you don't forget me."
+
+"How should I? This is not the first time you saved my life."
+
+"I scarcely thought I had succeeded so well," said he, "when we parted
+last; but you must tell me all about that to-morrow, when you are rested
+and refreshed. The crew here is not very unlike what you may remember
+aboard the yacht: don't cross them, and you 'll do well with them."
+
+"What are they?" said I, eagerly.
+
+"Gambusinos," said he, in a low voice.
+
+"Bandits?" whispered I, misconceiving the word.
+
+"Not quite," rejoined he, laughing; "though, I've no doubt, ready to
+raise a dollar that way if any one could be found in these wild parts
+a little richer than themselves;" with this, he commended me to a sound
+sleep, and the words were scarcely spoken ere I obeyed the summons.
+
+Before day broke, I was aroused by the noise of approaching departure;
+the band were strapping on knapsacks, slinging muskets, and making other
+preparations for the march; Halkett, as their captain, carrying
+nothing beyond his weapons, and in his air and manner assuming all the
+importance of command.
+
+The "Lépero," as I was called, was ordered to follow the column at
+about a hundred paces to the rear; but as I was spared all burden, in
+compassion to my weak state, I readily compounded for this invidious
+position, by the benefits it conferred. A rude meal of rye-bread and
+cold venison, with some coffee, made our breakfast, and away we started;
+our path lying through the vast prairie I have already spoken of.
+
+As during my state of "quarantine," which lasted seven entire days,
+we continued to march along over a dreary tract of monotonous
+desolation,--nothing varying the dull uniformity of each day's journey,
+save the chance sight of a distant herd of buffaloes, the faint traces
+of an Indian war-party, or the blackened embers of a bivouac,--I will
+not weary my readers by dwelling on my own reflections as I plodded on:
+enough, when I say they were oftener sad than otherwise. The uncertainty
+regarding the object of my fellow-travellers harassed my mind by a
+thousand odd conjectures. It was clear they were not merchants, neither
+could they be hunters, still less a "war-party,"--one of those marauding
+bands which on the Texan frontier of Mexico levy "black-mail" upon the
+villagers, on the plea of a pretended protection against the Indians.
+Although well armed, neither their weapons, their discipline, nor, still
+less, their numbers, argued in favor of this suspicion. What they could
+possibly be, then, was an insurmountable puzzle to me. I knew they were
+called Gambusinos,--nothing more. Supposing that some of my readers
+may not be wiser than I then was, let me take this opportunity, while
+traversing the prairie, to say in a few words what they were.
+
+The Gambusinos are the gold-seekers of the New World,--a class who,
+in number and importance, divide society with the "Vaqueros," the
+cattle-dealers, into two almost equal sections. Too poor to become
+possessors of mines, without capital for enterprise on a larger scale,
+they form bands of wandering discoverers, traversing the least-known
+districts of the Sonora, and spending years of life in the wildest
+recesses of the Rocky Mountains. Associating together generally from
+circumstances purely accidental, they form little communities, subject
+to distinct laws; and however turbulent and rebellious under ordinary
+control, beneath the sway of the self-chosen leaders they are reputed to
+be submissive and obedient.
+
+Their skill is, as may be judged, rude as their habits, they rarely
+carry their researches to any depth beneath the surface; some general
+rules are all their guidance, and these are easily acquired. They are
+all familiar with the fact that the streams which descend from the
+Rocky Mountains, either towards the Atlantic or Pacific, carry in their
+autumnal floods vast masses of earth, which form deposits in the plains;
+that these deposits are often charged with precious ores, and sometimes
+contain great pieces of pure gold. They know, besides, that the quartz
+rock is the usual bed where the precious metals are found, and that
+these rocks form spurs from the large mountains, easily known, because
+they are never clothed by vegetation, and called in their phraseology
+"Crestones."
+
+A sharp short stroke of the "barreta," the iron-shod staff of the
+Gambusino, soon shivers the rock where treasure is suspected; and, the
+fragments being submitted to the action of a strong fire, the existence
+of gold is at once tested. Often the mere stroke of the barreta will
+display the shining lustre of the metal without more to do. Such is, for
+the most part, the extent of their skill.
+
+There are, of course, gradations even here; and some will distinguish
+themselves above their fellows in the detection of profitable sources
+and rich "crestones," while others rarely rise above the rank of mere
+"washers,"--men employed to sift the sands and deposits of the rivers in
+which the chief product is gold-dust.
+
+Such, then, is the life of a "Gambusino." In this pursuit he traverses
+the vast continent of South America from east to west, crossing
+torrents, scaling cliffs, descending precipices, braving hunger, thirst,
+heat, and snow, encountering hostile Indians and the not less terrible
+bands of rival adventurers, contesting for existence with the wild
+animals of the desert, and generally at last paying with his life the
+price of his daring intrepidity. Few, indeed, are ever seen as old
+men among their native villages; nearly all have found their last rest
+beneath the scorching sand of the prairie.
+
+Upon every other subject than that of treasure-seeking, their minds were
+a perfect blank. For _them_, the varied resources of a land abounding
+in the products of every clime, had no attraction. On the contrary, the
+soil which grew the maize, indigo, cotton, the sugar-cane, coffee, the
+olive, and the vine, seemed sterile and barren, since in such regions no
+_gold_ was ever found. The wondrous fertility of that series of terraces
+which, on the Andes, unite the fruits of the torrid zone with the
+lichens of the icy North, had no value in the estimation of men who
+acknowledged but one wealth, and recognized but one idol. _Their_ hearts
+turned from the glorious vegetation of this rich garden to the dry
+courses of the torrents that fissure the Cordilleras, or the stony
+gorges that intersect the Rocky Mountains.
+
+The life of wild and varied adventure, too, that they led was associated
+with these deserted and trackless wastes. To them, civilization
+presented an aspect of slavish subjection and dull uniformity; while
+in the very vicissitudes of their successes there was the excitement
+of gambling: rich to-day, they vowed a lamp of solid gold to the
+"Virgin,"--to-morrow, in beggary, they braved the terrors of sacrilege
+to steal from the very altar they had themselves decorated. What strange
+and wondrous narratives did they recount as we wandered over that
+swelling prairie!
+
+Many avowed that their own misdeeds had first driven them to the life
+of the deserts; and one who had lived for years a prisoner among the
+Choctaws confessed that his heart still lingered with the time when he
+had sat as a chief beside the war-fire, and planned stratagems
+against the tribe of the rival Pawnees. To men of hardy and energetic
+temperament, recklessness has an immense fascination. Life is so often
+in peril, they cease to care much for whatever endangers it; and
+thus, through all their stories, the one feeling ever predominated,--a
+careless indifference to every risk coupled with a most resolute conduct
+in time of danger.
+
+I soon managed to make myself a favorite with this motley assemblage;
+my natural aptitude to pick up language, aided by what I already knew of
+French and German, assisted me to a knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese;
+while from a "half-breed" I acquired a sufficiency of the Indian dialect
+in use throughout the Lower Prairies. I was fleet of foot, besides
+being a good shot with the rifle,--qualities of more request among my
+companions than many gifts of a more brilliant order; and, lastly,
+my skill in cookery, which I derived from my education on board the
+"Firefly," won me high esteem and much honor. My life was therefore far
+from unpleasant. The monotony of the tract over which we marched was
+more than compensated for by the marvellous tales that beguiled the way.
+One only drawback existed on my happiness; and yet that was sufficient
+to embitter many a lonely hour of the night, and cast a shade over
+many a joyous hour of the day. I am almost ashamed to confess what that
+source of sorrow was, the more as, perhaps, my kind reader will already
+fancy he has anticipated my grief, and say, "It was the remembrance of
+Donna Maria; the memory of _her_ I was never to see more." Alas, no! It
+was a feeling far more selfish than this afflicted me. The plain fact
+is, I was called "The Lépero." By no other name would my companions
+know or acknowledge me. It was thus they first addressed me, and so they
+would not take the trouble to change my appellation. Not that, indeed, I
+dared to insinuate a wish upon the subject; such a hint would have
+been too bold a stroke to hazard in a company where one was called
+"Brise-ses-fers," another, "Colpo-di-Sangue," a third, "Teufel's Blut,"
+and so on.
+
+It was to no purpose that I appeared in all the vigor of health and
+strength. I might outrun the wildest bull of the buffalo herd; I might
+spring upon the half-trained "mustang," and outstrip the antelope in
+her flight; I might climb the wall-like surface of a cliff, and rob the
+eagle of her young: but when I came back, the cry of welcome that met me
+was, "Bravo, Lépero!" And thus did I bear about with me the horrid badge
+of that dreary time when I dwelt within the Lazaretto of Bexar.
+
+The very fact that the name was not used in terms of scoff or reproach
+increased the measure of its injury. It called for no reply on my
+part; it summoned no energy of resistance; it was, as it were, a simple
+recognition of certain qualities that distinguished me and made up my
+identity; and at last, to such an extent did it work upon my imagination
+that I yielded myself up to the delusion that I was all that they styled
+me,--an outcast and a leper! When this conviction settled down on
+my mind, I ceased to fret as before, but a gloomy depression gained
+possession of me, uncheered save by the one hope that my life should not
+be entirely spent among my present associates, and that I should yet be
+known as something else than "The Lépero."
+
+The prairie over which we travelled never varied in aspect save with
+the changing hours of the day. The same dreary swell, the same yellowish
+grass, the same scathed and scorched cedars, the same hazy outlines of
+distant mountains that we saw yesterday, rose before us again to-day,
+as we knew they would on the morrow,--till at last our minds took the
+reflection of the scene, and we journeyed along, weary, silent, and
+footsore. It was curious enough to mark how this depression exhibited
+itself upon different nationalities. The Saxon became silent and
+thoughtful, with only a slight dash of more than ordinary care upon
+his features, the Italian grew peevish and irritable, the Spaniard was
+careless and neglectful, while the Frenchman became downright vicious in
+the wayward excesses of his spiteful humor. Upon the half-breeds, two
+of whom were our guides, no change was ever perceptible. Too long
+accustomed to the life of the prairie to feel its influence as peculiar,
+they plodded on, the whole faculties bent upon one fact,--the discovery
+of the Chihuahua trail, from which our new track was to diverge in a
+direction nearly due west.
+
+Our march, no longer enlivened by merry stories or exciting narratives,
+had become wearisome in the extreme. The heavy fogs of the night and the
+great mist which arose at sunset prevented all possibility of tracing
+the path, which often required the greatest skill to detect, so that we
+were obliged to travel during the sultriest hours of the day, without
+a particle of shade, our feet scorched by the hot sands, and our heads
+constantly exposed to the risk of sunstroke. Water, too, became each day
+more difficult to obtain; the signs by which our guides discovered its
+vicinity seemed, to to me, at least, little short of miraculous; and
+yet if by any chance they made a mistake, the anger of the party rose
+so near to mutiny that nothing short of Halkett's own authority could
+restore order. Save in these altercations, without which rarely a
+day passed over, little was spoken; each trudged along either lost in
+vacuity or buried in his own thoughts.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII. THE PLACER
+
+As for myself, my dreamy temperament aided me greatly. I could build
+castles forever; and certainly there was no lack of ground here for the
+foundation. Sometimes I fancied myself suddenly become the possessor
+of immense riches, with which I should found a new colony in the very
+remotest regions of the West. I pictured to myself the village of my
+workmen, surrounded with its patches of cultivation in the midst of
+universal barrenness; the smiling aspect of civilized life in the
+very centre of barbarism; the smelting furnaces, the mills, the great
+refining factories, of which I had heard so much, all rose to my
+imagination, and my own princely abode looking down upon these evidences
+of my wealth.
+
+Then, I fancied the influences of education diffusing themselves among
+the young, who grew up with tastes and habits so different from those of
+their fathers. How pursuits of refinement by degrees mingled themselves
+with daily requirements, till at last the silent forests would echo with
+the exciting strains of music, or the murmuring rivulet at nightfall
+would be accompanied by the recited verses of poetry.
+
+The primitive simplicity of such a life as I then pictured was a perfect
+fascination; and when wearied with thinking of it by day, as I dropped
+asleep at night the thoughts would haunt my dreams unceasingly.
+
+This castle-building temperament--which is, after all, nothing but
+hope engaged practically--may, when pushed too far, make a man dreamy,
+speculative, and visionary, but if restrained within any reasonable
+limits, cannot fail to support the courage in many an hour of trial, and
+nerve the heart against many a sore infliction. I know how it kept me up
+when others of very different thews and sinews were falling around me.
+Independently of this advantage, another and a greater one accompanied
+it. These self-created visions, however they may represent a man in
+a situation of greatness or power, always do so to exhibit him
+dispensing--what he imagines at least to be--the virtues of such a
+station! No one, I trust, ever fancied himself a monarch for the sake
+of all the cruelties he might inflict, and all the tyrannies he might
+practise; so that, in reality, this "sparring against Fortune with the
+gloves on" is admirable practice, if it be nothing else.
+
+It was on the seventeenth day of our wanderings that the guide announced
+that we had struck into the Chihuahua "trail"; and although to our eyes
+nothing unusual or strange presented itself, Hermose exhibited signs
+of unmistakable pride and self-esteem. As I looked around me on the
+unvarying aspect of earth and sky, I could not help remembering my
+disappointment on a former occasion, when I heard of the "Banks of
+Newfoundland," and fancied that the Chihuahua trail might have some such
+unseen existence as the redoubtable "Banks" aforesaid, which, however
+familiar to codfish, are seldom visited by Christians.
+
+"The evening star will rise straight above our heads to-night," said
+Hermose,--and he was correct; our path lay exactly in the very line with
+that bright orb. The confidence inspired by this prediction increased
+as we found that an occasional prickly pear-tree now presented itself,
+with, here and there, a dwarf-box or an acacia. As night closed in, we
+found ourselves on the skirt of what seemed a dense wood, bordered by
+the course of a dried-up torrent. A great wide "streak" of rocks and
+stones attested the force and extent of that river when filled by the
+mountain streams, but which now trickled along among the pebbles with
+scarcely strength enough to force its way. Hermose proceeded for some
+distance down into the bed of the torrent, and returned with a handful
+of sand and clay, which he presented to Halkett, saying, "The rains have
+not been heavy enough; this is last year's earth."
+
+Few as were the words, they conveyed to me an immense impression of his
+skill, who, in a few grains of sand taken at random, could distinguish
+the deposits of one year from those of another.
+
+"How does it look, Halkett?" cried one.
+
+"Is it heavy?" asked another.
+
+"It is worthless," said Halkett, throwing the earth from him. "But we
+are on the right track, lads, for all that; there 's always gold where
+the green snake frequents."
+
+It was a mystery at the time to me how Halkett knew of the serpent's
+vicinity; for although I looked eagerly around me, I saw no trace of
+one.
+
+"I vow he's a-sarchin' for the Coppernose," said a Yankee, as he laughed
+heartily at my ignorance.
+
+"Do you see that bird there upon the bough of the cedar-tree?" said
+Halkett. "That's the 'Choyero;' and wherever he's found, the Coppernose
+is never far off." The mystery was soon explained in this wise: the
+"Choyero" is in the habit of enveloping himself in the leaves of a
+certain prickly cactus called "Choya," with which armor he attacks the
+largest of these green serpents, and always successfully,--the strong,
+thorny spines of the plant invariably inflicting death-wounds upon the
+snake. Some asserted that the bird only attacked the snake during his
+season of torpor, but others stoutly averred that the Choyero was a
+match for any Coppernose in his perfect vigor.
+
+The approach of the long-sought-for "Placer" was celebrated by an extra
+allowance of rum, and the party conversed till a late hour of the
+night, with a degree of animation they had not exhibited for a long time
+previous. Stories of the "washings" resumed their sway,--strange, wild
+narratives, the chief interest in which, however striking at the time,
+lay in the manner of those who related them, and were themselves the
+actors. They nearly all turned upon some incident of gambling, and were
+strong illustrations of how completely the love of gain can co-exist
+with a temperament utterly wasteful and reckless, while both can render
+a man totally indifferent to every feeling of friendship. There was
+mention, by chance, of a certain Narvasque, who had been the comrade of
+many of the party.
+
+"He is dead," cried one.
+
+"Caramba!" cried another, "that is scarcely true; they told me he was at
+the Austin fair this fall."
+
+"You may rely on it he's dead," said the first, "for I know it; he died
+on the Sacramento, and in this wise. We had had a two months' run of
+luck at the Crestones of Bacuachez,--such fortune as I only hope we
+may soon see again; none of your filthy wash and sieve work, nor any
+splintering of a steel barreta on a flint-rock, but light digging along
+the stream, and turning up such masses of the real shining metal
+as would make your heart leap to look at,--lumps of
+thirty,--thirty-five,--ay, forty pounds."
+
+"There, there, Harispe!" said an old fellow, with a long pipe of
+sugar-cane, "if we are to swallow what's a-comin', don't choke us just
+now."
+
+"What does an old trapper know of the diggin's?" said Harispe,
+contemptuously. "'T is a bee-huntin' and a birds'-nestin' you ought
+to be. Smash my ribs! if he ever saw goold, except on the breast of a
+gooldfinch." Having silenced his adversary, he resumed:--
+
+"We were all rich by the time we reached Aranchez. But what use is
+metal? One can't eat it, nor drink it, nor even sleep on't; and the
+fellows up there had got as much as we had ourselves. Everything cost
+twenty--no, but two hundred and twenty times its value! I used to cut a
+goold button off my coat every morning for a day's grub, so that we
+had to make ourselves a kind of log-hut outside the village, and try
+to vittal ourselves as best we could. There war n't much savin' in that
+plan neither, for we drank brandy all day long, and it cost half an
+ounce of goold every bottle of it! Then we stayed up all night and
+played brag, and it was that finished Narvasque. He was a-betting with
+Shem Avery, and Shem, who felt he was in for a run of luck, layed it
+on a bit heavy like; and the end o' it was, he won all Narvasque's two
+months' diggin's, all to a twenty-eight 'ouncer' that he would n't bet
+for anybody,--no, nor let any one see where he hid it. Shem had his
+heart on that lump, and said, 'I 'll go fifty ounces against your lump,
+Narvasque;' and the other did n't take it at first, but up he gets and
+leaves the hut. 'Honor bright,' said he, 'no man follows me.' They all
+gave their words, and he went out a short distance into the wood, where
+he had a sheep's heart hanging near a rock, in the centre of which he
+had concealed his treasure. He was n't three yards from the spot, when
+a great spotted snake darts through the long grass, and, making a spring
+at the piece of meat, bolts it and away! Narvasque followed into the
+deep jungle, unarmed as he was; there a deadly combat must have ensued,
+for when his cries aroused us, as we sat within the hut, we found him
+bitten on every part of the body, and so near death that he had only
+time to tell how it happened, when he expired."
+
+"And the snake?" cried several, in a breath.
+
+"He got clear away; we gave chase for four days after him in vain. But a
+fellow with as much spare cash about him must have come to bad ere now."
+
+"The Injians has ripped him open afore this, depend on't," said another.
+"There 's scarce a snake of any size hasn't an emerald or splice of gold
+in him."
+
+"There's more gold lies hidden by fellows that have never lived, or come
+back to claim it, than ye know of," said the old trapper; "and that's
+the kind of 'Placer' _I'd_ like to chance upon, already washed and
+smelted."
+
+"They talk of martyrs!" said a tall, sallow Spaniard, who had been
+educated for a priest: "let me tell you that those Injians, ay, even the
+negroes, have endured as much torture for their gold as ever did
+zealot for his faith. There was a fellow in my father's time up at
+Guajuaqualla, who, it was said, had concealed immense treasures, not
+only of gold, but gems, emeralds, diamonds, and rubies: well, he not
+only refused all offers from the Gobernador of the mines to share the
+booty, but he suffered his toes to be taken off by the smelting nippers,
+rather than make a confession. Then they tried him with what the miners
+call a 'nest-egg,' that is, a piece of gold heated almost red, and
+inserted into the spine of the back; but it was all to no use, he never
+spoke a word."
+
+"I heard of him; that was a nigger called Crick," cried another.
+
+As for me, I heard no more. The sound of that name, which brought up the
+memory of my night at Anticosti and all its terrors, filled my heart,
+besides, with a strange swelling of hope, vague and ill-defined, it is
+true, but which somehow opened a vision of future wealth and greatness
+before me. The name, coupled with the place, Guajuaqualla, left no doubt
+upon my mind that they were talking of no other than the Black Boatswain
+himself. If I burned to ask a hundred questions about him, a prudent
+forbearance held me back. I knew that of all men living, none are so
+much given to suspicion and mistrust as the Gambusinos. The frauds and
+deceits eternally in practice among them, the constant concealments of
+treasure, the affected desertion of rich "Placers," in order to return
+to them later and alone,--these and many like artifices suggest a
+universal want of confidence which is ever at work to trace motives or
+attribute intentions for every chance word or accidental expression. I
+retained my curiosity therefore; but from that hour forward, the negro
+and his hidden gold were ever before me. It mattered not where I was, in
+what companionship, or how engaged. One figure occupied the foreground
+of every picture. If my waking thoughts represented him exactly as I saw
+him at Anticosti, my sleeping fancies filled up a whole history of his
+life. I pictured him a slave in the "Barracoons" of his native land,
+heavily ironed and chained. I saw him on board the slaver, with
+bent-down head and crippled limbs, crouching between the decks. I
+followed him to the slave-market and the sugar plantation. I witnessed
+his sufferings, his sorrows, and his vengeance. I tracked him as he fled
+to the woods, with the deep-mouthed bloodhounds behind him; and I
+stood breathless while they struggled in deadly conflict, till, pale,
+bleeding, and mangled, the slave laid them dead at his feet, and
+tottered onward to stanch his wounds with the red gum of the liana.
+Then came an indistinct interval; and when I saw him next, it was as a
+gold-washer in the dark stream of the "Rio Nero," his distorted limbs
+and mangled flesh showing through what sufferings he had passed.
+
+Broken, incoherent incidents of crime and misery, of tortured agonies
+and hellish vengeance, would cross my sleeping imagination, amidst
+which one picture ever recurred,--it was of the negro as I saw him at
+Anticosti, crouching beast-like on the earth, and while he patted the
+ground with his hand, throwing a stealthy, terrified glance on every
+side to see that he was not observed. That he fancied himself in the
+act of concealing the gold for which he had bartered his very blood,
+the gesture indicated plainly enough; and in the same attitude my fancy
+would depict him so powerfully, so truthfully, too, that when I awoke,
+I had but to close my eyes again, and the vision would come back with
+every color and adjunct of reality.
+
+My preoccupation of mind could not have escaped the shrewd observation
+of companions, had not the unexpected discovery of gold in the sands
+of the river effectually turned every thought into another and more
+interesting channel. At first it was mere dust was detected; but, later
+on, small misshapen pieces of dusky yellow were picked up, which showed
+the gold in its most valuable form, in combination with quartz rock.
+
+Up to the moment of that discovery, all was lassitude and indifference.
+A few only gave themselves the trouble to wet their feet, the greater
+number sitting lazily down upon the river's bank, and gazing on the
+"washers" with a contemptuous negligence. The failures they experienced,
+even their humble successes, were met with sneers and laughter; till at
+last Hermose held up aloft a little spicula of gold about the thickness
+of a pencil. No sooner had the brilliant lustre caught their eyes, than,
+like hounds at the sight of the stag, they sprung to their feet and
+dashed into the stream.
+
+What a sudden change came over the scene! Instead of the silence of
+that dark river, through whose dull current three or four figures waded
+noiselessly, while in lazy indolence their companions lay smoking or
+sleeping near, now, in an instant, the whole picture became animated.
+With plashing water and wild shouts of various import, the deep glen
+resounded, as upwards of thirty men descended into the river; and while
+some examined the bed of the stream with the "barretas," others dived
+beneath the water to explore it with their hands, and bring up mingled
+masses of earth and dust, over which they bent with earnest gaze for
+many minutes together.
+
+Then what cries of joy or disappointment broke forth at every instant!
+There seemed at once to come over that hardened, time-worn group of men
+all the changing fickleness of childhood,--the wayward vacillations of
+hope and despair, bright visions of sudden wealth, with gloomy thoughts
+of disappointment,--when, suddenly, one brought up from the bed of the
+stream something which he showed to his neighbor, then to another and
+another, till a knot had gathered close around him, among which I found
+myself. "What is it?" said I, disappointed at not seeing some great mass
+of yellow gold.
+
+"Don't you see? It is the fossil bone of the antelope," said Hermose;
+"and when the floods have penetrated deep enough to unbury that, there
+'s little doubt but we shall find gold enough."
+
+"Who says enough?" cried a Mexican, as, emerging half-suffocated from
+the water, he held aloft a pure piece of metal, nearly the size of a
+small apple. "Of such fruit as this, one never can eat to indigestion!"
+
+Halkett's whistle was soon heard, summoning the whole party to a council
+on the bank; nor was the call long unanswered. In an instant the tanned
+and swarthy figures were seen emerging, all dripping as they were,
+from the stream, ascending the banks, and then throwing themselves in
+attitudes of careless ease around the leader.
+
+A short discussion ensued as to the locality upon which we had chanced,
+some averring that it was an unexplored branch of the "Brazo," others
+that it was one of those wayward courses into which mountain streams
+are directed in seasons of unusual rain. The controversy was a warm, and
+might soon have become an angry, one, had not Halkett put an end to all
+altercation by saying, "It matters little how the place be called, or
+what its latitude; you know the Mexican adage, 'It's always a native
+land where there's gold.' That there is _some_ here, I have no doubt;
+that there is _as much_ as will repay us for the halt, is another
+question. My advice is, that we turn the river into another course,
+leave the present channel dry and open, and then explore it thoroughly."
+
+"Well spoken and true," said an old white-headed Gambusino. "That is the
+plan in the Far West; and they are the only fellows who go right about
+their work."
+
+The proposal was canvassed ably on all sides, and adopted with scarcely
+anything like opposition; and then parties were "told off," to carry
+into execution different portions of the labor. The section into which I
+fell was that of the scouts, or explorers, who were to track the course
+of the stream upwards, and search for a suitable spot at which to
+commence operations. Hermose took the command of this party, and named
+the "Lépero" as his lieutenant.
+
+The "sierra" through which our path lay was singularly wild and
+picturesque. The rocks, thrown about in every fantastic shape, were
+actually covered with the tendrils of the liana, whose great blue
+flowers hung in luxuriant clusters from every cliff and crag. Wild fig
+and almond trees--loaded with fruit, red guavas and limes, met us as
+we advanced, till at length we found ourselves in the very centre of
+a tract rich in every production of our gardens, and all growing in
+spontaneous freedom and wildness. The yellow-flowering cactus and
+the golden lobelia, that would have been the choicest treasures of a
+conservatory in other lands, we here broke branches off to fan away the
+mosquitoes and the gallinippers.
+
+The farther we went, the more fruitful and luxuriant did the tract seem.
+Oranges, peaches, and grapes, in all the profusion of their wildest
+abundance, surrounded us, and even littered the very way beneath our
+feet. To feel the full enchantment of such a scene, one should have been
+a prairie traveller for weeks, long-wearied and heart-sore with the dull
+monotony of a tiresome journey, with fevered tongue and scorching feet,
+with eyeballs red from the glaring sun, and temples throbbing from the
+unshaded lustre. Then, indeed, the change was like one of those wondrous
+transformations of a fairy tale, rather than mere actual life. In the
+transports of our delight we threw ourselves down among the flowering
+shrubs, and covered ourselves with blossoms and buds; we bound the grape
+clusters on our foreheads like bacchanals, and tied great branches of
+the orange-tree round us as scarfs. In all the wantonness of children,
+we tore the fruit in handfuls, and threw it around us. The wasteful
+prodigality of nature seemed to suggest excess on our part, prompting us
+to a hundred follies and extravagances. As if to fill up the measure of
+our present joy by imparting the brightness of future hope, Hermose told
+us that such little spots of luxuriant verdure were very often found in
+the regions richest with gold, and that we might be almost certain
+of discovering a valuable Placer in our immediate vicinity. There was
+another, and that no inconsiderable, advantage attending these "Oases"
+of fertility. The Indians never dared to intrude upon these precincts;
+their superstition being that the "Treasure God," or the "Genius of
+the Mine," always had his home in these places, and executed summary
+vengeance upon all who dared to invade them. This piece of red-man
+faith, however jocularly recorded, did not meet that full contempt from
+my comrades I could have expected. On the contrary, many cited instances
+of disasters and calamities which seemed like curious corroborations
+of the creed. Indeed, I soon saw how naturally superstitious credences
+become matter of faith to him who lives the wild life of the prairies.
+
+"Then you think we shall have to pay the price of all this enjoyment,
+Hermose?" said I, as I lay luxuriously beneath a spreading banana.
+
+"Quien sabe? who knows?" exclaimed he, in his Mexican dialect, and with
+a shrug of the shoulders that implied doubt.
+
+Although each event is well marked in my memory, and the incidents of
+each day indelibly fixed upon my mind, it is needless that I should
+dwell upon passages, which, however at the time full of adventure and
+excitement, gave no particular direction to the course of my humble
+destiny. We succeeded in finding a spot by which the bed of the river
+might be changed; and after some days of hard labor we accomplished the
+task.
+
+The course of the stream thus left dry for a considerable distance
+became the scene of our more active exertions. The first week or two
+little was discovered, save gold dust, or an occasional "spicula" of
+the metal, heavily alloyed with copper; but as we followed up the course
+towards the mountain, a vein of richest ore was found, lying near the
+surface too, and presenting masses of pure gold, many of them exceeding
+twenty ounces in weight.
+
+There could be no doubt that we had chanced upon a most valuable Placer;
+and now orders were given to erect huts, and such rude furnaces for
+testing as our skill stood in need of. A strict scale of profits was
+also established, and a solemn oath exacted from each, to be true and
+faithful to his comrades in all things. Our little colony demanded
+various kinds of service; for, while the gold-seeking was our grand
+object, it was necessary, in order to subsist the party, that a corps
+of trappers and hunters should be formed, who should follow the buffalo,
+the red-deer, and the wild hog over the prairies.
+
+Many declined serving on this expedition, doubtless suspecting that
+the share of treasure which might be allotted to the absent man would
+undergo a heavy poundage. Hermose, however, whose adventurous spirit
+inclined more willingly to the excitement of the chase than the
+monotonous labor of a washer, volunteered to go, and I offered myself to
+be his companion. Some half-dozen of the youngest agreed to follow us,
+and we were at once named--The Hunters to the Expedition.
+
+The rivalry between the two careers, good-natured as it was, served to
+amuse and interest us; and while _our_ blank days were certain to obtain
+for us a share of scoffs and jibes, _their_ unsuccessful ones did not
+escape their share of sarcasm. If one party affected to bewail the
+necessity of storing up treasure for a set of walking gentlemen who
+passed the day in pleasure-rambles about the country, the other took
+care to express their discontent at returning loaded with spoils for a
+parcel of lazy impostors that lounged away their time on the bank of a
+river. Meanwhile, both pursuits flourished admirably. Practice had made
+us most expert with the rifle; and as we were fortunate enough to secure
+some of the "mustangs," and train them to the saddle, our "chasse"
+became both more profitable and pleasant. By degrees, too, little
+evidences of superfluity began to display themselves in our equipment:
+our saddles, at first made of a mere wooden trestle, with a strip
+of buffalo hide thrown across it, were now ornamented with black
+bear-skins, or the more valuable black fox-skin; our own costume, if
+not exactly conformable to Parisian models, was comfortable and easy,--a
+brown deerskin tunic, fastened by a belt around the waist; short
+breeches, reaching to the knee-cap, which was left bare, for climbing;
+"botas vaqueras," very loose at top, and serving as holsters for our
+pistols; and a cap of fox or squirrel, usually designed by the wearer,
+and exhibiting proofs of ingenuity, if not taste: such was our dress.
+
+Our weapons of rifle, and bowie-knife, and pistols, giving it a
+character, which, on the boards of a minor theatre, would have been a
+crowning "success." We were also all mounted,--some, Hermose and myself
+in particular, admirably so. And although I often in my own heart
+regretted the powers of strength and endurance of poor "Charry,"
+my little mustang steed, with his long forelock and his bushy
+moustaches,--a strange peculiarity of this breed,--was a picture of
+compactness and agility.
+
+We had also constructed a rude wagon--so rude that I can even yet laugh
+as I think on it--to carry our spoils, which were far too cumbrous for a
+mere horse-load, and when left on the prairies attracted such numbers
+of prairie-wolves and vultures as to be downright perilous. If this same
+wagon was not exactly a type for "Long Acre," it was at least strong and
+serviceable; and although the wheels were far nearer oval than circular,
+they _did_ go round; the noise they created in so doing might have been
+disagreeable to a nervous invalid, being something between the scream
+of a railway train and the yell of a thousand peacocks. But I believe
+we rather liked it,--at least, I know that when some luckless Sybarite
+suggested the use of a little bear's fat around the axle, he was looked
+on as a kind of barbarian to whom nature denied the least ear for music.
+
+As for the "chasse" itself, it was glorious sport,--glorious in the
+unbounded freedom to wander whither one listed; glorious in the sense of
+mastery we felt that we alone of all the millions of mankind had reached
+this far-away, unvisited tract; glorious in its successes, its dangers,
+and its toils!
+
+There was, besides, that endless variety of adventure prairie-hunting
+affords. Now, it was the heavy buffalo, lumbering lazily along, and
+tossing his huge head in anger as the rifle-ball pierced his dense hide.
+Now, it was the proudly antlered stag, careering free over miles and
+miles of waste. At another time the grizzly bear was our prey, and our
+sport lay in the dense jungle or among the dwarf scrub, through which
+the hissing rattlesnake was darting, affrighted at the noise. In more
+peaceful mood, the antelope would be the victim; while the wild turkey
+or the great cock of the wood would grace with his bright wavy feathers
+the cap of him whose aim was true at longest rifle range.
+
+And these were happy days,--the very happiest of my whole life; for if
+sometimes regrets would arise about that road of ambition from which I
+had turned off, to wander in the path of mere pleasure, I bethought me
+that no career the luckiest fortune could have opened to me would have
+developed the same manly powers of endurance of heat and cold and of
+peril in a hundred shapes. In no other pursuit could I have educated
+myself to the like life of toils and dangers, bringing me daily, as
+it were, face to face with Death, till I could look on him without a
+shudder or a fear.
+
+I will not say that Donna Maria may not have passed across the picture
+of my mind-drawn regrets; but if her form did indeed flit past, it was
+to breathe a hope of some future meeting, some bright time to come, the
+recompense of all our separation. And I thought with pride how much more
+worthy of her would I be as the prairie-hunter,--the fearless follower
+of the bear and buffalo, accustomed to the life of the wild woods,--than
+as the mere adventurer, whose sole stock in trade was the subterfuge and
+deceit he could practise on the unwary.
+
+It was strange enough all this while that I seemed to have lost sight of
+my old guide-star,--the great passion of my earlier years, the desire to
+be a "gentleman." It was stranger still, but after-reflection has shown
+me that it was true, I made far greater progress toward that wished-for
+goal when I ceased to make it the object of my ambition.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV. THE FATE OF A GAMBUSINO
+
+"The life of the prairie," with all its seeming monotony, was very far
+from wearisome. The chase, which to some might have presented the same
+unvarying aspect, to those who passionately loved sport abounded in new
+and exciting incidents. If upon one day the object of pursuit was the
+powerful bison bull, with his shaggy mane and short straight horns, on
+another, it was the swift antelope or the prairie fox, whose sable skin
+is the rarest piece of dandyism a hunter's pelisse can exhibit; now and
+then the wide-spread paw of a brown bear would mark the earth, and
+give us days of exciting pursuit; or, again, some Indian "trail"--some
+red-man "sign"--would warn us that we were approaching the
+hunting-grounds of a tribe, and that all our circumspection was needed.
+Besides these, there were changes, inappreciable to the uninitiated,
+but thoroughly understood by us, in the landscape itself, highly
+interesting. It is a well-known fact that the shepherd becomes
+conversant with the face of every sheep in his flock, tracing
+differences of expression where others would recognize nothing but
+a blank uniformity; so did the prairie, which at first presented one
+unvarying expanse, become at last marked by a hundred peculiarities,
+with which close observation made us intimate. Indeed, I often wondered
+how a great stretching plain, without a house, a tree, a shrub, or a
+trickling brook, could supply the materials of scenic interest; and the
+explanation is almost as difficult as the fact. One must have lived the
+life of solitude and isolation which these wild wastes compel, to feel
+how every moss-clad stone can have its meaning,--how the presence of
+some little insignificant lichen indicates the vicinity of water,--how
+the blue foxbell shows where honey is to be found,--how the faint spiral
+motion of the pirn grass gives warning that rain is nigh at hand. Then
+with what interest at each sunset is the horizon invested, when the eye
+can pierce space to a vast extent, and mark the fog-banks which tower
+afar off, and distinguish the gathering clouds from the dark-backed herd
+of buffaloes or a group of Indians on a march. Every prairie "roll,"
+every dip and undulation of that vast surface, had its own interest,
+till at length I learned to think that all other prospects must be tame,
+spiritless, and unexciting, in comparison with that glorious expanse,
+where sky and earth were one, and where the clouds alone threw shadows
+upon the vast plain.
+
+The habit of a hunter's life in such scenes, the constant watchfulness
+against sudden peril, inspire a frame of mind in which deep
+reflectiveness is blended with a readiness and promptitude of
+action,--gifts which circumstances far more favorable to moral training
+do not always supply. The long day passed in total solitude, since very
+often the party separates to rendezvous at nightfall, necessarily calls
+for thought,--not, indeed, the dreamy revery of the visionary, forgetful
+of himself and all the world, but of that active, stirring mental
+operation which demands effort and will. If fanciful pictures of
+the future as we would wish to make it, intervene, they come without
+displacing the stern realities of the present, any more than the far
+distances of a picture interfere with the figures of the foreground.
+
+Forgive, most kind reader, the prolix fondness with which I linger on
+this theme. Fortune gave me but scant opportunity of cultivation, but
+my best schooling was obtained upon the prairies. It was there I learned
+the virtue of self-reliance,--the only real independence. It was there
+I taught myself to endure reverses without disappointment, and bear
+hardships without repining. It was there I came to know that he who
+would win an upward way in life must not build upon some self-imagined
+superiority, but boldly enter the lists with others, and make
+competitorship the test of his capacity. They were inferior
+acquirements, it is true; but I learned also to bear hunger and cold,
+and want of rest and sleep, which in my after-life were not without
+their value. It would savor too much of a "bull" for him who writes his
+own memoirs to apologize for egotism; still, I do feel compunctions of
+conscience about the length of these personal details,--and now to my
+story.
+
+While we pursued our hunting pastime over the prairies, the "expedition"
+was successful beyond all expectation. No sooner was the bed of the
+river laid bare, than gold was discovered in quantities, and the
+"washers," despising the slower process of "sifting," betook themselves
+to the pick and the "barreta," like their comrades. It was a season of
+rejoicing, and, so far as our humble means permitted, of festivity; for
+though abounding in gold, our daily food was buffalo and "tough doe,"
+unseasoned by bread or anything that could prove its substitute. If the
+days were passed in successful labor, the evenings were prolonged with
+narratives of the late discoveries, and gorgeous imaginings of the
+future as each fancied the bright vista should be. Some were for a life
+of unbounded excess and dissipation,--the "amende," as they deemed
+it, for all their toil and endurance; others anticipated a career of
+splendor and display in the Old World. The Frenchman raved of Paris and
+its cafés and restaurants, its theatres and its thousand pleasures. A
+few speculated upon setting forth on fresh expeditions with better means
+of success. Halkett alone bethought him of home and of an aged mother,
+in the far-away valley of Llanberris, whose remainder of life he longed
+to render easy and independent.
+
+Nor was it the least courageous act of his daring life to avow such a
+feeling among such associates. How they laughed at his humility! how
+they scoffed at the filial reverence of the Gambusino! Few of them had
+known a parent's care. Most were outcasts from their birth, and started
+in life with that selfish indifference to all others which is so often
+the passport to success. I saw this, and perceived how affection and
+sympathy are so much additional weight upon the back of him "who enters
+for the plate of Fortune;" but yet my esteem for Halkett increased from
+that moment. I fancied that his capacity for labor and exertion was
+greater from the force of a higher and a nobler impulse than that which
+animated the others; and I thought I could trace to this source the
+untiring energy for which he was conspicuous above all the rest. It
+was evident, too, that this "weakness," as they deemed it, had sapped
+nothing of his courage, nor detracted in aught from his resolute
+daring,--ever foremost, as he was, wherever peril was to be confronted.
+
+I ruminated long and frequently over this, to me, singular trait of
+character,--whole days as I rambled the prairies alone in search of
+game; the tedious hours of the night I would lie awake speculating upon
+it, and wondering if it were impulses of this nature that elevated men
+to high deeds and generous actions, and--to realize my conception in one
+word--made them "gentlemen."
+
+To be sure, in all the accessory advantages of such, Halkett was most
+lamentably deficient, and it would have been labor in vain to endeavor
+to conform him to any one of the usages of the polite world; and yet, I
+thought, might it not be possible that this rude, unlettered man might
+have within him, in the recesses of his own heart, all those finer
+instincts, all those refinements of high feeling and honor that make
+up a gentleman,--like a lump of pure virgin gold encased in a mass of
+pudding-stone. The study of this problem took an intense hold upon me;
+for while I could recognize in myself a considerable power for imitating
+all the observations of the well-bred world, I grieved to see that these
+graces were mere garments, which no more influenced a man's real actions
+than the color of his coat or the shape of his hat will affect the
+stages of an ague or the paroxysms of a fever.
+
+To become a "gentleman," according to my very crude notions of that
+character, was the ruling principle of my life. I knew that rank,
+wealth, and station were all indispensably requisite; but these I
+also fancied might be easily counterfeited, while other gifts must be
+absolutely possessed,--such as a good address; a skill in all manly
+exercises; a personal courage ever ready to the proof; a steady
+adherence to a pledged word. Now I tried to educate myself to all these,
+and to a certain extent I succeeded. In fact, I experienced what all men
+have who have set up a standard before them, that constant measurement
+will make one grow taller. I fancied that Halkett and myself were on
+the way to the same object, by different roads. Forgive the absurd
+presumption, most benevolent reader; for there is really something
+insufferably ludicrous in the very thought; and I make the "confession"
+now only in the fulness of a heart which is determined to have no
+concealments.
+
+That I rode my "mustang" with a greater air; that I wore my black fox
+pelisse more jauntily; that I slung my rifle at my back with a certain
+affectation of grace; that I was altogether "got up" with an eye to the
+picturesque,--did not escape my companions, who made themselves vastly
+merry at pretensions which, in their eyes, were so supremely ridiculous,
+but which amply repaid me for all the sarcasm, by suggesting a change of
+their name for me,--my old appellation, "Il Lépero," being abandoned for
+"Il Condé," the Count. It matters little in what spirit you give a man a
+peculiar designation: the world take it up in their own fashion, and he
+himself conforms to it, whether for good or evil.
+
+As the "Condé," I doubtless displayed many a laughable affectation, and
+did many things in open caricature of the title; but, on the other hand,
+the name spurred me on to actions of most perilous daring, and made me
+confront danger for the very sake of the hazard; till, by degrees, I saw
+that the designation conferred upon me--at first in mockery--became a
+mark of honorable esteem among my comrades.
+
+The prairie was fruitful in incidents to test my courage. As the season
+wore on, and game became more scarce, we were compelled to pursue the
+"bison" into distant tracks, verging upon the hunting-grounds of an
+Indian tribe called the Camanches. At first our "rencontres" were
+confined to meeting with a scout or some small outlying party of the
+tribe; but later on we ventured farther within their frontier, and upon
+one occasion we penetrated a long and winding ravine which expanded into
+a small plain, in the midst of which, to our amazement, we beheld their
+village.
+
+The scene was in every way a striking one. It was a few minutes after
+sunset, and while yet the "yellow glory" of the hour bathed the earth,
+that we saw the cane wigwams of the "Camanches" as they stood at either
+side of a little river that, with many a curve, meandered through the
+plain. Some squaws were seated on the banks, and a number of children
+were sporting in the stream, which appeared too shallow for swimming.
+Here and there, at the door of the wigwams, an old man was sitting
+smoking. Some mustangs, seemingly fresh caught, were picketed in a
+circle, and a few boys were amusing themselves, tormenting the animals
+into bounds and curvets, the laughter the sport excited being audible
+where we stood. The soft influence of the hour, the placid beauty of the
+picture, the semblance of tranquil security impressed on everything,
+the very childish gambols,--were all images so full of home and homelike
+memories that we halted and gazed on the scene in speechless emotion.
+Perhaps each of us at that moment had traversed in imagination half a
+world of space, and was once again a child! As for myself, infancy
+had been "no fairy dream," and yet my eyes filled up, and yet my lip
+quivered, as I looked.
+
+It was evident that the warriors of the tribe were absent on some
+expedition. The few figures that moved about were either the very
+old, the very young, or the squaws, who, in all the enjoyment of that
+gossiping, as fashionable in the wild regions of the West as in the
+gilded boudoirs of Paris, sat enjoying the cool luxury of the twilight.
+
+Our party consisted of only four and myself; and standing, as we did,
+in a grove of nut-trees, were perfectly concealed from view: no sense
+of danger then interfered with our enjoyment of the prospect; we gazed
+calmly on the scene on which we looked.
+
+"Senhor Condé," whispered one of my party, a swarthy Spaniard from the
+Basque, "what a foray we might make yonder! Their young men are absent;
+they could make no defence. Caramba! it would be rare sport."
+
+"Condé mio!" cried a Mexican, who had once been a horse-dealer, "I see
+mustangs yonder worth five hundred dollars, if they are worth a cent;
+let us have a dash forward and carry them off."
+
+"There is gold in that village," muttered an old Ranchero, with a white
+moustache; "I see sifting-sieves drying beside the stream."
+
+And so, thought I to myself, these are the associates who, a moment
+back, I dreamed were sharing my thoughts, and whose hearts, I fancied,
+were overflowing with softest emotions. One, indeed, had not pronounced,
+and to him I turned in hope. He was a dark-eyed, sharp-featured Breton.
+"And you, Claude," said I, "what are your thoughts on this matter?"
+
+"I leave all in the hands of my captain," said he, saluting in military
+fashion; "but if there be a pillage, I claim the woman that is sitting
+on the rock yonder, with a yellow girdle round her, as mine."
+
+I turned away in utter disappointment. The robber-spirit was the only
+one I had evoked, and I grew sick at heart to think of it. How is it
+that, in certain moods of mind, the vices we are conversant with assume
+a double coarseness, and that we feel repugnance to what daily habit had
+seemed to have inured us?
+
+"Is it to be, or not?" growled the Spaniard, who, having tightened his
+girths and examined the lock of his rifle, now stood in somewhat patient
+anxiety.
+
+"Since when have we become banditti," said I, insultingly, "that we are
+to attack and pillage helpless women and children? Are these the lessons
+Halkett has taught us? Back to the camp. Let us have no more of such
+counsels."
+
+"We meet nothing but scoffs and jibes when we return empty-handed,"
+muttered the Spaniard. "It is seldom such an opportunity offers of a
+heavy booty."
+
+"Right-about," said I, imperiously, not caring to risk my ascendency by
+debating the question further. They obeyed without a word; but it was
+easy to see that the spirit of mutiny was but sleeping. For some miles
+of the way a dreary silence pervaded the party. I tried all in my power
+to bring back our old good understanding, and erase the memory of the
+late altercation; but even my friend Narvasque held aloof, and seemed to
+side with the others. I was vexed and irritated to a degree the amount
+of the incident was far from warranting; nor was the fact that we were
+returning without any success without its influence. Moody and sad, I
+rode along at their head, not making any further effort to renew their
+confidence, when suddenly a spotted buck started from the shelter of a
+prairie roll, and took his way across the plain. To unsling my rifle and
+fire at him was the work of half a minute. My shot missed; and I heard,
+or thought I heard, a burst of contemptuous laughter behind me. Without
+turning my head, I spurred my horse to a sharp gallop, and proceeded to
+reload my rifle as I went. The buck had, however, got a "long start"
+of me; and although my mustang had both speed and endurance, I soon saw
+that the chase would prove unrewarding; and, after a hot pursuit of half
+a mile, I pulled up and wheeled about. Where was my party? Not a trace
+of them was to be seen. I rode up a little slope of the prairie, and
+then, at a great way off, I could descry their figures as with furious
+speed they were hastening back in the direction of the Camanche village.
+I cannot express the bitterness of the feeling that came over me.
+
+It was no longer the sense of outraged humanity which filled my heart.
+Selfishness usurped the ground altogether, and it was the injured honor
+of a leader whose orders had been despised. It was the affront to
+my authority wounded me so deeply. Then I fancied to myself their
+triumphant return to the camp, laden with the spoils of victory, and
+full of heroic stories of their own deeds; while I, the captain of
+the band, should have nothing to contribute but a lame narrative of
+misplaced compassion, which some might call by even a harsher name. Alas
+for weak principle! I wished myself back at their head a hundred times
+over. There was no atrocity that, for a minute or two, I did not feel
+myself capable of; I really believe that if any other course were open
+to me, I had never turned my steps back toward the camp. Crest-fallen
+and sad indeed was I as I rode forward,--now cursing the insubordinate
+rabble that deserted me; now inveighing against my own silly efforts
+to change the ferocious instincts of such natures. In my bitterness of
+spirit I attributed all to my foolish ambition of being "the gentleman."
+What business had such a character there? or what possible link could
+bind him to such companionship? In my discontent, too, I fancied that
+these "gentlemen" traits were like studding-sails, only available in
+fine weather and with a fair wind, but that for the storms and squalls
+of life such fine-spun canvas was altogether unsuited. Is it needful I
+should say that I lived to discover this to be an error?
+
+To reach the camp ere nightfall, I was obliged to ride fast, and the
+quick stride of my "half-breed" did more to rally my spirits than all my
+philosophizings.
+
+The slight breeze of sunset was blowing over the prairie, when I came
+in sight of the skirting of nut-wood which sheltered the camp to the
+"south'ard." It was like home, somehow, that spot. The return to it each
+evening had given it that character, and one's instincts are invariably
+at work to make substitutes for all the "prestiges" that tell of family
+and friends. I experienced the feeling strongly now, as I entered the
+wood and spurred my nag onward, impatient to catch a glimpse at the
+watch-fires. As I issued from the copse, and looked up towards the
+little table-land where the camp used to stand, I saw nothing that spoke
+of my friends. There were no fires; not a figure moved on the spot. I
+pressed eagerly forward to ascertain the reason, my mind full of its
+own explanation of the fact, in which, I own it, fears were already
+blending. Perhaps they had removed somewhat higher up the stream;
+perhaps the Camanches had been there, and a battle had been fought;
+perhaps--But why continue? Already I stood upon the spreading surface of
+tableland, and was nearing the spot where all our huts were built, and
+now a deep, booming noise filled my ears,--a hollow, cavernous sound,
+like the sea surging within some rocky cave. I listened; it grew fuller
+and louder, or seemed to do so, and I could mark sounds that resembled
+the crashing of timber and the splintering of rocks.
+
+My suspense had now risen to torture, and my poor mustang, equally
+frightened as myself, refused to move a step, but stood with his ears
+flattened back, fore-legs extended, and protruded nostril, sniffing, in
+a very paroxysm of fright.
+
+I dismounted, and, fastening his head to his fore-leg, in Mexican
+fashion, advanced on foot. Each step I made brought me nearer to the
+sounds, which now I perceived were those of a fast-rolling river. A
+horrid dread shot through my heart, my senses reeled as it struck me;
+but with an effort I sprang forward, and there, deep below me, in a
+boiling ocean of foam, rolled the river along the channel which we had
+succeeded in damming up, on the mountain side, and in whose dry bed all
+our labors had been followed. In an instant the whole truth revealed
+itself before me: the stream, swollen by the rain falling in the distant
+mountains, had overborne the barrier, and, descending with all its
+force, had carried away village, mines, and every trace of the ill-fated
+"Expedition." The very trees that grew along the banks were at first
+undermined, and then swept away, and might be seen waving their great
+branches above the flood, and then disappearing forever, like gigantic
+figures struggling in the agony of drowning. The rude smelting-house,
+built of heavy stones and masses of rock, had been carried down with
+the rest. Trees whose huge size attested ages of growth reeled with the
+shock that shook the earth beside them, and seemed to tremble at their
+own coming destiny.
+
+The inundation continued to increase at each instant, and more than once
+the "yellowest" waves compelled me to retire. This it was which first
+led me to despair of my poor comrades, since I inferred that the torrent
+had burst its barrier only a short space before my arrival; and as the
+sunset was the hour when all the gold discovered during the day was
+washed, before being deposited in the smelting-house, I conjectured that
+my companions were overtaken at that moment by the descending flood, and
+that none had escaped destruction.
+
+However the sad event took place, I never saw any of them after; and
+although I tracked the stream for miles, and spent the entire of two
+days in search of them, I did not discover one trace of the luckless
+expedition. So changed had everything become--such a terrible alteration
+had the scene undergone--that whenever I awoke from a sleep, short and
+broken as my feverish thoughts would make it, it was with difficulty I
+could believe that this was once the "Camp;" that where that swollen
+and angry torrent rolled, had been the dry, gravelly bed where joyous
+parties labored; that beneath those cedars, where now the young
+alligator stirred the muddy slime, we used to sit and chat in pleasant
+companionship; that human joys and passions and hopes once lived and
+flourished in that little space where ruin and desolation had now set
+their marks, and where the weariest traveller would not linger, so
+sorrow-struck and sad was every feature of the scene.
+
+Poor Halkett was uppermost in my thoughts,--his remembrance of his
+old mother, his plans for her future happiness and comfort, formed,
+doubtless, many a long year before, and only realized to be dashed
+forever! How many a wanderer and outcast, doubtless, like him, have sunk
+into unhonored graves in far-away lands, and of whom no trace exists,
+and who are classed among the worthless and the heartless of their
+families; and yet, if we had record of them, we might learn, perhaps,
+how thoughts of home--of some dear mother, of some kind sister, of some
+brother who had been more than father--had spirited them on to deeds of
+daring and privation, and how, in all the terrible conflict of danger in
+which their days were spent, one bright hope, of returning home at last,
+glittered like a light-ship on a lonely sea, and shed a radiance when
+all around was dark and dreary.
+
+The third day broke, and still found me lingering beside the fatal
+torrent, not only without meeting with any of my former comrades, but
+even of that party who had returned to the Indian village not one came
+back. In humble imitation of prairie habit, I erected a little cross on
+the spot, and with my penknife inscribed poor Halkett's name. This done,
+I led my horse slowly away through the tangled underwood till I reached
+the open plain, then I struck out in a gallop, and rode in the direction
+where the sun was setting.
+
+The mere detail of personal adventures, in which the traits of character
+or the ever-varying aspects of human nature find no place, must always
+prove wearisome. The most "hair-breadth 'scapes" require for their
+interest the play of passions and emotions; and in this wise the perils
+of the lonely traveller amid the deserts of the Far West could not vie
+in interest with the slightest incident of domestic life, wherein human
+cares and hopes and joys are mingled up.
+
+I will not longer trespass on the indulgence of any one who has
+accompanied me so far, by lingering over the accidents of my prairie
+life, nor tell by what chances I escaped death in some of its most
+appalling forms. The "Choctaw," the jaguar, the spotted leopard of the
+jungle, the cayman of the sand lakes, had each in turn marked me for its
+prey, and yet, preserved from every peril, I succeeded in reaching the
+little village of "La Noria," or the "Well," which occupies one of the
+opening gorges of the Rocky Mountains, at the outskirts of which some
+of the inhabitants found me asleep, with clothing reduced to very rags,
+nothing remaining of all my equipment save my rifle and a little canvas
+pouch of ammunition.
+
+My entertainers were miners, whose extreme poverty and privation would
+have been inexplicable, had I not learned that the settlement was formed
+exclusively of convicts, who had either been pardoned during the term of
+their sentence, or, having completed their time, preferred passing
+the remainder of their lives in exile. As a "billet of conduct" was
+necessary to all who settled at the village, the inhabitants, with a
+very few exceptions, were peaceable, quiet, and inoffensive; and of
+the less well disposed, a rigidly severe police took the most effective
+charge.
+
+Had there been any way of disposing of me, I should not have been
+suffered to remain; but as there was no "parish" to which they could
+"send me on," nor any distinct fund upon which to charge me, I was
+retained in a spirit of rude compassion, for which, had it even been
+ruder, I had been grateful. The "Gobernador" of the settlement was an
+old Mexican officer of Santa Anna's staff called Salezar, and whose
+"promotion" was a kind of penalty imposed upon him for his robberies
+and extortions in the commissariat of the army. He was not altogether
+unworthy of the trust, since it was asserted that there never was a
+convict vice nor iniquity in which he was not thoroughly versed, nor
+could any scheme be hatched, the clew to which his dark ingenuity could
+not discover.
+
+
+
+I was summoned before him on the day of my arrival, and certainly a
+greater contrast could not have been desired than was the bravery of his
+costume to the rags of mine. A Spanish hat and feathers, such as is only
+seen upon the stage, surmounted his great red and carbuncled face; a
+pair of fiery red moustaches, twisted into two complete circles, with a
+tail out of them like an eccentric "Q;" a sky-blue jacket covered
+with silver buttons; tight pantaloons of the same color; and Hessian
+boots,--made up the chief details of a figure whose unwieldy size the
+tightness of the dress did not by any means set off to advantage. He
+wore besides a quantity of daggers, pistols, and stilettos suspended
+around his person, and a huge Barcelona blade hung by two silver chains
+from his side, the rattle and jingle of which, as he spoke, appeared to
+give him the most lively pleasure. I was ordered to stand before a
+table at which he sat, with a kind of secretary at his side, while
+he interrogated me as to who I was, whence I came, the object of my
+journey, and so forth. My account of myself was given in the very
+briefest way I could devise,--totally devoid of all coloring or
+exaggeration, and, _for me_, with a most singular avoidance of the
+romantic; and yet, to my utter discomfiture, from the very announcement
+of my name, down to the last incident of my journey, he characterized
+every statement by the very short and emphatic word "a lie," desiring
+the secretary to record the same in his "Ledger," as his own firm
+conviction; "and add," said he, solemnly, "that the fellow is a spy
+from the States of North America,--that he probably belonged to some
+exploring party into our frontier,--and that he will most certainly
+be hanged whenever the smallest offence is proved against him." These
+benign words were most royally spoken, and I made my acknowledgments for
+them by taking off my tattered and greasy cap and, with a most urbane
+bow, wishing him health and happiness for half a century to come, to
+pronounce similar blessings upon many others.
+
+The bystanders did look, I confess, somewhat terrified at my impromptu
+courtesy; but Salezar, upon whom my rags, and my grotesque appearance
+generally, produced a rather amusing effect, laughed heartily, and bade
+them give me something to eat. The order, simple and intelligible as it
+was, at least to me, seemed to evoke the strangest signs of surprise and
+astonishment, and not unreasonably; for, as I afterwards came to know,
+no Lazarus eat of the crumbs which fell from this "rich man's table,"
+while from the poor herd of the settlers not a crust nor a parched pea
+could be expected, as they were fed by rations so scantily doled out as
+barely to support life. The order to feed me was therefore issued
+pretty much in the same spirit which made Marie Antoinette recommend the
+starving people to eat "brioche." As no one was to be found, however,
+bold enough to express a doubt as to the facility of the measure, I was
+led away in silence.
+
+A very animated little discussion arose in the street as to what I was
+to get, where to have it, and who to give it,--difficulties which none
+seemed able to solve by any explanation save the usual Mexican one of
+"Quien sabe?" or "Who knows?"--having uttered which in accents of very
+convincing embarrassment, each went his way, leaving me standing with
+an old mule-driver, the only one who had not delivered himself of this
+speech.
+
+Now, it chanced that the well from which the village derived its name of
+"La Noria" had originally been worked by two mules, who having died
+off, their places were supplied by two miserable asses of the prairie
+breed,--creatures not much bigger than sheep, and scarcely stronger.
+These wretched beasts had been for years past stimulated to their daily
+labor by the assiduous persecutions of a fierce English bull-dog, who
+with bark and bite made their lives a very pretty martyrdom. Either
+worn-out by his unremitting exertions, or that asses' flesh (of which,
+from their hocks and hind quarters generally, he freely partook)
+disagreed with him, the animal sickened and died, leaving the poor
+Mulero to his own unaided devices to drive the donkeys round the charmed
+circle. I believe that he did all that mere man was capable of,--in
+fact, in everything save using his teeth he imitated closely the
+practices of the illustrious defunct. But asses though they were, they
+soon discovered that the "great motive principle" was wanting, and
+betook themselves to a far easier and more congenial mode of doing the
+day's work.
+
+Now, the Mulero was a man of thought and reflection, and it occurred
+to him that if asses, however inadequately, could yet, in some sort,
+perform the functions of mules, there was no reason why a man, even a
+very poor-looking and ragged one, should not replace a bull-dog. There
+was that hungry, half-starved look about me, too, that vouched my
+temper would not be of the sweetest; and he eyed me with the glance of a
+connoisseur. At last Mijo--for such was he called--made the proposal
+to me in all form, explaining that my predecessor had had his rations
+allowed him like a colonist, and was entitled to sleep under cover at
+the house of his former mistress, La Senhora Dias, "who," he added, with
+a sly wink, "was my countrywoman." Well knowing a Mexican never boggles
+at a lie, no matter how broad and palpable, I took no notice of what I
+at once concluded to be impossible, but proceeded to inquire as to the
+precise functions I might be expected to perform in my canine capacity.
+
+"A mere nothing," said he, with a shrug of his shoulders; "we harness
+the beasts at daybreak,--say three o'clock; by eight the water is all
+up; then you can sleep or amuse yourself till four of the afternoon,
+when the Commandante Salezar likes to have cool water for his
+bath,--that only takes an hour; then you are free again till night
+closes in."
+
+"And what then?" asked I, impatiently.
+
+"You have your rounds at night."
+
+"My rounds! where, and what for?"
+
+"Against the prairie wolves, that now and then are daring enough to come
+down into the very settlement, and carry off kids and lambs,--ay, and
+sometimes don't stop there."
+
+He winked with a terrible significance at the last words.
+
+"So, then, I am not only to bark at the asses all day, but I am to bay
+the wolves by night?" said I, half indignantly.
+
+"Lupo did it," responded he, with a nod.
+
+"_He_ was a dog, Señhor Mijo," said I.
+
+"Ah, that he was!" added he, in a tone very different from my remark,
+accompanying it with a most disparaging glance at my ragged habiliments.
+I read the whole meaning of the look at once, and hung my head, abashed
+at the disparaging comparison.
+
+He waited patiently for my reply, and, perceiving that I was still
+silent, he said, "Well, is it a bargain?"
+
+"Agreed," said I, with a sigh; and wondering if Fortune had yet any
+lower depths in store for me, I followed him to his hut. Mijo proceeded
+to acquaint me with all the details of my office, and also certain
+peculiarities of the two beasts for whose especial misery I was engaged.
+If compassion could have entered into my nature, it might have moved me
+at sight of them. Their haunches and hocks were notched and scored with
+the marks of teeth, while their tails were a series of round balls, like
+certain old-fashioned bell-ropes, the result of days of suffering.
+
+"I am so accustomed to the name, I must call you 'Lupo,'" said Mijo;
+"you have no objection?"
+
+"Not in the least," said I; "if a 'dog in office,' why not a dog in
+name?"
+
+That same day I was conducted to the "Tienda del Gato," the shop of
+"The Cat," at the sign of which animal La Señhora Dias resided. It was a
+small cottage at the very extremity of the village, in a somewhat pretty
+garden; and here a kind of canteen was held, at which the settlers
+procured cigars, brandy, and other like luxuries, in exchange for their
+"tickets of labor."
+
+Of the Señhora, some mystery existed: the popular rumor was, that she
+had been the favorite mistress of Santa Anna, whose influence, however,
+could not rescue her from the fate of a convict, to which she was
+sentenced for forgery. Her great patron contrived, however, to release
+her from the indignity of a penal settlement, and placed her at "La
+Noria," where she had resided two years. Some said that it was to
+conceal herself from the prying curiosity of the vulgar; another, that
+it was to hide the brand of the letter "F," burned with a hot iron in
+her forehead; others, again, that it was by Santa Anna's express order
+(but what the reason?) she always wore a black velvet mask, which, since
+her arrival at the village, none had seen her remove.
+
+A hundred stories, one more absurd than another, were circulated
+about her high birth and condition, and the vast wealth she had once
+possessed; the only real clew I could discover to these narratives
+being the simple fact that her dog, a fierce English bull-dog,--my
+own predecessor, and who by peculiar favor was permitted to accompany
+her,--used to wear a massive silver collar, richly chased and
+ornamented: fiction, indeed, had invested it with precious stones
+and gems; but these were purely imaginative ornaments. Even devoid of
+jewels, such was deemed an unequivocal proof of riches among those whose
+poverty was of the very lowest order, and La Señhora Dias bought her
+"millionnaire" character at a cheap price. To me, the most interesting
+part in her story was that which called her my countrywoman; and yet
+this seemed so unlikely, and was coupled with so much that I knew to be
+impossible, that I did not venture to believe it.
+
+It was the hour of the siesta when we reached "The Cat," so that I had
+no opportunity of seeing the Señhora. Mijo conducted me to a little
+building in the garden, originally built as a hut for a man who watched
+the fruit, but latterly inhabited by Lupo. There I was installed at
+once. Some chestnut-leaves were my bed; a small spring afforded me
+water; I was to receive eight ounces of maize bread each day, with half
+an ounce of coffee,--Lupo had "taken" the latter "out" in sausages.
+Of the fruit of the garden, consisting of limes, oranges, peaches,
+and mangoes, I was free of whatever fell to the ground,--a species
+of black-mail that never failed me at the dessert. These were my
+perquisites,--my duties I already knew; and so Mijo left me to recruit
+myself by one day's rest, and on "the morrow" to begin my labors.
+
+I shall never forget the strange _mélange_ of feelings, pleasurable and
+the reverse, which came over me as I first found myself alone, and had
+time to think over my condition. Many would perhaps have said that the
+degradation would have mastered all other thoughts, and that the life to
+which I was reduced would have tended to break down all self-respect
+and esteem. Whether to my credit or otherwise, I know not, but I did
+not feel thus,--nay, I even went so far as to congratulate myself that
+a source of livelihood was open to me which did not involve me in forced
+companionship, and that I might devote so many hours of each day to my
+own undisturbed thoughts, as I wandered about that vast garden, in which
+no other than myself appeared ever to set foot.
+
+Culture it had none, nor seemed to need, it; one of my duties was to
+pluck the ripe fruit every day, ere I issued forth to the "Well," and
+place the baskets at the Señhora's door; and, save this, I believe all
+was left to nature. What a wilderness of rank luxuriance it was! The
+earth had become so fertilized by the fallen fruit left to rot as it
+fell, that the very atmosphere was loaded with the odor of peaches and
+oranges and pomegranates. A thousand gaudy and brilliant flowers, too,
+glittered among the tall grass that tried to overtop them; and insects
+and creatures of colors still more beauteous fluttered and chirped among
+the leaves, making a little chorus of sounds that mingled deliciously
+with the rippling stream that murmured near.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV. LA SEÑHORA
+
+To this very hour I am unable to say how long I remained at the village
+of La Noria. Time slipped away unchronicled; the seasons varied little,
+save for about two winter mouths, when heavy snows fell, and severe cold
+prevailed; but spring followed these with a suddenness that seemed
+like magic, and then came summer and autumn, as it were, blended into
+one,--all the varied beauties of the one season vying with the other.
+This was all that was wanting to complete the illusion which
+the monotony of my daily life suggested; for me there was no
+companionship,--no link that bound me to my fellow-men; the "Sunday,"
+too, "shone no Sabbath-day for me." The humble range of my duties never
+varied; nor, save with Mijo, did I ever exchange even a passing word.
+Indeed, the hours of _my_ labor were precisely those when all others
+slept; and whether I tracked the wayworn asses at their dreary round,
+or pursued my solitary path at night, my own was the only voice I ever
+heard. It was the "life of a dog;" but, after all, how many states of
+existence there are far less desirable! I had always wherewithal to
+subsist upon; I had no severe labor, nor any duty incompatible with
+health; and I had--greatest blessing of all--time for self-communing
+and reflection; that delicious leisure, in which the meanest hovel ever
+raised by hands become one's "Home." I was happy, then, after my own
+fashion; various little contrivances to lighten my tasks amused and
+occupied my thoughts. To bring the garden into order was also a passion
+with me; and although necessitated to invent and fashion the tools to
+work with, I was not deterred by this difficulty, but manfully overcame
+it. I greatly doubted if Watt ever gazed at a new improvement in steam
+machinery with half the delight I looked upon my first attempt at
+a rake. Then, what pleasure did I experience as I saw the trim beds
+covered with blooming flowers, the clearly raked walks, the grass-plots
+close-shaven and weedless! How the thoughts of changes and alterations
+filled my mind as I wandered in the dreary night! What trellises did I
+not invent; what festoons of the winding vine-branches; what bowers of
+the leafy banana! Like the old gardener, Adam, I began at last to think
+that all these things were too beautiful for one man's gaze, that such
+ecstasies as mine deserved companionship, and that the selfishness of
+my enjoyment was the greatest blot upon its perfection. When this notion
+caught hold of me, I wandered away in fancy to the "Donna Maria de los
+Dolores;" and how fervently did I believe that, with her to share it, my
+present existence had been a life of Paradise!
+
+These thoughts at last exhausted themselves, and I fell a thinking why
+the Señhora Dias never had the curiosity to visit her garden, nor
+see the changes I had wrought in it. To be sure, it was true she knew
+nothing of them: how, then, was I to make the fact reach her ears? The
+only hours that _I_ was at liberty were those when every close-drawn
+curtain and closed shutter proclaimed the "siesta."
+
+It was clear enough that a whole life might slip over in this fashion
+without my ever seeing her. There was something in the difficulty that
+prompted a desire to overcome it; and so I set myself to plan the means
+by which I might make her acquaintance. Of the windows which looked
+towards the garden, the blinds were always closed; the single door that
+led into it as invariably locked; I bethought me of writing a humble and
+most petitionary epistle, setting forth my utter solitude and isolation;
+but where were pen and ink and paper to come from? These were luxuries
+the Gobernador himself alone possessed. My next thought was more
+practicable: it was to deposit each morning upon her basket of fruit a
+little bouquet of fresh flowers. But, then, would they ever reach her
+hands?--would not the servant purloin and intercept my offering?--ay,
+that was to be thought of.
+
+By most assiduous watching, I at last discovered that her bedroom looked
+into the garden by a small grated window, almost hidden by the gnarled
+branches of a wild fig-tree. This at once afforded me the opportunity I
+desired, and up the branches of this I climbed each morning of my life,
+to fasten to the bars my little bouquet of flowers.
+
+With what intense expectancy did I return home the first morning of my
+experiment! what vacillations of hope and fear agitated me as I came
+near the garden, and, looking up, saw, to my inexpressible delight, that
+the bouquet was gone! I could have cried for very joy! At last I was no
+longer an outcast, forgotten by my fellows. One, at least, knew of my
+existence, and possibly pitied and compassionated my desolation.
+
+I needed no more than this to bind me again to the love of life; frail
+as was the link, it was enough whereupon to hang a thousand hopes and
+fancies, and it suggested matter for cheering thought, where, before,
+the wide waste of existence stretched pathless and purposeless before
+me. How I longed for that skill by which I might make the flowers the
+interpreters of my thoughts! I knew nothing of this, however; I could
+but form them into such combinations of color and order as should please
+the senses, but not appeal to the heart; and yet I did try to invent a
+language, forgetting the while that the key of the cipher must always
+remain with myself.
+
+It chanced that one night, when on my rounds outside the village,
+I suddenly discovered that I had forgotten the caps for my rifle. I
+hastened homeward to fetch them, and entered the garden by a small door
+which I had myself made, and of which few were cognizant. It was a night
+of bright moonlight; but the wind was high, and drifted large masses
+of cloud across the sky, alternately hiding and displaying the moon.
+Tracking, with an instinct too well trained to become deceptive, the
+walks of the garden, while a dark mass shut out the "lamp of night," I
+reached my hut, when suddenly, on a little stone bench beside the door,
+I beheld a female figure seated. She was scarcely four yards from
+where I stood, and in the full glare of the moonlight as palpable as at
+noonday. She was tall and elegantly formed; her air and carriage, even
+beneath the coarse folds of a common dress of black serge, such as
+bespoke condition; her hands, too, were white as marble, and finely and
+delicately formed; in one of them she held a velvet mask, and I watched
+with anxiety to see the face from which it had been removed, which was
+still averted from me. At last she turned slowly round, and I could
+perceive that her features, although worn by evident suffering and
+sorrow, had once been beautiful; the traits were in perfect symmetry;
+the mouth alone had a character of severity somewhat at variance with
+the rest, but its outline was faultless,--the expression only being
+unpleasing. The dark circles around the eyes attested the work of years
+of grief, bitter and corroding.
+
+What should I do,--advance boldly, or retire noiselessly from the spot?
+If the first alternative presented perhaps the only chance of ever
+speaking to her, it might also prevent her ever again visiting the
+garden. This was a difficulty; and ere I had time to solve it, she arose
+to leave the spot. I coughed slightly: she halted and looked around,
+without any semblance of terror or even surprise, and so we stood face
+to face.
+
+"You should have been on your rounds on this hour!" said she, with a
+manner of almost stern expression, and using the Spanish language.
+
+"So I should, Señhora; but having forgot a part of my equipment, I
+returned to seek it."
+
+"They would punish you severely if it were known," said she, in the same
+tone.
+
+"I am aware of that," replied I; "and yet I would incur the penalty
+twice over to have seen one of whom my thoughts for every hour these
+months past have been full."
+
+"Of me? You speak of me?"
+
+"Yes, Señhora, of you. I know the presumption of my words; but bethink
+you that it is not in such a spirit they are uttered, but as the cry of
+one humbled and humiliated to the very dust, and who, on looking at you,
+remembers the link that binds him to his fellows, and for the instant
+rises above the degradation of his sad condition."
+
+"And it is through _me_,--by looking at me,--such thoughts are
+inspired!" said she, in an accent of piercing anguish. "Are you an
+English youth?"
+
+"Yes, Señhora, as much as an Irishman can call himself."
+
+"And is this the morality of your native land," said she, in English,
+"that you can feel an elevation of heart and sentiment from the
+contemplation of such as I am? Shame, sir,--shame upon your falsehood,
+or worse shame upon your principle."
+
+"I only know you as my day and night dreams have made you, lady,--as the
+worshipper creates his own idol."
+
+"But you have heard of me?" said she, speaking with a violence and
+rapidity that betokened a disordered mind. "All the world has heard of
+me, from the Havannah to Guajuaqualla, as the poisoner and the forger!"
+
+I shook my head dissentingly.
+
+"It is, then, because you are less than human," said she, scoffingly,
+"or you _had_ heard it. But mind, sir, it is untrue; I am neither." She
+paused, and then, in a voice of terrible emotion, said, "There is enough
+of crime upon this poor head, but not that! And where have you lived,
+not to have heard of La Señhora Dias?" said she, with an hysteric laugh.
+
+In a few words I told her how I had made part of a great gold-searching
+expedition, and been utterly ruined by the calamity which destroyed my
+companions.
+
+"You would have sold yourself for gold wherewith to buy pleasure!"
+muttered she to herself.
+
+"I was poor, lady; I must needs do something for my support."
+
+"Then why not follow humble labor? What need of wealth? Where had you
+learned its want, or acquired the taste to expend it? You could only
+have imitated rich men's vices, not their virtues, that sometimes
+ennoble them."
+
+The wild vehemence of her manner, as with an excessive rapidity she
+uttered these words, convinced me that her faculties were not under
+the right control of reason, and I followed her with an interest even
+heightened by that sad impression.
+
+"You see no one, you speak to none," said she, turning round suddenly,
+"else I should bid you forget that you have ever seen me."
+
+"Are we to meet again, Señhora?" said I, submissively, as I stood beside
+the door, of which she held the key in her hand.
+
+"Yes--perhaps--I don't know;" and, so saying, she left me.
+
+Two months crept over--and how slowly they went!--without my again
+seeing the Señhora. Were it not that the bouquets which each morning
+I fastened to the window-bars were removed before noon, I could have
+fancied that she had no other existence than what my dreamy imagination
+gave her. The heavy wooden "jalousies" were never opened; the door
+remained close locked; not a foot-tread marked the gravel near it. It
+was clear to me she had never crossed the threshold since the night I
+first saw her.
+
+I fell into a plodding, melancholy mood. The tiresome routine of my
+daily life, its dull, unvarying monotony, began to wear into my soul,
+and I ceased either to think over the past or speculate on the future,
+but would sit for hours long in a moody revery, actually unconscious of
+everything.
+
+Sometimes I would make an effort to throw off this despondency, and try,
+by recollection of the active energy of my own nature, to stir up myself
+to an effort of one kind or other; but the unbroken stillness, the vast
+motionless solitude around me, the companionless isolation in which
+I lived, would resume their influence, and with a weary sigh I would
+resign myself to a hopelessness that left no wish in the heart save for
+a speedy death.
+
+Even castle-building--the last resource of imprisonment--ceased to
+interest. Life had also resolved itself into a successsion of dreary
+images, of which the voiceless prairie, the monotonous water-wheel, the
+darkened path of my midnight patrol, were the chief; and I felt myself
+sinking day by day, hour by hour, into that resistless apathy through
+which no ray of hope ever pierces.
+
+At last I ceased even to pluck the flowers for the Señhora's window.
+I deemed any exertion which might be avoided, needless, and taxed my
+ingenuity to find out contrivances to escape my daily toil. The garden I
+neglected utterly; and in the wild luxuriance of the soil the rank weeds
+soon effaced every sign of former culture. What a strange frame of mind
+was mine! Even the progress of this ruin gave me a pleasure to the full
+as great as that once felt in witnessing the blooming beauty of its
+healthful vegetation. I used to walk among the rank and noisome weeds
+with the savage delight of some democratic leader who saw his triumph
+amid the downfall of the beautiful, the richly-prized, and the valued,
+experiencing a species of insane pleasure in the thought of some fancied
+vengeance.
+
+How the wild growth of the valueless weed overtopped the tender
+excellence of the fragrant plant; how the noisome odor overpowered
+its rich perfume; how, in fact, barbarism lorded it over civilization,
+became a study to my distorted apprehension; and I felt a diabolical joy
+at the victory.
+
+A little more, and this misanthropy had become madness; but a change was
+at hand. I was sitting one night in the garden: it was already the hour
+when my "patrol" should have begun; but latterly I had grown indifferent
+to the call of duty: as Hope died out within me, so did Fear also, and
+I cared little for the risk of punishment,--nay, more, a kind of
+rebellious spirit was gaining upon me, and I wished for some accident
+which might bring me into collision with some one. As I sat thus, I
+heard a footstep behind me: I turned, and saw the Señhora close to me.
+I did not rise to salute her, but gazed calmly and sternly, without
+speaking.
+
+"Has the life of the dog imparted the dog's nature?" said she,
+scoffingly. "Why don't you speak?"
+
+"I have almost forgotten how to do so," said I, sulkily.
+
+"You can hear, at least?"
+
+I nodded assent.
+
+"And understand what you hear?"
+
+I nodded again.
+
+"Listen to me, then, attentively, for I have but a short time to stay,
+and have much to tell you. And, first of all, do you wish to escape from
+hence?"
+
+"Do I wish it!" cried I; and in the sudden burst, long dried-up sources
+of emotion opened out afresh, and the heavy tears rolled down my cheeks.
+
+"Are you willing to incur the danger of attempting it?"
+
+"Ay, this instant!"
+
+"If so, the means await you. I want a letter conveyed to a certain
+person in the town of Guajuaqualla, which is about two hundred miles
+distant."
+
+"In which direction?" asked I.
+
+"You shall see the map for yourself; here it is," said she, giving me
+a small package which contained a map and a mariner's compass. "I only
+know that the path lies over the prairie and by the banks of a branch of
+the Red River. There are villages and farmhouses when you have reached
+that region."
+
+"And how am I to do so, unmolested, Señhora? A foot-traveller on the
+prairie must be overtaken at once."
+
+"You shall be well mounted on a mustang worth a thousand dollars; but
+ride him without spurring. If he bring you safe to Guajuaqualla he has
+paid his price." She then proceeded to a detail which showed how well
+and maturely every minute circumstance had been weighed and considered.
+The greatest difficulty lay in the fact that no water was to be met
+with nearer than eighty miles, which distance I should be compelled to
+compass on the first day. If this were a serious obstacle on one side,
+on the other it relieved me of all apprehension of being captured after
+the first forty or fifty miles were accomplished, since my pursuers
+would scarcely venture farther.
+
+The Señhora had provided for everything. My dress, which would have
+proclaimed me as a runaway "settler," was to be exchanged for the gay
+attire of a Mexican horse-dealer,--a green velvet jacket and hose, all
+slashed and decorated with jingling silver buttons, pistols, sabre, and
+rifle to suit.
+
+The mustang, whose saddle was to be fitted with the usual accompaniment
+of portmanteau and cloak, was also to have the leathern purse of the
+"craft," with its massive silver lock, and a goodly ballast of doubloons
+within. Two days' provisions and a gourd of brandy, completed an
+equipment which to my eyes was more than the wealth of an empire.
+
+"Are you content?" asked she, as she finished the catalogue.
+
+I seized her hand, and kissed it with a warm devotion.
+
+"Now for the reverse of the medal. You may be overtaken; pursuit is
+almost certain,--it may be successful; if so, you must tear the letter I
+shall give you to fragments so small that all detection of its contents
+may be impossible. Sell your life dearly; this I counsel you, since a
+horrible death would be reserved for you if taken prisoner. Above all,
+don't betray me."
+
+"I swear it," said I, solemnly, as I held up my hand in evidence of the
+oath.
+
+"Should you, however, escaping all peril, reach Guajuaqualla in safety,
+you will deliver this letter to the Señhor Estavan Olares, a well-known
+banker of that town. He will present you with any reward you think
+sufficient for your services, the peril of which cannot be estimated
+beforehand. This done,--and here, mark me! I expect your perfect
+fidelity,--all tie is severed between us. You are never to speak of me
+so long as I live; nor, if by any sun of Fortune we should chance to
+meet again in life, are you to recognize me. You need be at no loss for
+the reasons of this request: the position in which I am here placed--the
+ignominy of an unjust sentence, as great as the shame of the heaviest
+guilt--will tell you why I stipulate for this. Are we agreed?"
+
+"We are. When do I set out?"
+
+"To-morrow by daybreak; leave this a little before your usual time, pass
+out of the village, and, taking the path that skirts the beech wood,
+make for the Indian ground,--you know the spot. At the cedar-tree close
+to that you will find your horse all ready,--the letter is here." Now
+for the first time her voice trembled slightly, and for an instant
+or two she seemed irresolute. "My mind is sometimes so shaken by
+suffering," said she, "that I scarcely dare to trust its guidance; and
+even now I feel as if the confidence I am about to place in an utter
+stranger, in an--"
+
+"Outcast, you would say," said I, finishing what she faltered at.
+"Do not fear, then, one humbled as I have been can take offence at an
+epithet."
+
+"Nor is it one such as I am who have the right to confer it," said she,
+wiping the heavy drops from her eyes. "Good-bye forever!--since, if you
+keep your pledge, we are never to meet again." She gave me her hand,
+which I kissed twice, and then, turning away, she passed into the house;
+and before I even knew that she was gone, I was standing alone in the
+garden, wondering if what had just occurred could be real.
+
+If my journey was not without incident and adventure, neither were they
+of a character which it is necessary I should inflict upon my reader,
+who doubtless ere this has felt all the wearisome monotony of prairie
+life, by reflection. Enough that I say, after an interesting mistake
+of the "trail" which led me above a hundred miles astray! I crossed
+the Conchos River within a week, and reached Chihuahua, a city of
+considerable size, and far more pretensions than any I had yet seen in
+the "Far West."
+
+Built on the narrow gorge of two abrupt mountains, the little town
+consists of one great straggling street, which occupies each side of a
+torrent that descends in a great tumbling mass of foam and spray along
+its rocky course. It was the time of the monthly market, or fair, when
+I arrived, and the streets were crowded with peasants and muleteers in
+every imaginable costume. The houses were mostly built with projecting
+balconies, from which gay-colored carpets and bright draperies hung
+down, while female figures sat lounging and smoking their cigarettes
+above. The aspect of the place was at once picturesque and novel. Great
+wooden wagons of melons and cucumbers, nuts, casks of olive-oil and
+wine; bales of bright scarlet cloth, in the dye of which they excel;
+pottery ware; droves of mustangs, fresh caught and capering in all their
+native wildness; flocks of white goats from the Cerzo Gorde, whose wool
+is almost as fine as the Llama's; piles of firearms from Birmingham and
+Liège, around which groups of admiring Indians were always gathered;
+parroquets and scarlet jays, in cages; richly ornamented housings for
+mule teams; brass-mounted saddles and a mass of other articles littered
+and blocked up the way so that all passage was extremely difficult.
+
+Before I approached the city, I had been canvassing with myself how best
+I might escape from the prying inquisitiveness to which every stranger
+is exposed on entering a new community. I might have spared myself the
+trouble, for I found that I was perfectly unnoticed in the motley throng
+with which I mingled.
+
+My strong-boned, high-bred mustang, indeed, called forth many a
+compliment as I rode past; but none had any eye, nor even a word, for
+the rider. At last, as I was approaching the inn, I beheld a small knot
+of men whose dress and looks were not unfamiliar to me; and in a moment
+after, I remembered that they were the Yankee horse-dealers I had met
+with at Austin, some years before. As time had changed me far more than
+them, I trusted to escape recognition, not being by any means desirous
+of renewing the acquaintance. I ought to say that, besides my Mexican
+costume, I wore a very imposing pair of black moustaches and beard, the
+growth of two years at "La Noria," so that detection was not very easy.
+
+While I was endeavoring to push my way between two huge hampers of
+tomatoes and lemons, one of this group, whom I at once recognized
+as Seth Chiseller, laid his hand on my beast's shoulder and said, in
+Spanish, "The mustang is for sale?"
+
+"No, Señhor," said I, with a true Mexican flourish, "he and all mine
+stand at your disposal, but I would not sell him."
+
+Not heeding much the hackneyed courtesy of my speech, he passed his
+hands along the animal's legs, feeling his tendons and grasping his neat
+pasterns. Then, proceeding to the hocks, he examined them carefully;
+after which he stepped a pace or two backwards, the better to survey
+him, when he said, "Move him along in a gentle trot."
+
+"Excuse me, Señhor, I came here to buy, not to sell. This animal I do
+not mean to part with."
+
+"Not if I were to offer you five hundred dollars?" said he, still
+staring at the beast.
+
+"Not if you were to say a thousand, Señhor," said I, haughtily; "and
+now pray let me pass into the court, for we are both in need of
+refreshment."
+
+"He an't no Mexican, that 'ere chap," whispered one of the group to
+Chiseller.
+
+"He sits more like a Texan," muttered another.
+
+"He'll be the devil, or a Choctaw outright, but Seth will have his beast
+out of him," said another, with a laugh; and with this the group opened
+to leave me a free passage into the inn-yard.
+
+All the easy assurance I could put on did not convince myself that my
+fears were not written in my face as I rode forward. To be sure, I did
+swagger to the top of my bent; and as I flung myself from the saddle, I
+made my rifle, my brass scabbard, my sabretache, and my spurs perform
+a crash that drew many a dark eye to the windows, and set many a fan
+fluttering in attractive coquetry.
+
+"What a handsome Caballero! how graceful and well-looking!" I thought
+I could read in their flashing glances; and how pleasant was such an
+imaginary _amende_ for the neglect I had suffered hitherto.
+
+Having commended my beast to the hands of the ostler, I entered the inn
+with all the swaggering assurance of my supposed calling, but, in good
+earnest, with anything but an easy heart at the vicinity of Seth and
+his followers. The public room into which I passed was crowded with
+the dealers of the fair in busy and noisy discussion of their several
+bargains; and had I been perfectly free of all personal anxieties, the
+study of their various countenances, costumes, and manners had been
+most amusing, combining as they did every strange nationality,--from
+the pale-faced, hatchet-featured New Englander to the full-eyed, swarthy
+descendant of old Spain. The mongrel Frenchman of New Orleans, with
+the half-breed of the prairies, more savage in feature than the
+Pawnee himself, the shining negro, the sallow Yankee, the Jew from the
+Havannah, and the buccaneer-like sailor who commanded his sloop and
+accompanied him as a species of body-guard,--were all studies in their
+way and full of subject for after-thought.
+
+In this motley assemblage it may easily be conceived that I mingled
+unnoticed, and sat down to my mess of "frijoles with garlic" without
+even a passing observation. As I ate on, however, I was far from pleased
+by remarking that Seth and another had taken their seats at a table
+right opposite, and kept their eyes full on me with what in better
+society had been a most impudent stare. I affected not to perceive this,
+and even treated myself to a flask of French wine, with the air of a man
+revelling in undisturbed enjoyment. But all the rich bouquet, all the
+delicious flavor, were lost upon me; the sense of some impending danger
+overpowered all else; and let me look which way I would, Seth and
+his buff-leather jacket, his high boots, immense spurs, and enormous
+horse-pistols rose up before me like a vision.
+
+I read in the changeful expression of his features the struggle between
+doubt and conviction as to whether he had seen me before. I saw what was
+passing in his mind, and I tried a thousand little arts and devices to
+mystify him. If I drank my wine, I always threw out the last drops of
+each glass upon the floor; when I smoked, I rolled my cigar between my
+palms, and patted and squeezed it in genuine Mexican fashion. I turned
+up the points of my moustache like a true hidalgo, and played Spaniard
+to the very top of my bent.
+
+Not only did these airs seem not to throw him off the scent, but I
+remarked that he eyed me more suspiciously, and often conversed in
+whispers with his companion. My anxiety had now increased to a sense
+of fever, and I saw that if nothing else should do so, agitation alone
+would betray me. I accordingly arose, and called the waiter to show me
+to a room.
+
+It was not without difficulty that one could be had, and that was a
+miserable little cell, whitewashed, and with no other furniture than a
+mattress and two chairs. At least, however, I was alone; I was relieved
+from the basilisk glances of that confounded horse-dealer, and I threw
+myself down on my mattress in comparative ease of mind, when suddenly
+I heard a smart tap at the door, and a voice called out, with a very
+Yankee accent, "I say, friend, I want a word with you."
+
+I replied, in Spanish, that if any one wanted me, they must wait till I
+had taken my "siesta."
+
+"Take your siesta another time, and open your door at once; or mayhap I
+'ll do it myself!"
+
+"Well, sir," said I, as I threw it open, and feigning a look of angry
+indignation, the better to conceal my fear, "what is so very urgently
+the matter that a traveller cannot take his rest, without being
+disturbed in this fashion?"
+
+"Hoity-toity! what a pucker you're in, boy!" said he, shutting the door
+behind him; "and we old friends too!"
+
+"When or where have we ever met before?" asked I, boldly.
+
+"For the 'where,'--it was up at Austin, in Texas; for the
+'when,'--something like three years bygone."
+
+I shook my head, with a saucy smile of incredulity.
+
+"Nay, nay, don't push me farther than I want to go, lad. Let bygones be
+bygones, and tell me what's the price of your beast, yonder."
+
+"I 'll not sell the mustang," said I, stoutly.
+
+"Ay, but you will, boy! and to me, too! And it's Seth Chiseller says
+it!"
+
+"No man can presume to compel another to part with his horse against his
+will, I suppose?" said I, affecting a coolness I did not feel.
+
+"There's many a stranger thing than _that_ happens in these wild parts.
+I've known a chap ride away with a beast,--just without any question at
+all!"
+
+"That was a robbery!" exclaimed I, in an effort at virtuous indignation.
+
+"It war n't far off from it," responded Seth; "but there 's a reward for
+the fellow's apprehension, and there it be!" and as he spoke he threw
+a printed handbill on the table, of which all that I could read with
+my swimming eyes were the words, "One Hundred Dollars Reward,"--"a mare
+called Charcoal,"--"taking the down trail towards the San José."
+
+"There was no use in carrying that piece of paper so far," said I,
+pitching it contemptuously away.
+
+"And why so, lad?" asked he, peering inquisitively at me.
+
+"Because this took place in Texas, and here we are in Mexico."
+
+"Mayhap, in strict law that might be something," said he, calmly; "but
+were I to chance upon him, why should n't I pass a running-knot over his
+wrists, and throw him behind me on one of my horses? Who's to say 'You
+sha' n't?' or who's to stop a fellow that can ride at the head of thirty
+well-mounted lads, with Colt's revolvers at the saddle-bow?--tell me
+that, boy!"
+
+"In the first place," said I, "the fellow who would let himself be taken
+and slung on your crupper, like a calf for market, deserves nothing
+better; and particularly so long as he owned a four-barrelled pistol
+like this!"--and here I drew the formidable weapon from my breast, and
+held it presented towards him, in a manner that it is rarely agreeable
+to confront.
+
+"Put down your irons, lad," said he, with the very slightest appearance
+of agitation in his manner; "we'll come to terms without burning
+powder."
+
+"I ask for nothing better," said I, putting up my weapon; "but I 'll not
+stand being threatened."
+
+He gave a short, dry laugh, as though the conceit of my speech amused
+him, and said, "Now, to business: I want that mustang."
+
+"You shall have him, Seth," said I, "the day he reaches Guajuaqualla,
+whither I am bound in all haste."
+
+"I am a-going north," said Seth, gruffly, "and not in that direction."
+
+"You can send one of your people along with me, to fetch him back."
+
+"Better to leave him with me now, and take a hack for the journey," said
+he.
+
+This was rather too much for my temper; and I ventured to say that he
+who was to receive a present should scarcely dictate the conditions
+accompanying it.
+
+"It's a ransom, boy,--a forfeit,--not a present," said he, gravely.
+
+"Let us see if you can enforce it, then," said I, instinctively
+
+"There, now, you're angry again!" said he, with his imperturbable smile;
+"if we're to have a deal together, let us do it like gentlemen."
+
+Now, probably a more ludicrous caricature of that character could not
+have been drawn than either in the persons, the manners, or the subject
+of the transaction in hand; but the word was talismanic, and no
+sooner had he uttered it than I became amenable to his very slightest
+suggestion.
+
+"Let me have the beast,--I want him; and I see your holsters and
+saddle-bags have a jingle in them that tells me dollars are plenty with
+you; and as to this,"--he threw the piece of paper offering the reward
+at his feet,--"the man who says anything about it will have to account
+with Seth Chiselier, that's all."
+
+"How far is it from this to Guajuaqualla?"
+
+"About a hundred and twenty miles by the regular road; but there 's a
+trail the miners follow makes it forty less. Not that I would advise
+you to try that line; the runaway niggers and the half-breeds are always
+loitering about there, and they 're over ready with the bowie-knife, if
+tempted by a dollar or two."
+
+Our conversation now took an easy, almost a friendly tone. Seth knew the
+country and its inhabitants perfectly, and became freely communicative
+in discussing them and all his dealings with them.
+
+"Let us have a flask of 'Aguadente,'" said he, at last, "and then we 'll
+join the fandango in the court beneath."
+
+Both propositions were sufficiently to my taste; and by way of showing
+that no trace of any ill-feeling lingered in my mind, I ordered an
+excellent supper and two flasks of the best Amontillado.
+
+Seth expanded, under the influence of the grape, into a most agreeable
+companion. His personal adventures had been most numerous, and many of
+them highly exciting; and although a certain Yankee suspiciousness of
+every man and his motives tinged all he said, there was a hearty tone of
+good-nature about him vastly different from what I had given him credit
+for.
+
+The Amontillado being discussed, Seth ordered some Mexican "Paquaretta,"
+of delicious flavor, of which every glass seemed to inspire one with
+brighter views of life; nor is it any wonder if my fancy converted the
+rural belles of the courtyard into beauties of the first order.
+
+The scene was a very picturesque one. A trellised passage, roofed
+with spreading vines in full bearing, ran around the four sides of the
+building, in the open space of which the dancers were assembled. Gay
+lamps of painted paper and rude pine-torches lit up the whole, and gave
+to the party-colored and showy costumes an elegance and brilliancy which
+the severer test of daylight might have been ungenerous enough to
+deny. The olive-brown complexion--the flashing dark eyes--the graceful
+gestures--the inspiriting music--the merry voices--the laughter--were
+all too many ingredients of pleasure to put into that little
+crucible, the human heart, and not amalgamate into something very like
+enchantment,--a result to which the Paquaretta perhaps contributed.
+
+Into this gay throng Seth and I descended, like men determined, in
+Mexican phrase, to "take pleasure by both horns." It was at the very
+climax of the evening's amusement we entered. The dance was the Mexican
+fandango, which is performed in this wise: a lady, stepping into the
+circle, after displaying her attractions in a variety of graceful
+evolutions, makes the "tour" of the party in search of the Caballero she
+desires to take as her partner. It is at his option either to decline
+the honor by a gesture of deferential humility, or, accepting it,
+he gives her some part of his equipment,--his hat, his scarf, or his
+embroidered riding-glove, to be afterwards redeemed as a forfeit;
+the great amusement of the scene consisting in the strange penalties
+exacted, which are invariably awarded with a scrupulous attention to the
+peculiar temperament of the sufferer. Thus, a miserly fellow is certain
+to be mulcted of his money; an unwieldy mass of fears and terrors is
+condemned to some feat of horsemanship; a gourmand is sentenced to a
+dish of the least appetizing nature; and so on: each is obliged to an
+expiation which is certain to amuse the bystanders. While these are
+the "blanks" in the lottery, the prizes consist in the soft, seductive
+glances of eyes that have lost nothing of Castilian fire in their
+transplanting beyond seas; in the graceful gestures of a partner to whom
+the native dance is like an expressive language, and whose motions are
+more eloquent than words,--in being, perhaps, the favored of her whose
+choice has made you the hidalgo of the evening; and all these, even
+without the aid of Paquaretta, are no slight distinctions.
+
+Were the seductions less attractive, it is not a man whose Irish blood
+has been set a-glowing with Spanish wine who is best fitted to
+resist them, nor assuredly ought Con Cregan to be selected for such
+self-denial. I stood in the circle with wondering admiration, delighted
+with everything. Oh, happy age! glorious hour of the balmy night!
+excellent grape-juice! how much of delicious enjoyment do I owe you all
+three! I suppose it is the case with every one, but I know it to be with
+me, that wherever I am, or however situated, I immediately single
+out some particular object for my especial predilection. If it be a
+landscape, I at once pitch upon the spot for a cottage, a temple, or a
+villa; if it be a house, I instantly settle in my mind the room I would
+take as my own, the window I would sit beside, the very chair I'd
+take to lounge in; if it be a garden, I fix upon the walk among whose
+embowering blossoms I would always be found: and so, if the occasion be
+one of festive enjoyment, I have a quick eye to catch her whose air and
+appearance possess highest attractions for me. Not always for me the
+most beautiful,--whose faultless outlines a sculptor would like to
+chisel,--but one whose fair form and loveliness are suggestive of
+the visions one has had in boyhood, filling up, in rich colors, the
+mind-drawn picture we have so often gazed on, and made the heroine of
+a hundred little love-stories, only known to one's own heart. And, oh,
+dear! are not these about the very best of our adventures? At least,
+if they be not, they are certainly those we look back on with fewest
+self-reproaches.
+
+In a mood of this kind it was that my eye rested upon a slightly formed
+but graceful girl, whose dark eyes twice or thrice had met my own,
+and been withdrawn again with a kind of indolent reluctance--as I
+fancied--very flattering to me. She wore the square piece of scarlet
+cloth on her head, so fashionable among the Mexican peasantry, the
+corners of which hung down with heavy gold tassels among the clusters
+of her raven locks; a yellow scarf, of the brightest hue, was gracefully
+thrown over one shoulder, and served to heighten the brilliancy of her
+olive tint; her jupe, short and looped up with a golden cord, displayed
+a matchless instep and ankle. There was an air of pride--"fierté,"
+even--in the position of the foot, as she stood, that harmonized
+admirably with the erect carriage of her head, and the graceful
+composure of her crossed arms made her a perfect picture. Nor was I
+quite certain that she did not know this herself; certain is it,
+her air, her attitude, her every gesture, were in the most complete
+"keeping" with her costume.
+
+She was not one of the dancers, but stood among the spectators, and, if
+I were to pronounce from the glances she bestowed upon the circle,
+not one of the most admiring there; her features either wearing an
+expression of passive indifference, or changing to a half smile of
+scornful contempt. As, with an interest which increased at each moment,
+I watched her movements, I saw that her scarf was gently pulled by a
+hand from behind; she turned abruptly, and, with a gesture of almost
+ineffable scorn, said some few words, and then moved proudly away to
+another part of the "court."
+
+Through the vacant spot she had quitted I was able to see him who had
+addressed her. He was a young, powerfully built fellow, in the dress of
+a mountaineer, and, though evidently of the peasant class, his dress and
+arms evinced that he was well to do in the world; the gold drop of his
+sombrero, the rich bullion tassels of his sash, the massive spurs of
+solid silver, being all evidences of wealth. Not even the tan-colored
+hue of his dark face could mask the flush of anger upon it as the girl
+moved off, and his black eyes, as they followed, glowed like fire. To my
+amazement, his glance was next bent upon me, and that with an expression
+of hatred there was no mistaking. At first, I thought it might have been
+mere fancy on my part; then I explained it as the unvanished cloud still
+lingering on his features; but at last I saw plainly that the insulting
+looks were meant for myself. Let me look which side I would, let me
+occupy my attention how I might, the fellow's swarthy, sullen face never
+turned from me for an instant.
+
+I suppose something must have betrayed to my companion what was passing
+within me, for Seth whispered in my ear, "Take no notice of him,--he's a
+Ranchero; and they are always bad uns to deal with."
+
+"But what cause of quarrel can he have with me?" said I; "we never saw
+each other before."
+
+"Don't you see what it is?" said Seth. "It's the muchacha: she's his
+sweetheart, and she's been a-looking too long this way to please him."
+
+"Well, if the girl has got such good taste," said I, with a saucy laugh,
+"he ought to prize her the more for it."
+
+"She _is_ a neat un, that's a fact," muttered Seth; and at the same
+instant the girl walked proudly up to where I stood, and, making a low
+courtesy before me, held out her hand. I suppose there must have been a
+little more than the ordinary enthusiasm in the manner I pressed my lips
+upon it, for _she_ blushed, and a little murmur ran round the circle.
+The next moment we were whirling along in the waltz,--I, at least, lost
+to everything save the proud pleasure of what I deemed my triumph. The
+music suddenly changed to the fandango, of which dance I was a perfect
+master; and now the graceful elegance of my partner and the warm
+plaudits of the company called forth my utmost exertions. As for her,
+she was the most bewitching representative of her native measure it is
+possible to conceive, her changeful expression following every movement
+of the dance: now retiring in shrinking bashfulness, now advancing
+with proud and haughty mien, now enticing to pursuit by looks of
+languishment, now, as if daring all advances, her flashing eyes would
+almost sparkle with defiance.
+
+What a terrible battery was this to open upon the defenceless breastwork
+of a poor Irishman! How withstand the showering grape-shot of dark
+glances?--how resist the assault of graces that lurked in every smile
+and every gesture? Alas! I never attempted a defence; I surrendered, not
+"at," but "without," discretion; and, tearing off the great embroidered
+scarf which I wore, all heavy with its gold fringe, I passed it round
+her taper waist in a very transport of enthusiasm.
+
+While a buzz of approbation ran round the circle, I heard the words
+uttered on all sides, "Destago!" "A forfeit!"
+
+"I'll try his gallantry," said the girl, as, darting back from my arms,
+she retired to the very verge of the circle, and, holding up the rich
+prize, gazed at it with wondering eyes; and now exclamations of praise
+and surprise at the beauty of the tissue broke from all in turn.
+
+"The muchacha should keep the 'capotillo,'" said an old lynx-eyed
+duenna, with a fan as large as a fire-board.
+
+"A Caballero rich as that should give her a necklace of real pearls,"
+said another.
+
+"I 'd choose a mustang, with a saddle and trappings all studded with
+silver," muttered a third in her ear.
+
+"I 'll have none of these," said the girl, musing; "I must bethink me
+well if I cannot find something I shall like to look at with pleasure,
+when mere dress and finery would have lost their charm. I must have
+that which will remind me of this evening a long time hence, and make me
+think of him who made it a happiness; and now what shall it be?"
+
+"His heart's blood, if that will content you!" cried the mountaineer,
+as, springing from his seat, he tore the scarf from her hands and dashed
+it on the ground, trampling it beneath his feet, and tearing it to very
+rags.
+
+"A fight--a fight!" shouted out a number of voices; and now the crowd
+closed in upon the dancing space, and a hundred tongues mingled in
+wild altercation. Although a few professed themselves indignant that a
+stranger should be thus insulted, I saw plainly that the majority were
+with their countryman, whom they agreed in regarding as a most outraged
+and injured individual. To my great astonishment, I discovered that
+my friend Seth took the same view of the matter, and was even more
+energetic than the others in reprobation of my conduct.
+
+"Don't you see," cried he to me, "that you have taken his sweetheart
+from him? The muchacha has done all this to provoke his jealousy."
+
+"Oui, oui," said a thin, miserable-looking Frenchman, "vous avez tiré la
+bouteille; il faut payer le vin."
+
+In all probability, had not the crowd separated us most effectually,
+these comments and counsels had been all uttered "after the fact;" for
+I dashed forward to strike my antagonist, and was only held back by main
+force, as Seth whispered in my ear, "Take it coolly, lad; it must be a
+fight now, and don't unsteady your hand by flying into a passion."
+
+Meanwhile the noise and confusion waxed louder and louder; and from the
+glances directed towards me there was very little doubt how strongly
+public opinion pronounced against me.
+
+"No, no!" broke in Seth,--in reply to some speech whose purport I could
+only guess at, for I did not hear the words,--"that would be a downright
+shame. Let the lad have fair play. There's a pretty bit of ground
+outside the garden, for either sword or pistol-work, whichever you
+choose it to be. I 'll not stand anything else."
+
+Another very fiery discussion ensued upon this, the end of which was
+that I was led away by Seth and one of his comrades to my room, with the
+satisfactory assurance that at the very first dawn of day I was to meet
+the Mexican peasant in single combat.
+
+"You have two good hours of sleep before you," said Seth, as we entered
+my room; "and my advice is, don't lose a minute of them."
+
+It has been a mystery to me, up to the very hour I am writing in, how
+far my friend Seth Chiseller's conduct on this occasion accorded with
+good faith. Certainly, it would have been impossible for any one to have
+evinced a more chivalrous regard for my honor, and a more contemptuous
+disdain for my life, than the aforesaid Seth. He advanced full one
+hundred reasons for a deadly combat, the results of which, he confessed,
+were speculative matters of a most dreamy indifference. Now, although it
+has almost become an axiom in these affairs that there is nothing like a
+bold, decided friend, yet even these qualities may be carried to excess;
+and so I began to experience.
+
+There was a vindictiveness in the way he expatiated upon the gross
+character of the insult I had received, the palpable openness of the
+outrage, that showed the liveliest susceptibility on the score of my
+reputation; and thus it came to pass, I suppose, from that spirit of
+divergence and contradiction so native to the human heart that the
+stronger Seth's argument ran in favor of a most bloody retribution, the
+more ingenious grew my casuistry on the side of mercy; till, grown weary
+of my sophistry, he finished the discussion by saying: "Take your own
+road, then; and if you prefer a stiletto under the ribs to the chance of
+a sabre-cut, it is your own affair, not mine."
+
+"How so? Why should I have to fear such?"
+
+"You don't think that the villano will suffer a fellow to take his
+muchacha from him, and dance with her the entire evening before a whole
+company, without his revenge? No! no! they have different notions on
+that score, as you 'll soon learn."
+
+"Then what is to be done?"
+
+"I have told you already, and I tell you once more: meet him
+to-morrow,--the time is not very distant now. You tell me that you are
+a fair swordsman: now, these chaps have but one attack and one guard.
+I 'll put you up to both; and if you are content to take a slight
+sabre-cut about the left shoulder, I'll show you how to run him through
+the body."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Why, then," said he, turning his tobacco about in his mouth, "I guess
+you'd better run for it; there'll be no time to lose. Mount your beast,
+and ride for the Guajuaqualla road, but don't follow it long, or you'll
+soon be overtaken. Turn the beast loose, and take to the mountains,
+where, when you 've struck the miner's track, you 'll soon reach the
+town in safety."
+
+Overborne by arguments and reasons, many of which Seth strengthened
+by the pithy apothegm of "Bethink ye where ye are, boy! This is not
+England, nor Ireland neither!" all my scruples vanished, and I set about
+the various arrangements in a spirit of true activity. The time was
+brief, since, besides taking a lesson in the broadsword, I had to make
+my will. The reader will probably smile at the notion of Con Cregan
+leaving a testament behind him; but the over-scrupulous Seth would have
+it so, and assured me, with much feeling, that it would "save a world of
+trouble hereafter, if anything were to go a bit ugly."
+
+I therefore bequeathed to the worthy Seth my mustang and his equipments
+of saddle, holsters, and cloak-bag; my rifle and pistols and bowie-knife
+were also to become his, as well as all my movables of every kind. I
+only stipulated that, in the event of the "ugly" termination alluded to,
+he would convey the letter with his own hands to Guajuaqualla,--a pledge
+he gave with the greater readiness that a reward was to be rendered for
+the service. There was some seventy dollars in my bag, which, Seth
+said, need not be mentioned in the will, as they would be needed for the
+funeral. "It 's costly hereabouts," said he, growing quite lively on the
+theme. "They put ye in a great basket, all decked with flowers, and they
+sticks two big oranges or lemons in your hands; and the chaps as carry
+you are dressed like devils or angels, I don't much know which,--and
+they do make such a cry! My eye for it, but if you was n't dead, you 'd
+not lie there long and listen to 'em!"
+
+Now, although the subject was not one half so amusing to me as it
+seemed to Seth, I felt that strange fascination which ever attaches to a
+painful theme, and asked a variety of questions about the grave and
+the ceremonies and the masses, reminding my executor that, as a good
+Catholic, I hoped I should have the offices of the Church in all
+liberality.
+
+"Don't distress yourself about that," said he; "I 'll learn a lot of
+prayers in Latin myself,--' just to help you on,' as a body might say.
+But, as I live, there goes the chaps to the 'Molino';" and he pointed to
+a group of about a dozen or more, who, wrapped up in their large cloaks,
+took the way slowly and silently through the tall wet grass at the
+bottom of the garden.
+
+I have ever been too candid with my kind reader to conceal anything from
+him. Let him not, therefore, I beg, think the worse of me if I own
+that, at the sight of that procession, a strange and most uncomfortable
+feeling pervaded me. There seemed something so purpose-like in their
+steady, regular tramp. There was a look of cold determination in their
+movement that chilled me to the heart. "Only to think!" muttered I,
+"how they have left their beds on this raw, damp morning, at the risk of
+colds, catarrhs, and rheumatism, all to murder a poor young fellow who
+never injured one of them!"
+
+Not a thought had I for the muchacha,--the cause of all my trouble; my
+faculties were limited to a little routine of which I myself was the
+centre, and I puzzled my brain in thinking over the human anatomy, and
+trying to remember all I had ever heard of the most fatal localities,
+and where one could be carved and sliced with the fullest impunity.
+
+"Come along!" said Seth; "we 've no time to lose. We must look out for
+a cheap mustang to wait for you on the Guajuaqualla road, and I have to
+fetch my sword; for this thing of yours is full eight inches too short."
+Seth now took my arm, and I felt myself involuntarily throwing a glance
+at the little objects I owned about the room,--as it were a farewell
+look.
+
+"What are you searching for?" said he, as I inserted my hand into my
+breast-pocket.
+
+"It's all right," said I; "I wanted to see that I had the Señhora's
+letter safe. If--if--anything--you understand me--eh?"
+
+"Yes, yes; I'll look to it. They sha' n't bury you with it," said he,
+with a diabolical grin which made me positively detest him, for the
+moment.
+
+If Mr. Chiseller was deficient in the finer sympathies of our nature, he
+was endowed with a rare spirit of practical readiness. The "mustang"
+was found in the very first stable we entered, and hired for a day's
+pleasure,--so he called it,--for the sum of two crowns. A mountain lad
+was despatched to hold him for my coming, at a certain spot on the road.
+The sabre was fetched from his chamber, and in less than five minutes we
+were on our way to the Molino, fully equipped and "ready for the fray."
+
+"Don't forget what I told you about the face-guard: always keep the hilt
+of your weapon straight between your eyes, and hold the elbow low."
+This he kept repeating continually as we went along, till I found myself
+muttering the words after him mechanically,--without attaching the
+slightest meaning to them. "The villain is a strong muscular chap,
+and perhaps he 'll be for breaking down your guard by mere force, and
+cleaving you down with a stroke. If he tries it, you 've only to spring
+actively to one side and give him your point, anywhere about the chest."
+From this he proceeded to discuss a hundred little subtleties and
+stratagems the Mexicans are familiar with, so that at last I regretted,
+from the very bottom of my soul, that the gage of battle had not fallen
+upon Seth himself, so much more worthy in every way of the distinction.
+
+If I seemed full of attention to all he was saying, my thoughts, in
+truth be it spoken, were travelling a vastly different road. I was
+engaged in the performance of a little mental catechism, which ran
+somewhat in this wise: "If you escape this peril, Master Con, will it
+not be wise to eschew fandangoes in future,--or, at least, not indulge
+in them with other men's sweethearts? Beware, besides, of horse-dealers,
+of Xeres and Paquaretta; and, above all, of such indiscretions as may
+make the 'Seth Chisellers' of this world your masters!" Ay, there was
+the sum and substance of my sorrows: that unlucky step about "Charry"
+and the lottery-ticket placed me in a situation from which there was no
+issue. I now saw, what many have seen before, and many will doubtless
+see again, that crime has other penalties besides legal ones, and that
+the difficulty of conforming to an assumed good character, with even
+_one_ lapse from the path of honesty, is very considerable.
+
+"Are you attending to me, lad?" cried Seth, impatiently. "I was telling
+you about the cross-guard for the head."
+
+"I have not heard one word of it," said I, frankly; "nor is it of the
+least consequence. All the talk in the world could n't make a swordsman,
+still less would a few passing hints like those you give me. If the
+villano be the better man, there's an end of the matter."
+
+Seth, less convinced by my reasonings than offended at them, spoke no
+more, and we approached the Molino in silence. As we neared the spot, we
+perceived the party seated in a little arbor, and by their gestures,
+as well as by a most savory odor of garlic, evidently eating their
+breakfast.
+
+"The fellows are jolly," said Seth: "had we not better follow their
+example? Here is a nice spot, and a table just at hand." At the same
+time he called out, "Muchacho, pan el vino en la mesa, and we 'll think
+of somewhat to eat."
+
+I tried to play indifferent, and seem at my ease; but it was no use.
+The vicinity of the other group, and, in particular, of a certain
+broad-shouldered member of it whom I could detect through the leaves,
+and who certainly did not eat with the air of a man who felt it to be
+his last breakfast, spoiled all my efforts, and nipped them even as they
+budded.
+
+"You don't eat," said Seth; "look at the villano yonder."
+
+"I see him," said I, curtly.
+
+"See how he lays in his prog!"
+
+"Let him show that he can be as dexterous with the broadsword as with a
+carving-knife," said I, with a tremendous effort.
+
+"Egad! I'll tell him that," cried Seth, jumping up, and hastening
+across the garden. I had not long to wait for the effect of the speech.
+Scarcely had Chiseller uttered a few words than the whole party arose,
+and such a volley of "Maledicion!" and "Caramba!" and other like terms I
+never heard before or since.
+
+"I knew that would make 'em blaze up," said he; "they're all ready
+now,--follow me." I obeyed, and walked after him into a little paddock,
+which, from the marks of feet and other signs, seemed to be a spot not
+chosen for the first time for such an amusement. The others entered by
+an opposite gate, and, taking off their cloaks, folded them carefully
+and laid them on the benches. They were armed to the very teeth, and
+really did look amazingly like the troop of brigands Drury Lane would
+produce in a new melodrama.
+
+One of the party advanced towards Seth to arrange preliminaries, while
+the rest lighted their cigars and began smoking,--an example I deemed it
+wise to imitate; at least, it looked cool.
+
+As I sat, affecting to admire the landscape, and totally careless of
+what was going on behind me, I overheard Seth in a warm altercation
+on the subject of my sabre, which the villano's friend insisted was
+at least eight or nine inches too long. Seth, however, was equally
+obstinate in asserting that I had always used it, had fought repeated
+duels with it; and if we could not call the principals as witnesses,
+it was for certain cogent reasons that need not be mentioned. How I
+chuckled at this bit of boastfulness! how I prayed that it might terrify
+the enemy! Nothing of the kind; the semi-savage stepped out into the
+circle, with his shirt-sleeve rolled up to the shoulder, displaying an
+arm whose muscular development was like knotted cordage. As if to give a
+foretaste of what he intended for me, he clove down the stout branch of
+an elm-tree with a single stroke and with the ease of a man slicing a
+cheese. Never did I think so meanly of a fandango as at that moment;
+never was I in a mood less lenient to female coquetry!
+
+"All's ready, Con, my hearty," whispered Seth, leaning over my shoulder;
+"here's the tool."
+
+If I had followed the instinct then strongest, I should have treated my
+"friend" Seth to the first of my maiden sword. But for him--But it was
+too late for regrets; and already the group had retired, leaving the
+villano standing in a position of formidable defence alone in the
+circle.
+
+
+
+I can remember that I walked calmly and slowly forward to the spot
+assigned me. I can remember the word being given to draw swords, and I
+even yet can see the flashing steel as it glistened, and hear the clang
+of the scabbards as we flung them from us; but of the encounter itself
+I have only the vaguest impression. Cuts, thrusts, parries, advances and
+retirings, feints and guards, are all blended up with the exclamations
+of the bystanders as, in praise or censure, they followed the encounter.
+At last, without knowing why, after a warm rally, my antagonist uttered
+a faint cry, and tottering a few paces back, let fall his sword, and
+sank heavily to the earth. I sprang forward in dread anxiety; but two of
+the others held me back while they cried out, "Basta--Basta, Señhor!" I
+tried to force my way past them, but they held me fast; and all that I
+could see was one of the group take up the villano's arm and let it go
+again, when it fell heavily to the ground with a dull bang I shall never
+forget! They then threw his cloak over him, and I saw him no more.
+
+"What are ye waitin' for, lad?" whispered Seth. "You don't want to
+attend his funeral, I reckon?"
+
+"Is he--is he------?" I could n't get the word out for worlds.
+
+"By course he is; and so will you be, if ye don't make a bolt of it."
+
+I have some recollection of an angry altercation between Seth and
+myself,--I refusing, and he insisting on my instant flight; but it ended
+somehow in my finding myself galloping along the Guajuaqualla road at a
+furious pace, and, to my extreme surprise, feeling now as eager about my
+safety as before I had been indifferent to it.
+
+I became conscious of this from the sense of uneasiness I experienced
+as each horseman neared me, and the danger of pursuit aroused in me the
+instinct of self-preservation.
+
+A rude sign-post at the foot of a rugged mountain path apprised me where
+the "miners' trail" led off to Guajuaqualla; so, dismounting from my
+"mustang," now wearied and blown by a pretty sharp pace for above seven
+miles, I turned the animal loose and set off on foot. I know of no
+descent so great in life as from the "saddle" to the "sole!" from the
+inspiriting pleasure of being carried along at will, to the plodding
+slowness of mere pedestrianism. In the one case you "shoot your sorrows
+flying;" in the other, they jog alongside of you all the way, halting
+with you when you lie down at noon, and taking share of the spring from
+which your parched lips are refreshed. Like an underbred acquaintance,
+they will not be denied; they are always "going _your_ way;" and in
+their cruel civility they insist on bearing you company.
+
+At a little cabaret of the very humblest order, I obtained some
+breakfast and made purchase of a stock of bread and a gourd of wine, as
+I learned that nothing was to be had before I reached "Sanchez," the hut
+of an old miner, which was reckoned halfway to Guajuaqualla. This done,
+again I set forth on my journey.
+
+The scenery was wild, without being grand. There was bareness and
+desolation, but no sublimity. It was evidently a tract of such inferior
+fertility that few in a land so rich as this would select it for a
+resting-place; and, accordingly, I came upon no signs of habitation
+other than the shealings the shepherds raise at certain seasons when
+migrating with their flocks among the mountains.
+
+It was exactly the character of landscape likely to increase and thicken
+the gloom of sad thoughts; and, indeed, mine wanted little assistance.
+This last exploit left a weight like lead upon my heart. All my
+sophistry about self-defence and wounded honor, necessity, and the like
+could not cover the fact that I had taken away a man's life in a foolish
+brawl, from the very outset of which the whole fault lay on _my_ side.
+
+"So much," said I, "for trying to be a 'gentleman'. Every step in this
+disastrous pursuit would seem to have a penalty attached to it; and,
+after all, I am just as far from the goal as when I set out."
+
+That day seemed a year in length; and were I to attempt to chronicle it,
+the reader would confess himself convinced before I had half finished;
+so that, for both our sakes, I 'll not "file my bill of particulars," as
+my respected father would have said, but at once come to the hour
+when the sun approached the horizon, and yet not anything like a human
+dwelling came in sight; and I still plodded along, sad and weary, and
+anxious for rest. If the events which I am about to record have little
+in them of extraordinary interest, they at least were the turning-points
+in my humble destiny, and therefore, kind reader, with your permission,
+we 'll give them a chapter to themselves.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI. THE DISCOVERY
+
+I had walked now for nearly twelve hours without discovering any
+appearance of Sanchez's cabin, in which I had hoped to pass the night.
+My prairie experience assured me that I had not lost the "trail," and
+yet if any light were burning for miles around, the elevated spot on
+which I stood should make it visible. Although much fatigued, there was
+nothing for it but to proceed, and at length I found myself in a narrow
+valley which Seth had heard described as the situation in which the
+miner's hut stood. It was dark and gloomy; but the hope that I was
+nearing the spot cheered me, and I walked on, footsore and tired as I
+was. Once or twice I thought I heard the bark of a dog. I stopped to
+listen; I shouted aloud, I whistled, but to no end. After an interval,
+however, the sounds were repeated, and now I could detect,--not the
+bark,--but the low, plaintive wail of an animal seemingly in pain. As it
+not unfrequently happens that the sheep-dogs are attacked by wolves, it
+immediately occurred to me such might be the present case; so I looked
+to the caps of my revolver, and hastened on in the direction of the
+cries.
+
+The wailing sounds grew fuller and louder as I advanced, and now I could
+distinguish that they were the cries of an animal in grief, and not of
+one in bodily pain. I increased my speed to the utmost, and suddenly I
+felt the warm tongue of a dog touch my hand, and his tail brush my legs,
+in sign of friendly welcome. I stopped to pat and caress him, but the
+poor creature uttered another cry so full of sorrow that all other
+thoughts were routed on the instant.
+
+He now preceded me, turning at each moment as if to see that I followed,
+and whining in a low, faint tone, as before. We had not long proceeded
+thus, when he stopped suddenly, and set up a cry the most shrill and
+heart-thrilling. I saw that we were in front of a miserable shealing,
+the door of which lay open; but all was dark within. I struck a light
+with my flint, and lighted a little taper. To my surprise, the hut
+contained several articles of furniture; but I had not more than time to
+notice them, when the dog, darting forward, placed his fore-paws upon a
+low settle-bed, and gave a dismal howl. I turned and beheld the figure
+of a very old man, his white beard hanging down to his chest, as he lay
+in what seemed a heavy sleep. I touched him; he was cold. I placed my
+hand on his heart; it was still. I tried to detect breathing; there was
+none--he was quite dead!
+
+The poor dog appeared to watch me with intense interest, as, one by one,
+I tried these different signs of life; but when he saw the hand fall
+heavily from my own, he again set up his cries, which now lasted for
+several minutes. The scene was a sad and touching one. The poor old
+miner,--for such his dress and the scattered implements of the craft
+bespoke him,--forgotten by all the world save by his dog, lay in all
+the seeming calm of sleep. A cup of water stood near him, and a little
+wooden crucifix lay on the bed, where probably it had fallen from his
+fingers. Everything around betokened great poverty. The few articles of
+furniture seemed as if they had been fashioned by himself, being of the
+rudest workmanship: his lamp was a dried gourd, and his one chair had
+been a stump, hollowed out with a hatchet. The most striking feature
+of all was a number of printed paragraphs cut from old newspapers and
+magazines and nailed against the planking of the hut; and these seemed
+to convey a little history of the old miner, so far, at least, as
+the bent and object of his life were implied. They were all, without
+exception, exaggerated and high-flown accounts of newly discovered
+"Placers,"--rich mines of gold,--some in the dark plains of the Ukraine,
+some in the deep forests of Mexico, some in the interior of Africa
+and on the far-away shores of the Pacific. Promises of golden harvest,
+visions of wealth rolling in vast abundance, great oceans of gain before
+the parched and thirsting lips of toil and famine! Little thought they
+who, half in the wantonness of fancy, colored these descriptions, what
+seeds they were sowing in many a rugged nature! what feverish passions
+they were engendering! what lures to wile men on and on, through youth
+and manhood and age, with one terrible fascination to enslave them!
+
+If many of these contained interesting scraps of adventure and
+enterprise in remote and strange countries, others were merely dry
+and succinct notices of the discovery of gold in particular places,
+announcements which nothing short of an innate devotion to the one theme
+could possibly have dwelt upon; and these, if I were to judge from the
+situations they occupied, were the most favored paragraphs, and those
+most frequently read over; they were the daily food with which he fed
+his hope, through, doubtless, long years of suffering and toil. It was
+the oil which replenished the lamp when the wick had burned to the very
+socket!
+
+How one could fancy the old Gambusino as he sat before his winter fire,
+half dozing in the solitude of his uncompanionable existence, revelling
+in all the illusions with which his mind was filled! With what sympathy
+must he have followed his fellow-laborers in every far-away quarter of
+the globe! how mourned over their disappointments, how exulted in their
+successes! These little scraps and sentences were the only links that
+tied him to the world--they were all that spoke to him of his own
+species!
+
+As I went about the hut, the appearance of the greatest poverty and
+privation struck me on every side: his clothing, worn to very tatters,
+had been mended by skins of beasts and patches of canvas; the tools
+with which he worked showed marks of rude repair that proved how "he to
+himself sufficed," without aid from others.
+
+I passed the night without sleep, my mind full of the melancholy picture
+before me. When day broke, I walked forth into the cool air to refresh
+myself, and found, to my astonishment, that the spot had been a Placer
+of once great repute,--at least so the remains around attested. The
+ruined framework of miners' huts; the great massive furnaces for
+smelting; huge cradles, as they are called, for gold-sifting; long
+troughs, formed of hollowed trunks, for washing,--lay scattered on all
+sides. The number of these showed what importance the spot had once
+possessed, and the rotten condition in which they now were proved how
+long it had been deserted by all save him who was now to take his rest
+where, for many a weary year, he had toiled and labored.
+
+A little cross, decorated with those insignia of torture so frequently
+seen in Catholic countries,--the pincers, the scourge, and the crown of
+thorns,--showed where Piety had raised an altar beside that of Mammon;
+and underneath this I resolved to lay the poor old Gambusino's bones, as
+in a Christian grave. I could not divest my mind of the impression that
+some power, higher than mere chance, had led me to the spot to perform
+those last offices to the poor outcast. Having eaten my breakfast, which
+I shared with the dog, I set to work to fashion something that should
+serve as a coffin. There was timber in abundance, and the old miner's
+tools sufficed for all I needed. My labor, however, was only completed
+as night closed in, so that I was obliged to wait for morning to finish
+my task.
+
+Wearied by my exertions, I slept soundly, and never awoke till the
+bright sunbeams pierced through the chinks of the log-hut, and streamed
+in amidst its dusky atmosphere; then I arose, and placed the old man
+in his coffin. I sat down beside it, and as I looked at the calm, cold
+features I could not help reflecting that even he had not been more an
+outcast from his fellows than I was myself. If fate had cast _his_ lot
+in the solitude of this dreary region, he was not more alone in the
+world than _I_, who had neither home nor family. How strange was it,
+too, that it should have devolved upon _me_ to pay him these last rites.
+No, no; this could not be accident. The longer I dwelt upon this theme,
+the more strongly was I impressed by this one conviction; and now,
+looking back, after the lapse of years, that feeling is but more
+confirmed by time.
+
+Taking the shovel and the pick, I set forth to dig the grave, the
+poor dog following at my heels, as though knowing in what cause I was
+laboring. The earth was hard and stony, so that at first I made but
+little progress; but soon I reached a clayey soft soil, which again was
+succeeded by a dense, firm stratum of stones, impacted closely together,
+like a pavement made by hands; indeed, it was difficult to conceive it
+otherwise, the stones being so nearly of the same size, and laid down
+with a regularity so striking and purposelike. I proceeded to loosen
+them with the barreta, but, to my surprise, no sooner had I displaced
+this layer than another exactly similar displayed itself underneath. If
+this be "Nature's handiwork," thought I, "it is the strangest thing I
+ever saw." I labored hard to remove this second tier, and now came down
+upon a light gravelly soil, into which the barreta passed easily. Shall
+I own that it was with a sense of disappointment that I perceived this?
+It was not that my expectations had taken any distinct or palpable form,
+but their vagueness somehow had not excluded hope!
+
+As I struck down the iron barreta into the light earth, I sat down and
+fell into a musing fit, from which the dog aroused me by licking
+my hands and looking up into my face, as though reproaching me for
+deserting my task. I arose at once, and set to work in right earnest.
+The grave was now full five feet in depth, and needed only to be made a
+little longer. It was after about an hour's hard labor, and my task
+was all but completed, when the barreta struck a stone which it was
+requisite to move; it was a large and heavy one, and much more firmly
+impacted in the earth than I at first supposed, and it was only by
+splintering it with the iron "crow" that I was able to succeed. As I
+lifted the fragments and threw them away, my hands came in contact with
+a soft substance underneath, that, to the feel, at least, resembled the
+skin of a beast with the wool or hair on. I cleared away the earth,
+and saw to my astonishment what I at once knew to be a piece of buffalo
+hide, smeared over with a peculiar oil the Indians use to prevent
+rotting or decomposition. I drew forth my knife and ripped it open;
+a strong skin of undressed buck was now laid bare; again I applied my
+knife vigorously to this, and as the sharp steel ran freely along,
+a glittering heap of gold disclosed itself before me, and rolled in
+fragments to my feet!
+
+I cannot attempt to describe the emotions of that moment, as, with
+a heart bursting with delight, I ran my fingers through the heaps of
+shining metal, many of them larger than my closed fist. I pulled off my
+cap and filled it; I opened my handkerchief, and in a few moments
+that also was crammed; I stuffed my pockets; but the treasure seemed
+inexhaustible. I arose, and hastened to the hut for the great canvas bag
+in which the poor miner used to keep his chestnuts, and, oh, the terror
+that came over me now, lest I should be seen, lest any other should
+discover me! With the speed that fear alone can supply I soon filled the
+sack, not alone with gold, but also with several little leather
+bags, which I discovered contained gems and precious stones, emeralds
+principally, with opals, sapphires, and rubies, some of a size and color
+I had never seen equalled before. There were eight of these bags, marked
+with some enigmatical letters, of which I did not know the meaning, nor,
+in good truth, did I puzzle myself to discover. The wealth, unbounded as
+it seemed, needed no explanation; there it lay glittering upon the grass
+beneath the morning sun, and there I sat amidst it, as Aladdin might
+have sat amidst the treasures of his mine.
+
+As I opened the bags one after another, in eager impatience, I came upon
+one filled with papers, and these I quickly discovered were receipts
+for deposits of large sums placed at various times in the hands of Don
+Xafire Hijaros, banker, at Guajuaqualla, by Menelaus Crick! Yes, these
+were the hidden treasures for which the Black Boatswain of Anticosti
+had endured the tortures of the burning iron and the steel, the
+terrible agonies of the flesh pincers, and the slow, lingering pains of
+paralysis. These, then, were the visions that haunted his dotage in the
+very night I had seen him, as he struggled in some imaginary conflict,
+and patted the ground in some fancied act of concealment! A sudden chill
+ran through me as I thought by what horrible deeds of crime and blood
+all this treasure might--nay, must--have been amassed! What terrible
+acts of murder and assassination! Many of the gems were richly set, and
+showed that they had been worn. Some of the emeralds had been extracted
+from ornaments, or taken from the hilts of daggers or swords. Violence
+and blood had stained them all, there could not be a doubt of it; and
+now there arose within me a strange conflict, in which the thirst for
+wealth warred with a feeling of superstition that whispered, "No luck
+could go with gain so bought!" The perspiration rolled in great drops
+down my face; my heart swelled and throbbed with its emotions; the
+arteries of my temples beat with a force that seemed to smite the
+very brain as I canvassed this vital question, "Dare I touch wealth so
+associated with deeds of infamy?"
+
+If my wishes arranged themselves on one side, all my fears were
+marshalled on the other; and what foes can wage a more terrible
+conflict! The world, with its most attractive pleasures, its thousand
+fascinations, all the delusions that gold can buy and convert into
+realities, beckoned here. Horrible fancies of an unknown vengeance, a
+Nemesis in crime unexpiated, menaced there! May I never have to preside
+in a court where the evidence is so strongly opposed, where the facts
+are so equally balanced! If, at one instant, I beheld myself the
+gorgeous millionnaire, launching forth into the wide ocean of unexplored
+enjoyment, at the next I saw myself crawling upon the earth, maimed and
+crippled like the old negro slave; a curse upon me; the cries of widowed
+mothers ringing in my ears; the curses of ruined fathers tracking
+me wherever I went! I cannot tell what verdict my poor empanelled
+conscience might have brought in at last, but suddenly a new witness
+appeared in the court and gave a most decided turn to the case. This was
+no less than "the Church," whose testimony gently insinuated that if the
+matter were one of difficulty, it was not yet without a solution. "It is
+true, Master Con," whispered she, "that these treasures have an odor of
+rapine; but let us see if the Church cannot purify them. A silver lamp
+to the Virgin can throw a lustre upon deeds that have not 'loved the
+light.' An embroidered petticoat can cover a great many small sins, and
+the incense that rises from a gold censer, offered by pious hands, will
+do much to correct the pungency of even the saltest tears."
+
+Build a chapel, Con; endow a nunnery,--or, if you don't like shutting
+up young ladies, let it be a "monkery;" make an investment in hair-cloth
+shirts and cord girdles; buy shares in the grand Purgatory scheme,
+and take out "next world scrip," in the shape of masses, jubilees, and
+novenas. You can keep a bishop, without feeling the cost, and have
+a whole candle manufactory perpetually at the service of "Our Lady,"
+without being obliged to curtail one of your own wax-lights. What a
+revulsion did this bright thought give to all my previous doubtings!
+not only satisfying my scruples here, but suggesting very comfortable
+associations for hereafter. By this proceeding, Con, thought I, you are
+"hedging against hereafter;" you may be a Sardanapalus while you live,
+and a saint after death: it's betting upon the "double event," with all
+the odds in your favor.
+
+I must say, for the sake of my credit, that I resolved to "do the thing
+handsomely." I determined that a finer virgin should not be seen than
+mine, and that if a "Saint Cregan" could be discovered in the catalogue,
+I'd adopt him as my patron, at any cost. Neither would I forget the poor
+old miner in my pious offerings: he should have masses said for him for
+a full twelvemonth to come, and I 'd offer a silver pickaxe to any of
+the calendar who would deign to accept it. In a word, there was nothing
+that money could do (and what can it not?) that I would not engage to
+perform, so that the Church should consent to take me into partnership.
+
+Never was a poor head exposed to such a conflict of discordant thoughts.
+Plans of pleasures and pilgrimages; gorgeous visions of enjoyment
+warring with fancies of sackcloth and scourges; sumptuous dinners,
+equipages, theatres, balls, and festivities mingling with fastings,
+processions, and mortifications, made up a chaos only a shade above
+downright insanity.
+
+The day wore on, and it was late in the afternoon ere I bethought me
+of the poor Gambusino, beside whose open grave I still sat, lost in
+speculation. "Poor fellow!" said I, as I hoisted his coffin on my
+shoulder, "you have got a rich pall-bearer for one who died in such
+poverty; you little thought you would be borne to the grave by a
+millionnaire!" As I said this--I shame to own it--there was a tinge of
+self-commendation in the notion, as though inferring, "See what a noble
+fellow I am! with gold and gems such as an emperor might envy, and yet
+look at me, carrying a poor old miner's body to the grave just as if we
+were equals!"
+
+"It's very handsome of you, Con,--that I must say!" whispered I to
+myself; but, somehow, the poor dog did not appear to take the same
+exalted notion of my magnanimity, but was entirely engrossed by his
+sorrow; for he lay crouching upon the earth, uttering cries the most
+piteous and heartrending at each shovelful I threw in the grave.
+
+"Cheer up, poor fellow!" said I, patting him, "you shall have a gold
+collar and a clasp of real emerald." How naturally does a rich man recur
+to wealth as the cure for every affliction! How difficult for him to
+believe that gold is not a sovereign remedy for all disorders!
+
+As for the dog, poor brute! he took no more heed of my consolation
+than he noticed my altered condition,--of which, by his familiarity,
+he showed himself totally unconscious. How differently had he behaved,
+thought I, had he been a man! What sudden respect had he felt for me;
+what natural reluctance to obtrude himself on me; how honored by my
+notice, how distinguished by my favor! It is plain the dog is a very
+inferior animal; his perceptions are not fine enough to distinguish
+between the man of wealth and the pauper!
+
+These and very similar reflections engaged me while I completed my task,
+after which I carried my precious burdens off, and deposited them within
+the hut. By this time I was very hungry, but had nothing to eat save the
+fragments that remained from my breakfast,--a singular meal for one who,
+in a fitting place, could have dined sumptuously and off vessels of gold
+and silver! I had the appetite of a poor man, however, and eat heartily;
+and then, taking my gourd of wine, sat down beside a little spring that
+issued from the rock, to think over my future.
+
+Perhaps my whole life--not wanting in hours of pleasure and
+enjoyment--never presented anything so truly delightful as that evening.
+
+The season of gratification which I had dreamed of, sighed, panted, and
+prayed for, was now to be mine. I was at last to be a "gentleman,"--so
+far, at least, as immense wealth and a very decided taste for spending
+it could make me. But were these, I flatteringly asked myself, all my
+qualifications? Was I not master of three or four languages? Had I not
+become an expert shot, an excellent rider, a graceful dancer, with some
+skill upon the guitar and the mandolin? Could I not contend in most
+exercises where strength and activity were required, with any? Had I not
+travelled and seen something of the world and its ways? Ay, marry, and a
+little more of both than was usual for young gentlemen of fortune!
+
+Of personal advantages it might not become me to speak; but the truth
+requires me to say that Nature had dealt very handsomely by me. And
+now I ask of the fair reader,--the unfair one I put out of court on
+the occasion,--"Are not these very pretty chances with which to woo
+fortune?" Less sanguine spirits would perhaps have sighed for more, and
+asked for a hundred gifts, of whose use and value I knew nothing,--such
+as birth, family influence, and the like. As for me, I was content with
+the "hand of trumps" Fate had dealt me; I owned frankly that if I lost
+the game, it must be for lack of skill, and not of luck.
+
+My plans were very simple. Once at Guajuaqualla, I should find out where
+Donna Maria de los Dolores lived, and then, providing myself with a
+suitable equipage and servants, I should proceed to pay my addresses
+in all form, affecting to have resumed my real rank and station, from
+which, on our first acquaintance, a passing caprice had withdrawn me.
+I anticipated, of course, very shrewd inquiries as to my family and
+fortune; but I trusted to "native wit" to satisfy these, secretly
+resolving at the time that I would avoid lying for the future. And _à
+propos_ of this propensity, I had never indulged in it, save from that
+vagrant impulse that tempts a child to scamper over the flower-plat of
+a garden, instead of keeping to the gravel,--the great charm being found
+in the secret that it "was wrong." And, oh, ye dear, good, excellent
+souls whose instincts are always correct, who can pass knockers on doors
+and not wish to wring them off; who see gas-lamps in lonely spots,
+and never think of breaking them; who neither "humbug" the stupid, nor
+mistify the vain; who "take life" seriously,--forgive the semi-barbarism
+of our Celtic tastes, which leads us to regard "fun" as the very honey
+of existence, and leads us to extract it from every flower in life's
+path!
+
+When I "lied,"--as only the great "Pinto" ever lied more atrociously,--I
+was more amused by my own extravagances than were my listeners. I threw
+out my inventions among stupid folk as a rich man flings his guinea
+among a group of beggars, to enjoy the squabbling and contending for
+such an unlooked-for prize.
+
+And now I was going to abandon the habit, as one unsuited to the
+responsibilities of a rich man's station! Oh, dear, what a sigh honest
+Jack Falstaff must have heaved when he swore "he would eschew sack and
+low company, and live cleanly."
+
+I now addressed myself more practically to my work, and, seeing that it
+would be quite impossible for me to carry the great bulk of my treasure
+to Guajuaqualla, I replaced the canvas sack, with the gold and some of
+the larger bags of the gems, in the ground, and merely took those that
+contained the paper securities, and some of the more valuable emeralds,
+along with me.
+
+In parting with my wealth, even for a short absence, I confess my
+feelings were very poignant. A thousand fears beset me, and I turned
+to survey the spot beneath which it lay, wondering if there was any
+indication to mark the concealed riches below. All, however, looked safe
+and plausible; and I proceeded on my way, with a heart as easy as, I
+suppose, rich men's hearts are permitted to be!
+
+I believe the road along which I journeyed lay in the midst of a fertile
+and pleasing tract,--I believe, I say; for I own I saw nothing of it.
+The river along which Ï walked seemed silver, molten silver, to me;
+the fruit-trees bore apples of pure gold; the stars which studded the
+morning sky seemed sapphires and diamonds; the dewdrops on the grass
+were opals all. If I sat down to rest myself, I instantly took one of
+my precious bags from my pocket, to gaze at the bright treasures it
+contained, and feast my eyes with brilliancy.
+
+At last I found myself on the great high road, and, as the sign-post
+told me, only "très léguas"--three leagues--from Guajuaqualla. For a few
+copper coins I obtained a seat upon a peasant's "carro," and journeyed
+along more agreeably, secretly laughing to myself at the strange
+conveyance that carried "Cæsar and his fortunes."
+
+The peasant was an old man who lived by selling watermelons, gourds, and
+cucumbers in the city, and knew most of its well-known inhabitants. It
+was, therefore, a good opportunity for me to learn something of those in
+whom I was interested. He told me that the banker Don Xafire Hijaros had
+died several years ago, but that his son Manuel carried on the business,
+and was reputed to be the richest man in Guajuaqualla. It was said that
+the great wealth of the house had been accumulated in ways and by means
+that would not bear too close scrutiny. Large sums had been, it was
+alleged, lodged in his hands by negroes and Indians working at the
+mines, the owners of which were often made away with,--at least, few of
+those who made large deposits ever lived to claim them. The peasant told
+me several stories in illustration of this suspicion; but although
+they certainly did make an impression upon me, I attributed much to the
+exaggeration so common to every piece of local gossip, and I had seen
+enough in the world to know how frequently successful industry meets
+disparagement.
+
+As for Don Estaban Olarez, the old man told me that he had once been
+extremely rich, but that certain speculations he had entered into having
+proved unfortunate, he had lost the greater part of his fortune, and
+lived now in a state of comparative retirement about a league from
+Guajuaqualla. This piece of news had not the depressing effect upon me
+it might be supposed, since I augured that a rich son-in-law would
+be less scrupulously interrogated by the broken merchant than by the
+millionnaire. I even speculated on the manner I should adopt to dazzle
+him by my splendor, and with what cold and cutting irony I would address
+the Fra Miguel, and thank him for the considerate kindness with which
+he had repaid my services. Haughty and proud, with a dash of
+condescension,--"that must be my tone," said I; and so I went on,
+like my prototype in the Eastern tale, ruminating upon my power and my
+merciful disposition, till I had warmed my blood to a very good tyrant
+pitch, from which state I was aroused by the guard at the gate of the
+town asking if I had anything with me which should pay custom.
+
+"A poor traveller with his knapsack," said I, "may surely pass freely."
+
+"Vaya con Dios," said he, carelessly, and I entered the city.
+
+Although the little plain in which Guajuaqualla stands is more favorable
+as a site than the narrow gorge where Chihuahua is situated, the city
+itself is inferior to the latter. Built irregularly, not only as chance
+or caprice directed, but sharing in all the vicissitudes of speculation
+which the mines afforded, great palaces stand by the side of mean
+hovels, and gorgeous churches are flanked by abodes of squalid poverty.
+Streets, properly speaking, there were none. Each choosing the spot for
+his house at will, and as the city was founded in troubled times, when
+lawless violence was unrestrained,--the fortress-like character of
+the buildings was often conspicuous. Massive iron bars and stanchions
+protected the windows of the ground-floors; heavy fastenings secured
+the doors, whose surface was a fretwork of iron. Loop-holes for musketry
+usually guarded each side of the entrance, and a "grille," like that
+of a convent, showed that no stranger could be admitted uninterrogated.
+Many of the houses were surrounded by regular outworks of moat and
+bastion, while here and there an old rusty cannon, half hid among the
+weeds, would show more pretentious, though possibly not very efficient,
+means of defence.
+
+Of shrines, holy wells, and altars there was no end. The superstitious
+character of the Gambusino life had been adroitly laid hold of by the
+priests, who rarely fail to turn each phase of existence to their own
+profit, and, in this spot, the priestly hierarchy appeared to have
+nothing so near at heart as the success of the "Placers." Here were
+pictured virgins, looking blandly down at a group of very ill-favored
+half-breeds, at a washing; there was an old negro presenting a massive
+lump of gold to St. Joseph, who, with a sly look, seemed to promise
+not to forget the donor. St. Francis himself, pick in hand, was seen
+laboring at the head of a sturdy gang of workmen, and angels of all
+sizes appeared to busy themselves in gold-seeking, as though it were
+their natural pastime.
+
+Upon several of the altars, pieces of solid gold and silver lay, in a
+security that said much for the religious zeal of the inhabitants, while
+lamps of pure silver hung in a profusion on every side,--surrounded by
+votive offerings of the same metal,--such as shovels, barretas, picks,
+and sieves. Nor did piety limit itself merely to incentives to "stand
+well with the saints;" some most terrible examples of the opposite line
+of conduct were conspicuously displayed. Pictures representing dreadful
+catastrophes, by falling masses of rock, irruptions of torrents, and
+down-pouring cataracts, showed what fates were ever in store for those
+who "forgot the Church." And, as if to heighten the effect, whenever
+a cayman or a jaguar was "sloping off" with a miner in his mouth, a
+respectable saint was sure to be detected in the offing, wiping his eyes
+in compassion, but not stirring a finger to his assistance.
+
+I will not say that these specimens of pictorial piety induced any
+strong religious feeling to my mind, but they certainly amused me
+highly; and although hungry from a long fast, I stopped full twenty
+times on my way to the Posada to gaze and wonder at them.
+
+At the "Mono" (the "Ape"), a beast which at first _I_ mistook for a
+certain historical character to whom popular prejudice always vouchsafes
+a tail, I put up, and having discussed a very sumptuous breakfast, sent
+for the landlord, a little dark-visaged Jew from Pernambuco.
+
+"I hear," said I, arranging myself in an attitude of imposing elegance,
+"I hear, Señhor Maestro, that my people and equipages have not arrived
+yet, and I begin to feel a great anxiety for their safety. Can you learn
+from any of the Muleros if they have seen two carriages, with four mules
+each, on the Chihuahua road?"
+
+"I have just inquired," said the Jew, with a sly, almost impertinent
+leer, "and his Excellency's suite have not been seen."
+
+"How provoking!" said I, impatiently. "This comes of indulging that
+capricious taste for adventure which always inclines me to a solitary
+ramble among mountains. And now, here I am, without clothes, baggage,
+horses, servants,--in fact, with nothing that a person of my condition
+is accustomed to have about him."
+
+The Jew's face changed its expression during this speech, and, from a
+look of droll malice which it wore at first, assumed an air of almost
+open insolence as he said,--
+
+"Señhor Viajador, I am too old to be imposed upon by these fooleries.
+The traveller who enters an inn on his feet, with ragged clothes and
+tattered shoes, takes too high a flight when he raves of equipage and
+followers."
+
+I bethought me of the lesson I once gave the mate of the transport ship
+at Quebec, and I lay back indolently in my chair and stared coolly at
+the Jew. "Son of Abraham," said I, with a slow intonation, "take care
+what you say. I indulge in a vast variety of caprices, some of which
+the severe world calls follies; but there is one which I never permit
+myself,--namely, to suffer the slightest liberty on the part of an
+inferior. I give you this piece of information for your guidance, since
+it is possible that business with the banker Don Manuel Hijaros may
+detain me a few days in this place, and I desire that the lesson be not
+lost upon you."
+
+The Jew stood, while I delivered these words, a perfect ideal of doubt
+and embarrassment. The pretentious tone, contrasted with the ragged
+apparel, the air of insufferable pride, with all the semblance of
+poverty, and the calm composure of confidence, seemed to him singular
+features in one whose apparent destitution might have suggested
+humility.
+
+"I see your embarrassment," said I, "and I forgive your error; and
+now to business. I have several visits to pay in this neighborhood; my
+people may not arrive for a day or two; and I cannot afford the delay of
+waiting for them. Can you tell if there be anything suitable in the
+way of equipage for a man of rank to be had here? Something simple, of
+course, as befitting the place,--a plain carriage, with four mules,--if
+Andalusian, all the better; two lazadores, or outriders, will be
+sufficient, as I wish to avoid display; the liveries and equipment may
+be plain also."
+
+"There is at this moment, Señhor, the open carriage of the late
+Gobernador of Guajuaqualla to be sold,--he had not used it when he was
+called away by death: that and his six mules,--not Andalusian, it
+is true, but of the black breed of the Habannah,--are now at your
+Excellency's disposal."
+
+"And the price," said I, not seeming to notice the half-impertinent
+smile that curled his lip as he spoke.
+
+"Three thousand crowns, Señhor,--less than half their cost."
+
+"A mere trifle," said I, carelessly, "if the carriage please me.
+
+"Your Excellency can see it in the court beneath."
+
+I followed the Jew as he led the way into the open "cour," and, after
+passing across it, we entered a spacious building, where, amidst a whole
+hospital of ruined and dilapidated calèches, carres, and wagons, stood a
+most beautiful britscka, evidently imitated from some London or Parisian
+model. It was of a dark chocolate color, with rich linings of pale-blue
+silk. The arms of the late Gobernador were to have been painted on
+the doors, but fortunately were not begun when he died, so that the
+"carroza" seemed in every respect a private one. The Jew next showed
+me the team of mules, magnificent animals of fifteen and half hands in
+height, and in top condition. The harness and housings were all equally
+splendid and suitable.
+
+"If your Excellency does not deem them unworthy of you," said he, with a
+smile of most treacherous meaning, "they are certainly a great bargain.
+I have myself advanced fifteen hundred piastres upon them."
+
+"I'll take them," said I, curtly; "and now for the servants."
+
+"The coachman and a few lacqueys are here still, your Excellency; but
+their liveries had not been ordered when the sad event occurred."
+
+"Send the first tailor in the place to my apartment," said I; "and if
+there be a diamond merchant or a gem valuer here, let him come also."
+
+"I am myself a dealer in precious stones, your Excellency," replied the
+Jew, with a more submissive air than he had yet exhibited.
+
+"Come with me then," said I; "for I always carry some of my less
+valuable trinkets about with me, as the least cumbrous mode of taking
+money." Leaving the landlord in the sitting-room, I passed into my
+chamber, and speedily re-entered with a handsome emerald ring upon my
+finger, and a ruby brooch of great size in my breast.
+
+The Jew's eyes were lit up with a lustre only inferior to that of the
+gems as he saw them, and in a voice tremulous with eagerness he said,
+"Will your Excellency dispose of these?"
+
+"Yes," said I, carelessly; "there are others also, which I am determined
+to turn into cash. What value would you put upon this ring?"
+
+"Five hundred crowns, Señhor, if it be really as pure as it seems."
+
+"If that be your valuation, friend," rejoined I, "I would be a
+purchaser, not a seller, in this city. That gem cost me six thousand
+piastres! To be sure, something of the price must be laid to the charge
+of historical associations. It was the present of the Sultan Al Hadgid
+ak Meerun-ak-Roon to the Empress Matilda."
+
+"Six thousand piastres!" echoed the Jew, whose astonishment stopped
+short at the sum, without any regard for the great names I had hurled at
+him.
+
+"I believe I may have paid a trifle too much," said I, smiling; "the
+Prince of Syracuse thought it dear! But then here is a much more
+valuable stone, which only cost as much;" and, so saying, I took from
+my pocket an immense emerald, which had once formed the ornament of a
+dagger.
+
+"Ah, Dios! that is fine," said the Jew, as he held it between him and
+the light; "and, were it not for the flaw, would be a rare prize!"
+
+"Were it not for the flaw, friend," said I, "it would still be where
+it stood for upwards of eight hundred years,--in the royal crown of
+Hungary, in the 'Schatzkammer' of Presburg. The Emperor Joseph had it
+mounted in his own poignard; from his hands it reached the Caltons of
+Auersberg; and then, at the value of six thousand piastres, by a wager,
+came into my own."
+
+"And at what price would you now dispose of it?" asked he, timidly.
+
+"A friend might have it for ten thousand," said I, calmly; "to the world
+at large the price would be twelve."
+
+"Ah, your Excellency, such sums rest not in our humble city! You must go
+to Madrid or Grenada for wealth like that."
+
+"So I suspect," said I, coolly. "I will content myself with depositing
+them with my banker for the present; to sell them here would be a
+needless sacrifice of them."
+
+"And yet, Señhor, I would willingly be the purchaser of that gem," said
+he, as he stood, fascinated by the lustre of the stone, from which he
+could not take his eyes. "If six thousand five hundred piastres--"
+
+"I have said ten to a friend, my honest Israelite," interrupted I.
+
+"I am but a poor man, your Excellency,--a poor struggling, hard-working
+man,--content if he but gain the humblest profit by his labor; say,
+then, seven thousand piastres, and I will sell my mules to make up the
+amount."
+
+"I will say twelve, and not a doubloon less," Señhor Judio; "but a
+friend may have it for ten."
+
+"Ah, if your 'Alteza' would but say eight! Eight thousand piastres
+counted down upon the table in honest silver," said he; and the tears
+stood in his eyes as he supplicated.
+
+"Be it so," said I, "but upon one condition. Should you ever reveal
+this, or should you speak of the transaction in any way, there is no
+manner of evil and mischief I will not work you. If it cost me half my
+fortune, I will be your ruin; for I refused to part with that same
+to the Primate of Seville, and he would never forgive me if the story
+should reach his ears."
+
+The Jew wished the Patriarchs to witness his oath of secrecy; and though
+each of us was well aware that the other was lying, somehow we seemed
+satisfied by the exchange of our false coinage. I suppose we acted on
+the same principle as the thieves who could not keep their hands out of
+each other's pockets, although they knew well there was nothing there.
+
+Whatever the Jew's suspicion of the means by which I had become
+possessed of such wealth, he prudently thought that he might reap more
+profit by falling in with my plans than by needlessly scrutinizing my
+character; and, so far, he judged wisely.
+
+The contract for the carriage I completed on the spot, and having
+engaged the servants and ordered their liveries,--plain suits of brown,
+with gold tags, aiguilettes,--I gave directions for my own wearing
+apparel, in a style of costly magnificence that confirmed me in the
+title of "Alteza," given by all who came in contact with me. These
+occupations occupied the entire morning, and it was only late in the
+afternoon that I had spare time to recreate myself by a walk in the
+garden of the inn before dinner,--a promenade which, I am free to own,
+was heightened in its enjoyment by the rich rustling sounds of my heavy
+silk robe-dè-chambre, and the soft, downy tread of my velvet slippers
+on the smooth turf. It was a delicious moment! the very birds seemed to
+sing a little paean of rejoicing at my good luck; the flowers put forth
+their sweetest odors as I passed; and I felt myself in ecstasy with the
+whole creation, and in particular with that segment of it called Con
+Cregan. And there be folk in this world would call this egotism and
+vanity; ay, and by worse names too! As if it was not the very purest
+philanthropy--as if my self-content did not spring from the calm
+assurance that the goods of fortune were bestowed in the right
+direction, and that the goddess whom men call "fickle" was in reality a
+most discriminating deity!
+
+There are no two things in creation less alike than a rich man and a
+poor one! Not only do all their thoughts, feelings, and affections run
+in opposite channels, but their judgments are different; and from the
+habit of presenting particular aspects to the world, they come at last
+to conform to the impressions conceived of them by the public. The
+eccentricities of wealth are exalted into fashions,--the peculiarities
+of poverty are degraded to downright vices.
+
+"Oh, glorious metal!" exclaimed I, as I walked along, "that smooths
+the roughest road of life, that makes the toughest venison savory, and
+renders the rudest associates civil and compliant, what insolence and
+contumely had I not met with here, in this poor 'Posada,' had I only
+been what my humble dress and mean exterior denoted; and now, what is
+there that I cannot exact, what demands can I make, and hear that they
+are impossible!"
+
+"His Excellency's dinner is served," said the host, as he advanced, with
+many a low and obsequious salutation, to announce my dinner.
+
+I suppose that the cookery of the "Mono" was not of the very highest
+order, and that if presented before me now, it would meet but sorry
+acceptance from my more educated palate; but at the time I speak of,
+it seemed actually delicious. There appeared to arise faint odors, of
+savory import, from dishes whose garlic would now almost suffocate me,
+and I luxuriated in the flavor of wine, every glass of which would, at
+this day, have put my teeth on edge. If my enjoyment was great, however,
+I took care not to let it appear too palpable; on the contrary, I
+criticised and condemned with all the fastidiousness of a spoiled
+nature, and only condescended to taste anything on the perpetual
+assurance of the host that "though very different from what his
+Excellency was used to, it was exactly to the taste of the late
+'Gobernador.'"
+
+I felt all the swelling importance of wealth within me as I beheld the
+cringing lacqueys and the obsequious host, who never dared to carry
+himself erect in my presence; the very meats seemed to send up an
+incense to my nostrils. The gentle wind that shook the orange-blossoms
+seemed made to bear its odors to my senses; all Nature appeared
+tributary to my enjoyment. And only to think of it! all this adulation
+was for poor Con Cregan, the convict's son; the houseless street-runner
+of Dublin; the cabin-boy of the yacht; the flunkey at Quebec; the
+penniless wanderer in Texas; the wag of the "Noria," in Mexico. What a
+revulsion, and how sudden and unexpected!
+
+It now became a matter of deep consideration within me how I should
+support this unlooked-for change of condition, without betraying
+too palpably what the French would call my "antecedents." As to my
+"relatives,"--forgive the poor pun,--they gave me little trouble. I had
+often remarked in life that vulgar wealth never exhibits itself in a
+more absurd and odious light than when indulging in pleasures of which
+the sole enjoyment is the amount of the cost. The upstart rich man may
+sit in a gallery of pictures where Titian, Velasquez, and Vandyck have
+given him a company whose very countenances seem to despise him, while
+he thinks of nothing save the price. If he listen to Malibran, the only
+sense awakened is the cost of her engagement; and hence that stolid
+apathy, the lustreless gaze, the unrelieved weariness, he exhibits in
+society, where it is the metal of the "mind" is clinking, and not the
+metal of the "mint." To a certain extent I did not incur great danger
+on this head: Nature had done me some kind services, the chief of which
+was, she had made me an Irishman!
+
+There may seem--alas! there is too great cause that there should
+seem--something paradoxical in this boast, now, when sorrow and
+suffering are so much our portion; but I speak only of the individuality
+which, above every other I have seen or heard of, invests a man with a
+spirit to enjoy whatever is agreeable in life. Now, this same gift is a
+great safeguard against the vulgarity of purse-pride, since the man
+who launches forth upon the open sea of pleasure is rarely occupied by
+thoughts of self.
+
+As for me, I felt a kind of gluttony for every delight that gold can
+purchase. What palaces I would inhabit; what equipages I would drive;
+what magnificent fêtes I would give; what inimitable little dinners,
+where beauty, wit, and genius alone should be gathered together;
+what music should I possess in "my private band;" what exotics in
+my conservatory; and how I should dispense these fascinations; what
+happiness would I diffuse in the circle in which I moved, and what a
+circle would that be! It was to this precise point my buoyant fancy had
+brought me, as the second flask of champagne, iced almost to a crystal,
+had warmed me into a glow of imaginative enthusiasm. I fancied myself
+in a gilded saloon, where, amid the glare of a thousand wax-lights, a
+brilliant company were assembled. I thought that at each opening of the
+folding-door a servant announced some name, illustrious from position
+or great in reputation, and that around me, as I stood, a group was
+gathered of all that was distinguished in the world of fashion or
+celebrity. "Your Royal Highness has made this the proudest day of my
+life," said I, rising, and bowing reverentially before a faded old
+arm-chair. "May I offer your Eminence a seat," continued I to a red
+sofa-cushion I mistook for a cardinal. "Your Excellency is most heartily
+welcome," said I to an empty decanter. And so did I convert every
+adjunct of the chamber into some distinguished personage, even, to my
+fast expiring lamp, which, with a glimmering flame and a nauseous odor,
+was gradually dying away, and which I actually addressed as a great
+ambassador!
+
+After this, I conclude that I must have imagined myself in the
+East,--possibly taking a cup of sherbet with the Sultan, or a chibouk
+with the Khan of Tammerkabund; for when I became conscious once more, I
+found myself upon the hearthrug, where I had been enjoying a delicious
+sleep for some hours.
+
+"Would his Excellency desire to see his chamber?" asked the landlord,
+as, with a branch of candles, he stood in the doorway.
+
+I waved my hand in sign of assent, and followed him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII. GUAJUAQUALLA
+
+There are few things in this world gold cannot buy: but one among their
+number assuredly is--"a happy dream." Now, although I went to sleep in
+a great bed with damask hangings and a gilt crown upon it, my pillow
+fringed with deep lace, my coverlet of satin edged with gold, I dreamed
+the whole night through of strifes, combats, and encounters. At one time
+my enemy would be an Indian; at another, a half-breed; now, a negro;
+now, a jaguar or a rattlesnake: but with whom, or whatever the struggle,
+it was always for money! Nothing else seemed to have any hold upon my
+thoughts. Wealth, and wealth alone, appeared the guiding principle of my
+being; and, as the penalty, I was now to learn the ceaseless anxieties,
+the torturing dreads, this passion begets.
+
+With daylight, however, I awoke, and the bright sun, streaming in,
+brought the glorious reality of my happy lot before me, and reminded
+me of the various duties my high state imposed. My first care was
+to ascertain the amount and security of my riches; and I resolved to
+proceed regularly and in the most business-like manner in the matter.
+To this end I ordered my carriage, and proceeded to pay my visit to the
+banker, Don Xafire.
+
+I had devised and demolished full fifty ingenious narratives of myself
+when I drove into the courtyard where the banker resided, and found
+myself actually without one single satisfactory account of who I was,
+whence I came, and by what means I became possessed of the formidable
+papers I carried. "Let circumstances pilot the event" was my old maxim;
+and, so saying, I entered.
+
+The rattling tramp of my six mules, the cracking of whips, and the crash
+of the wheels, brought many a head to the windows of the old jail-like
+palace when my carriage drove up to the door, and the two outriders
+stood in "a salute" at each side while I descended. "Sua Eccelenza El
+Condé de Cregano" resounded through the arched hall and passages, as
+an old servant in a tawdry suit of threadbare livery led the way to Don
+Xafire's private apartment.
+
+After a brief wait in a large but meagrely furnished chamber, an old
+man--or a middle-aged one, with a look of age--entered, and, with a
+profusion of ceremonial, in which he assured me that his house, his
+wife, his oxen, his mules, his asses, and in fact everything "that was
+his," stood at my disposal, asked to what fortunate event he owed the
+honor of my visit.
+
+"I am the representative, Señhor Xafire," said I, "of the great house of
+Cregan and Company, of which doubtless you have heard, whose ships walk
+the waters of the icy seas, and lay at anchor amid the perfumes of the
+spice islands, and whose traffic unites two hemispheres."
+
+"May they always be prosperous!" said the polite Spaniard, bowing.
+
+"They have hitherto enjoyed that blessing," responded I, almost
+thankfully. "Even as the youngest member of the firm, I have nothing
+to complain of on the score of prosperity." I smiled, took forth a most
+gorgeous snuff-box, all glittering with brilliants, and, presenting it
+to the Spaniard, laid it carelessly on the table. After a brief pause,
+to let the splendor settle down into his heart, I proceeded to inform
+him that in the course of commercial transactions a vast number of
+bills, receipts for deposits and other securities, had fallen into our
+hands, upon many of which we had advanced large sums, seeing that they
+bore the name of that most respectable house, the Bank of Don Xafire, of
+Guajuaqualla. "These would," I added, "have been dispersed through the
+various channels of trade, had it not been the wish of my partners to
+open distinct relations with your house, and consequently they have
+retained the papers until a favorable occasion presented itself of
+personally making the proposition. This happy opportunity has arisen
+by our recent purchase of the great gold mines of the 'Arguareche' for
+seventy millions of piastres, of which you may have read in the 'Faros
+de la Habanas.'"
+
+He bowed a humble negative; and I went on to state that, our mining
+operations requiring co-operation and assistance, we desired to open
+relations with the great house of Don Xafire, whose good fame was well
+established on the 'Change of Liverpool.
+
+"You spoke of paper securities and such like, Señhor; may I ask of what
+nature they are?"
+
+"You shall see them, Don Xafire," said I, opening a very magnificent
+pocket-book, and presenting first a receipt, dated forty-eight years
+back, for the sum of twelve thousand piastres in silver, and four bags,
+weighing two hundred and eighty pounds of gold dust, from the hands
+of Menelaus Crick, of the mines of Hajoras, near Guajuaqualla. The
+Spaniard's dark cheek trembled, and a faint tinge of sickly yellow
+seemed to replace the dusky olive of his tint, as he said, "This is
+but waste paper, Señhor, and I trust your excellent house has advanced
+nothing on its credit."
+
+"On the contrary, Señhor Banquiero," responded I, "we have given the
+full sum, being much advised thereto by competent counsel."
+
+The battle was now opened, and the combat begun.
+
+It is needless I should weary my reader by recapitulating the tissue of
+inventions in which, as in a garment, I wrapped myself. I saw quickly
+that if _I_ was a rogue, so was my antagonist, and that for every
+stratagem _I_ possessed, _he_ was equally ready with another. At last,
+pushed hard by his evasions, equivocations, and subterfuges, I was
+driven to utter a shadowy kind of menace, in which I artfully contrived
+to mix the name of the General Santa Anna,--a word, in those days, of
+more than talismanic power.
+
+"And this reminds me," said I, "that one of my suite who lost his way,
+and was taken prisoner in the Rocky Mountains, committed to my charge a
+letter, in which I fancy the General is interested." This was a random
+shot, but it struck the bull's-eye through the very centre. The Señhora
+Dias's letter was enclosed in an envelope, in which a few words only
+were written; but these, few as they were, were sufficient to create
+considerable emotion in Don Xafire, who retired into a window to read
+and re-read them.
+
+Another shot, thought I, and he's disabled! "It is needless, then,
+Don Xafire, to prolong an interview which promises so little. I will
+therefore take my leave; my next communication will reach you through
+the General Santa Anna."
+
+"May I not crave a little time for consideration, Señhor?" said he,
+humbly. "These are weighty considerations; there may be other demands
+still heavier in store for us of the same kind."
+
+"You are right, Señhor; there are other and still heavier claims, as you
+very properly opine. Some of them I have here with me; others are in the
+hands of our house; but all shall be forthcoming, I assure you."
+
+"What may be the gross amount, Señhor?" said the banker, trying, but
+very ineffectually, to look at his ease.
+
+"Without pretending to minute accuracy, I should guess the sum at
+something like seven hundred thousand piastres,--this, exclusive
+of certain claims for compensation usual in cases of inquiry. You
+understand me, I believe." The last menace was a shot in the very centre
+of his magazine, and so the little usurer felt it, as he fidgeted among
+his papers and concealed his face from me.
+
+"Come, Señhor Xafire," said I, with the air of a man who means to
+deal mercifully, and not to crush the victim in his power, "I will be
+moderate with you. These bills and receipts shall be all placed in
+your hands on payment of the sums due, without any demand for interest
+whatever. We will not speak of the other claims at all. The transaction
+shall be strictly in honor between us, and nothing shall ever transpire
+to your disadvantage regarding it. Is this enough?"
+
+The struggle in the banker's mind was a difficult one; but after several
+hours passed in going over the papers, after much discussion, and some
+altercation, I gained the day; and when I arose to take my leave, it was
+with my pocket-book stuffed full of bills on Pernambuco, Mexico,
+Santa Cruz, and the Havannah, with letters of credit, bonds, and other
+securities; the whole amounting to four hundred thousand piastres. The
+remaining sum of three hundred thousand, I had agreed to leave in Don
+Xafire's hands at reasonable interest. In fact, I was but too happy
+in the possession of so much to think twice about what became of the
+remainder.
+
+I presented my friend Xafire with my ruby brooch, as a souvenir,--not,
+indeed, that he needed anything to remind him of our acquaintance; and
+we parted with all the regrets of brothers about to separate.
+
+"You will stay some days with us here, I hope?" said he, as he conducted
+me to my carriage.
+
+"I intend a short visit to some of the old 'Placers' in your
+neighborhood," replied I, "after which I mean to return here;" and so,
+with a last embrace, we parted.
+
+My next care was to pay a visit to Don Estaban, for I was burning with
+anxiety to see Donna Maria once more, and to open my campaign as a
+rich suitor for her hand. The day chosen for this expedition seemed
+a fortunate one, for the road, which led through a succession of
+vineyards, was thronged with townspeople and peasants in gay holiday
+dresses, all wending their way in the same direction with ourselves. I
+asked the reason, and heard that it was the _fête_ of the Virgin de los
+Dolores, whose chapel was on the estate of Don Estaban. I bethought me
+of the time when I had planned a pilgrimage to that same shrine,--little
+suspecting that I was to make it in my carriage, with six mules and two
+outriders!
+
+In less than an hour's drive we came in sight of Don Estaban's villa,
+built on the side of a richly wooded mountain, and certainly not
+betraying any signs of the reduced fortune of which I had heard. A
+series of gardens, all terraced in the mountain, lay in front, among
+which fountains were playing and _jets d'eau_ springing. A small lake
+spread its calm surface beneath, reflecting the whole scene as in a
+mirror, with its feathery palm-trees and blossoming mimosas, beneath
+whose shade hundreds of visitors were loitering or sitting, while the
+tinkling sounds of guitar and mandolin broke the stillness.
+
+It was a strange and curious sight; for while pleasure seemed to
+hold unbounded sway on every side, the procession of priests in rich
+vestments, the smoke of censers, the red robes of acolytes, mingled with
+the throng, and the deep chanting of the liturgies was blended with the
+laughter of children and the merry sounds of light-hearted joy. "I have
+come in the very nick of time," thought I, "to complete this scene of
+festivity;" and finding that my carriage could only advance slowly along
+the crowded avenue, I descended, and proceeded on foot, merely attended
+by two lacqueys to make way for me in front.
+
+A lively controversy ran among the spectators at each side of me, of
+which I was evidently the subject, some averring that I was there as a
+portion of the pageant, an integral feature in the procession; others,
+with equal discrimination, insisting that my presence was a polite
+attention on the part of Our Lady de "Los Dolores," who had sent an
+illustrious personage to grace the festival as her representative. On
+one point all were agreed,--that my appearance amongst them was a favor
+which a whole life of devotion to me could not repay; and so rapidly
+was this impression propagated that it sped up the long approach through
+various groups and knots of people, and actually reached the villa
+itself long before my august person arrived at the outer court.
+
+Never was dignity--at least such dignity as mine--intrusted to better
+hands than those of my "Caçadores." They swaggered along, pushing back
+the crowds on each side as though it were a profanation to press too
+closely upon me. They flourished their great gold-headed canes as if
+they would smash the skulls of those whose eager curiosity outstepped
+the reverence due to me; and when at length we reached the gates of the
+court-yard, they announced my name with a grandeur and pomp of utterance
+that, I own it frankly, actually appalled myself! I had not, however,
+much time given me for such weaknesses, as, directly in front of the
+villa, at a table spread beneath an awning of blue silk, sat a goodly
+company, whose splendor of dress and profusion of jewellery bespoke them
+the great guests of the occasion. The host--it was easy to detect him
+by the elevated seat he occupied--rose as I came forward, and, with a
+humility I never can praise too highly, assured me that if any choice
+were permitted him in the matter, he would prefer dying on the spot, now
+that his worldly honors could never exceed the triumph of that day;
+that all the happiness of the festivity was as gloom and darkness to his
+soul, compared to the brilliancy my presence diffused; and not only was
+everything he owned mine from that moment forth, but, he ardently hoped
+he might have a long line of grandchildren and great-grandchildren to be
+my slaves in succeeding generations.
+
+While the worthy man poured forth these "truths" in all the flourish
+of his purest Castilian, and while I listened to them with the
+condescending urbanity with which a sovereign may be presumed to hear
+the strains of some national melody in their praise, as pleasant, though
+somewhat stale, another individual was added to the group, whose
+cunning features evinced nothing either of the host's reverence or of
+my grandeur. This was Fra Miguel, the Friar, who, in a costume of
+extraordinary simplicity, stood staring fixedly at me.
+
+"Il Condé de Cregauo!" repeated Don Estaban. "I have surely heard the
+name before. Your highness is doubtless a grandee of Spain?"
+
+"Of the first class!" said I, with a slight cough; for the confounded
+Friar never took his eyes off me.
+
+"And we have met before, Señhor Condé," said he, with a most equivocal
+stress upon the last words. "How pleasant for me to thank the Condé for
+what I believed I owed to the mere wayfarer." These words he uttered in
+a whisper close to my own ear.
+
+"Better that, than ungratefully desert a benefactor!" said I, in the
+same low tone; then, turning to Don Estaban, who stood amazed at our
+dramatic asides, I told him pretty much what I had already related to
+the banker at Guajuaqualla; only adding that during an excursion which
+it was my caprice to make alone and unaccompanied, I had been able
+to render a slight service to his fair daughter, Donna Maria de Los
+Dolores, and that I could not pass the neighborhood without inquiring
+after her health, and craving permission to kiss her hand.
+
+"Is this the Señhor Cregan of the 'Rio del Crocodielo '?" cried Don
+Estaban, in rapture.
+
+"The same whom we left in safe keeping with our Brothers of Mercy, at
+Bexar!" exclaimed the Friar, in affected amazement.
+
+"The very same, Fra Miguel, whom you humanely consigned to the Lazaretto
+of Bexar,--an establishment which has as little relation to 'mercy' as
+need be; the same who, having resumed the rank and station that belong
+to him, can afford to forget your cold-hearted desertion."
+
+"San Joachim of Ulloa knows if I did not pay for masses for your soul's
+repose!" exclaimed he.
+
+"A very little care of me in this world," said I, "had been to the full
+as agreeable as all your solicitations for me in the next; and as for
+San Joachim," added I, "no witness can be received as evidence who will
+not appear in court."
+
+"It is a pleasure to see your Excellency in the perfect enjoyment of
+your faculties," said the Fra, with a deceitful smile; but I paid little
+attention to his sneer, and turned willingly to Don Estaban, whose
+grateful acknowledgments were beyond all bounds. He vowed that he owed
+his daughter's life to my heroism, and that he and she, and all that
+were theirs, were mine.
+
+"Very gratifying tidings these," thought I, "for a man who only asks for
+an 'instalment of his debt,' and will be satisfied with the lady."
+
+"Maria shall tell you so herself," added Don Estaban, in a perfect
+paroxysm of grateful emotion. "Don Lopez y Cuesta y Goloso can never
+forget your noble conduct." Not caring much how retentive the memory of
+the aforesaid hidalgo might prove,--whom I at once set down as an uncle
+or a godfather,--I hastened after the host to where his daughter sat at
+the table. I had but time to see that she was dressed in black, with a
+profusion of diamonds scattered, not only through her hair, but over her
+dress, when she arose, and, ere I could prevent it, fell at my feet and
+covered my hands with kisses, calling me her "Salvador," in a voice of
+the wildest enthusiasm,--an emotion which seemed most electrically to
+seize upon the whole company; for I was now laid hold of by every
+limb, and hugged, kissed, and embraced by a score of people, the large
+majority of whom, I grieve to say, were the very hardest specimens of
+what is called the softer sex.
+
+
+
+One member of the company maintained a look of cold distrust towards me,
+the very opposite of all this cordiality. This was Don Lopez, who did
+not need this air of dislike to appear to my eyes the ugliest mortal I
+had ever beheld. He was exceedingly short of stature, but of an immense
+breadth; and yet, even with this, his head was far too big for his body.
+A huge spherical mass, party-colored with habits of debauch, looked like
+a terrestrial globe, of which the mouth represented the equator. His
+attempts at embellishment had even made him more horrible; for he wore
+a great wig, with long curls flowing upon his shoulders, and his immense
+moustachios were curled into a series of circles, like a ram's horn. His
+nose had been divided across the middle by what seemed the slash of a
+cutlass, the cicatrix remaining of an angry red color, amid the florid
+hue of the countenance.
+
+The expression of these benign features did not disgrace their symmetry.
+It was a cross between a scowl and a sneer; the eyes and brow performed
+the former, the mouth assuming the latter function.
+
+Blushing with shame and trembling with emotion, Maria led me towards
+him, and, in accents I can never forget, told how I had rescued her in
+the passage of the Crocodile River. The wretch scowled more darkly
+than before, as he listened, and when she ended, he muttered something
+between his bloated lips that sounded marvellously like "Picaro!"
+
+"Your godfather scarcely seems so grateful as one might expect,
+Señhora," said I.
+
+"Muerte de Dios!" he burst out, "I am her husband."
+
+Whether it was the simple fact so palpably brought forward, the manner
+of its announcement, or the terrible curse that involuntarily fell from
+my lips, I know not, but Donna Maria fell down in a swoon. Fainting,
+among foreigners, I have often found, is regarded next door to actually
+dying; and so it was here. A scene of terror and dismay burst forth that
+soon converted the festivity into an uproar of wild confusion. Every one
+screamed for aid, and dashed water in his neighbor's face. The few who
+retained any presence of mind filled out large bumpers of wine, and
+drank them off. Meanwhile, Donna Maria was sufficiently recovered to be
+conducted into the house, whither she was followed by her "marido," Don
+Lopez, whose last look as he passed me was one of insulting defiance.
+
+The cause of order having triumphed, as the newspapers say, I was led to
+one side by Don Estaban, who in a few words told me that Don Lopez was
+a special envoy from the Court of Madrid, come out to arrange some
+disputed question of a debt between the two countries; that he was a
+Grandee d'Espana, a Golden Fleece, and I don't know what besides; his
+title of Donna Maria's husband being more than enough to swallow up
+every other consideration with me. The ceremony had been performed
+that very morning. It was the wedding breakfast I had thrown into such
+confusion and dismay.
+
+Don Estaban, in his triumphal narrative of his daughter's great
+elevation in rank, of the proud place she would occupy in the proud
+court of the Escurial, her wealth, her splendor, and her dignity, could
+not repress the fatherly sorrow he felt at such a disproportioned union;
+nor could he say anything of his son-in-law but what concerned his
+immense fortune. "Had it been you, Señhor Condé," cried he, throwing
+himself into my arms,--"you, young, handsome, and well-born as you are,
+I had been happy."
+
+"Is it too late, Don Estaban?" said I, passionately. "I have wealth
+that does not yield to Don Lopez, and Maria is not--at least, she was
+not--indifferent regarding me."
+
+"Oh, it is too late, far too late!" cried the father, wringing his
+hands.
+
+"Let me speak with Maria herself. Let me also speak with this Don
+Lopez. I may be able to make him understand reason, however dull his
+comprehension."
+
+"This cannot be, Señhor Caballero," said another voice. It was Fra
+Miguel, who, having heard all that passed, now joined the colloquy.
+"Nothing short of a dispensation from the Holy See could annul the
+marriage, and Don Lopez is not likely to ask for one."
+
+"I will not suffer it," cried I, in desperation. "I would rather carry
+her away by force than permit such a desecration."
+
+"Hush! for the love of the Virgin, Señhor," cried Don Estaban. "Don
+Lopez is captain of the Alguazils of the Guard, and a Grand Inquisitor."
+
+"What signifies that in Mexico?" said I, boldly.
+
+"More than you think for, Señhor," whispered Fra Miguel. "We have not
+ceased to be good Catholics, although we are no longer subjects of Old
+Spain." There was an air of cool menace in the way these words were
+spoken that made me feel very ill at ease. I soon rallied, however,
+and, drawing the Friar to one side, said, "How many crowns will buy a
+candelabrum worthy of your chapel?"
+
+He looked at me fixedly for a few seconds, and his shrewd features
+assumed a character of almost comic cunning. "The Virgin de los Dolores
+is too simple for such luxuries, Señhor Condé," said he, with a sly
+drollery.
+
+"Would she not condescend to wear a few gems in her petticoat?" asked I,
+with the easy assurance of one not to be balked.
+
+"She has no pleasure in such vanities," said the Fra, with an
+hypocritical casting down of his eyes.
+
+"Would she not accept of an embroidered handkerchief," said I, "to
+dry her tears? I have known one of this pattern to possess the most
+extraordinary powers of consolation;" and as I spoke I drew forth a
+bank-note of some amount, and gently drew it across his knuckles.
+
+A slight tremor shook his frame, and a short, convulsive motion was
+perceptible in the hand I had "galvanized;" but in an instant, with his
+habitual calm smile and mellow voice, he said, "Your piety will bring
+a blessing upon you, Señhor, but our poor shrine is unused to such
+princely donations."
+
+"Confound the old hypocrite," muttered I to myself; "what is he at?--Fra
+Miguel," said I, assuming the business-like manner of a man who could
+not afford to lose time, "the Virgin may be, and doubtless is, all that
+you say of her; but there must needs be many excellent and devout men
+here, yourself doubtless among the number, who see numberless objects
+of charity, for whom their hearts bleed in vain. Take this, and remember
+that he who gave it, only asks as a return your prayers and good
+wishes."
+
+The Friar deposited the present in some inscrutable fold of his loose
+garment, and then, drawing himself proudly up, said, "Well, now what is
+it?"
+
+"Am I too late?" asked I, with the same purpose-like tone.
+
+"Of course you are; the ceremony is finished, the contracts are signed
+and witnessed. In an hour they will be away on their road to the
+Havannah."
+
+"You have no consolation to offer me,--no hope?"
+
+"None of an earthly character," said he, with a half-closed eye.
+
+"Confound your hypocrisy!" cried I, in a rage.
+
+"Don't be profane," said he, calmly. "What I have said is true. Heaven
+will some day take Don Lopez,--he is too good for this wicked world; and
+then, who knows what may happen?"
+
+This was but sorry comfort, waiting for the bride to become a widow;
+but, alas, I had no better! Besides it had cost me a heavy sum to
+obtain, and accordingly I prized it the more highly.
+
+If _my_ anxieties were acute, apparently Don Lopez's mind was not in
+a state of perfect serenity. He stormed and raved at everybody and
+everything. He saw, or, what was pretty much the same thing, he fancied
+he saw, a plot in the whole business, and swore he would bring the
+vengeance of the Holy Office upon everybody concerned in it. In this
+blessed frame of mind the departure of the newly wedded pair took place
+in spite of all my entreaties; Don Lopez drove away with his young
+bride,--the last I beheld of her was a white hand waving a handkerchief
+from the window of the carriage. I looked, and--she was gone!
+
+If some were kind-hearted enough to pity me, the large majority of the
+company felt very differently, and bore anything but friendly feelings
+to one who had marred the festivities and cut short--Heaven could
+only tell by what number of days--the eating, dancing, singing, and
+merriment.
+
+The old ladies were peculiarly severe in their comments, averring that
+no well-bred man would have thought of interfering with a marriage. It
+was quite time enough to talk of his passion when the others were six or
+eight months married!
+
+Of the younger ladies, a few condoled with me, praised my heroism and
+my constancy, and threw out sly hints that when I tried my luck next,
+fortune might possibly be more generous to me. Don Estaban himself
+appeared to sympathize sincerely with my sorrow, and evinced the
+warmest sense of gratitude for the past. Even the Fra tried a little
+good-nature; but it sat ill upon him, and it was easy to see that he
+entertained a great mistrust of me.
+
+From the brief experience of what I suffered in these few days, I am
+decidedly of opinion that rich men are far more impatient under reverses
+and disappointments than poor ones! It was a marvellous change for one
+like me, whose earlier years, it is unnecessary to remind the reader,
+were not passed in the lap of that comfortable wet nurse called
+"affluence;" and yet with all this brilliant present and still more
+fascinating future, at the very first instance of an opposition to my
+will, I grew sad, dispirited, and morose. I should have been very angry
+with myself for my ingratitude, but that I set it all down to the score
+of love; and so I went about the house, visiting each room where Donna
+Maria used to sit, reading her books, gazing at her picture, and feeding
+my mind with a hundred fancies which the next moment of thought told me
+were now impossible.
+
+Don Estaban, whose grief for the loss of his daughter was in a manner
+divided with mine, would not suffer me to leave him; and although the
+place itself served to keep open the wound of my regret, and the Fra's
+presence was anything but conciliatory, I passed several days at the
+villa.
+
+It would have been the greatest relief to me could I have persuaded
+myself to be candid with Don Estaban, and told him frankly the true
+story of my life. I felt that all the consolations which he offered me
+were of no avail, simply because I had misled him! The ingenious tissue
+of fiction in which I enveloped myself was a web so thin that it tore
+whenever I stirred, and my whole time was spent, as it were, in
+darning, patching, and piecing the frail garment with which I covered my
+nakedness.
+
+A dozen times every day I jumped up, determined to reveal my humble
+history; but as regularly did a sentiment of false shame hold me back,
+and a dread of old Fra Miguel's malicious leer, should he hear the
+story. Another, and a strange feeling, too, influenced me. My imaginary
+rank, birth, and station had, from the mere force of repetition, grown
+to be a portion of myself. I had played the part with such applause
+before the world that I could not find in my heart to retire behind the
+scenes and resume the humble dress of my real condition.
+
+By way of distracting my gloomy thoughts, I made little excursions in
+the surrounding country, in one of which I contrived to revisit the
+"placer," and carry away all the treasure which I had left behind me.
+This was much more considerable than I had at first believed, the gems
+being of a size and beauty far beyond any I had ever seen before; while
+the gold, in actual coined money, amounted to a large sum.
+
+Affecting to have changed my original intention of investing a great
+capital in the mines of Mexico, and resolved instead to return to
+Europe, I consulted Don Estaban as to the safest hands in which to
+deposit my money. He named a certain wealthy firm at the Havannah, and
+gave me a letter of introduction to them, requesting for me all the
+attention in their power to bestow; and so we parted.
+
+It was with sincere sorrow I shook his hand for the last time; his
+cordiality was free-hearted and affectionate; and I carry with me,
+to this hour, the memory of his wise counsels and honest precepts, as
+treasures, not the least costly, I brought away with me from the New
+World.
+
+I arrived safely at the Havannah, travelling in princely state with
+two carriages and a great baggage-wagon guarded by four mounted
+"carabinieros" who had taken a solemn oath at the shrine of a certain
+Saint Magalano to eat any bandits who should molest us,--a feat of
+digestion which I was not sorry their devotion was spared.
+
+The bankers to whom Don Estaban's letters introduced me were most
+profuse in their offers of attention, and treated me with all the
+civilities reserved for the most favored client. I only accepted,
+however, one invitation to dinner, to meet the great official
+dignitaries of the place, and the use of their box each evening at
+the opera, affecting to make delicacy of health the reason of not
+frequenting society,--a pretext I had often remarked in use among people
+of wealth and distinction, among whose privileges there is that of being
+sick without suffering.
+
+There was a French packet-ship to sail for Malaga in about ten days
+after my arrival; and as I knew that Don Lopez intended to leave that
+port for Europe, I quietly waited in the Havannah, determined to be his
+fellow-traveller. In preparing for this voyage, every thought of my
+mind was occupied, resolved to outdo the old Spaniard in luxury and
+magnificence. I ordered the most costly clothes, I engaged the most
+accomplished servants, I bespoke everything which could make the
+tediousness of the sea less irksome, even to the services of a
+distinguished performer on the guitar, who was about to visit Europe,
+and engaged to begin his journey under such distinguished patronage as
+that of the Condé de Cregano.
+
+What wonderful speculations did I revel in as I pictured to myself
+Don Lopez's ineffectual rage, and his fair wife's satisfaction, when I
+should first make my appearance on deck,--an appearance which I artfully
+devised should not take place until we were some days at sea! What
+agonies of jealousy should I not inflict upon the old Castilian! what
+delicate flatteries should I not offer up to the Donna! I had laid in
+a store of moss-rose plants, to present her with a fresh bouquet every
+morning; and then I would serenade her each night beneath the very
+window of her cabin. So perfectly had I arranged all these details to
+my own satisfaction that the voyage began to appear a mere pleasure
+excursion, every portion of whose enjoyment originated with me, and all
+whose blanks and disappointments owed their paternity to Don Lopez; so
+that, following up these self-created convictions in my usual sanguine
+manner, I firmly persuaded myself that the worthy husband would either
+go mad or jump overboard before we landed at Malaga. Let not the reader
+fall into the error of supposing that hatred to Don Lopez was uppermost
+in my thoughts,--far from it; I wished him in heaven every hour of the
+twenty-four, and would willingly have devoted one-half of my fortune
+to make a saint of him in the next world, rather than make a martyr in
+this.
+
+I was walking one evening in my banker's garden, chatting pleasantly
+on indifferent topics, when, on ascending a little eminence, we came
+in view of the sea. It was a calm and lovely evening, a very light land
+breeze was just rippling the waters of the bay, fringing the blue with
+white, when we saw the graceful spars of a small sloop of war emerge
+from beneath the shadow of the tall cliffs and stand out to sea.
+
+"The 'Moschetta,'" said he, "has got a fair wind, and will be out of
+sight of land by daybreak."
+
+"Whither is she bound?" asked I, carelessly.
+
+"For Cadiz," said he; "she came into port only this morning, and is
+already off again."
+
+"With despatches, perhaps?" I remarked, with the same tone of
+indifference.
+
+"No, Señhor; she came to convey Don Lopez y Geloso, the Spanish
+ambassador, back to Madrid."
+
+"And is he on board of her now?" screamed I, in a perfect paroxysm of
+terror. "Is _she_ too?"
+
+"He embarked about an hour ago, with his bride and suite," said the
+astonished banker, who evidently was not quite sure of his guest's
+sanity.
+
+Overwhelmed by these tidings, which gave at once the death-blow to all
+my plans, I could not speak, but sat down upon a seat, my gaze fixed
+upon the vessel which carried all my dearest hopes.
+
+"You probably desired to see his Excellency before he sailed?" said the
+banker, timidly, after waiting a long time in the expectation that I
+would speak.
+
+"Most anxiously did I desire it," said I, shrouding my sorrow under an
+affectation of important state solicitude.
+
+"What a misfortune," exclaimed he, "that you should have missed him! In
+all likelihood, had you seen him, he would have agreed to our terms."
+
+"You are right," said I, shaking my head sententiously, and neither
+guessing nor caring what he alluded to.
+
+"So that he would have accepted the guarantee," exclaimed the banker,
+with increased excitement.
+
+"He would have accepted the guarantee," echoed I, without the remotest
+idea of what the words could mean.
+
+"Oh, Madré de Dios, what an unhappy mischance is this! Is it yet too
+late? Alas! the breeze is freshening,--the sloop is already sinking
+beyond the horizon; to overtake her would be impossible! And you say
+that the guarantee would have been accepted?"
+
+"You may rely upon it," said I, the more confidently as I saw that the
+ship was far beyond the chance of pursuit.
+
+"What a benefactor to this country you might have been, Señhor, had you
+done us this service!" cried the banker, with enthusiasm.
+
+"Well, it is too late to think of it now," said I, rather captiously;
+for I began to be worried with the mystification.
+
+"Of course, for the present it is too late; but when you arrive in
+Europe, Señhor Condé, when you are once more in the land where your
+natural influence holds sway, may we entertain the hope that you will
+regard our case with the same favorable eyes?"
+
+"Yes, yes," said I, with impatience, "if I see no reason to change my
+opinions."
+
+"Upon the subject of the original loan there can be no doubt, Señhor
+Condé."
+
+"Perhaps not," said I; "but these are questions I must decline entering
+upon. You will yourself perceive that any discussion of them would be
+inconvenient and indiscreet."
+
+The diplomatic reserve of this answer checked the warmth of his
+importunity, and he bashfully withdrew, leaving me to the undisturbed
+consideration of my own thoughts.
+
+I sat till it was already near midnight, gazing on the sea, my eyes
+still turned to the track by which the vessel had disappeared, and at
+last rose to retire, when, to my amazement, I perceived my friend the
+banker, accompanied by another person, approaching towards me.
+
+"Señhor Condé," said he, in a mysterious whisper, "this is his
+Excellency the Governor;" and with these words, uttered in all the
+reverence of awe, he retired, leaving me face to face with a tall,
+dignified-looking personage, whose figure was concealed in the folds of
+a great cloak.
+
+In all the formal politeness of his rank and country, the Governor
+begged I would be seated, and took his place beside me. He explained how
+the banker, one of the richest and most respected men in the Havannah,
+had informed him of my gracious intentions respecting them, and the sad
+mishap by which my mediation was foiled. He entered at length into the
+question of the debt, and all its financial difficulties,--which, even
+had they been far less intricate and complicated, would have puzzled a
+head which never had the bump arithmetical. How he himself saw his way
+through the labyrinth, I know not; but had the sum been a moderate
+one, I vow I would rather have paid it myself than investigate it
+any farther, such an inextricable mass of complications, doubles, and
+difficulties did it involve.
+
+"Thus, you perceive," said he, at the close of a formidable sum of
+figures, "that these eighteen millions made no part of the old loan, but
+were, in fact, the first deposit of what is called the 'Cuba debt;' not
+that it ever should have had that name, which more properly belonged to
+the original Poyais three-and-a-half--You understand me?"
+
+"Perfectly; proceed."
+
+"That being the case, our liability is reduced to the sum of
+twenty-seven millions on the old four-and-a-quarters."
+
+"Clearly so."
+
+"Now we approach the difficult part of the matter," said he, "and I must
+entreat your most marked attention; for here lies the point which has
+hitherto proved the stumbling-block in the way of every negotiation."
+
+I promised the strictest attention, and kept my word till I found myself
+in a maze of figures where compound interest and decimal fractions
+danced a reel together, whose evolutions would have driven Mr. Babbage
+distracted; while the Governor, now grown "warm in the harness," kept
+exclaiming at every instant, "Do you see how the 'Ladrones' want to
+cheat us here? Do you perceive what the Picaros intend by that?"
+
+If I could not follow his arithmetic, I could at least sympathize in his
+enthusiasm; and I praised the honor of the Mexicans, while I denounced
+"the cause of roguery" over the face of the globe, to his heart's
+content.
+
+"You are satisfied about the original debt, Señhor Condé?" at last said
+he, after a "four-mile heat" of explanation.
+
+"Most thoroughly," said I, bowing.
+
+"You'd not wish for anything farther on that head?"
+
+"Not a syllable."
+
+"And as to the Cuba instalment, you see the way in which the first scrip
+became entangled in the Chihuahua 'fives,' don't you?"
+
+"Plain as my hand before me."
+
+"Then, of course, you acknowledge our right to the reserve fund?"
+
+"I don't see how it can be disputed," said I.
+
+"And yet that is precisely what the Madrid Government contest!"
+
+"What injustice!" exclaimed I.
+
+"Evident as it is to your enlightened understanding, Señhor Condé, you
+are, nevertheless, the first man I have ever found to take the right
+view of this transaction. It is a real pleasure to discuss a state
+question with a great man."
+
+Hereupon we both burst forth into an animated duet of compliments, in
+which, I am bound to confess, the Governor was the victor.
+
+"And now, Señhor Condé," said he, after a long volley of panegyric, "may
+we reckon upon your support in this affair?"
+
+"You must understand, first of all, Excellenza," replied I, "that I am
+not in any way an official personage. I am,"--here I smiled with a most
+fascinating air of mock humility,--"I am, so to speak, a humble--a very
+humble--individual, of unpretending rank and small fortune."
+
+"Ah, Señhor Condé," sighed the Governor, for he had heard of my ingots
+from the banker.
+
+"Being as I say," resumed I, "my influence is naturally small. If I
+am listened to in a matter of political importance, I owe the courtesy
+rather to the memory of my family's services than to any insignificant
+merits I may possess. The cause of justice is, however, never weak, no
+matter how humble the means of him who asserts it. Such as I am, rely
+upon me."
+
+We embraced here, and the Governor shed a few official tears at the
+thought of so soon separating from one he regarded as more than his
+brother.
+
+"We feel, Señhor Condé," said he, "how inadequate any recognition of
+ours must be for services such as yours. We are a young country and a
+Republic; honors we have none to bestow,--wealth is already your own; we
+have nothing to offer, therefore, but our gratitude."
+
+"Be it so," thought I; "the burden will not increase my luggage."
+
+"This box will remind you, however, of an interview, and recall one who
+deems this the happiest, as it is the proudest, hour of his life;" here
+he presented me with a splendid gold snuff-box containing a miniature of
+the President, surrounded by enormous diamonds.
+
+Resolving not to be outdone in generosity, and at least not to be guilty
+of dishonesty before my own conscience, I insisted upon the Governor's
+acceptance of my watch,--a very costly repeater, studded with precious
+stones.
+
+"The arms of my family--the Cregans are Irish--will bring me to your
+recollection," said I, pointing to a very magnificent heraldic display
+on the timepiece, wherein figured the ancient crown of Ireland over
+a shield, in one compartment of which was an "eye winking," the motto
+being the Gaelic word "Nabocklish," signifying "Maybe not," ironically.
+
+I will not dwell upon the other particulars of an interview which lasted
+till nigh morning. It will be sufficient to mention that I was presented
+with letters of introduction and recommendation to the Mexican Ministers
+at Paris and Madrid, instructing them to show me every attention, and
+desiring them to extend to me their entire confidence, particularly to
+furnish me with introductions to any official personages with whom
+I desired to be acquainted. This was all that I wanted; for I was
+immensely rich, and only needed permission to pass the door of the
+"great world," to mingle in that society for which my heart yearned and
+longed unceasingly.
+
+Some of my readers will smile at the simplicity which believed these
+passports necessary, and was ignorant that wealth alone is wanting to
+attain any position, to frequent any society, to be the intimate of any
+set in Europe, and that the rich man is other than he was in classic
+days,--"Honoratus, pulcher, rex denique regum."
+
+I have lived to be wiser, and to see vulgarity, coarseness, meanness,
+knavery, nay, even convicted guilt, the favored guests of royal saloons.
+The moral indictments against crime have to the full as many flaws as
+the legal ones; and we see, in every society, men, and women too, as
+notoriously criminal as though they wore the red-and-yellow livery
+of the galleys. Physicians tell us that every drug whose sanitary
+properties are acknowledged in medicine, contains some ingredients of
+a noxious or poisonous nature. May not something similar exist in the
+moral world? and even in the very healthiest mixture, may not some
+"bitter principle" be found to lurk?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII. THE VOYAGE OF THE 'ACADIE'
+
+I was not sorry to leave the Havannah on the following day. I did not
+desire another interview with my "friend" the Governor, but rather felt
+impatient to escape a repetition of his arithmetic and the story of the
+"original debt."
+
+Desirous of supporting my character as a great personage, and at the
+same time to secure for myself the pleasure of being unmolested during
+the voyage, I obtained the sole right to the entire cabin accommodation
+of the "Acadie" for myself and suite; my equipages, baggage, and some
+eight or ten Mexican horses occupying the deck.
+
+A salute of honor was fired as I ascended the ladder, and replied to by
+the forts,--a recognition of my dignity at which I took occasion to seem
+offended; assuring the captain that I was travelling in the strictest
+incognito; leaving it to his powers of calculation to compute what
+amount of retinue and followers I should have when journeying in the
+full blaze of acknowledged identity.
+
+I sat upon the poop-deck as they weighed the anchor, contrasting in my
+mind my present condition with that of my first marine experiences on
+board the "Firefly." I am richer, thought I. Am I better? Have I become
+more generous, more truthful, more considerate, more forgiving?
+
+Has my knowledge of the world developed more of good in me, or of evil;
+have my own successes ministered rather to my self-esteem than to my
+gratefulness; and have I learned to think meanly of all who have been
+beaten in the race of fortune? Alas! there was not a count of this
+indictment to which I dared plead "Not guilty." I had seen knavery
+thrive too often, not to feel a kind of respect for its ability; I saw
+honesty too often worsted, not to feel something like contempt for its
+meekness. It was difficult to feel a reverence for poverty, whose traits
+were frequently ridiculous; and it was hard to censure wealth, which
+dispensed its abundance in splendid hospitalities. Oh, the cunning
+sophistries by which we cover up our real feelings in this life,
+smothering every healthy impulse and every generous aspiration, under
+the guise of some "conventionality."
+
+My conscience was less lenient than I expected. I cut but a sorry figure
+"in the dock," and was obliged to throw myself upon the mercy of the
+court. I will be more considerate in future, said I to myself; I will
+be less exacting with my servants, and more forgiving to their
+delinquencies; I will try and remember that there is an acid property in
+poverty that sours even the sweetest "milk of human kindness." I will
+be trustful, too,--a "gentleman" ought not to be suspicious; it is
+eminently becoming a Bow Street officer, but suits not the atmosphere
+of good society. These excellent resolutions were to a certain extent "à
+propos;" for just as "the foresail began to draw," a boat came alongside
+and hailed the ship. I did not deign any attention to a circumstance
+so trivial to "one of my condition," and never noticed the conversation
+which in very animated tones was kept up between the captain and the
+stranger, until the former, approaching me with the most profound
+humility, and asking forgiveness for the great liberty he was about
+to take, said that a gentleman whom urgent business recalled to Europe
+humbly entreated permission to take his passage on board the "Acadie."
+
+"Are you not aware it is impossible, my good friend?" said I,
+listlessly. "The accommodation is lamentably restricted, as it is; my
+secretary's cabin is like a dog-kennel, and my second cook has actually
+to lie round a corner, like a snake."
+
+The captain reddened, and bit his lip in silence.
+
+"As for myself," said I, heroically, "I never complain. Let me have any
+little cabin for my bed, a small bath-room, a place to lounge in during
+the day, with a few easy sofas, and a snug crib for a dinner-room, and
+I can always rough it. It was part of my father's system never to make
+Sybarites of his boys." This I asserted with all the sturdy vehemence of
+truth.
+
+"We will do everything to make your Excellency comfortable," said the
+captain, who clearly could not see the reasons for my self-praise. "And
+as to the Consul, what shall we say to him?"
+
+"Consul, did you say?" said I.
+
+"Yes, Señhor Condé, he is the French Consul for the Republic of
+'Campecho.'" That this was a State I had never heard of before, was
+quite true; yet it was clearly one which the French Government were
+better informed upon, and deigned to recognize by an official agent.
+
+"Hold on there a bit!" shouted out the captain to the boat's crew.
+"What shall I say, Señhor Condé? The Chevalier de la Boutonerie is very
+anxious on the subject."
+
+"Let this man have his passage," said I, indolently, and lighted a
+cigar, as if to turn my thoughts in another direction, not even noticing
+the new arrival, who was hoisted up the side with his portmanteau in a
+very undignified fashion for an official character. He soon, however,
+baffled this indifference on my part, by advancing towards me, and, in a
+manner where considerable ease and tact were evident, thanked me for my
+polite consideration regarding him, and expressed a hope that he might
+not in any way inconvenience me during the voyage.
+
+Now, the Chevalier was not in himself a very prepossessing personage,
+while his dress was of the very shabbiest, being a worn-out suit of
+black, covered by a coarse brown Mexican mantle; and yet his fluency,
+his quiet assurance, his seeming self-satisfaction, gained an ascendancy
+over me at once. I saw that he was a master in a walk in which I myself
+had so long been a student, and that he was a consummate adept in the
+"art of impudence."
+
+And how mistaken is the world at large in the meaning of that art!
+How prone to call the unblushing effrontery of every underbred man
+impudence! The rudeness that dares any speech, or adventures upon
+any familiarity; the soulless, heartless, selfish intrusiveness that
+scruples not to invade any society,--these are not impudence, or they
+are such specimens of the quality as men only possess in common with
+inferior animals. I speak of that educated, cultivated "impudence"
+which, never abashed by an inferiority, felt acutely, is resolved to
+overbear worldly prejudices by the exercise of gifts that assert a
+mastery over others,--a power of rising, by the expansive force of
+self-esteem, into something almost estimable. Ordinary mortals tell lies
+at intervals, _per saltum_, as the doctors say; but these people's
+whole life is a lie. The Chevalier was a fine specimen of the class,
+and seemed as indifferent to a hundred little adverse circumstances as
+though everything around him went well and pleasantly.
+
+There was a suave dignity in the way he moved a very dubious hand
+over his unshaven chin, in the graceful negligence he exhibited when
+disposing the folds of his threadbare cloak, in the jaunty lightness
+with which, after saluting, he replaced his miserable hat on the favored
+side of his head, that conveyed the whole story of the man.
+
+What a model for my imitation had he been, thought I, if I had seen him
+in the outset of life! what a study he had presented! And yet there he
+was, evidently in needy circumstances, pressed on by even urgent want,
+and I, Con Cregan, the outcast, the poor, friendless street-runner, had
+become a "millionnaire."
+
+I don't know how it was, but certainly I felt marvellously ill at ease
+with my new friend. A real aristocrat, with all the airs of assumption
+and haughtiness, would have been a blessing compared with the submissive
+softness of the "Chevalier." Through all his flattery there seemed a
+sly consciousness that his honeyed words were a snare, and his smile
+a delusion; and I could never divest myself of the feeling that he saw
+into the very secret of my heart, and knew me thoroughly.
+
+I must become his dupe, thought I, or it is all over with me. The fellow
+will detect me for a "parvenu" long before we reach Malaga!
+
+No man born and bred to affluence could have acquired the keen insight
+into life that I possessed. I must mask this knowledge, then, if I would
+still be thought a "born gentleman." This was a wise resolve,--at least,
+its effects were immediately such as I hoped for. The Chevalier's little
+sly sarcasms, his half-insinuated "équivoques," were changed for a tone
+of wonder and admiration for all I said. How one so young could have
+seen and learned so much!--what natural gifts I must possess!--how
+remarkably just my views were!--how striking the force of my
+observations!--and all this while I was discoursing what certainly does
+not usually pass for "consummate wisdom." I soon saw that the Chevalier
+set me down for a fool; and from that moment we changed places,--_he_
+became the dupe versus _me_. To be sure, the contrivance cost me
+something, as we usually spent the evenings at piquet or écarté, and the
+consul was the luckiest of men; to use his own phrase, applied to one he
+once spoke of, "savait corriger la fortune."
+
+Although he spoke freely of the fashionable world of Paris and London,
+with all whose celebrities he affected a near intimacy, he rarely
+touched upon his New World experiences, and blinked all allusion
+whatever to the republic of "Campecho." His own history was comprised in
+the brief fact that he was the cadet of a great family of Provence,--all
+your French rogues, I remark, come from the South of France,--that he
+had once held a high diplomatic rank, from which, in consequence of the
+fall of a ministry, he was degraded, and, after many vicissitudes
+of fortune, he had become Consul-General at Campecho. "My friends,"
+continued he, "are now looking up again in the world, so that I
+entertain hopes of something better than perpetual banishment."
+
+Of English people, their habits, modes of life, and thought, the
+Chevalier spoke to me with a freedom he never would have used if he
+had not believed me to be a Spaniard, and only connected with Ireland
+through the remote chain of ancestry. This deceit of mine was one he
+never penetrated, and I often thought over the fact with satisfaction.
+To encourage his frankness on the subject of my country, I affected to
+know nothing, or next to nothing, of England; and gradually he grew to
+be more communicative, and at last spoke with an unguarded freedom which
+soon opened to me a clew of his real history.
+
+It was one day as we walked the deck together that, after discussing the
+tastes and pursuits of the wealthy English, he began to talk of their
+passion for sport, and especially horse-racing. The character of this
+national pastime he appeared to understand perfectly, not as a
+mere foreigner who had witnessed a Derby or a Doncaster, but as one
+conversant with the traditions of the turf or the private life of the
+jockey and the trainer.
+
+I saw that he colored all his descriptions with a tint meant to excite
+an interest within me for these sports. He drew a picture of an "Ascot
+meeting," wherein were assembled all the ingredients that could excite
+the curiosity and gratify the ambition of a wealthy, high-spirited
+youth; and he dilated with enthusiasm upon his own first impressions of
+these scenes, mingled with half-regrets of how many of his once friends
+had quitted the "Turf" since he last saw it!
+
+He spoke familiarly of those whose names I had often read in newspapers
+as the great leaders of the "sporting world," and affected to have known
+them all on terms of intimacy and friendship. Even had the theme been
+less attractive to me, I would have encouraged it for other reasons, a
+strange glimmering suspicion ever haunting my mind that I had heard of
+the worthy Chevalier before, and under another title; and so completely
+had this idea gained possession of me that I could think of nothing
+else.
+
+At length, after we had been some weeks at sea, the welcome cry of
+"Land!" was given from the mast-head; but as the weather was hazy and
+thick, we were compelled to shorten sail, and made comparatively little
+way through the water; so that at nightfall we saw that another day must
+elapse ere we touched mother earth again.
+
+The Chevalier and the Captain both dined with me; the latter, however,
+soon repaired to the deck, leaving us in _tête-à-tête_. It was in all
+likelihood the last evening we should ever pass together, and I felt a
+most eager longing to ascertain the truth of my vague suspicions. Chance
+gave me the opportunity. We had been playing cards, and luck--contrary
+to custom, and in part owing to my always shuffling the cards _after_ my
+adversary--had deserted _him_ and taken _my_ side. At first this seemed
+to amuse him, and he merely complimented me upon my fortune, and smiled
+blandly at my success. After a while, however, his continued losses
+began to irritate him, and I could see that his habitual command of
+temper was yielding to a peevish, captious spirit he had never exhibited
+previously.
+
+"Shall we double our stake?" said he, after a long run of ill-luck.
+
+"If _you_ prefer it, of course," said I. And we played on, but ever with
+the same result.
+
+"Come," cried he, at last, "I 'll wager fifty Napoleons on this game."
+The bet was made, and he lost it! With the like fortune he played on and
+on, till at last, as day was dawning, he had not only lost all that he
+had won from me during the voyage, but a considerable sum besides, and
+for which he gave me his check upon a well-known banker at Paris.
+
+"Shall I tell you your fortune, Monsieur le Comte?" said he, in a tone
+of bitterness that almost startled me.
+
+"With all my heart," said I, laughing. "Are you skilful as a
+necromancer?"
+
+"I can at least decipher what the cards indicate," said he. "There is no
+great skill in reading, where the print is legible." With these words,
+he shuffled the cards, dividing them into two or three packets; the
+first card of each he turned on the face. "Let me premise, Count," said
+he, "before I begin, that you will not take anything in bad part which I
+may reveal to you, otherwise I'll be silent. You are free to believe, or
+not to believe, what I tell you; but you cannot reasonably be angry if
+unpleasant discoveries await you."
+
+"Go on fearlessly," said I; "I'll not promise implicit faith in
+everything, but I 'll pledge myself to keep my temper."
+
+He began at once drawing forth every third card of each heap, and
+disposing them in a circle, side by side. When they were so arranged, he
+bent over, as if to study them, concealing his eyes from me by his
+hand; but at the same time, as I could perceive, keenly watching my
+face between his fingers. "There is some great mistake here," said he
+at length, in a voice of irritation. "I have drawn the cards wrong,
+somehow; it must be so, since the interpretation is clear as print. What
+an absurd blunder, too!" and he seemed as if about to dash the cards up
+in a heap, from a sense of angry disappointment.
+
+"Nay, nay," cried I, interposing. "Let us hear what they say, even
+though we may dispute the testimony."
+
+"If it were less ridiculous it might be offensive," said he, smiling;
+"but being as it is, it is really good laughing-matter."
+
+"I am quite impatient,--pray read on."
+
+"Of course it is too absurd for anything but ridicule," said he,
+smiling, but, as I thought, with a most malicious expression. "You
+perceive here this four of clubs, which, as the first card we turn,
+assumes to indicate your commencement in life. Now, only fancy, Monsieur
+le Comte, what this most insolent little demon would insinuate. Really,
+I cannot continue. Well, well, be it so. This card would say that you
+were not only born without rank or title, but actually in a condition
+of the very meanest and most humble poverty. Isn't that excellent?"
+said he, bursting out into a fit of immoderate laughter, in which the
+spiteful glance of his keen eyes seemed to pierce through and through
+me.
+
+As for me, I laughed too; but what a laugh it was! Never was a burst
+of natural sorrow so poignant in suffering as that forced laugh, when,
+covered with shame, I sat there, beneath the sarcastic insolence of the
+wretch, who seemed to gloat over the tortures he was inflicting.
+
+"I can scarcely expect that this opening will inspire you with much
+confidence in the oracle," said he; "the first step a falsehood,
+promises ill for the remainder of the journey."
+
+"If not very veracious," said I, "it is at least very amusing. Pray
+continue."
+
+"What would the old counts of your ancestry have said to such a
+profanation?" cried the Chevalier. "By Saint Denis, I would not
+have been the man to asperse their blood thus, in their old halls at
+Grenada!"
+
+"_We_ live in a less haughty age," said I, affecting a smile of
+indifference, and motioning to him to proceed.
+
+"What follows is the very commonest of that nonsense which is revealed
+in all lowly fortunes. You are, as usual, the victim of cold and hunger,
+suffering from destitution and want. Then there are indications of a
+bold spirit, ambitious and energetic, bursting out through all the gloom
+of your dark condition, and a small whispered word in your ear, tells
+you to hope!" While the Chevalier rattled out this "rodomontade" at a
+much greater length than I have time or patience to repeat, his eyes
+never quitted me, but seemed to sparkle with a fiend-like intelligence
+of what was passing within me. As he concluded, he mixed up the cards
+together, merely muttering, half aloud, "adventures and escapes by land
+and sea. Abundance of hard luck, to be all compensated for one day, when
+wealth in all its richest profusion is showered upon you." Then, dashing
+the cards from him in affected anger, he said, "It is enough to make men
+despise themselves, the way in which they yield credence to such rank
+tomfoolery! but I assure you, Count, however contemptible the oracle has
+shown herself to-day, I have on more than one occasion been present at
+the most startling revelations,--not alone as regarded the past, but the
+future also."
+
+"I can easily believe it, Chevalier," replied I, with a great effort to
+seem philosophically calm. "One must not reject everything that has not
+the stamp of reason upon it; and even what I have listened to to-day,
+absurd as it is, has not shaken my faith in the divination of the cards.
+Perhaps this fancy of mine is the remnant of a childish superstition,
+which I owe in great part to my old nurse. She was a Moor by birth, and
+imbued with all the traditions and superstitions of her own romantic
+land."
+
+There was a most sneering expression on the Chevalier's face as I
+uttered these words. I paid no attention to it, however, but went on:
+"From the venerable dame I myself attained to some knowledge of 'destiny
+reading,' of which I remember once or twice in life to have afforded
+very singular proofs. _My_ skill, however, usually preferred unravelling
+the 'future' to the 'present.'"
+
+"Speculation is always easier than recital," said the Chevalier, dryly.
+
+"Very true," said I; "and in reading the past I have ever found how want
+of sufficient skill has prevented my giving to the great fact of a
+story the due and necessary connection; so that, indeed, I appear as if
+distinct events alone were revealed to me, without clew to what preceded
+or followed them. I see destiny as a traveller sees a landscape by
+fitful flashes of lightning at night, great tracts of country suddenly
+displayed in all the blaze of noonday, but lost to sight the next moment
+forever! Such humble powers as these are, I am well aware, unworthy to
+bear competition with your more cultivated gifts; but if, with all
+their imperfections, you are disposed to accept their exercise, they are
+sincerely at your service."
+
+The Chevalier, I suspect, acceded to this proposal in the belief that it
+was an effort on my part to turn the topic from myself to _him_, for
+he neither seemed to believe in my skill, nor feel any interest in its
+exercise.
+
+Affecting to follow implicitly the old Moorish woman's precepts, I
+prepared myself for my task by putting on a great mantle with a hood,
+which, when drawn forward, effectually concealed the wearer's face.
+This was a precaution I took the better to study his face, while my own
+remained hid from view.
+
+"You are certainly far more imposing as a prophet than I can pretend to
+be," said he, laughing, as he lighted a cigar, and lay back indolently
+to await my revelations. I made a great display of knowledge in
+shuffling and arranging the cards, the better to think over what I was
+about; and at last, disposing some dozen in certain mystic positions
+before me, I began.
+
+"You startled _me_, Chevalier, by a discovery which only wanted truth
+to make it very remarkable. Let me now repay _you_ by another which I
+shrewdly suspect to be in the same condition. There are four cards now
+before me, whose meaning is most positive, and which distinctly assert
+that you, Chevalier de la Boutonerie, are no chevalier at all!"
+
+"This is capital." said he, filling out a glass of wine and drinking it
+off with the most consummate coolness.
+
+"And here," said I, not heeding his affected ease,--"here is another
+still stranger revelation, which says that you are not a Frenchman, but
+a native of a land which latterly has taken upon it to supply the rest
+of the world with adventurers,--in plain words, a Pole."
+
+"It is true that my father, who held a command in the Imperial army,
+lived some years in that country," said he, hastily; "but I have yet to
+learn that he forfeited his nationality by so doing."
+
+"I only know what the cards tell me," said I, spreading out a mass of
+them before me, and pretending to study them attentively; "and here is a
+complication which would need a cleverer expositor than I am. Of all
+the tangled webs ever I essayed to unravel, this is the knottiest. Why,
+really, Chevalier, yours must have been a life of more than ordinary
+vicissitude, or else my prophetic skill has suffered sadly from disuse."
+
+"Judging from what you have just told me, I rather lean to the latter
+explanation," said he, swallowing down two glasses of wine with great
+rapidity.
+
+"I suspect such to be the case, indeed," said I, "for otherwise I could
+scarcely have such difficulty in reading these mystic signs, once so
+familiar to me, and from which I can now only pick up a stray phrase
+here and there. Thus I see what implies a high diplomatic employment,
+and yet, immediately after, I perceive that this is either a mistake of
+mine, or the thing itself a cheat and a deception."
+
+"It surely does not require divination to tell a diplomatic agent that
+he has served on a foreign mission," said the Chevalier, with a sneer.
+
+"Perhaps not, but I see here vestiges of strange occurrences in which
+this fact is concerned. A fleeting picture passes now before my eyes:
+I see a race-course, with its crowds of people and its throng of
+carriages, and the horses are led out to be saddled, and all is
+expectation and eagerness, and--what! This is most singular! the vision
+has passed away, and I am looking at two figures who stand side by side
+in a richly furnished room, a man and a woman. _She_ is weeping, and
+_he_ consoling her. Stay! He lifts his head--the man is yourself,
+Chevalier!"
+
+"Indeed!" said he; but this time the word was uttered in a faint voice,
+while a pallor that was almost lividness colored his dark features.
+
+"She murmurs a name; I almost caught it," exclaimed I, as if
+carried away by the rapt excitement of prophecy. "Yes! I hear it now
+perfectly,--the name is Alexis!"
+
+A fearful oath burst from the Chevalier, and with a bound lie sprung to
+his feet, and dashed his closed fists against his brow. "Away with
+your jugglery, have done with your miserable cheat, sir,--that can only
+terrify women and children. Speak out like a man: who are you, and what
+are you?"
+
+"What means this outrage, sir? How have you forgotten yourself so far
+as to _use_ this language to _me?_" said I, throwing back the mantle and
+standing full before him.
+
+"Let us have no more acting, sir, whether it be as prophet or bully,"
+said he, sternly. "You affect to know _me_, who I am, and whence I have
+come. Make the game equal between us, or it may be worse for you."
+
+"You threaten me, then," said I, calmly.
+
+"I do," was the answer.
+
+"It is therefore open war between us?"
+
+"I never said so," replied he, with a most cutting irony of manner;
+"but whatever secret malice can do,--and you shall soon know what it
+means,--I pledge myself you will not find yourself forgotten."
+
+"Agreed, then; now leave me, sir."
+
+"I am your guest, sir," said he, with a most hypocritical air of
+deference and courtesy. "It is surely scant politeness to drive me hence
+when I am not in a position to find another shelter; we are upon the
+high seas; I cannot walk forth and take my leave. Believe me, sir, the
+character you would fain perform before the world would not act so."
+
+Notwithstanding the insult conveyed in the last words, I determined
+that I would respect "him who had eaten my salt;" and with a gesture of
+assent, for I could not speak, I moved away.
+
+No sooner was I alone than I repented me of the rash folly into which,
+for the indulgence of a mere petty vengeance, I had been betrayed. I saw
+that by this absurd piece of malice I had made an enemy of a man whose
+whole career vouched for the danger of his malevolence.
+
+How could he injure me? What species of attack could he make upon me?
+Whether was it more likely that he would avoid me as one dangerous to
+himself, or pursue me wherever I went by his vengeance? These were hard
+questions to solve, and they filled my mind so completely that I neither
+heeded the bustle which heralded the arrival on board of the pilot,
+or the still busier movement which told that we were approaching the
+harbor. At last I went on deck and approached the bulwark, over which
+a number of the crew were leaning, watching the course of a boat that,
+with all her canvas spread, was making for land. "The pilot-boat," said
+the captain, in reply to my glance of inquiry; "she is lying straight
+in, as the consul is anxious to land at once."
+
+"Is he on board of her?" said I, with an anxiety I could not conceal.
+
+"Yes, Señhor Condé, and your Excellency's secretary too."
+
+Was it my fear suggested the notion, or was it the simple fact, but I
+thought that the words "Count" and "Excellency" were articulated with
+something like a sneer? I had no opportunity to put the matter to the
+test, for the captain had already quitted the spot, and was busy with
+the multifarious cares the near approach to land enforces. My next
+thought was, Why had my secretary gone ashore without my orders?
+Was this a piece of zeal on his part to make preparations for our
+disembarking, or might it be something worse? and, if so, what? Every
+moment increased the trouble of my thoughts. Certainly, misfortunes do
+cast their shadows before them, for I felt that strange and overwhelming
+sense of depression that never is causeless. I ran over every species
+of casualty that I could imagine, but except highway robbery, actual
+"brigandage," I could not fancy any real positive danger to be
+anticipated from the Chevalier.
+
+How different was my mood from what I expected it would have been on
+nearing shore! Where were all my visions of pomp and splendor? Where the
+proud circumstances of my more than princely state? Alas! I would have
+given a full fourth of my wealth to be landed unostentatiously and
+quietly, and to have my mind relieved from all dread of the cursed
+Chevalier.
+
+That I did not overrate the peril before me, events soon proved.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX. THE CARCEL MORENA AT MALAGA
+
+As we sailed proudly into the harbor of Malaga, my attention--at
+first directed to the striking features of the shore, where lay a
+city actually embowered amid orange-groves--was soon drawn off by the
+appearance of a boat, rowed by twelve men, which approached the ship.
+The national flag of Spain floated from a standard in her stern, and I
+could mark the glitter of arms and uniforms on board of her.
+
+"The officers of health, I suppose?" said I, carelessly, to the captain.
+
+"No, Señhor, these are soldiers of the garrison."
+
+"Ah, I understand," said I, "they are on the alert as to whom they land
+in these troublous times; for it was the period of the great Carlist
+struggle.
+
+"Possibly," was his dry remark, and he moved away.
+
+A hoarse challenge from the boat was answered by something from the
+ship; and the "accommodation-ladder" was immediately lowered, and an
+officer ascended to the deck, followed by two of his men, with their
+side-arms.
+
+Some of the ordinary greetings being interchanged between the captain
+and the officer, the latter said, "My business here is with the person
+styling himself the Condé de Cregano. Where is he?"
+
+"That is my name, Señhor," said I, with a studious admixture of civility
+and condescension.
+
+"Please to walk this way, sir," said the officer, leading towards the
+poop cabin, and preceding me with a degree of assurance that boded ill
+for his impression of my dignity.
+
+As we entered the cabin, I could hear the two soldiers taking up their
+places as sentries at the door.
+
+"I wish to see your passport, Señhor," said he, as he seated himself at
+the table.
+
+"My passport shall be produced at the fitting time," said I, "when I
+arrive on shore. Here I have no need of any."
+
+"You are wrong, sir; once within that circle of buoys, at the mouth of
+the port, you are within the limits of the shore authorities; but were
+it even otherwise, these are not the times for scruples, and I, for one,
+would not hesitate to arrest you on the information I have received."
+
+"Information you have received, sir!" exclaimed I, in terror and
+amazement.
+
+"Yes, sir; I may as well tell you that Malaga is not in the possession
+of your friends,--you will not find a Carlist garrison ready to give
+you a salute of honor at your landing. Far less formal, but not less
+peremptory attentions await you. But produce your papers, for I have no
+time to lose."
+
+I saw at a glance that my position was most perilous, and as rapidly
+resolved to make an effort for safety. "Señhor Capitana," said I,
+placing an open pocket-book stuffed with bank-notes before him, "please
+to accept my passport, and to keep it in your own safe possession. I
+shall put to sea again, and order the captain to land me at some port in
+Italy."
+
+"It is too late," said he, with a sigh, as he pushed the pocket-book
+away; "the informations against you are already transmitted to Madrid."
+
+"Great heavens! and for whom do they take me?" cried I.
+
+"I cannot tell; I never heard. I only know that I have the order for
+your arrest as the person assuming to be 'the Condé Cregano.'"
+
+"What crime is laid to my charge? Have I defrauded any one? What is
+alleged against me?"
+
+"Show me your passport," said he again.
+
+"There it is," said I, producing the document which by Don Estaban's
+intervention I had obtained from the authorities of Guajuaqualla, and
+wherein I was called a native of Grenada and a noble of Spain.
+
+"And all this is true as set forth?" said the officer.
+
+"It is a principle of law in my native land that no prisoner is called
+upon to criminate himself," said I.
+
+"In that case you are no Spaniard," said the officer, shrewdly, "nor,
+indeed, does your accent so bespeak you. You are now under arrest."
+He opened the door as he said this, and, pointing me out to the two
+sentries, whispered something too low for me to overhear. This done, he
+left the cabin and went upon deck.
+
+I looked up from the chair where I sat, into the faces of my two
+guardians, and a more ill-favored pair of gentlemen I never beheld.
+Ill-fed but dissipated-looking rascals, they seemed more like highwaymen
+than soldiers. Still, even a chance was not to be thrown away, and so
+I whispered in a soft voice: "My worthy friends, in that writing-case
+yonder there are bank-notes to a very large amount. In a few moments
+they will be taken away from me, never to be restored. I may as well
+have the satisfaction of knowing that two brave but poor men are
+benefited by them. Bring me the desk, and I'll give them to you." They
+looked at each other and they looked at me; they then looked towards
+the door and the skylight, and although without speaking, it was plain
+enough to see what was passing in their minds.
+
+"Remember," said I, "I ask nothing in return from you. I shall not
+attempt to escape, nor, were I to do so, could you aid me in any way. I
+merely wish to assist two worthy fellows who certainly do not look like
+the 'spoiled children of fortune.'"
+
+They hesitated and seemed afraid, and at last they whispered for a few
+seconds together; and then one of them went over, and, taking up the
+desk, laid it down before me. "You can make a fair division at another
+time," said I; "it is better not to waste precious moments now, but at
+once conceal the money about your persons. Here are some eight or ten
+thousand piastres,--and here, fully as much more for you. These are
+Mexican notes for a large sum, and these are bills on Amsterdam and
+Hamburgh for great amounts. That's right, my lads, make short work of
+it,--in your boots, in your shakos; anywhere for the present, only be
+quiet!"
+
+Truly they merited all my encomiums! To "stow away" plunder, I 'd back
+them against any pair who ever stopped a diligence on the high road; nor
+was it without some little difficulty I could persuade them to leave any
+money in the desk, as a precaution to prevent the suspicion of what
+had actually occurred. As I aided them in the work of concealment,
+I artfully contrived to possess myself of one paper,--the Havannah
+banker's receipt for the large deposits I had left in his hands; and
+this I managed to slip within the lining of my travelling-cap. It was a
+last anchor of hope, if ever I were to weather the storm around me!
+
+Our work had scarcely been completed, and the desk replaced in its
+former situation, when the officer returned. He briefly informed me that
+seals had been placed on all my effects, that my household was placed
+under an arrest similar to my own, and that when I had pointed out the
+various articles of my property in the cabin, there was nothing more for
+me to do but to accompany him on shore.
+
+As I was not suffered to take any portion of my baggage with me, even of
+my clothes, I was soon in the boat and pulling rapidly for the land. The
+quays and the jetty were crowded with people whose curiosity I at once
+perceived had no other object than myself; and although some did not
+scruple to exhibit towards me signs of dislike and dissatisfaction, I
+could remark that others regarded me with a compassionate, and even a
+kindly look. All were, however, scrupulously silent and respectful,
+and touched their hats in salutation as I ascended the stairs of the
+landing-place.
+
+This feeling, to my considerable astonishment, I perceived extended even
+to the soldiery, one or two of whom saluted as I passed. In any case,
+thought I, it is for no insignificant offender I am taken; and even that
+is some comfort, provided my crime be not high treason.
+
+I was conducted straight to the "Carcel Morena," a large, sombre-looking
+building which was at once fortress, prison, and residence of the
+Governor, exhibiting a curious mixture of these incongruous functions in
+all its details.
+
+The apartment into which I was ushered was a large saloon, dimly lighted
+by narrow windows piercing the thick walls. The furniture had once been
+handsome, but from time and neglect had become worn and disfigured. A
+small table, spread with a very tolerable breakfast, stood in one of
+the windows, at which I was invited to seat myself, and then I was
+left alone to my own lucubrations. Hunger prevailed over grief, I ate
+heartily; and having concluded my meal, amused myself by studying
+the Trojan war, which was displayed upon the walls in a very ancient
+tapestry.
+
+I had traced the fortunes of Greeks and Trojans on the walls till 1 was
+well-nigh wearied. I had even gazed upon the little patches of brown
+grass beneath the windows till my eyes grew dim with watching; but no
+one came to look after me, and, in the unbroken silence around, I
+half feared that I should be utterly forgotten, and left, like the old
+tapestry, to die of moths and years; but at last, as day was declining,
+I heard something like the clank of arms and the tramp of soldiery,
+and soon the sounds were more distinctly marked, approaching my door.
+Suddenly the two leaves of the folding-door were thrown wide, and an
+elderly man, in a general's uniform, followed by two other officers,
+entered.
+
+Without taking any notice of the salute I made him, he walked towards
+the fireplace, and, standing with his back to it, said to one of his
+aides-de-camp, "Read the 'procès-verbal,' José."
+
+José bowed, and, taking from his sabretache a very lengthy roll
+of paper, began to read aloud, but with such rapidity and such
+indistinctness withal that I could only, and with the greatest
+difficulty, catch a stray word here and there. The titles of her Majesty
+the Queen appeared to occupy full ten minutes, and an equal time to be
+passed in setting forth the authority under whose jurisdiction I then
+stood. These over, there came something about an individual who, born a
+Mexican or a native of Texas, has assumed the style, title, and dignity
+of a Count of Spain, such rank being taken for purposes of deception,
+and the better to effect certain treasonable designs, to be set forth
+hereafter. After this there came a flourish about the duties of
+loyalty and fidelity to the sovereign, whose private virtues came in by
+parenthesis, together with a very energetic denunciation on all base
+and wicked men who sought to carry dissension into the bosom of
+their country, and convulse with the passions of a civil war a nation
+proverbially tranquil and peace-loving.
+
+Nothing could be less interesting than the style of this paper, except
+the manner of him who recited it. State truisms, in inflated language,
+and wearisome platitudes about nothing, received no additional grace
+from a snuffling nasal intonation and a short cough.
+
+I listened at first with the anxiety of a man whose fortunes hung on the
+issue; then, as the vague, rambling character of the document diminished
+this interest, I heard with more indifference; and, lastly, completely
+wearied by the monotony of the voice, and the tiresome iterations of
+the style, I could not prevent my thoughts from wandering far from the
+affair in hand.
+
+What fearful crimes were alleged against me,--what dire offences I was
+charged with,--I was not to hear, since, lost in the pleasant land of
+day-dreams, I fancied myself strolling in the shade of a forest, with
+Donna Maria beside me, while I poured out a most impassioned narrative
+of my love and fidelity. Nor was it till the reading was concluded, and
+a loud "Hem!" from the General resounded through the chamber, that I
+remembered where I was.
+
+"Prisoner!" said he, in a stern, authoritative tone, "you have now heard
+the nature of the charge against you, and the reasons of your arrest;
+you will answer certain questions, the replies to which, if not in
+accordance with truth, constitute the crime of 'Traicion,' the penalty
+being death. What is your name?"
+
+"Con Cregan."
+
+"Native of what country?"
+
+"Ireland."
+
+"What rank and position do you hold in society?"
+
+"A variable one,--as luck favors me."
+
+"What trade or profession do you follow?"
+
+"Whatever seems most convenient at the moment."
+
+"Have you served?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"In the land or sea service?"
+
+"In both."
+
+"With what grade?"
+
+"Nothing very distinguished."
+
+"Have you ever held the command of an expedition?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"With what object, and where?"
+
+"In the prairies of South America, to shoot red-deer."
+
+"Remember, sir," said the General, "this is no occasion for untimely
+jest; these sallies may cost you more dearly than you think for."
+
+"If I am to speak the truth," said I, boldly, "I must answer as I have
+done. If you want fiction, I 'm ready for you at a moment's notice."
+
+"Make a note of that, José!--' says that he is perfectly indifferent
+whether he tells truth or falsehood.'"
+
+"And add, by way of parenthesis," said I, "that the General is precisely
+of my own way of thinking."
+
+"Write down,' insults the commission,'" said the General, boiling with
+rage.
+
+The paragraph seemed a full one, for the interrogating was not resumed
+for some minutes.
+
+"Now, sir," resumed the General, "state your object in coming to the
+country."
+
+"To get out of it as fast as I could."
+
+"For whose use were the arms provided,--the horses and horse equipage
+with which you embarked?"
+
+"My own."
+
+"Name the agent or agents of Don Carlos with whom you have held
+correspondence?"
+
+"None. I never knew any."
+
+"By whose hands were the large sums of money in your possession
+intrusted to you?"
+
+"I found them."
+
+"How, and where?"
+
+"In a hole."
+
+The General's face grew purple; and more than once I could see the
+struggle it cost him to repress his bursting indignation. And in the
+mutterings he let fall to his secretary, it was easy to mark that his
+comments on the evidence were not too favorable.
+
+"Were you acquainted with Brigadier Hermose Gonzillos?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nor with his brother, the Canon Gonzillos?"
+
+"No."
+
+"When did you first meet Señhor Ruy Peres Y' Hacho?"
+
+"Never saw him in my life."
+
+"Nor held intercourse with him?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Were not much in his company, nor intrusted to him the secret details
+of the expedition?"
+
+"I know nothing of what you're talking about."
+
+"Produce Ruy Peres," said the General; and the door opened, and the
+Chevalier, dressed in a military uniform and with several decorations of
+foreign orders, entered.
+
+"Do you know this gentleman?" said the General, dryly.
+
+"I know him for a Pole whose name is Alexis Radchoffsky--at least, under
+such a name he once lived in London, and is well known to the police
+there."
+
+"Go on," said the General to the secretary. "On being confronted with
+the Señhor Ruy Peres, the prisoner became suddenly abashed, and at
+once confessed that he had known him intimately several years before in
+London."
+
+"Is that man a witness against me?" asked I, eagerly.
+
+"Attend to me, sir," said the General, while he made a sign to the
+Chevalier to retire. "Neither subterfuge nor insolence will avail you
+here. You are perfectly well known to us,--your early history, your late
+intrigues, your present intentions."
+
+"With such intimate knowledge of all about me, General," said I,
+coolly, "have n't we been wasting a great deal of valuable time in this
+interrogatory?"
+
+"And, notwithstanding repeated admonitions, persisted in using the most
+indecorous language to the commission." These words the General dictated
+in a loud voice, and they were immediately taken down by his secretary.
+
+"Señhor Concregan," said he, addressing me, "you stand now committed,
+by virtue of a royal warrant, a copy of which, and of the charges laid
+against you, will be duly transmitted to you. Whenever the authorities
+have decided whether your offence should be submitted to a civil or
+military tribunal, you will be brought up for trial."
+
+"I am an English subject, sir," said I; "I belong to a nation that never
+permits its meanest member to be trampled on by foreign tyranny, far
+less will it suffer his liberty or life to be sacrificed to a false and
+infamous calumny. I claim the protection of my ambassador, or at least
+of such a representative of my country as your petty locality may
+possess. I desire--" What I was about to demand as my birthright was not
+destined to be made public on this occasion, since at a signal from the
+General the door opened, and two soldiers, advancing, adjusted handcuffs
+on my wrists, and led me away even before I had recovered from the
+surprise the whole proceeding occasioned me.
+
+Whether it was that I enjoyed the prerogative of a State prisoner, or
+that the authorities were not quite clear that they were justified in
+what they were doing, I cannot say; but my prison discipline was of the
+very mildest order. I had a most comfortable room, with a window looking
+seaward over the beautiful bay of Malaga, taking a wide range along
+shore, where gardens and villas and orange-groves extended for miles.
+The furniture was neat, and with some pretensions to luxury; and the
+fare, I am bound to own, was excellent. Books, and even newspapers, were
+freely supplied to me, and, save that at certain intervals the clank of
+a musket, and the shuffling of feet in the corridor without, told that
+the sentry of my guard was being relieved, I could have fancied myself
+in some homely inn, without a restriction upon my liberty. My handcuffs
+had been removed the moment I had entered my chamber, and now the iron
+stanchions of my window were the only reminders of a jail around me.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX. CONSOLATIONS OF DIPLOMACY
+
+The first revulsion of feeling over, the terrible shock of that fall
+from the pinnacle of wealth and greatness to the lowly condition of a
+prisoner unfriended and destitute,--I actually began to enjoy my life,
+and feel something wonderfully like happiness. I do not pretend to
+say that my disappointment was not most acute and painful, or that I
+suffered little from the contemplation of my ruined hopes. No, far from
+it; but my grief, like the course of a mountain torrent, soon ran off,
+and left the stream of my life clear and untroubled as ever. It is true,
+thought I, this is a terrible contrast to what I was a week ago; but
+still, is it not a long way in advance of what my original condition
+promised? I am a prisoner in a Spanish fortress: is not even that
+better than a peasant in an Irish hovel? The very cares with which I am
+surrounded bespeak a certain consequence pertaining to me; I am one whom
+ministers of State think and speak about, whose name is often on their
+lips, whose memory haunts them in their half-waking moments. Is not this
+something? Is it not a great deal to one whose whole ideal was to avoid
+the bypaths of life, and take his course in its very widest and busiest
+thoroughfares?
+
+The occupations in which I passed my days greatly contributed to sustain
+this pleasant illusion. I was eternally writing letters, memorials,
+statements of facts, and what not, of interminable narratives, to all
+our ministers and consuls, invoking their aid, and protesting in the
+name of the British nation against the unwarrantable tyranny of my
+imprisonment. It is quite true that these lengthy documents of
+mine seemed to meet but sorry acceptance. For a length of time no
+acknowledgment of their reception ever reached me; but at last the
+following dry epistle informed me that my memorials had reached their
+destination:--
+
+
+     "Sir,--I am directed by the Secretary of State for
+     Foreign Affairs to acknowledge the receipt of your memorials
+     dated the 9th, 12th, 18th, 23rd, and 25th of last month,
+     together with various letters bearing on the same subjects
+     since that time, and to state, in reply, that the matter of
+     your complaint is at present under investigation with the
+     authorities of the Spanish Government.
+
+     "His Lordship the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
+     desires me to add his regrets that even in the event of your
+     liberation he can hold out no prospect whatever that any
+     compensation will be made to you for the loss of property
+     you allege to have suffered, and which, of course, was
+     incurred as one of the many risks natural to the course of
+     such an expedition as you were engaged in.
+
+     "I have the honor to be, sir,
+
+     "F. O., London,
+
+     "Your most obedient servant,
+
+     "Oct. 18--.
+
+     "Joseph Backslip.
+
+     "To Cornelius Cregan, Esq."
+
+This was a sad damper! To think that I was to lose the immense amount
+of property with which I had embarked,--the gems and jewels, the rare
+objects of art, the equipages, the beautiful horses of purest Mexican
+blood! not to speak of that far greater loss,--the large sum in actual
+money! But, then, what a consolation to remember that a Secretary of
+State was mingling his sorrows with my own on the subject; that he
+actually gave an official character to his grief, by desiring the
+Under-Secretary to convey "his regrets" in a despatch! his regrets--to
+me, Con Cregan! What inestimable words! That ever I should live to know
+that the Right Honorable Lord Puzzleton, the adored cherub of fashion,
+the admired of _coteries_, the worshipped of "the Commons," the favored
+guest of Windsor, should, under the big seal of his office, assure me of
+his heartfelt sympathy!
+
+I closed my eyes as I read the paragraph, and imagined that we were
+weeping together, like the "Babes in the Wood." "How they wrong this
+man," thought I, "in England; what calumnies they circulate about his
+levity, his heartlessness, and so forth; and see! look at him here
+mingling in the private sorrows of an individual, and taking part in all
+the private woes of Con Cregan." By this beautiful artifice I contrived
+to raise the aforesaid Con to a very considerable elevation in his
+own esteem; and thus, worthy reader, by pleasant fancies and ingenious
+illusions,--wares that every man can fashion at will,--did I contrive to
+make my prison at Malaga a most endurable resting-place, and even now to
+make its retrospect full of sweet memories.
+
+Nor were my imaginings limited to such visions as these, for I loved to
+compare my condition with that of other exalted prisoners, and fancy how
+_my_ conduct would read by the side of _theirs_. If I were less piously
+resigned, less submissive, than Silvio Pellico, assuredly I showed more
+dignity in my fall than the Exile of St. Helena. I bore all the little
+vexations of my lot with a haughty reserve that entirely subdued every
+sign of a querulous nature, and seemed to say, "My time will come yet!"
+
+At last it appeared either as if my memorials were never opened, or,
+if opened, never read. No answer came whatever! and even the Malaga
+newspapers, which, in the dearth of shipping intelligence, would
+often insert some little notice of me, stating how "the 'Conde' walked
+yesterday for an hour upon 'the leads';" "the 'Condé' partook with an
+appetite of a partridge, and conversed freely with the officer on duty,"
+and so on,--now they never by any chance alluded to me; and I seemed,
+for all the interest the world manifested about me, to have suffered a
+species of moral decease. It was the unhealthy season of the year, and
+the Consul had absented himself, leaving his functions to his "Vice,"
+who, having also a "constitution," had departed likewise, bequeathing
+the traditions and cares of office to his Dutch colleague, who neither
+spoke nor read any other tongue than that muddy language begotten of
+dikes and fogs. Wearied possibly by the daily arrival of half a quire
+of my remonstrances, or curious to see the machine by which these broad
+sheets were struck off with such unfailing celerity, this official
+arrived one day at the prison with an order from the Governor,
+permitting him to see the "Condé."
+
+I was, as usual, writing away, when the turnkey announced his Excellency
+(every official is Excellency if too low for Highness), Mynheer van
+Hoagendrius, and a very short and immensely fat personage, dressed in
+a kind of black-and-white plaid jacket and trousers, entered. He looked
+like a huge chess-board set on legs. A grunt, a snort, a thick sound
+like a struggle between choking and gurgling, ensued, which I concluded
+to be something in Dutch, and he seated himself opposite me.
+
+I made my compliments to him, polyglot-wise, in French, English,
+Spanish, and at last German,--the last evidently striking a spark out of
+the embers of his cold intelligence, for he fixed his dull eyes upon
+me, and seemed as though he would soon wake up. Animated by this hope,
+I proceeded in my very best "Deutsch" to expound my sorrows to him.
+Fortunately for me, my German had been acquired in the low companionship
+of "skippers" and sailors, and consequently bore a nearer resemblance
+to its half-brother of Holland than the more cultivated tongues of
+professors and philosophers.
+
+I cannot, to this hour, say whether it arose from any interest in the
+narrative, or whether proceeding from the laudable desire to come at the
+truth in a question of much difficulty, but the Mynheer now came to me
+each morning, and usually stayed two hours, during which I talked and
+he smoked incessantly. Often, when he left me, have I asked myself "what
+progress I had made in his good opinion? how far had I made him master
+of my case?" but the question remained without an answer; for if
+occasionally a stray flash of intelligence would light up his dull
+features, on following the direction of his eyes I could perceive that
+the animation arose from the sight of some fishing-boat returning loaded
+with turbot, or that the savory odor of salt cod had saluted him
+from the shore. I felt at length as though I were sailing without
+a log-line,--nothing to mark my progress or say in what latitude I
+cruised.
+
+My Dutch friend had now been visiting me for above six weeks, during
+which, if he had not supplied himself with every detail of my calamity,
+he had at least smoked all the choice tobacco which, as a favor from
+the Governor, I was permitted to land for my own use; and as yet he had
+given no signs of life other than the act of fumigation aforesaid. I was
+half angry, half amused, at the little act of dexterity with which he
+emptied the last remnant of my pure Havannah into his pipe, and heard,
+with a kind of malicious satisfaction, the little sigh with which he
+pushed the empty canister from him.
+
+He seemed lost for some time in the slough of his Dutch reflections,
+but at length he fixed his eyes upon me, and in a low, suffocating tone
+said, "Hast a file?"
+
+"No," said I.
+
+"There, then," said he, giving me a small parcel tightly tied up in
+paper. "Farewell!" and he moved towards the door before I could recover
+from my surprise to thank him. As he reached it, he turned about, and
+in a very significant voice said, "Der bood est hardt,"--a species of
+Plat-Deutsch I might not have understood if unaccompanied by a gesture
+which implied that the ground was hard beneath my window, as a caution
+to me in the event of a leap.
+
+No sooner was I alone than I opened my precious packet, which, besides
+two files, contained a small phial of aquafortis and another of
+oil,--the latter a useful adjunct to prevent the grating noise being
+heard. Having concealed the implements in a rat-hole, I proceeded to
+examine the iron bars of the window, which, although seemingly of great
+size and strength, were in reality coated with a rust of more than half
+their actual thickness. This was a most inspiriting discovery, and at
+once animated me with glowing hopes of success.
+
+As I could only work during the night, I affected illness as a
+reason for keeping my bed during the day, when I slept profoundly and
+refreshingly.
+
+The non-success of all my efforts to interest diplomacy in my cause was
+just beginning to impress me with a sense of gloom and despondency, when
+this new incident occurred to rally my drooping courage. Life had now an
+object; and that, if not always enough for happiness, is sufficient at
+least to rouse those energies which, when stagnant, produce despair.
+How I longed for night to come, that I might resume my labor! with what
+resolute industry I worked on during the dark hours, only ceasing when
+the change of the sentries brought the guard close beneath my window,
+and even grudging the few seconds thus wasted! With what delight I used
+to measure the fissure which, at first only deep enough for my nail, was
+now sufficient to cover the file! This I used to conceal each morning
+with bread colored by the rusty powder that fell from the filing, so
+that, to all seeming, everything was in its usual order.
+
+This was almost the only period of my life in which I remembered my
+father: from some similarity in our condition, perhaps, he was now
+seldom out of my thoughts. I used to wonder if he were still alive,
+and how situated; whether he was yet a convict going forth in chains to
+daily toil, or a "ticket-of-leave" man working at some settlement in the
+"Bush." Did he ever think of me? Did he ever dream of his native land,
+or wish to return to it? And what prospect of escape did fortune hold
+out to him? That, after all, was the great link which bound him to my
+thoughts! Was there any silent and sympathizing Dutchman to take pity on
+his captivity?
+
+At the close of the fifth week, I had the inestimable pleasure of
+"reporting the breach practicable," or, in less sounding phrase, of
+assuring myself that the middle bar of the window was removable at will,
+and thus a free egress was permitted me to an extensive terrace,
+which, with a low parapet, overlooked the bay for miles. This was about
+five-and-twenty feet from the ground, and was guarded beneath by a
+sentry, one of a chain of sentinels, whose "watch" extended around
+the entire fortress. The descent and the guard were then the only
+difficulties which now remained to be overcome,--so far, at least, as
+mere liberation from the prison walls extended. I am sure I invented
+at least fifty choice stratagems which afterthought always showed were
+perfectly worthless. I bethought me of bribing the sentry with the few
+gold pieces which I still possessed; but what security had I that he
+might not resist the seduction, or betray me even after receiving the
+money?
+
+The fall, too, was considerable; nor was there anything to which I could
+attach my bedclothes to lower myself to the ground. It must be "a drop;"
+and what a situation should I be in were I to break a bone, or even
+sprain my ankle in the effort! Alas! I now perceived that although the
+most laborious portion of my work was accomplished, the most difficult
+still remained to be done.
+
+The obstacles to mere escape were sufficiently great to prevent me
+even thinking of the course to be pursued after I reached the ground
+in safety, for I was without friend, shelter, passport, or any means of
+disguise or concealment whatever.
+
+I pondered long and carefully over the question; and already had two
+dreary weeks passed over since I had cut through the bar, and yet, so
+far as I could see, no nearer to liberation than when the solid iron
+enclosed me. My mind began to sink under the fatigue of unceasing
+contrivance, and a dreamy, dreary sense of hopelessness seemed gaining
+on me. It had been a dark, cloudy day, with gusts of wind, followed by
+intervals of calm. The air was moist and heavy, and charged with the
+depressing influences which the "mestrale," that sickliest of all winds,
+ever brings. Masses of leaden-colored clouds floated low over the sea,
+which was broken into a short angry "jobbe," as if after a storm.
+
+All betokened the approach of a gale of wind, and, as night set in, the
+signs of bad weather thickened. Scarcely had the sun set, when it became
+dark as pitch; the wind, which had lulled for a brief space previous,
+now sprung up, and the sea fretted and chafed against the rocks with
+that peculiar sharp chirping sound that presages "wind." The clank of
+chain cables, the plashing noise of falling anchors, the loud shouts
+of the sailors as they prepared to meet the gathering storm, even now
+heard, while in the changing position of the different lights of the
+bay I could discern the movements of the various vessels as they
+sought shelter or made ready for sea, in expectation of the "gale." The
+impenetrable darkness, the roaring wind, the flashing of the lights,
+the cries of the seamen, the hurrying of feet along the quays, and the
+sounds of different boats' crews departing in haste,--all gave a charm
+to a scene of which the obscurity increased the interest. A large French
+steamer was to have sailed that night for Marseilles; but I overheard a
+voice from the street foretelling that the "Gazonne" might leave without
+her passengers, "as no one would go on board of her on such a night." A
+red lantern at the peak indicated the vessel, and I could see that she
+had changed her position and "taken up a berth" farther out in the bay.
+
+I cannot tell by what instinct I selected her as a peculiar object of my
+interest, but so it was. I watched her unceasingly, and rarely took my
+eyes from the quarter where she lay; and when the heaving motion of the
+"red light" showed that she was tossing in a heavy sea, I listened too
+with eagerness to catch anything from those that passed beneath that
+might concern this vessel, which now engrossed all my sympathy. "Were I
+once but on board of her," thought I, "the wildest hurricane that ever
+blew would be sweeter to me than all the balmy airs that ever bore the
+odor of orange-blossom through my barred window!" I would have braved
+the stormiest seas, the maddest gale, shipwreck itself, rather than
+longer remain the helpless, hopeless thing a life of imprisonment was
+making of me. "Would that the alternative were given me," said I to
+myself: "the free choice to change these four walls for the deck over
+which the waves are dancing in foamy sheets! with what a thankful heart
+would I take the offer!"
+
+The last visit of the turnkey, who came to see all safe, broke in for
+a moment upon these musings; and now the double-locked door, and his
+retiring footsteps, told me that no further molestation was to be
+feared, and that I was, at least till daybreak, the undisturbed master
+of my own reveries. I opened the window, pushed back the iron stanchion,
+and walked out upon the terrace. It was a night of storm and wild
+hurricane. The rain swept by in great plashes, increasing the darkness,
+and mingling its hissing noise, with the breaking crash of the sea, as
+it beat furiously against the rocks. The dancing, bobbing motion of the
+lights on board the different craft showed what "a sea" was raging in
+the bay; while, even in the city itself, the clatter of falling tiles
+and chimneys told the violence of the gale. I stood upon the terrace;
+and as the rain penetrated my frail garment, and the wind wafted my wet
+hair across my cheeks, I felt a sense of ecstasy that nothing in all my
+previous life had ever equalled. It was the sensation of freedom; it
+was the burst of delight with which the captive welcomes the long-lost
+liberty. "Better this," thought I, "than the snuggest chamber that ever
+called itself a prison."
+
+It was past the hour when any further visit from the turnkey might
+be expected. Already the outer door of my chamber had been locked and
+barred with all that scrupulous attention to noise and clank that
+are supposed only essential in a melodrama. The sentry had just been
+relieved on the esplanade beneath the terrace, so that I might consider
+myself disencumbered from all fear of interruption in any quarter. I sat
+down upon the parapet, and peered into the dark depth below me, where
+the hazy glimmer of the sentry's lamp served to mark the height. At
+first it seemed a terrific drop; but after a while I began to satisfy
+myself that the darkness contributed to this effect; and as my sight
+grew more accustomed to the gloom, I was able to trace different
+objects,--among others, the conical roof of the sentry-box, at a
+distance of scarcely more than fifteen feet beneath me.
+
+Thus far I could reach by making a rope of my bed-clothes, and attach
+one end to a portion of the battlement of the parapet; but how should I
+venture on a descent in such a place? how risk the almost certainty of
+recapture by the sentry himself? This was a formidable difficulty, and
+demanded much consideration; and yet, were I to select any other spot,
+I might chance to be disabled by the fall, and then all my efforts
+were fruitless, since a broken bone, or even a sprained ankle, would be
+certain ruin.
+
+Never was a knotty point more canvassed, nor the clew to a difficulty
+more zealously searched for! As generally happens in such cases, first
+thoughts are best, and the bold course the safest. By descending on the
+sentry-box, I should at least reach the ground without injury; and if I
+were to have a "tussle" for it with the guard, it would be without the
+disadvantage of a previous damage. Besides this, the incessant noise
+of the tempest, the crashing of the sea, and the deep booming of the
+thunder gave hopes that my descent might be unheard. Nay, more, the
+sound of my heavy body over his head would be rather an admonition to
+stay quietly within than risk himself outside, to the danger of tumbling
+tiles or masses of masonry from the parapet. The more I reflected upon
+this, the clearer I saw that the storm was a Heaven-sent accident for
+me; that the darkness, the tumult, and the deserted streets were all
+accessories the most favorable; that to neglect such an occasion of
+escape would be downright madness. If I took some time to arrive at this
+conclusion, I made up for the delay by the rapidity of my subsequent
+movements. I hastily returned to my room; and had I been bred a
+ropemaker, my two sheets and counterpane could not have been fashioned
+into a three-stranded rope more handily; and, my sailor's experience
+favoring, I adjusted the cord in a "timber hitch" round one of the
+battlements, and well satisfied myself that I might trust to the other
+extremity,--"Con Cregan and his fortunes."
+
+I then took a hurried survey of my room, trimmed my lamp that it might
+burn till morning, secured the three or four papers of value which still
+remained to me, and then issued forth to my enterprise.
+
+A cannon-shot from the bay rung out as I again stepped upon the terrace,
+and I accepted the augury as an omen of welcome. I will not deny that
+my hands trembled as I examined, for the last time, the fastening of the
+cord; nor do I seek to conceal that as I buttoned my coat, the beating
+of my heart smote heavily against my fingers. I even hesitated for an
+instant; and during that instant, brief as it was, I could have faced
+death itself rather than the uncertainty before me. The weakness passed
+quickly away, and, with a short but fervent prayer, I grasped the rope
+and slipped noiselessly over the parapet.
+
+A sudden gust of wind swept past at the moment, and swung me out from
+the wall as though I had been a thing of no weight, calling for all my
+strength to prevent me from being blown away! And now I was buffeted
+about, tossed here and thrown there, with a violence that almost
+dislocated every joint in my body. The jerking motion and the chafing of
+my rope on the parapet made me tremble for my security, and not without
+cause; for in one great swing, in which I described an arc no other
+pendulum, living or dead, ever compassed before, I came back with such
+force against the roof of the sentry-box, striking it with both my feet
+together at the same instant, that my cord snapped short in the very
+centre.
+
+
+
+The force of my fall, added to the previous blow, capsized the
+sentry-box, and I came to the ground along with it, in a state of
+fright that even to this very hour I cannot recall without shuddering.
+Half-stunned by the fall, bruised and almost lifeless from terror, I sat
+there waiting for the moment when the sentry would issue forth and seize
+me; nor was it till after the lapse of several minutes that I perceived
+that the soldier was in a trap, the weighty sentry-box had fallen
+over on the front, and effectually debarred him from any chance of
+self-extrication.
+
+I stooped over to listen, but all was still; he never spoke a
+word,--probably stunned by the shock, or he might have fainted from
+terror. Whatever the cause, neither my humanity nor my curiosity cared
+to explore further, but, rising to my feet, and ascertaining, to my
+inexpressible delight, that I was uninjured, I set off at full speed
+toward the shore. The sea suggested escape, and thither I bent my way,
+without thinking more on the matter.
+
+I could see, from the hurried movement of lights along the pier, that
+boats were rapidly leaving for the various ships in the harbor. To get
+on board any of these, no matter what, or whither bound, was all my
+object,--a Tunis pirate or a Malay prow would have been a happy exchange
+for the black prison at Malaga.
+
+I had almost run myself out of breath, when I came up with a knot of
+some dozen people who were hastening onward as fast as they could. Two
+heavily laden barrows with luggage, and a multitude of cloaks, shawls,
+and mantles, pronounced them to be travellers; and I soon collected,
+from the expressions dropped by the boatmen, that they were about to
+embark in the French steamer for Leghorn. Mingling with the group,
+which the darkness freely permitted, I heard a voice say, in English,
+something about the weather; and now, listening more attentively, I
+picked up that they were an English family hurrying to Pisa to see a son
+whose failing health gave them no time for delay. I gathered, too, that
+the packet, which should not have started till the next day, was now
+leaving suddenly; the captain haviug sent a message to say that he had
+determined to put to sea rather than ride out the gale so near shore.
+
+The travellers were mingling their complaints at this peremptory
+summons, with others over the absence of their courier, who had got
+leave to see some of his friends about a league away, and must now
+inevitably be left behind. In the course of their lamentings, I could
+learn that they had only engaged the man the evening before at the
+recommendation of the landlord, and had scarcely seen him above a couple
+of times.
+
+In fact, except that he was an Italian, and his name Raffaello, they
+knew nothing about him. At last they reached the jetty where the boat
+lay, and now I could hear their discussion, whether it were better to
+leave the courier's effects behind, or take them on, in the hope that he
+might yet come up.
+
+"He's a smart fellow, and depend upon it he 'll be here before we sail,"
+said a young man of the party.
+
+"No, no," cried another, "he 'll never hear a word of the packet till
+she's half way to Leghorn."
+
+"What did you tell him, William?" asked an elderly lady.
+
+"To be back by six o'clock to-morrow morning," said the first speaker.
+
+"Ay, but in what language did you speak?"
+
+"I spoke Italian, and afterwards I said it in French; for he does n't
+know one word of English."
+
+This was all I wanted; I slipped noiselessly away, and, retiring to some
+distance behind the party, waited till I saw them descend the stairs
+to the boat. This occupied some time, for the party were numerous, and
+their trunks and portmanteaus were without end. At last, just as the
+word to shove off was given, I dashed forward at the top of my speed,
+crying out in Spanish, "Hold fast there! wait for the courier!"
+
+"What's the matter?" asked one of the Englishmen.
+
+"A courier, Señhor," said a sailor, "wants to come with us."
+
+"Oh, Raffaello, by George!" exclaimed the other; "I knew he 'd be up.
+Put back, men; he belongs to us."
+
+"Pardon, signori," said I, stepping lightly over the gunwale, "I have
+had a sharp run for it;" and away we went! Seated on a great-coat of
+black sheepskin, which from its style and cut I knew must have belonged
+to my predecessor, Raffaello, I could see the rapid passage of lights on
+the shore in the direction of my late prison, and at last could detect
+one glimmering from a part of the building where my cell stood. The roll
+of drums beating to arms was soon heard, and it was evident to me that
+my escape had become known,--that the garrison of the fortress was on
+the alert to recapture me. Although fully a mile from land, and rowing
+with all the vigor of twelve stout sailors towards a vessel whose steam
+was already whizzing through the escape funnel, my heart almost sunk
+within me from very fear; and rather than be retaken I would have jumped
+into the boiling tide that swelled and broke around me.
+
+The sailors more than once relaxed their efforts to watch what was
+going forward on shore; and how fervently did I, in silence, curse their
+curiosity! Externally, however, I maintained my calm demeanor, and even
+ventured to conjecture that a fire must have broken out in the fortress,
+such was the commotion and excitement discernible in that quarter.
+
+Another suggested the possibility of its being some prisoner that
+had made his escape,--a notion which I took occasion to ridicule, by
+averring that the Carcel was reputed to be the strongest prison in
+Spain, and an instance of evasion altogether unknown.
+
+Thus chatting, we reached the steamer. To my intense delight, the anchor
+was already weighed; and scarcely had we mounted the ladder than she
+broached round, head to sea, and clove through the water like a fish.
+
+Every plunge of the great ship shook the strong timbers and made her
+huge framework tremble, sending a thrill of pleasure through me. With
+each mountain wave that rolled past, I saw my chance of safety increase,
+and knew that no boat--manned by Spaniards, at least--would dare pursuit
+in such a storm. I had abundant leisure for these reflections, since
+my "masters" had only time to get on board when they retired to their
+berths, overcome by sea-sickness, so that I was at full liberty to
+indulge my own thoughts, and dispose of myself without the slightest
+interruption. From a smart little French maid I learned that the family
+was called Grimes; that they had recently come from England by way of
+Gibraltar, where one of the sons, now with them, was quartered with his
+regiment; that the party consisted of a widow lady with three daughters
+and two sons, a third being the invalid at Pisa. They were rich, good
+sort of folks, very ignorant of the Continent, very credulous, and
+altogether a satisfactory kind of connection for a cunning French
+_femme-de-chambre_ and a roguish courier to fall in with. This latter
+fact Mademoiselle Virginie insisted upon with no small degree of
+self-gratulation, giving me to understand that we might have a very
+thriving career as fellow-laborers in the same vineyard.
+
+Her sketches of English life, manners, and prejudices were not a little
+amusing, while the rules she laid down for the due management and
+control of her masters were a perfect chapter in domestic machiavelism.
+There had once been a time when I would have enlisted willingly under
+such a banner,--glad to reach the upper story of life, even by such a
+back stair; but now that I had tasted the glorious supremacy of command
+myself, that I had revelled in the mastery of a great household, that
+I had rolled along in my own chariot, clothed in fine linen and
+faring sumptuously every day, I felt my return to a menial situation
+a degradation unendurable. I determined that, once in Italy, I would
+escape from the thraldom of such servitude, come what might of it.
+
+By long dwelling on the theme, I had contrived to impress myself with
+the most profound conviction that I was a much-injured individual, that
+my case, if not sufficient for a war with Spain, was a fair ground for a
+parliamentary "flare-up," angry diplomatic notes, and Heaven knows what
+threats of our outraged Foreign Office. That a man with such a glorious
+grievance should sink down into a courier, to wrangle with landlords,
+bully waiters, and flirt with the "maid in the rumble," was not to be
+thought of. I felt that I was sworn at Highgate, and destined for the
+inside of the travelling-carriage, and not the "out."
+
+Scarcely were we arrived at Leghorn, and installed at the San Marco,
+than I began to prepare for my emancipation,--a bold step, considering
+that all the available resources I possessed was a ruby ring set round
+with brilliants, which I had concealed in my cap along with my papers.
+I was admonished to lose no time in my departure, by remarking that
+another packet from Malaga was expected within a week, which probably
+would convey the rightful courier, in search of his missing baggage, and
+I was by no means desirous of being confronted with the real Simon Pure.
+
+I am not sure that this latter consideration did not weigh most with me
+in the matter, since the novelty of my situation and the sense of its
+creature-comforts might have induced me to linger a little longer in a
+capacity even as humble. With such people as the Grimes's, the courier
+was supreme, and his rule despotic. From the hour at which they were to
+dine, to what they were to eat,--how they were to spend the day, what
+to see, and what to avoid,--were all at his dictation; while from the
+landlord came a perfect volley of civilities that plainly showed who was
+the real personage to whom adulation was due. If my masters dined on a
+chicken, _I_ fed upon ortolans; while _they_ made wry faces over their
+"Chianté," I luxuriated on Château La Rose or Chambertin. For _my_ table
+were reserved the oysters of Venice, the fresh "sardines" of Gorgona,
+the delicate mutton of Pistoja, the delicious Becafica of the Vai
+d'Arno, while Piscia was ransacked for my dessert, till I saw myself
+surrounded with rarities that even in my great days I scarcely dreamed
+of.
+
+There was a kind of "abandon," too, in this mode of life that pleased me
+well,--a delightful sense of irresponsibility pervaded everything I did
+or imagined.
+
+The courier knows nothing of that hesitation which besets his master at
+the thought of some costly indulgence. _He_ neither doubts nor denies
+himself. The Emperor of Russia may have bespoke the post-horses,
+but _he_ knows how to bribe even against the Czar himself, and would
+intrigue for the fish intended for a cardinal's Friday dinner. He is
+perhaps the only traveller who is indifferent to the bill,--nay, he even
+glories in its extravagance, as increasing his own percentage. I was
+beginning to see and appreciate all these advantages when caution
+admonished me to escape. The real Raflfaello was doubtless already at
+sea, and might arrive ere I had evacuated the territory.
+
+I only waited, then, to see "my family" snugly housed at Pisa, when I
+proceeded to tender my resignation. It was very flattering to my vanity
+to see the distress my announcement created; they evidently felt like a
+crew about to be deserted by the pilot in a difficult navigation. They
+were but indifferent linguists, and worse travellers; and I almost
+repented of my resolve as I perceived the dismay it occasioned, the
+full measure of which I was admitted to witness, since--from my supposed
+ignorance of English--they discussed the question very freely in my
+presence.
+
+"Does he say he 's dissatisfied with his situation?" asked the old lady.
+
+"It is difficult to make out what he means, Mamma," replied a daughter.
+
+"These fellows are always intriguing for higher wages," observed the
+subaltern.
+
+"Or to engage with people of greater consequence," remarked the second
+son.
+
+"We had better send for the tutor, Mamma; he speaks French better than
+we do."
+
+This proposition--albeit not accepted as a compliment to themselves by
+the two brothers--was at last acceded to, and, after a brief delay, the
+individual in question made his appearance. To avoid any semblance of
+understanding what went forward, I stood in patient silence, not even
+turning my head in the direction where the family were now grouped
+around the "Dragoman."
+
+"You are to find out what he wants," said the old lady, eagerly. "Say
+that we are perfectly satisfied with him; and if it be an increase--"
+
+"That he 'll not get a sou more with my consent," broke in the sub. "He
+receives already more than a captain in the line."
+
+"I only know that I never had as much to spend at Cambridge," echoed the
+other.
+
+"They are always extravagantly paid," said the elder daughter.
+
+"The creatures give themselves such airs," observed number two.
+
+"And when they are at all well-looking they're intolerable," broke in
+number three, who had been coolly scanning me through her eyeglass.
+
+The tutor by this time had evidently received his instructions in full,
+and beckoned me to follow him into a small room adjoining the saloon.
+I obeyed; and scarcely had the door closed upon us than I started, and
+broke out into an involuntary exclamation of surprise. The individual
+before me was no other than my first friend, the kind youth who had
+taken me by the hand at the very outset of my career, the student of
+Trinity, Dublin, named Lyndsay.
+
+As I perceived that he did not recognize me, I had time enough to
+observe him well, and mark the change which more than twelve years had
+wrought upon him. Though still young, anxiety and mental exertion had
+worn him into premature age. His eye was dulled, his cheeks pale and
+sunken, and in his manner there was that timid hesitation that stood
+abashed in the presence of my own cool effrontery. I could see easily
+that the man of thought and reflection was succumbing before the man
+of action and of the world, and I was selfish enough to revel in the
+triumph.
+
+In a low, diffident voice he proceeded to ask me if there was anything
+in the nature of my situation that induced me to quit a service where I
+had given the fullest satisfaction.
+
+I replied by an easy caress of my long black moustache, and a certain
+expressive gesture of the shoulders, meant to convey that my objections
+were of a nature that did not admit exactly of discussion,--rather
+questions of delicate personal feeling than of actual difficulty. Hinted
+that I had rarely served anything less than a royal highness, and feared
+that I should be likely to injure myself,--of degenerating into an
+easy and familiar manner, by associating with those so nearly of my own
+level.
+
+I saw the blood mantle in the pale cheek of the student as he listened
+to this impertinence, and thought that I could mark the struggle that
+was passing within him, while, in a calm, collected tone, he said that
+those were questions on which he could not give any opinion, and that
+if I desired to leave, of course no further objections would be offered.
+"Might I ask," added he, with a manner where a most courteous politeness
+prevailed,--"might I ask what are the qualifications of a person in your
+condition of life?"
+
+"I think," replied I, "that I appreciate the meaning of your question.
+You would ask by what right a man humbly born, educated to mere menial
+duties, can aspire to the position and the pay a courier claims. I
+am willing to tell you. To begin, then: He must be familiar with
+the geography of Europe,--I speak here of the merely Continental
+courier,--he must know the boundaries, the high roads, the coinage,
+the customs, the privileges of every petty State, from the smallest
+principality of Germany to the greatest sovereignty of a Czar. He must
+know the languages, not as scholars and grammarians know them, but in
+all their dialects and 'patois.' It is not enough that he has learned
+the tongue in which Dante wrote, or Metastasio sung, he must speak
+Venetian and Milanese, Neapolitan and Piedmontese. He should know the
+Low German of the Black Forest, the Wiener dialect of the Austrian, and
+talk every gradation of French, from the frontiers of Flanders to the
+vine-groves of Provence and Auvergne. He must be as familiar with every
+city of Europe as though it were his birthplace; with the churches,
+the galleries, their monuments, and their history. He must know the
+delicacies of each land, and every rarity it can produce for the palate
+of the epicure. He must be a connoisseur in wine, pictures, china,
+cuisine, statuary, engravings, armor, ancient furniture, manuscripts,
+horseflesh, the drama, and Bohemian glass; able to pack a trunk,
+or expatiate upon a Titian; to illustrate a fresco, to cheat a
+custom-house, to bully a prefect, make an omelette, ride postilion.
+These, with a running knowledge of international law and the Code
+Napoléon, and some skill in all the minor operations of surgery,--these
+are a brief summary of a courier's qualifications."
+
+"And do you tell me, friend," said he, earnestly, "that you can do all
+this?"
+
+"Indifferent well," said I, carelessly. "There are, doubtless, others
+who have gained a higher proficiency in the craft; but as I am still
+young, I'll not despair of future eminence."
+
+He heaved a deep sigh, and leaned his head upon his hand.
+
+I fancied I could read what was passing in his mind, and, at a
+haphazard, said, "You are contrasting the catalogue with that of your
+own acquirements, and perhaps asking yourself, to what end all the
+midnight toil of scholarship? Why have I labored hard, with aching brow
+and fevered heart, when one with vulgar attainments like these,--the
+scattered fragments, the crumbs that fall from the table of real
+knowledge,--can secure a better livelihood and more real independence
+than myself; and the reason is, mine are marketable wares that find
+purchasers in every class, and among every gradation of society. 'My
+lord' must have his courier; so must the rich cotton-spinner or the
+barrister on his wedding-tour. The wealthy dowager, the blooming widow,
+the ex-minister travelling for 'distraction' the young heir journeying
+for dissipation, the prelate, the banker, the ruined duke, the newly
+enriched mill-owner,--all, however differing in other points, agree in
+this one want, and must have one who will think for them and speak
+for them, bargain and bully for them, assert their rank and importance
+wherever they appear; so that of the obstacles of travel, its
+difficulties and contrarieties, they should know as little as though
+their road lay between London and Croydon."
+
+"Still, it is a puzzle to me," sighed the young man, "how these
+people achieve the attainments you speak of. Even a smattering of such
+knowledge would seem to require both time and study."
+
+"They have but a smattering," said I; "yet it is gained exactly in
+the very school where such small proficiency goes farthest,--'the
+world'--and which you will one day discover has its sources of
+knowledge, its tests of ability, ay, and its degrees of honor, marked
+out as palpably as Oxford and Cambridge. There is this advantage, too,
+sir, over the university,--the track in which you are to travel
+is marked out for you; you must not stray to the right or to the
+left,--while in 'the world' the field of direction is wide, open, and
+expanded; there's a path for every one, if they 'll only look for it."
+
+He started as I said these words; and as his cheeks flushed up, he
+said, "I remember once upon a time hearing those very words from a poor
+friendless boy in my own country. He was setting out, as he said, to
+seek his fortune, and his whole stock in life was the hope inspired by
+that sentiment."
+
+"And what became of him?"
+
+"I never could learn. He disappeared suddenly; and whether he enlisted
+into some regiment abroad, or died at home, I never ascertained."
+
+"Then I can tell you, sir,--he now stands before you, the same whom
+once you so kindly succored! the houseless, friendless child whom you
+protected and sheltered. I am Con Cregan."
+
+It would be difficult to describe the bewilderment of poor Lyndsay as I
+said this; he sat down, closed his eyes, opened them again, rubbed them,
+stared at me, tried to speak, and at last, rising up, grasped my hand
+warmly, and cried, "Then, of course, you remember _my_ name?"
+
+"I could never forget it, Mr. Lyndsay," said I, affectionately.
+
+This was enough, and he now shook me by both hands with all the warmth
+of old friendship.
+
+As he was madly eager to learn the story of my life, and as I was bent
+on my departure by the morning mail for Genoa, we agreed to meet at an
+hour when the household had retired to bed; meanwhile, he was to charge
+himself with the office of making an explanation to the family, and
+informing them that matters of urgency required my presence at Paris
+without delay. This agreed upon, we separated.
+
+The entire night we passed in talking, for he insisted upon hearing my
+adventures from the very hour we had parted company in Dublin, down to
+the moment we were then seated together. It was evident, at times, from
+the tone of questioning, that he accepted several of my statements at
+least as doubtful; but gradually, as he discovered my acquaintance
+with various languages, the knowledge I possessed of different remote
+countries, their habits and natural productions, this incredulity gave
+way; and when finally I produced the letters of the Havannah banker,
+with the receipts for my instalments, he showed that every shade of
+hesitation had vanished, and that he no longer entertained a doubt of my
+veracity.
+
+As the hour of separating drew nigh, he turned the subject to my own
+immediate requirements; and although I assured him that my ring, which
+I had already disposed of, was sufficient for all immediate wants, he
+insisted upon my accepting a loan of one hundred dollars, to be repaid,
+as he himself said, "when I resumed my countship." These were his
+parting words as I ascended to the roof of the diligence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI A NEW WALK IN PROGRESSIVE LIFE
+
+I will not trespass on my reader's patience with the details of my
+journey, nor ask him to form acquaintance with any of those pleasant
+travelling companions whose whims, caprices, and merry fancies lightened
+the road. The company of a diligence is a little world in all its
+features of selfishness, apathy, trustfulness, credulity, and unbelief.
+It has its mock humilities and absurd pretensions even more glaringly
+displayed than every-day life exhibits them. Enough, then, if I say
+ours were fair specimens of the class; and when, on arriving at the
+Messageries Royales, the heavy "conveniency" deposited us in the court,
+we shook hands all round ere separating, like people who were well
+pleased when together, but yet not broken-hearted at the thought of
+parting.
+
+And now I found myself at Paris, that glorious capital, whose very air
+is the champagne of atmospheres, and where, amid the brilliant objects
+so lavishly thrown on every side, even the poor man forgets his poverty,
+and actually thinks he has some share in the gorgeous scene around him.
+I heaved one heavy sigh from the very bottom of my heart as I thought
+what might have been the condition in which I could once have rolled
+along these same streets; and with this brief tribute to the past, I
+trudged along towards the Embassy. All my hope lay in the prospect of an
+interference on the part of the English Government, and the demand of an
+indemnification for my loss.
+
+After some little delay, and a slight catechizing on the part of a bulky
+porter in scarlet livery, I was admitted to a room where a number of
+people, chiefly couriers and "Laquais de Place," were assembled, to
+obtain signatures or passports, and who were summoned from time to time
+to enter an inner chamber where the official sat. _My_ turn came at
+length, and, with a heart almost swelling to suffocation, I entered.
+
+"For England, I suppose," said a pale young gentleman, with black
+moustaches, not looking up from the table, where he sat reading his
+"Galignaui."
+
+"No, sir, mine is not a passport case. I am here to make a charge
+against the Spanish Government for false imprisonment and spoliation."
+
+The young gentleman raised his head, and stared at me fixedly for a
+couple of seconds, and then, in the most silvery of accents, said, "Be
+good enough to repeat what you have said."
+
+I did so; adding, "As my case has occupied the attention of the
+Foreign Office for some time back, you may possibly have heard of my
+name,--Count Cregan."
+
+The youth sprang up from his chair, and hastened into another room,
+whence I could hear loud shouts of laughter immediately proceeding.
+
+"No, no, Barrington," said a deeper and an older voice; "I don't want to
+see the fellow, and I advise you to get rid of him at once. He 'll be
+a bore to us every day of the week, if you give him the slightest
+encouragement."
+
+"But is there really nothing in his case?"
+
+"Nothing whatever; he is a downright impostor."
+
+"But Puzzleton certainly corresponded with him.''
+
+"Of course he did, to prevent the Opposition making a handle of his case
+in 'the House;' but he soon saw the whole thing was a trumped-up charge,
+and as we want to go on smoothly with the Madrid Government, it would be
+absurd to disturb our relations for the sake of a fellow like this."
+
+"Oh, that's it," said the _attaché_, catching a faint glimmering of the
+secret machinery of diplomacy.
+
+"To be sure," added the other; "if we wanted a grievance, that man's
+would do as well as another; but there is no need to hold him over, we
+can always catch the Spaniards tripping when we want it. My advice is,
+therefore, get rid of him. Say that he must embody his statement in the
+form of a memorial, supported by whatever he can adduce in the way of
+evidence; that a personal interview can lead to nothing; and, in fact,
+dismiss him in the usual way."
+
+And with these lucid instructions,--given in a tone far too loud to be
+diplomatic,--the _attaché_ returned to the room where I waited.
+
+"You 'll have to reduce this to writing, Count Cregan," said he,
+standing with his back to the fire, and assuming an air that he fancied
+was quite that of a Talleyrand,--"something in the form of a memorial,
+you understand."
+
+"I have already done so, unsuccessfully," said I, shortly.
+
+"Ah, wasn't aware," sighed the young gentleman, stroking his moustache.
+
+"The Secretary of Foreign Affairs acknowledged the receipt of my
+statement, and at one time held out some hope of redress."
+
+"Ah, indeed!" echoed the other.
+
+"The state of our relations with Spain, however," added I, "not
+requiring a grievance just then, my case was naturally shelved."
+
+He started, bit his lip, and evinced unmistakable signs of being ill at
+ease. "In fact," resumed I, growing warmer as I proceeded, "no further
+notice was taken of me than what barely sufficed to take my case out
+of the hands of Opposition members. I was assumed to be an impostor,
+because the moment was not favorable to believe me honest. Good
+diplomacy, perhaps, but rather lax morality. Now, sir, I have lost _my_
+cause,--that is quite evident; let us see if _you_ have gained _yours_.
+The press is the great vindicator of individual wrongs, and I 'll make
+its columns the arena in which this struggle shall be decided."
+
+"Be good enough to wait one instant,--take a seat, Count," observed the
+young gentleman, in his very politest of tones, while he hastily retired
+into the inner room once more. This time the conversation was so low
+that not a whisper reached me. After a few seconds he re-entered.
+
+"Your case will be inquired into, Count, and representation made to the
+Spanish minister at this court. May I ask where you are staying here?"
+
+"I have not yet taken up my residence at Paris." "Your passport is
+of course with the police?" I bowed an assent, while a sudden thought
+flashed across me. "They mean to send me out of the country!" The
+_attaché_ had twice said "Good morning," ere I remarked it, and with a
+hurried leave-taking I quitted the room, well aware of the folly into
+which a momentary fit of passion had betrayed me.
+
+It was palpable enough,--my passport would at once offer a ground for my
+expulsion: I was an English subject, travelling on a Spanish passport. I
+must, of course, expect to be disowned by the Spanish minister, and not
+acknowledged by my own.
+
+This was a sorry beginning, and I sauntered out into the streets in a
+very depressed state of mind. What was I to do? My funds were at a low
+ebb,--I had not above four hundred francs in the world. Into what
+career could I throw myself, and, while obtaining a livelihood, avoid
+discovery? I knew various things, in that smattering sort of way which,
+by the aid of puffing and notoriety, often succeeds with the world; but
+yet notoriety was the very thing I most dreaded! There was nothing for
+it but to change my name. Many would doubtless say that this was not any
+great sacrifice,--need not have cost me any very poignant sufferings;
+but they would be wrong. I had clung to my name through all the changes
+and vicissitudes of my fortune, as though it embodied my very identity.
+It was to make that humble name a great one that I had toiled and
+struggled through my whole life. In that obscure name lay the whole
+impulse of my darings. Take that from me, and you took away the energy
+that sustained me, and I sunk down into the mere adventurer, living on
+from day to day, and hour to hour, without purpose or ambition. I had
+borne my name in the very lowest passages of my fortune, hoping one day
+or other to contrast these dark periods with the brilliant hours of my
+destiny. And now I must abandon it! "Well, be it so," thought I, "and,
+by way of compromise, I 'll keep half of it, and call myself Monsieur
+Corneille; and as to nationality, there need be little difficulty.
+Whenever a man talks indifferent Spanish, he says he is from the Basque.
+If he speaks bad German, he calls himself an Austrian. So I, if there be
+any irregularities in my regular verbs, will coolly assert that I am a
+brave Belge and a subject of King Leopold; and if humility be a virtue,
+this choice of a native land ought to do me credit."
+
+I raised my head from my musings at this moment, and found myself at
+the corner of the Rue Goguenarde, exactly opposite a house covered with
+placards and announcements, from the street to the third story, a great
+board with gilt letters, over the entrance, proclaiming it the "Bureau
+des Affiches" for all nations. Nor was the universality a mere pretence,
+as a single glance could show the range of advertisements, taking
+in everything, from an estate in Guadaloupe to a neat chamber in the
+Marais; from a foundry at Lyons to the sweeping of a passage in the Rue
+Rivoli. All the nostrums of medicine, all the cheap appliances of the
+toilet, remedies against corpulence, perventives to extreme emaciation,
+how to grow hair, how to get rid of it, governesses, ballet-dancers,
+even ladies "with suitable portions and great personal attractions,"
+were all at the command of him rich enough to indulge his indolence.
+"There must surely be something applicable to me in all those varied
+wants," thought I; and I entered a great room where several knots of men
+and women, of different ranks and conditions, were gathered around large
+tablets of advertisements.
+
+Some were in search of lost articles of dress or jewelry, a runaway
+child or a missing spaniel; some inquiring for cheap apartments, or
+economical modes of travel with others going the same road: but the
+greater number were in pursuit of some means of livelihood,--and what
+a host they were! Professors of every art, science, and language;
+journalists, poets, tenors, gardeners, governesses, missionaries,
+rope-dancers, frail little damsels who performed as goddesses in a
+pantomime, and powerful fellows who performed the "life-models" of
+academies, together with a number of well-dressed gentlemen of a certain
+age who announced themselves as "discreet friends to any party engaged
+in a delicate and difficult transaction."
+
+My heart sunk within me as I saw the mass of capability by which I was
+surrounded. "What could the world want with me," thought I, "in such a
+glut of acquirements as I see here?" And I was about to turn away,
+when my attention was drawn to a very little elderly man who was most
+importunately entreating one of the clerks to do him some service or
+other. The old man's eagerness was actually painful to witness. "I will
+sell it for a mere nothing," said he, "although it cost me five hundred
+francs!"
+
+"You'll be fortunate if you get one hundred for it," said the clerk.
+
+"I would accept of even one hundred,--nay! I'd take eighty," sighed the
+old man.
+
+"So you ought," said the other. "These things are all at a discount now;
+men like more active and energetic situations. Retirement is not the
+taste of our day."
+
+"Retirement!" thought I; "that may be exactly what would suit _me_ at
+this moment," and I drew near to listen.
+
+"Find me a purchaser with seventy francs," ejaculated the old man, "and
+I'll close with him."
+
+"What is it, Monsieur?" said I, bowing civilly to both.
+
+"A 'quatorzième,' sir," said the clerk, interposing, that he might earn
+his commission, in the event of a deal. "A quatorzième; and I am bound
+to say one of the best in this quarter of Paris. It takes in the Rue
+de la Chuine, the Place de la Boucherie, with a very large sweep of the
+Boulevard Mont Parnasse."
+
+"A quatorzième!" cried I, in amazement; "I never heard of any one living
+so high up. Are there really houses in Paris fourteen stories high?"
+
+They both burst into a fit of laughter as I said this, and it was some
+time ere the clerk could recover his gravity sufficiently to reply; at
+last he said, "I perceive that Monsieur is a stranger to Paris and its
+ways, or he would know that a quatorzième is not an apartment fourteen
+stories high, but an individual who holds himself always in readiness
+at the dining-hours of his neighborhood, to make the fourteenth at any
+table, where, by accident, the unlucky number of thirteen should be
+assembled,--a party which every well-informed person would otherwise
+scruple to sit down with. This, sir, is a quatorzième; and here is a
+gentleman desirous of disposing of his interest in such an enviable
+property."
+
+To my question as to what were the necessary qualifications, they both
+answered in a kind of duet, by volubly recapitulating that nothing was
+needed but a suit of black, and clean gloves; unobtrusive demeanor and
+a moderate appetite being the certain recommendations to a high
+professional success. I saw the chief requirement well,--to eat little,
+and to talk less; to come in with the soup, and go out with the salad;
+never to partake of an _entrée_, nor drink save the "ordinaire:" these
+were the duties; the reward was ten francs. "It used to be a Napoleon,
+Monsieur," said the old mau, wiping his eyes. "In the time of Charles
+the Tenth it was always a Napoleon; but these 'canailles' nowadays have
+no reverence for anything; I have known even the ministry dine thirteen
+on a Friday,--to be sure, the king was fired at two days afterwards for
+it; but nothing can teach them."
+
+The old gentleman grew most communicative on the subject of his "walk,"
+which he was only abandoning in consequence of the rheumatism, and
+the difficulty of ascending to dinner-parties on a high elevation. He
+depicted with enthusiasm the enjoyments of a profession that demanded,
+as he observed, so little previous study, was removed from all the
+vicissitudes of commerce, pleasant in practice, and remunerative in pay.
+He also insinuated the possible advantages to a young and handsome
+man, who could scarcely fail to secure a good marriage, by observing a
+discreet and decorous demeanor; and, in fact, he represented his calling
+in such a light as at least to give me the liveliest curiosity to enter
+upon it for a brief space, and while meditating what future steps I
+should take in life.
+
+That same afternoon I saw myself announced at the porter's window of
+a very shabby-looking house in the Rue de la Forge as "Monsieur de
+Corneille,"--the "de" being advised by my predecessor,--"Quatorzième
+prêt à toute heure," and thus opened my professional career. I was told
+that it was all important in my vocation that I should not be seen much
+abroad in the world. There should be a certain mysteriousness about me,
+when I appeared at a dinner-table, that might permit the host to speak
+of me--to strangers--as his old friend the Baron de So-and-so, who
+rarely ventured out even to dine with him. In fact, I should be as
+guarded against publicity as though I were a royal personage. This
+was not a hard condition at the time, since I was desirous of escaping
+notice. I passed all my mornings, therefore, in writing--sometimes
+memorials to a minister, sometimes statements for the press; now, they
+were letters to the banker at Guajuaqualla, or to Don Estaban, or to
+the great firm at the Havannah. The cost of postage deterred me from
+despatching most of them, but I continued to write them, as though to
+feed the cravings of my hope. When evening drew nigh, I abandoned the
+desk for the toilet; and having arrayed myself in most austere black,
+waited for the summons which should invite me to some unknown feast.
+I have often perused records of the early struggles of a professional
+life,--the nervous vacillations between hope and fear which haunt him
+who watches day after day, for some time, that he is not forgotten
+of the world; the fretful jealousies of the fortunate rival; the sad
+depression over his own failures; the eager watching lest the footfall
+on the stairs stop not at his door, and the wearisome sinking of the
+heart as the sounds die away in the distance, and leave him to the
+silence of his own despair. If I had not to feel the corroding regrets
+of him who has toiled long and ardently for the attainment of a
+knowledge that now lies in rust, unused, unasked for, unwanted, I had to
+learn what are his tortures who waits till the world call him.
+
+There I sat in all my "bravery." What a contrast between my sleek
+exterior and the half-famished creature within! Sometimes my impatience
+would break out into a fit of passion, in which I railed at the old
+knave who had entrapped me, at fortune that deserted me, at myself, who
+had grown indolent, and void of enterprise. Sometimes I became almost
+stupid by long reflection, and would sit to a late hour of the night,
+unconscious of everything; and sometimes I would actually laugh outright
+at the absurdity of my assumed calling, wondering how I ever could have
+been fool enough to embrace it.
+
+The world had evidently grown out of its superstitions; republicanism
+and socialism, and all the other free and easy notions by which men
+persuaded themselves that the rich are thieves, and the poor the just
+inheritors of the gains, had knocked down many a mock idol besides
+monarchy. Men no longer threw a pinch of salt over their left shoulder
+when they upset the salt-cellar; did n't pierce their egg-shell, lest
+the fairies might make a boat of it; and so, among many other remains of
+the custom of our ancestors abandoned, they sat down to dinner, careless
+whether the party were thirteen or thirty.
+
+"I might as well try and revive astrology," thought I, "as seek to trade
+upon superstition in this unbelieving age! I doubt if all Paris contains
+another quatorzième than myself; the old villain knew the trade was
+ruined, when he sold me his 'goodwill' of the business."
+
+I was in the very deepest and darkest abyss of these gloomy thoughts
+one evening, when a heavy down-pour of rain, and the sorrowful moan of
+a December wind, added melancholy to my wearied spirit. It was such
+a night that none would have ventured out who could have claimed the
+humblest roof to shelter him. The streets were perfectly deserted, and,
+early as it was, the shops were already closed for the night. The very
+lamps that swung to and fro with the wind, looked hazy and dim amid
+the sweeping rain, and the chains clanked with the dreary cadence of a
+gibbet.
+
+I knew it was needless to go through the ceremony of dressing on such a
+night. "Better face all the imaginary terrors of a thirteen party than
+brave the real danger of a storm like this,"--so I reasoned; and, in all
+the freedom of my tattered dressing-gown, I paced my room in a frame of
+mind very little above despair. "And this in Paris," cried I; "this the
+city where in some hundred gilded saloons,--at this very moment--are met
+men brilliant in all the gifts of genius, and women more beautiful and
+more fascinating than the houris of Paradise. Wit and polished raillery,
+bright glances and soft smiles, are now mingling amid the glitter of
+stars, and crosses, and diamonds; while some thousands, like me, are
+actually famishing with hunger,--too poor even to have a fire to thaw
+the icicles of despair that are gathering around the heart!"
+
+Had it not been better for me if I had lived on in the same humble
+condition to which I was born, than have tasted of the fascinations of
+riches, to love and pine after them forever? No! this I could not agree
+to. There were some moments of my glorious prosperity that well repaid
+me for all I had, or all I could suffer for them; and to whatever depth
+of evil destiny I might yet be reserved, I should carry with me
+the delicious memory of my once happiness. Con Cregan--the
+light-hearted--was himself again! Con,--the vagrant, the passionate
+lover of whatever life offered of pleasure, of beauty, and of
+splendor,--who only needed a good cash account with Coutts to make his
+existence a "fairy tale"! I forgot for a moment that I lived in a mean
+chamber with a broken window, a fireless grate, a table that never was
+graced with a meal! a bed that resembled a "board," and a chair, to sit
+upon which without smashing, required the dexterity of a juggler!
+
+A sharp knocking at my door cut short these meditations, and a voice at
+the same time cried out my name. "Come in," said I, authoritatively. I
+fancied it might be the landlord, and was not sorry to brave him--by the
+darkness. The door opened, and a figure, which even in the gloom I could
+perceive was that of a stranger, entered. "Monsieur de Corneille lives
+here?" said he.
+
+"I have the humble honor to be that individual," responded I.
+
+"Have you got no light? I have smashed my shins across a confounded
+chair," said he, querulously.
+
+"You 're all safe now," said I; "keep round by the wall, but take care
+of the rat-trap near the corner."
+
+"Let's have a light, mon cher," said the other, half coaxingly.
+
+"I never have a light," said I; "I detest glare, hate snuffing a candle,
+and can't endure the thought of patronizing Russia and her tallow."
+
+"Could n't we have a bit of fire, then?" asked he.
+
+"Fire before Christmas!" exclaimed I. "Are we in Tobolsk? What Sybarite
+talks of fire in Paris at this season?"
+
+"I really am ambitious of seeing you, Monsieur," said the other: "can we
+not compass this object without any violence to your feelings?"
+
+"Have you a cigar-case?" said I.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, strike a light; and here 's a letter which you may set fire to:
+you can thus make an inspection of me by 'inch of paper.'"
+
+He laughed pleasantly at the conceit, and lighted the letter, by the aid
+of which, as he held it above his head, he took a rapid survey of the
+chamber and its contents, myself being the chief movable it boasted.
+
+"Of a truth, my friend," said he, "this apartment has nothing
+superfluous about it."
+
+"Cool and airy," said I, calmly, "with a magnificent view of red-tiled
+roofs and chimney-pots."
+
+"And you--would it be an impertinence to ask if you ever condescend
+to the restriction of anything more limited than that very graceful
+dressing-room?"
+
+"Oh, certainly!" exclaimed I; "only be good enough to say why you ask
+the question." By this time the stranger's torch had burned down so
+close to his fingers as to cause an exclamation of pain as he threw it
+on the ground, and thus were we once more in the dark.
+
+"Not from mere motives of idle curiosity, Monsieur," said he, "did
+I ask, but simply, having come here to request the pleasure of your
+company at dinner to-day. I made the inquiry with a direct object. My
+name is Paul de Minérale."
+
+"Not the distinguished writer, the inimitable novelist, the delightful
+composer of the 'Curate's Niece,' 'The Path through the Vineyard,' 'The
+Rose of Auteuil'?"
+
+"I am much flattered," said he, cutting short my enumeration, "to
+discover so ardent an admirer of my poor productions; but, as time
+presses, will you be good enough to hasten your toilet, for my 'cottage'
+is near Belleville, and will take us nigh an hour to reach."
+
+I proceeded accordingly to array myself in cleaner costume, while my
+visitor kept up an agreeable conversation, chiefly bearing upon my line
+of life, the changeful passages of which, he seemed to think, ought to
+offer much amusement; nor could he conceal his astonishment on learning
+that he himself was my first and only client. "What an age we live in
+I" cried he; "where is that 'ancient faith' departed? Can men so openly
+disparage the gods?"
+
+"Though my theology has been changed," said I, "that's all. The Bourse
+and the Ballet are the modern deities, and he must be a rare sceptic who
+refuses to believe in them."
+
+"You are a philosopher, I perceive," said he.
+
+"Only before dinner," replied I. "I am speculative with the soup, and
+grave with my 'petit pâté;' reserved with the first entrée; blandly
+communicative after the pièce de résistance; playful over the asparagus
+or the peas; soothing with the rôti; and so descend into a soft and
+gentle sadness as the dessert appears. I leave digestion to take its
+course, waiting for my mocha and maraschino. In the drawing-room I blaze
+forth in all the vividness of agreeability."
+
+"What could have induced one so evidently intended for a foreground
+figure to prefer the humble and shadowy part of a 'quatorzième '?" said
+he, in surprise.
+
+"The 'Res Dura' that crosses every man's destiny, and a spice of that
+spirit of investigation which teaches one to explore very unwholesome
+depths and very unrewarding regions,--a blending of that which made the
+Czar a carpenter, and Louis Philippe a teacher of mathematics."
+
+"Ah! that reminds me," interposed he, "that I ought to put you on your
+guard. To-day a Royal Prince will honor us with his company. There are
+a couple of ministers and a general. The rest of the party are of
+the artiste class, whose susceptibilities you cannot wound; authors,
+actresses, journalists, and danseuses, however touchy in the great
+world, are angels of good temper in small societies." With this he
+proceeded to give me a nearer insight into the kind of company into
+which I was to be introduced,--a society, so far as I could learn, that
+a rigid moralist might have deemed "more fair than honest." I learned,
+too, that I owed the distinction of my invitation to a wager between his
+Royal Highness the Duc de St. Cloud and my host; the bet being that De
+Minérale was to find out a "quatorzième" and bring him to dinner, his
+search for one not to begin till after five o'clock p.m.; the Prince
+being fully convinced that no regular practitioner in that walk any
+longer existed. "Your presence, my dear sir," continued he, "is worth,
+independent of the charm of your conversation, fifty Napoleons;
+one-half of which I must beg you to accept;" saying which, he gracefully
+presented me with a purse, whose pleasant weight descended into my palm
+with a sensation indescribably soft and soothing.
+
+All this time we were rattling along towards Belleville at a rapid pace;
+and although the rain swept past in torrents, the lightning flashed, and
+the wind tore the strong trees from their roots, and strewed the ground
+with their gigantic limbs, I sat in a revery of sweet and delightful
+fancies, the only alloy to my ecstasy being a passing fear that at
+each moment shot through me: Can this be real? Am I awake? or has
+long fasting so weakened my faculties that this is but a delusion; and
+instead of hastening to a dinner-party with a royal guest, I am speeding
+onwards to a prison, or, mayhap, a madhouse. These fancies, at first but
+fitful and at intervals, became at length so distressing that I was on
+the very point of communicating them to my companion, and asking for his
+counsel and comfort, when we drove into a small avenue, and then almost
+immediately drew up in front of a porch, where, amid a blaze of light,
+stood three or four servants in gaudy liveries, awaiting our arrival.
+
+"Well, Paul!" cried a young, fashionable-looking fellow, with a very
+imposing black beard, "what success?"
+
+"I 've won,--here he is!" cried my companion. "Have I much time to
+spare?"
+
+"Something less than two minutes," said the other, as he coolly surveyed
+me through his glass. "Present me, Paul."
+
+"Mons. Alphonse de Langeron--Mons. de Corneille."
+
+"The author of the 'Fancies by Starlight,'" said I, bowing with a most
+respectful devotion.
+
+"Guilty, sir! and of fifty other indiscretions to the full as great,"
+said he, laughing.
+
+"Ah, sir, I know it by heart; that stanza on the 'Waled Letty' haunts me
+like a dream."
+
+"Sharp fellow, our friend the 'quatorzième'!" whispered Alphonse to Paul
+as we walked along towards the drawing-room.
+
+How I should like to dwell upon the details of that dinner, the most
+delightful entertainment of my whole life! It needed not the sudden
+transition from the dark and dreary chamber I inhabited to the gilded
+saloon, all in a blaze with wax-lights, to make me feel it such. The
+"service" was splendid--the cookery perfection--the wines the rarest of
+every vintage--the apartment itself had all the chastened grandeur of
+a mediaeval chamber, with the gorgeous splendor contributed by a
+magnificent beauffet of silver;--and the guests! what beauty and
+fascination of female loveliness--what charm of wit and agreeability
+among the men! The great damper upon my enjoyment was my actual doubt of
+the reality of the whole scene. It was not, alone, that all the splendor
+appeared so wonderful--that the glitter of gold and the beauty of
+porcelain dazzled the eye; but the very names of the illustrious guests
+themselves suggested incredulity. What wonder if I could not credit my
+senses, as I heard the first names in all the genius of France on every
+side of me! Here, the great historian, and philosopher, and statesman;
+there, the delightful lyric poet; yonder, the first novelist of Europe;
+and next to him the distinguished painter, whose great battle-piece
+was in commemoration of the young Prince beside him, a hero of
+"two-and-twenty."
+
+Nothing could be more easy or familiar than the tone of
+conversation,--that happy pleasantry that tickles but never wounds, so
+unlike the English propensity for "quizzing"--that vulgar version
+of Gallic "badinage;" and then how eloquent, without pedantry, how
+sparkling, and how suggestive! Ah, my kind reader, I see the rippling
+smile over the broad Atlantic of your countenance. You have guessed all
+the secret of my enthusiasm, and you know the mystery of my admiration.
+Be it so; I am ready to confess all. It was my own success that made
+the chief enchantment of the scene. I was the lion of the evening. Not
+a theme on which I did not hold forth, not a subject I did not
+discuss,--politics, bull-fighting, cookery, dress, literature, duelling,
+the ballet, horse-racing, play, scandal, naval tactics, colonization,
+cotton-spinning, music, railroads, and the "dry-rot." I was profound,
+playful, serious, jocose, instructive, and amusing by turns. Madmlle. de
+la Bourdonaye, the first actress of the "Français," was charmed with my
+dramatic criticism; the poet--enthusiastic at my recital of a stanza
+of his own; the general pronounced me the very best judge of cavalry
+evolutions he had ever met; the great painter begged the favor of a
+visit from me at his studio; and the Prince's aide-de-camp--himself a
+distinguished soldier--told me, in a whisper, to hold myself disengaged
+for the following Wednesday.
+
+These were, after all, but the precursors of greater triumphs in the
+drawing-room, where I played and sang several Mexican ballads; danced
+the Bollero with Madmlle. Rose Jasmin, of the Grand Opéra; and lassoed
+a Mount St. Bernard mastiff with the bell-rope. After this, beat the
+statesman at chess; rolled up Indian cigarettes for the ladies, whom
+I taught to sit squaw fashion; told various anecdotes of my prairie
+adventures; and wound up all by concocting a bowl of "ponch à
+l'Américaine," at once the astonishment and the delight of all. I must
+not suffer myself to dwell longer on this theme, nor speak of that
+supper, with its champagne and culembourgs, its lyrics and its lobster
+salads, with ortolans, epigrams, seductive smiles, and maraschino jelly.
+Enough. The orgies--for it was no less--lasted till nigh morning; and
+when we arose from table, a pale streak of coming day was struggling
+between the margins of the curtains.
+
+"His Royal Highness will set you down, Mons. de Corneille," said the
+aide-de-camp, advancing to me.
+
+Blushing with pleasure and shame together, I accepted what could not be
+declined, and proceeded to take leave of my kind host and his friends.
+Cordial greetings, and flattering wishes soon to meet again, met me on
+every side, and I retired actually overwhelmed with civil attentions.
+
+"Do we pass by your quarter, Monsieur?" said his Royal Highness, as I
+took my seat in the carriage.
+
+I would have given all my worldly wealth, and expectations to boot, to
+be able to say that I lived in the Place Vendôme or the Rue Royale; but
+there was no help for it, the murder would out one day, since my host
+knew my address; and with an easy, unabashed air, I said that I lodged
+in the Rue de la Forge, near the Mount St. Parnasse.
+
+The Prince bowed, and took no notice of the announcement; but I
+thought that I could read a very peculiar twinkle in the eye of the
+aide-de-camp. I might have easily been mistaken, however, for I
+felt myself on my trial, and thought everything an accusation. How
+gratuitously I tortured myself, subsequent knowledge of life has
+repeatedly convinced me; for while to some upstart rich man, the
+acknowledgment of my humble abode would have been a shock sufficient
+to sever us forever, to the Prince the matter had no other significance
+than that it suited my means, with which, whether ample or the reverse,
+he had no right to meddle. Indeed, I was not sorry to remain in
+doubt upon the fact, since in the difficult negotiation between the
+aide-de-camp and the coachman, who had never so much as heard of my
+unhappy street, his Royal Highness never evinced any surprise whatever,
+but sat patiently to the end of the discussion, without vouchsafing even
+a word upon the subject.
+
+"This must be the house, number 21,748," said the chasseur, at length;
+and we drew up at the well-known door, where the old porter sat reading
+on one side, while his wife was peeling carrots at the other.
+
+It was the first moment of confusion I suffered, since I had left the
+same spot; but my cheek was in a flame as the lacquey let down the
+steps, and offered me his arm to descend. The lowly veneration of the
+old porter, as he stared at the royal liveries and the emblazoned panels
+of the carriage, was but a sorry compensation for the mock servility of
+the chasseur, whose eyes seemed to look through into my very heart,
+so that I actually did not hear the parting words of the Prince as the
+equipage drove away.
+
+Curious anomaly! the half-insolent glances of the lacqueys sank deeper
+into my spirit than the flattering smile of the Prince's adieu. How
+much more alive is our nature to the pang of scorn than to the balm
+of kindness! These were my reflections as I entered my humble chamber,
+every portion of which seemed doubly miserable to me now. "Is it
+possible," thought I, "that I have endured this hitherto? Have I really
+sat in that crazy old chair, and stretched my limbs upon that wretched
+pallet? Can it be real? or which is the delusion,--my recent splendor,
+or my present squalor?" Although up all night, I was far too much
+excited for sleep, even could I have persuaded myself to seek it on so
+humble a couch. I therefore set myself to think over the future, and
+wonder whether the brilliant scene in which I had so lately mixed would
+remain in its isolated brightness amid the desolation of my life, or
+be the guide-star to future greatness and distinction. My late success
+emboldened me to think that Fortune had not yet deserted me. "Who
+knows," thought I, "but the Spaniards may behave handsomely yet, and
+make restitution of my property; or what if the Mexican banker should be
+a true man, and acknowledge my claim upon him?" "If I could but enlist
+the Prince in my cause," thought I again, "how certain should I be of
+the issue! French influence always was powerful in Spain. Napoleon used
+to say, 'There were no Pyrenees;' I should be content if there were only
+a good road over them to convey the despatches that might assert my just
+right."
+
+A quick step upon the stairs at that instant caught my ear; few ever
+ascended so high up as my story, so I listened, and almost at once my
+door was thrown open, and my host of the preceding evening rushed into
+the room. Having shaken hands with me cordially, he said, "Corneille,
+mon ami! I have made another wager about you; and although the sum is
+a trifling one, I am curious to ascertain if I am the winner. Jules de
+Montserrat and Emile de Gency and myself had a dispute last night about
+your nationality, which ended in a bet. I am bound in honor not to tell
+you what our several opinions and guesses were, but still at liberty to
+ask you, what is your native country?"
+
+"I am an Irishman, and derive my name from the ancient family of
+Cregan. Cornelius is but my Christian name, which I assumed to cover the
+disgrace of my altered fortune."
+
+"As to our wager, then, we were all in error,--none of us guessed
+Ireland. As to your being a man of birth and station, I need scarcely
+say, we were all agreed."
+
+"Would it were otherwise," said I, with a deep sigh; "a humble position
+might be endured well enough, if unalloyed by the regrets of a condition
+forfeited forever. If you are curious to hear a very unhappy story, I am
+willing to relate it."
+
+"You couldn't do me a greater favor," said he, seating himself like one
+eager to listen.
+
+"First, then, we'll have some breakfast," said I; "and then, with a good
+fire and no fear of interruption,--for I have not one acquaintance in
+Paris,--you shall hear my history from beginning to end."
+
+Chocolate and cutlets, champagne and devilled kidneys, brioches,
+sardines, and coffee, made their appearance as rapidly as though such
+delicacies were in the habit of daily mounting these steep stairs; and
+a cheerful blaze glowed once more in a grate where the oldest inhabitant
+had never beheld a fire.
+
+These preparations being made, we began our meal, and I opened my
+narrative. The reader must not feel offended with me if I ventured to
+draw upon my imagination for the earlier facts of my history. Nature had
+not been generous to me in the article of a father: what great harm if
+I invented one for myself? Fortune had placed my birth beneath the
+thatched roof of an Irish cabin: was it not generous of me to call it
+the ancient baronial seat of the Cregans? She started me poor and in
+rags: I was above repining, and called myself rich and well-nurtured.
+But why weary my reader with such a recital? If it was necessary to
+raise the foundation on fiction, the after-events of my career I was
+satisfied to state pretty nearly as they happened, merely altering the
+reasons for my journey to the New World, which I ascribed to my search
+after a great inheritance belonging to my family, who were originally
+from Andalusia, and grandees of Spain.
+
+"And this of course you failed in," said my friend, who rather felt
+this portion of my story less interesting than certain other and more
+stirring passages.
+
+"On the contrary," said I, "I succeeded perfectly. I not only
+discovered the banker in whose hands my family wealth was deposited, but
+established my claim most satisfactorily, and received a very large
+sum in gold, with bills to a high amount on various mercantile houses,
+besides leaving in his hands an important balance, for which I had
+no immediate necessity." After a slight sketch of my Mexican
+progress,--very little embellished or exaggerated,--I narrated my
+voyage to Europe and my capture at Malaga exactly as they occurred,
+circumstantially recording every detail of name and date I could
+remember down to the very moment of my reaching Paris.
+
+"One question more, my dear friend," said M. Paul, after some fifty very
+searching interrogatories, as closely argued as the cross-examination
+of a counsel at law. "One question more, and I have done. I know you 'll
+not be offended at the liberty I am about to take,--nay, I feel you 'll
+be even gratified with my candor. Tell me frankly, as between man and
+man, is there one word of truth in all this, or is it not downright
+moonshine,--sheer invention from beginning to end?"
+
+I started to my legs, my face crimson with anger, but, as suddenly
+recovering myself, said, "You were right, sir, to bespeak a degree of
+command over my feelings before you ventured upon this freedom, which if
+I cannot altogether pardon, yet I will not resent."
+
+"So it is true, then," said he, with a degree of melancholy in his voice
+I could not fathom.
+
+"Of course it is," rejoined I.
+
+"Sorry to hear it; deeply, sincerely sorry,--that's all," replied he,
+in the self-same manner; "I cannot express to you one-half of my
+disappointment."
+
+"Sorrow! disappointment!" exclaimed I. "May I ask what possible interest
+you could have in supposing me to be an impostor and a cheat?"
+
+"Hard names these," said he, laughing, "but I will explain myself. If
+the story that you have just told me were fiction, I could give you
+three hundred francs a day to write feuilletons for the 'Débats.' If
+one-half of it were even invention, you 'd be worth two hundred on the
+'Siècle' or the 'Presse;' say you stole the material, and you 'd still
+do admirably for the 'Mode.'
+
+"Are you--so conversant with a hundred thousand things--ignorant that
+the grand principle of division of labor has extended itself from
+the common arts of manufacture to the operations of genius; and that,
+nowadays, no man would think of composing an entire work himself, any
+more than he would of turning mason, carpenter, slater, locksmith, and
+glazier, were he about to build a house? On the contrary, having fixed
+upon the site, and determined the proportions of his future edifice, he
+surrounds himself with competent and skilful hands in all the several
+walks of constructiveuess, reserving to himself that supervision and
+direction which could not be practicable were he engaged in actual
+labor. Thus is he a master-builder in fiction, selecting his artificers,
+storing his materials, apportioning the quantity, keenly watching the
+variations in public taste, and producing at last a mass and variety
+that no one brain--however fertile and assiduous--could be capable of.
+This," said he, drawing himself up proudly, "this is my walk. By the aid
+of this discovery,--for it is mine, and mine only,--I am enabled to
+draw tears in the 'Débats,' and convulse with laughter in the
+'Constitutionnel;' and while writing of the torrid zone in one journal,
+I have an Icelander as my hero in another. Men stare at the range of my
+knowledge of life under aspects so various and discordant; and well may
+they wonder, were I to draw upon my own unassisted faculties. But it is
+men like you, Cregan, I want,--shrewd, sharp, ready-witted dogs; quick
+to remark, and quicker to report. What say you, then, will you join my
+corps in the fiction-foundry over which I preside?"
+
+"Were I but capable--"
+
+"You are eminently so. We need no literary ability, no craft of
+authorship,--no more than the child who picks the wool in the factory
+is called on to direct the loom that weaves it into cloth. Let me
+finish the article; I 'II give it the gloss for sale! What say you? Five
+thousand francs a year, free admission to every theatre in Paris, and a
+dinner at 'La Trou aux Bois '--where you dined yesterday--every Sunday?"
+
+"A bargain," cried I, in ecstasy.
+
+"Concluded by both parties, who thus acknowledge their hand and seal,"
+cried he, tossing off a glass of champagne; and then, rising from the
+table, he prepared to take his leave. "I conclude," said he, "that you
+'ll not continue your residence here much longer. Seek out some quarter
+less near to heaven, and more accessible to poor human nature."
+
+I promised to follow the advice, and we separated: he to repair to his
+haunts,--the cafés, the editorial snuggeries, and other gossip shops of
+Paris; and I to seek out a more congenial abode, and one more befitting
+the favorable turn which Fate had now imparted to my fortune.
+
+The afternoon of that same day saw me installed in a pleasant little
+apartment overlooking the garden of the Luxembourg, and where, from a
+little terrace, I could inhale the odor of the orange blossoms, and see
+the children at play amid the plashing of fountains and the waving
+of the tall grass. It was, as I discovered, the quarter of the whole
+artiste class,--poets, painters, actors, sculptors, feuilletonists, and
+caricaturists; nor was it difficult to ascertain the fact, as a certain
+extravagance of beard, various modifications of hat, and peculiarly cut
+coats and trousers presented themselves at every moment. Resolving
+to don "the livery of my race," I made my appearance in a suit of
+coffee-brown, hat and russet boots to match; as for beard, a life of
+seclusion for several weeks had only left me the task of retrenchment;
+and the barber whose services I invoked had but to ask my career to
+impress me with that artiste stamp that makes every full-faced man a
+mock "Holbein," and every thin one a bad Vandyke.
+
+"The novelists wear it straight across, and square below the chin, sir,"
+said he. "This is a plate of Monsieur Eugène Sue; but there is a certain
+dash of energy about Monsieur's eyes--a kind of 'beauté insolente,' if I
+may be pardoned the phrase--that would warrant the beard to be pointed.
+May I venture to trim Monsieur as Salvator Rosa?"
+
+"Use your own discretion, Monsieur Palmyre," said I; "the responsibility
+is great, and I will not clog it by even a suggestion."
+
+To say that I could not have known myself on arising from his hands is
+no exaggeration, so perfectly changed had my features become in their
+expression. As a disguise, it was perfect; and this alone was no small
+recommendation.
+
+As I walked the alleys of the Luxembourg, where at every instant men
+travestied like myself came and went, I could not help recalling the
+classical assertion that "no two augurs could meet face to face without
+laughing," and I wondered excessively how we artistes surveyed each
+other and preserved even a decent gravity.
+
+My career as a _litterateur_ began the next day, and I received a
+short editorial summons from the office of "La Tempête" to furnish a
+feuilleton of a hundred and twenty-four lines; the postscript adding
+that as Admiral Du Guesclin had just arrived from Macao, some "esquisses
+des moeurs Chinoises" would be well timed. Of China I only knew what a
+lacquered tea-tray and the willow pattern could teach me; but I set to
+work at once, and by assuming my sketches to be personal adventures and
+experiences, made up a most imposing account of Chinese domesticity.
+
+The article had an immense success: the air of veracity was perfect; and
+the very officers of the fleet were so deluded by the imposition as
+to believe they must have frequently met me at Shang-kee-shing or
+Fong-wong-loo.
+
+Thus was I launched into a career, of all others the most amusing, the
+most exciting, and, I must also add, the most dissipated. Living apart
+from all mankind in a little circle of our own, where we only recognized
+the world as we ourselves were pleased to paint it, our whole lives were
+one long scoff and sneer at everybody and everything. Friendship meant
+the habit of meeting at dinner; the highest nobility of soul was his who
+paid the reckoning.
+
+If there was little actual happiness among us, there was certainly no
+care nor any touch of sorrow. A great picture condemned, a poem cut to
+pieces, a play hissed off, only suggested a "souper de consolation,"
+when the unlucky author would be the first to cut jokes upon his own
+failure, and ridicule the offspring of his own brains. Who could look
+for sympathy where men had no feeling for themselves? Even thieves, the
+proverb tells us, observe "honor" with each other; but we were worse
+than thieves, since we actually lived and grew fat upon each other's
+mishaps. If one exhibited a statue at the Louvre, another was sure to
+caricature it for the Passage de l'Opéra. If one brought out a grand
+drama at the Français, a burlesque was certain to follow it at the
+Palais-Royal. Every little trait that near intercourse and familiarity
+discloses, every weakness that is laid bare in the freedom of friendly
+association, were made venal, and worth so much a line for "Le Voleur"
+or "L'Espion."
+
+As to any sulking, or dreaming of resenting these infractions, he might
+as well try to repress the free-and-easy habits of a midshipman's berth.
+They were the "masonry of the craft," which each tacitly subscribed to
+when he entered it.
+
+All intercourse was completely gladiatorial, not for display, but for
+defence. Everlasting badinage on every subject and on everybody was the
+order of each day; and as success was to the full as much quizzed
+as failure, any exhibition of vanity or self-gratulation met a heavy
+retribution. Woe unto him whose romance went through three editions in
+a fortnight, or whom the audience called for at the conclusion of his
+drama!
+
+As for the fairer portion of our guild, being for the most part
+ostracized in general society, they bore a grudge against their sex,
+and affected a thousand airs of mannishness. Some always dressed in male
+attire; many sported little moustaches and chin-tufts, rode man-fashion
+in the Bois de Boulogne, fought duels; and all smoked. Like other
+converts, they went farther in their faith than the old believers, and
+talked Communism, Socialism, and Saint Simonianism, with a freedom that
+rose high above all the little prejudices ordinary life fosters.
+
+If great crimes, such as shock the world by their enormity, were quite
+unknown among us, all the vices practicable within the Law and the Code
+Napoléon were widely popular; and the worst of it all was, none seemed
+to have the remotest conception that he was not the beau-ideal of
+morality. The simple fact was, we assumed a very low standard of
+_right_, and chose to walk even under _that_.
+
+With Paris and all its varied forms of life I soon became perfectly
+familiar,--not merely that city which occupies the Faubourg St. Honoré,
+or St. Germain, not the Paris of the Boulevards or the Palais-Royal
+only, but with Quartier St. Denis, the Batignolles, the Cité, and the
+Pays Latin. I knew every dialect, from the slang of fashion to the
+conventional language of its lowest populace. I heard every rumor,
+from the cabinet of the Minister down to the latest gossip of the
+"Coulisses:" what the world said and thought, in each of its varying and
+dissimilar sections; how each political move was judged; what was the
+public feeling for this or that measure; how the "many-headed" were
+satisfied or dissatisfied, whether with the measures of the Ministry, or
+the legs of the new danseuse; and thus I became the very perfection of
+a feuilletoniste. There is but one secret in this species of
+literature,--the ever-watchful observation of the public; and when it is
+considered that this is a Parisian public, the task is not quite so easy
+as some would deem it. This watchfulness, and a certain hardihood
+that never shrinks from any theme, however sacred to the conventional
+reserves of the general world, are all the requisites.
+
+I have said it was a most amusing life; and if eternal excitement, if
+the onward rush of new emotions, the never-ceasing flow of stimulating
+thoughts, could have sufficed for happiness, I might have been, and
+ought to have been, contented. Still, the whole was unreal. Not only was
+the world we had made for ourselves unreal, but all our judgments, all
+our speculations, our hopes, fears, anticipations, our very likings and
+dislikings! Our antipathies were mock, and what we denounced with all
+the pretended seriousness of heartfelt conviction in one journal, we not
+unfrequently pronounced to be a heaven-sent blessing in another. Bravos
+of the pen, we had no other principle than our pay, and were utterly
+indifferent at whom we struck, even though the blow should prove fatal.
+That we should become sceptical on every subject; that we should cease
+to bestow credence on anything, believing that all around was false,
+hypocritical, and unreal as ourselves, was natural enough; but this
+frame of mind bears its own weighty retribution, and not even the
+miserable victim of superstitious fear dreads solitude like him whose
+mind demands the constant stimulant of intercourse, the torrent of new
+ideas, that whirls him along, unreflecting and unthinking.
+
+It will be easily seen that all my narrative of myself met but little
+faith in such company. They unhesitatingly rejected the whole story
+of my wealth; and my future restoration to rank and riches used to be
+employed as a kind of synonym for the Greek calends. The worst of all
+this was, their disbelief infected even me, and I gradually began to
+look upon myself as an impostor. My hope--the guide-star that cheered
+me in many a dark and gloomy period--began to wane, and I felt that ere
+long all those aspirations which had spirited me on in life would lie
+cold and dead within me, and that my horizon, would extend no further
+than where each daily sun sunk to rest. To show any discontent with my
+walk, to evince in the slightest degree any misgivings that we of "La
+petite Presse" did not give laws to taste, morals, jurisprudence, and
+legislation, would have been high treason. To imply a doubt that we held
+in our hands, not alone the destinies of Paris, but of Europe,--of all
+civilization,--would have been a rank and outrageous heresy. Like the
+priest, the journalist can never unfrock himself. The mark of the ink,
+more tenacious than the blood on Lady Macbeth's fingers, will "never
+out." What, then, could I do? For, wearied of my calling, I yearned
+for a little truth, for a new glimpse of reality, however short and
+fleeting.
+
+Full of these thoughts, I repaired one morning to the Trou-aux-Bois,
+where fortunately I found my friend Paul alone,--at least, except three
+secretaries, to whom he was dictating by turns, he had no one with him!
+"Wait till I have finished this 'Attack of Wolves on a Caravan,'" said
+he, "and the 'Death of Jules de Tavanne by Poison,' and I 'm your
+man. Meanwhile, step into my study; there are masses of newspapers and
+letters which you can read freely."
+
+He did not detain me long. Apparently the wolves were weak, and soon
+beaten off, and the poison was strong, and soon did its work; for he
+joined me in less than half an hour.
+
+My explanation was listened to patiently, and, what surprised me more,
+without astonishment. He saw nothing exaggerated or high-flown in the
+difficulties I started, and even went the length of confessing that
+many of my objections had occurred to his own mind. "But then," said he,
+"what is to be done? If you turn soldier, are you always certain that
+you will concur in the justice of the cause for which you fight? Become
+a lawyer, and is not half your life passed in arraigning the right and
+defending the wrong? Try medicine; and where will be your 'practice'
+if you only prescribe for the really afflicted, and do not indulge the
+caprices and foster the complainings of the 'malade imaginaire '? As an
+apothecary, you would vend poisons; as an architect, you would devise
+jails and penitentiaries; and so to the end of the chapter. Optimism is
+just as impracticable as it is dangerous. Accept the world as you find
+it, not because it is the best, but because it is the only policy; and,
+above all, be slow in changing a career where you have met with success.
+The best proof that it suits you is, that the public think so."
+
+Being determined on my course, I now affected a desire to see life in
+some other form, and observe mankind under some other aspect. To this
+he assented freely, and, after a few moments' discussion, suddenly
+bethought him of a letter he had received that very morning. "You
+remember the Duc de St. Cloud, whom you met at dinner the first day you
+spent here?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Well, he was, as you are aware, ordered off to Africa, to take a high
+military command a few days after, and has not since returned to France.
+This day I have received a letter from him, asking me to recommend some
+one among my literary acquaintances to fill the office of his private
+secretary. You are exactly the man for the appointment. The duties are
+light, the pay liberal, the position agreeable in every way; and,
+in fact, for one who desires to see something of the world which the
+Boulevard du Gent and the Café de Paris cannot show him, the opportunity
+is first rate."
+
+The proposal overjoyed me! Had I been called on to invent a post for
+myself, this was exactly the thing I should have fancied. A campaign
+against the Arabs; the novelty of country, people, and events; a life of
+adventure, with a prince for my companion,--these were the very crowning
+desires of my ambition.
+
+"I 'll write about it this very day: there will be a mail for Algiers
+made up this evening, and not a moment shall be lost in making the
+application."
+
+I could not express one half my gratitude for this opportune kindness;
+and when I again turned my steps toward Paris, my heart had regained the
+buoyant elasticity which had so often lifted me above all the troubled
+waves of life.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII. MOI ET MON PRINCE
+
+In less than a fortnight after the interview I have just recorded, I
+received a letter from De Minérale, enclosing another, addressed
+to himself, and whose royal seal at once proclaimed the writer. De
+Minérale's was only a few lines, thus:--
+
+
+     "Dear C,--I forward you the 'Duke's' reply to my note, by
+     which you will see that we have been in time, and fortunate
+     enough to secure your appointment. Lose not a moment in
+     fulfilling the instructions contained in it, and dine with
+     me to-day at the 'Frères,' at seven.
+
+     "Yours,
+
+     "P. deM."
+
+     The Duke's epistle, almost equally brief, was to the effect:
+
+     "Headquarters, Oran.
+
+     "My Dear De Minérale,--Of course I remember perfectly our
+     friend the 'Quatorzième,' whose lucubrations in the journals
+     I have since been much amused with. In some respects he
+     would suit me well, being a fellow of high animal spirits,
+     great readiness, and, if I mistake not, well fitted for the
+     rough usage of a campaign. But it strikes me that if his
+     position be such as you represent it, the exchange would be
+     anything but profitable. This is a land of few pleasures and
+     no luxuries. Tell him that we never see truffles, that
+     champagne is only a tradition, and, except Moorish damsels,
+     who never show us more of their faces than a pair of eyes,--
+     --darting fire and anger,--we have no beauties. Yet if,
+     despite all these drawbacks, he be still willing to tempt
+     his fortune, and trust to 'a razzia' for the rest, let him
+     call on Count du Verguoble, at the 'Ministère de la Guerre,'
+     where he will find everything in readiness for his
+     appointment.
+
+     "Should he desire it, he can also receive his commission in
+     my own regiment, the 13th Chasseurs-à-cheval; and as he will
+     not be called on for duty, he might as well accept an
+     appointment that will at least give him forage for his
+     horses and some other advantages.
+
+     "Send me all the new things that are out, and tell me what
+     you and Alphonse are doing. 'Mes amitiés' to our fair
+     friend in the Rue Ponchaule, and the like--indiscriminately--
+     to all the others.
+
+     "Yours affectionately,
+
+     M. dk St. C.
+
+     "You call him 'Le Comte de Creganne,' and so I have written
+     it for the Minister: is this right?"
+
+I read and re-read the letter till I knew every sentence of it by heart;
+and then, dressing myself with a degree of care the importance of the
+occasion suggested, I drove off for the Minister's office. It was not
+the hour of his usual reception; but on sending in my name, which I did
+as Le Comte de Creganne, I was at once admitted.
+
+His Excellency was all smiles and affability, praised his Royal
+Highness's selection of a name so greatly honored in literature, and
+paid me many flattering compliments on my writings,--which, by the
+way, he confounded with those of half-a-dozen others; and then, after a
+variety of civil speeches, gently diverged into a modest inquiry as to
+my native country, rank, and fortune. "We live in days, mon cher Comte,"
+said he, laughing, "in which high capacity and talent happily take
+precedence of mere lineage; but still, an illustrious personage has
+always insisted upon the necessity of those immediately about the person
+of the princes being of noble families. I am quite aware that you can
+fulfil every condition of the kind, and only desire such information as
+may satisfy his Majesty."
+
+I replied by relating the capture of my property at Malaga, which,
+among other things, contained all the title-deeds of my estates, and
+the patent of my nobility. "These alone," said I, producing the banker's
+letters addressed to me as Condé de Cregano, "are all that remain to me
+now to remind me of my former standing; and although, as born a British
+subject, I might at once apply to my minister to substantiate my claims,
+the unhappy events of Ireland which enlisted my family in the ranks of
+her patriots have made us exiles,--proscribed exiles forever."
+
+This explanation went further than my previous one. The old French
+antipathy to England found sympathy for Irish rebellion at once; and
+after a very brief discussion, my appointment was filled up, and I was
+named Private Secretary to the Duc de St. Cloud, and Lieutenant in the
+13th Regiment of Chasseurs-à-cheval.
+
+A new career had now opened before me, and it was one of all others the
+most to my choice. The war in Africa had become by that time a kind of
+crusade; it was the only field where Frenchmen could win fame and honor
+in arms, and the military fever of the nation was at its height. Into
+this enthusiasm I threw myself ardently; nor did it need the stimulation
+derived from a new and most becoming uniform to make me fancy myself a
+very Bayard in chivalry.
+
+A truly busy week was spent by me in preparations for departure: as I
+had to be presented at a private audience of the Court, to wait upon
+various high official personages, to receive instructions on many
+points, and, lastly, to preside at a parting dinner which I was to give
+to my literary brethren, before retiring from the guild forever.
+
+Last dinners and leave-takings are generally sad affairs; this of
+mine was, however, an exception: it was a perfect orgie of wild and
+enthusiastic gayety. All the beauty which the theatres and the "artiste"
+class generally could boast, was united with the brilliancy and
+convivial excellence of the cleverest men in Paris,--the professional
+sayers of smart things, the ready-witted ones, whose epigrams were
+sufficient to smash a cabinet, or laugh down a new treaty; and all in
+high spirits, since what promoted me, also left a vacancy in the corps
+that gave many others a step in the ranks of letters.
+
+What speeches were made in my honor, what toasts, prefaced by all
+the exaggeration of praise that would have been fulsome, save for the
+lurking diablerie of fun that every now and then burst forth in the
+midst of them! And then there were odes, and sonnets, and songs, in
+which my future achievements were pictured in a vein half-flattering,
+half-satirical,--that peculiar eau sucré, with a squeeze of lemon, that
+only a Frenchman knows how to concoct!
+
+
+
+During one of my most triumphant moments, when two of the very prettiest
+actresses of the "Odéon" were placing a laurel crown upon my brow,
+a cabinet-messenger was announced, and presented me with an order to
+repair at once to the Tuileries with my official letter of appointment,
+as his Majesty, by some accident, had forgotten to append to it his
+signature. Apologizing to my worthy friends for a brief absence, which
+they assured me should be devoted to expatiating on those virtues of
+my character which my presence interdicted them from enlarging upon, I
+arose, and left the room. It was necessary to arrange the disorder of my
+dress and appearance, and I made a hurried dressing, bathing my
+temples in cold water, and composing myself, so far as might be, into
+a condition fit to meet the eyes of royalty,--two of my friends
+accompanying me the while, and lending their assistance to my toilet.
+They at length pronounced me perfect, and I drove off.
+
+Although already past midnight, the King, with several members of the
+royal family, were seated at tea: two of the ministers, a few general
+officers, and a foreign ambassador being of the party.
+
+Into this circle, in which there was nothing to inspire awe, save
+the actual rank of the illustrious personages themselves, I was now
+introduced by the Minister of War. "Le Comte de Creganne, please your
+Majesty," said he, twice, ere the King heard him.
+
+"Ah, very true," said the King, turning round, and, with a smile of most
+cordial expression, adding, "My dear Count, it seems I had forgotten
+to sign your appointment,--a mistake that might have caused you some
+inconvenience and delay at Algiers. Pray let me amend this piece of
+forgetfulness."
+
+I bowed respectfully, and deposited before him the great square
+envelope, with the huge official seal annexed, that contained my
+nomination.
+
+"The Princess de Verneuil will be happy to give you some tea, Count,"
+said the King, motioning me to sit down; and I obeyed, while my heart,
+beating violently at my side, almost overpowered me with emotion.
+Only to think of it!--the son of an Irish peasant seated at the family
+tea-table of a great sovereign, and the princess herself, the daughter
+of a king, pouring out his tea!
+
+If nothing short of the most consummate effrontery can maintain a cool,
+unaffected indifference in presence of royalty, there is another frame
+of mind, indicative of ease and self-possession, perfectly compatible
+with a kingly presence; and this is altogether dependent on the manner
+and tone of the sovereign himself. The King--I have heard it was his
+usual manner--was as free from any assumption of superiority as would
+be any private gentleman under his own roof; his conversation was
+maintained in a tone of perfect familiarity with all around him, and
+even when differing in opinion with any one, there was a degree of
+almost deference in the way he insinuated his own views.
+
+On this occasion he directed nearly all his attention to myself, and
+made Ireland the subject, asking a vast variety of questions, chiefly
+regarding the condition of the peasantry, their modes of life, habits of
+thinking, education, and future prospects. I saw that my statements were
+all new to him, that he was not prepared for much that I told him,
+and he very soon avowed it by saying, "These, I must own, are not
+the opinions I have usually heard from your countrymen, Count; but I
+conclude that the opportunities of travel, and the liberalism of thought
+which intercourse with foreign countries begets, may lead you to take
+views not quite in accordance with mere stay-at-home politicians."
+I could have given him another and more accurate explanation of
+the difference. It was the first and only time that his Majesty had
+conversed with the son of a peasant,--one, himself born and bred beneath
+the thatch of a cabin, and who had felt the very emotions which others
+merely draw from their imaginations. As it grew late, his Majesty arose,
+and the Ministers one by one retired, leaving me the only stranger
+present. "Now, Count, I must not detain you longer; you leave Paris
+early to-morrow morning, and I should have remembered how large a
+portion of your night I have monopolized. This paper,--where is it?"
+
+I at once took up the envelope, and drew forth a document; but conceive
+my horror when I discerned that it was a piece of verse,--a droll song
+upon my new dignity that one of my villanous companions had stuffed into
+the envelope in place of my official letter of appointment. Crushing it
+in my hand, I pulled out another. Worse again! It was the bill-of-fare
+of our dinner at Very's, where "entrées" and "hors-d'ouvres, salmis and
+macédoines," figured in imposing array. One document still remained, and
+I drew it out; but as his Majesty's eyes were this time bent upon me,
+I had not a moment to see what might be its contents,--indeed, I half
+suspected the King saw my indecision; and, determining to put a bold
+face on the matter, I doubled down a blank piece of the paper, and
+placed it for his Majesty. Apparently his thoughts were wandering in
+some other direction, for he took up the pen abstractedly, and wrote
+the words, "Approved by us," with his name in a routine sort of way that
+showed he gave no attention to the act whatever.
+
+It was all I could do! To avoid any indecent show of haste in enclosing
+the paper within the envelope, my hand trembled so that I could scarcely
+accomplish it. When I had replaced it in my pocket, I felt like a
+drowning man at the moment he touches land.
+
+The King dismissed me with many flattering speeches, and I returned to
+Very's, where my friends were still at table. Resolved not to gratify
+the triumph of their malice, I affected to have discovered the trick in
+time to remedy it, and to replace my appointment in its enclosure. Of
+course the possibility of what might have occurred gave rise to many
+a droll fancy and absurd conceit, and I plainly saw how very little
+compunction there would have been for my disaster if a ludicrous scene
+had ensued between the king and myself.
+
+We separated now, with all the testimonies of sincere affection,--some
+of my fair friends even wept; and our parting had all the parade and
+about the same amount of sincerity as a scene in a drama. Paul alone
+showed any real feeling: he liked me probably because he had served
+me,--a stronger bond of affection than many people are aware of. "Tell
+me one thing, Creganne," cried he, as he shook my hand for the
+last time,--"we are perhaps never to meet again, life has so many
+vicissitudes,--tell me frankly, then, if your Mexican history, your
+riches and gems and gold, your diamonds, your rubies, your doubloons,
+and your moidores, are not all a humbug, together with your imprisonment
+in Malaga, and all its consequences?"
+
+"True, every word of it," said I, impressively.
+
+"Come, come, now, your secret is safe with _me_. Be open and
+above-board; say honestly that the whole was a 'get up.' I promise you
+fairly that, if you do, I 'll have a higher value for your talents at
+an episode than I now place upon your lost wealth and your countship to
+boot."
+
+"I'm sorry for it," replied I; "there are few men whose esteem I set
+more store by. If I could oblige you by becoming a cheat, my regard for
+you might possibly overmaster my better judgment; but, unhappily, I am
+what I represent myself, and what I trust one day yet to convince you."
+With this we parted. As the diligence drove away, I could see Paul still
+standing in the same place, evidently unable to resolve the difficult
+problem of my veraciousness.
+
+And now I am approaching a chapter of my history whose adventures
+and chances are alone a story in themselves. The varied fortunes of
+a campaign in a strange land, with strange enemies, new scenes and
+climate, of course were not without incidents to diversify and interest
+them; and although I could probably select more passages of curious
+adventure from this than from any other portion of my life, I am forced
+to pass by all in silence; and for these reasons: first, the narrative
+would lead me to a greater length than I have any right to presume upon
+in this history, or to believe that my reader would be a willing party
+to; and, secondly, the recital would entail the acquaintance with a
+vast variety of characters, not one of whom ever again occurred to me
+in life, and of whom, when I quitted Africa, their very names never were
+heard by me more. And here I may be pardoned for saying that I have been
+sadly constrained, in these my Confessions, to avoid, upon the one hand,
+any mention of those persons who merely exercised a passing influence
+on my fortunes, and yet to show by what agencies of personal
+acquaintanceship my character became formed and moulded. In a novel, the
+world would seem to consist of only the very characters introduced,
+or, rather, the characters serve as abstractions to represent certain
+qualities and passions of mankind; but in real life is this the case?
+Nay, is it not precisely the reverse? Do not the chance intimacies we
+form in the steamboat or the diligence very frequently leave deep and
+lasting impressions behind them? Are not phrases remembered, and words
+treasured up as axioms, that we have heard passingly from those we are
+never to see again? Of how many of our strongest convictions the origin
+was mere accident,--ideas dropped like those seeds of distant plants
+that are borne for thousands of miles upon the wind, and let fall in
+some far-away land to take root and fructify? And are these the agencies
+to be omitted when a man would give a "confession" to the world? Why are
+the letters of an individual his best biography, save as recording his
+judgment upon passing events or people, with whom, in all likelihood,
+he has little subsequent connection? But enough of this; I have said
+sufficient for apology to those who see the difficulty of the case. To
+those who do not, I have been prolix without being profitable.
+
+
+
+Of Africa, then, I must not speak. Three years of its burning sun and
+parched soil--the life of bivouac and battle--had done the work of ten
+upon my constitution and appearance. I was bronzed almost to a Moorish
+tint; a few straggling hairs of gray showed themselves in my dark beard
+and moustache; while emergencies and hazards of different kinds had
+imparted a sterner character to my features, that little resembled the
+careless gayety of my earlier days. In addition to this, I was wounded:
+a sabre cut received in defending the Prince from an attack of
+Arab horsemen had severed the muscles of my right arm; and although
+encouraged to believe that I should yet recover its use, I was for the
+time, at least, totally disabled, and as incompetent to wield a sword
+as a pen. A very flattering mention of me in "general orders," my name
+recorded in a despatch, and the ribbon of the "Legion," well rewarded me
+for these mishaps; and now, as a season of peace intervened, I was about
+to return to France with the rank of "Chef d'Escadron" and the fame of
+a distinguished officer. As the Prince, my master, was to make a tour
+in the provinces before his return to Paris, permission was given me to
+visit Italy, whither the physician advised me to repair to recruit my
+strength, before adventuring upon the trials of a more northern climate.
+The "Duc" overwhelmed me with kind protestations at parting, and gave me
+a letter to the French Minister at Naples, especially commending me to
+his friendship, and speaking of my services in terms that my modesty
+cannot permit me to repeat. Thus was Fortune once more my friend; and
+could I have but obliterated all memory of the past, and of those fatal
+riches,--the brief enjoyment of which had given an impulse to all my
+desires,--I might now have been well contented. High character as a
+soldier, a certain rank in the service, and the friendship of a Royal
+Prince, were not trifling advantages to one who had often sued destiny
+with success, even "_in forma pauperis_;" still, the "great game" I
+should have played, as the man of large fortune, was never out of my
+thoughts, and in secret I resolved to return to Mexico, and, as the
+phrase has it, "look after my affairs."
+
+This determination grew more fixed the longer I considered it; and
+here I may remark that the document to which the King had appended his
+signature and approval was a statement of my claims on Spain, drawn up
+by myself,--one of those hundred representations which I made, in idle
+hours, to while away time and amuse hope. If I was well aware that the
+signature was obtained by a mere accident, and without knowledge of the
+contents, I was not deterred from speculating as to what useful purpose
+it might be employed,--scruples of conscience being of all things in the
+world those I best knew how to dispose of.
+
+On reaching Naples I discovered that the Envoy to whom my letter was
+addressed had just been recalled, and in his place a young Secretary of
+Embassy was officiating,--one of those admirably dressed and inimitably
+gloved young gentlemen whom France despatches to foreign countries
+as representatives of her skill in neckcloths and waistcoats, and her
+incomparable superiority in lacquered leather. Monsieur de Bussenaç was
+a veritable type of Paris dandyism,--vain, empty, and conceited, with
+considerable smartness in conversation, and unquestionable personal
+courage; his life was passed in abusing England and affecting the most
+ludicrous imitation of all that was English,--in dress, equipage, and
+livery.
+
+Although my name was not unknown to him, he received me with the
+condescending courtesy the diplomatist usually assumes in his
+intercourse with the soldier: protested his regret that the gay season
+was over, that Naples was thinning every day, that he hardly knew where,
+or to whom, to present me.
+
+I assured him that pleasure was not among the ambitions of an invalid
+like myself; but, next to the care of my health, one of my objects in
+Naples was to press a claim upon the Spanish Government, to which
+the residence of a Spanish Minister of high rank at that court gave a
+favorable opportunity; and with this preface I gave a brief history of
+my loss and imprisonment. The young Chargé d'Affaires looked horridly
+bored by my story, of which, it was clear, he only heard a very small
+part; and when I concluded, he made a few notes of my statement, and
+promised to see the Spanish Ambassador upon it that very day.
+
+I believe that my experience is not a singular one; but from the moment
+that I announced myself as a person claiming the aid of the "Mission,"
+the doors of the Embassy were hermetically sealed against me. If I
+called, "His Excellency" (everything is Excellency to an embassy porter)
+was either in conference with a colleague, or replying to a despatch, or
+with the court. If I wrote, my answer was always a polite acknowledgment
+of my note, and no more. Even when we met passingly in the street, his
+salute was cold and markedly distant; so that I began to suspect that
+either he had heard something to my disadvantage among his colleagues,
+or that he had received some hint respecting me.
+
+I knew if I were to address the Duc de St. Cloud on the subject, that
+my essenced friend would at once receive a check, and possibly a heavy
+reprimand; but I was too proud to descend to this, and resolved to right
+myself without calling in the aid of others. With this intention, I
+repaired one day to the Mission, and having waited for some time, till
+I saw a person leave the cabinet, from whom I learned that the Envoy was
+at home, I advanced to the door. "Out, sir," said the porter, barring
+the way. I pushed him aside, with the air of one who was not to be
+trifled with, and, opening the door, walked in.
+
+Whether it was that the suddenness of my appearance unmanned him,
+or that something in my manner showed there was no time for further
+deception, he arose to receive me, and handed me a chair.
+
+"I have come, sir," said I, calmly but resolutely, "to ask if, in the
+matter which I intrusted to your hands, any progress has been made,
+or if I am still to be the patient recipient of notes which tell me
+nothing?"
+
+"What if there be nothing to tell, sir?" said the young diplomatist, now
+recovering his self-possession, and standing with his back to the fire,
+in the very easiest of attitudes.
+
+"I will beg of you to be more explicit," said I.
+
+"You shall not have to complain of me on that score, sir," said he, with
+a most affected air of courtesy; "and, as brevity is the very essence of
+clearness, I may as well state that on representing the case of El Condé
+de Cregano to the Minister of Spain, he very gravely assured me that
+I was inventing a personage, for that no such name existed among the
+nobility of his land. The dignity may be recognized in Mexico," added
+he, "but the Mexician Minister is equally perverse, and disclaims having
+so much as heard of you. I spoke of your wealth and great treasures,
+and they actually were rude enough to laugh,--not at you, sir, don't be
+angry,--but at _me_. The Spanish Ambassador, indeed, said that nothing
+was more common than for Carlist agents of inferior station to assume
+styles and titles which might entitle them to greater consideration if
+taken prisoner, and that in this wise you might have succeeded to your
+countship; but that to real rank, he persisted in asserting you had no
+claim whatever. This you must allow, sir, is awkward."
+
+"For you, certainly, it will prove so," said I, haughtily. "You may rely
+upon it, sir, that your career as a diplomatist will end where it begun.
+You have dared to insult one whose slightest word could crush you, did
+he not feel that such an exercise of influence would be ludicrously
+disproportioned to the object it was directed against. There, sir, there
+is a written statement of my claim; there a full and explicit demand
+for reparation; and there, the signature of your master the King, at
+the foot of it. You cannot be ignorant of the hand, nor can you dare to
+pretend it is a forgery."
+
+If my insulting language had brought the flush of anger to his cheek,
+this "damning proof" completely overcame all his presence of mind,
+and left him in a state of confusion and perplexity that any one, save
+myself, must have pitied.
+
+"The writing is certainly in the King's hand," said he, "and therefore I
+am obliged to concede the fact that your claim possesses features I was
+not previously aware of; with your leave, then, I will lay this document
+before the Spanish Minister--"
+
+"You shall do no such thing, sir," said I, haughtily; "my asserted right
+is just what it was before I showed you that paper; nor shall I stoop to
+any corroborative testimony of my claim, even from the hand of royalty;"
+and with this impertinent speech I advanced towards the grate and thrust
+the paper into the fire, pressing it down into the blaze with my foot,
+and watching till I saw it consumed.
+
+The diplomatist watched me narrowly throughout this brief proceeding,
+and I half feared that he had seen through my stratagem, as he said,
+"Well, Count, as not a shadow of doubt can exist now as to the authentic
+character of your demand, the best course will be to have a personal
+interview with the Spanish Ambassador. He 'receives' this evening at his
+palace, and, with your leave, we will wait upon him together. Of course
+the time and place will not admit of any discussion of this claim, but
+you can be presented,--a necessary preliminary to the intercourse that
+will follow."
+
+This all looked marvellously like a trap; but as any doubt or indecision
+now would be ruin, I affected to be much pleased with the proposal, and
+we parted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII. A SOIRÉE IN THE GREAT WORLD
+
+It was not without considerable trepidation and great misgiving that I
+awaited the evening. What subtlety might be in store for me, I could not
+guess; but it seemed clear that the young secretary meditated a heavy
+vengeance upon me, and would not lightly pardon the insult I had passed
+upon him.
+
+"I have it," thought I, after long and deep pondering: "his plan is
+to introduce me into a great and crowded assembly, with ministers,
+ambassadors, and generals, and then, in the face of a distinguished
+company, to proclaim me a cheat and impostor. He has doubtless the
+train all laid, only waiting for the match; and as the outrage will
+be inflicted conjointly and diplomatically, any demand for personal
+satisfaction will be vain, while a very slight hint at the Prefecture
+would suffice to have me expelled from the country."
+
+Should I confront this danger, or hazard the risk of such an exposure,
+or should I suffer judgment to be given against me by default? What
+a trying alternative! In the one case, a peril the greater for
+its shadowy, ill-defined consequences; in the other, certain and
+irretrievable disgrace! How often did I curse my ambitious yearning
+after wealth, that had not left me contented with my own fortune,--the
+hard-won, but incontestable, rewards of personal distinction. As the
+gallant officer who had gained each step upon the field of battle, and
+whose services had claimed the especial notice of his prince, I ought to
+have rested satisfied.
+
+My promotion would have been certain and rapid, and what higher
+condition should I dare to aspire to than the command of a French
+regiment, or possibly some brilliant staff appointment? Why will not
+men look downward as they climb the mountain of life, and see the humble
+abyss from which they have issued? Were they but to do so, how many
+would be convinced that they had done enough, and not risk all by
+striving to mount higher! The son of the poor peasant a General of
+Division!--one among that decorated group surrounding the sovereign of a
+great nation!--was not this sufficient? And so much assuredly was within
+my reach, merely by length of life and the ordinary routine of events!
+And yet all this must I jeopardize for the sake of gold! And now
+what course should I adopt? My whole philosophy through life had
+been comprised in that one word which summed up all Marshal Blucher's
+"tactics,"--"Forwards!" It had sufficed for me in many a trying
+emergency,--it had cut the black knot of many a tangle;--should I not
+still abide by it? Of course. This was not the moment to abandon the
+bold policy.
+
+From the "host of mine inn" I learned that the Spanish minister, whose
+receptions were little less splendid than those of the court itself,
+occupied a position which in countries of more rigid morality would have
+left his salons less crowded. In fact, it was asserted that he owed his
+eminent station to his having consented to marry a lady who had once
+been the rival of royalty itself in Spain, and whose banishment had
+been thus secured. Being still in the full pride of her beauty, and
+possessing great wealth, the "scandal" only added to her claim, in a
+society where notoriety of any kind is regarded as a distinction.
+
+She was the reigning belle of the capital. Her word was law on every
+theme of fashion and taste; her opinions exerted a considerable
+influence on matters of high political bearing; and despite the
+ambiguity of her position, she was the arbitress of every claim to
+admission into that society which arrogated to itself the name of being
+"the best."
+
+It is needless to say that a station of the kind engenders a species of
+tyranny to which the world responds by inventing all manner of stories
+and strange histories; and thus the Marchesa de la Norada was by some
+proclaimed a natural daughter of the Emperor Napoleon,--by others, of
+an English Royal Duke. She was a widow, and the wife of half-a-dozen
+personages together. There was not an European court into which she had
+not brought discord,--not a cabinet where she had not sown intrigue. Her
+beauty had seduced, her gold corrupted, and her wiles entrapped half the
+great statesmen of the age; while there was scarcely a crime within the
+red catalogue of the law that was not laid to her charge; and yet,
+with all these allegations against her, she was more sovereign in that
+capital than the rightful queen of the land. This was the presence into
+which I was to be introduced to-night, and--I frankly own it--I would
+have rather confronted the searching scrutiny of the most penetrating of
+men than meet the careless, half-bestowed glances of that woman! nor was
+it at all unlikely that to such a test they wished now to subject me and
+my pretensions.
+
+It is far easier for many men to confront a personal danger, the peril
+of life or limb, than to meet the trying difficulty of a slight before
+the world. To myself, the former would be as nothing in comparison. I
+could face any amount of peril in preference to the risk of a public
+mark of depreciation, and from a woman, too! where redress was as
+impossible as reply was useless.
+
+It was already midnight ere I could muster courage to set out,--not that
+the hour was inappropriate, for the Marchesa's receptions only began
+when the opera was over. As I drove along the Chiaia, the crowd of
+carriages told that this was a night of more than ordinary attraction,
+and more than one equipage of the Court passed by, showing that some
+members of the royal family would be present. This again terrified me.
+Was royalty to be among the witnesses of my shame? When a man's thoughts
+do take the turn of self-tormenting, what ingenuity will they not
+exhibit,--what astonishing resources of annoyance! I am convinced that
+my greatest enemy in life could never have inflicted a tenth part of
+that suffering which now I experienced from my own fancies! Among the
+thoughts which crossed my mind, one kept continually recurring, and made
+an impression that my memory will probably never lose,--it was my doubt
+whether I ought not to return and exchange my uniform for plain clothes,
+and thus avoid exposing the epaulette of a French officer, and the proud
+cordon I wore, to the chances of open insult.
+
+This question was yet unsolved in my mind as I drove into the court-yard
+of the palace. The turmoil and confusion of the scene--carriages
+interlocked, poles smashing panels, and horses rearing--was an actual
+relief to me, and I would have felt a heart-warm gratitude for any
+accident that might have upset half the company, and broken up the
+reception in disorder. Such "good-luck" was, however, not in store for
+me. My calèche at length drew up at the door, and I handed my card with
+my name to the major-domo, who stood at the top of the stairs with an
+army of liveried lacqueys around him. "Le Comte de Creganne!" resounded
+now through the spacious antechamber, and the voices of others took it
+up, and the echo without repeated it, every syllable falling upon my
+heart like the bang of a death-bell!
+
+Although our progress was soon arrested by the dense crowd, and all
+chance of moving farther, for a time at least, out of the question,
+the lacquey continued to call my name aloud, with what I deemed a most
+needless importunity of announcement. At last he ceased, leaving me to
+the enjoyment of a momentary tranquillity in mixing with the crowd. It
+was indeed but momentary; for the young attaché had made his way through
+the throng, and whispered in my ear, "Let us retire this way, and I
+'ll lead you by another passage, otherwise you will run a great risk
+of never being presented to the Marchesa." I could have told him that
+I would have borne even this misfortune like a man; but I did not, and
+merely followed him as he led the way through a suite of rooms, of which
+only one was occupied, and that by a card-party.
+
+The buzz and hum of voices apprised me that we were again approaching
+the company, and suddenly, on opening a door, we found ourselves in a
+small but gorgeously furnished chamber, where three or four ladies and
+about a dozen men were assembled, while the main body of the guests
+passed through in defile, each stopping to salute and say a few words to
+a lady who did the honors of the reception. As her back was towards me,
+I could only mark that she was tall, and of an air that was queenly in
+state and dignity. The stars and decorations around her showed that
+some of the party were princes of the blood, and others, ambassadors and
+ministers of state.
+
+"Wait where you are," whispered my companion; and he moved forward and
+entered the crowd. I stood an eager spectator of the scene, in which,
+despite all my anxieties, I could not but feel interested. It was the
+first great review I had ever witnessed of that fashionable world
+whose recognition and acceptance I so ardently coveted. Its slightest
+gestures, its least and most insignificant observances, were all
+matters of study to me. Every deep reverence, each motion of respectful
+courtesy, were things to mark and imitate, and I was storing up many a
+hint for future guidance, when I observed that a gentleman, whom I had
+rightly conjectured to be a royal prince, appeared to press some remark
+upon the "Marchesa," to which at last she replied, "I believe I must
+follow your Royal Highness's counsel, and take a few minutes' rest;"
+and, so saying, she dropped back from the group, and retired within a
+few paces of where I stood.
+
+"May I beg you to hand that chair, sir," said the Prince to me, and in
+a tone in which I own a certain haughtiness seemed to rebuke my want of
+thoughtfulness in not presenting it unbidden. I hastened to perform this
+service. The lady turned to acknowledge it; our eyes met, and we stood
+fixed and rooted to the spot, each speechless and pale with emotion. In
+those few seconds I felt as if I had lived years.
+
+"La Senhora Dias," murmured I, unconsciously to myself.
+
+"Lupo!" ejaculated she, as if in answer, and she trembled from head to
+foot.
+
+"You have really over-exerted yourself," said the prince, as, taking her
+hand, he pressed her down into a seat.
+
+Her eyes never quitted me for an instant, and the expression of her
+features became almost that of agonizing pain as she motioned me to
+approach her. "Is it possible that I see before me my old friend the
+Duke of------?" She stopped, and, with a look of entreaty I can never
+forget, intimated that I should fill up the blank.
+
+"Le Comte de Creganne, Madame," said I, coming to the rescue, "who is
+but too happy to find himself remembered by the Marchesa de la Norada."
+
+"Very true, Comte; I was confounding you with your constant companion,
+the Duke de la Breanza; I hope he is well, and the dear duchess. And
+you,--when did you arrive from the Brazils? I trust very lately, or you
+have treated me shamefully."
+
+Rapidly as these words were uttered, they were enough to give me the
+"consigne" of what rank my intimate friends held, in what class we met,
+and from whence I came. While I replied to her questions, she motioned
+me to a seat beside her, and, with a smile and a courteous apology
+to the prince for devoting herself to the old friend who had so
+unexpectedly presented himself, she dropped her voice to a whisper and
+said, "Not now, nor here, but to-morrow we will speak together."
+
+"Enough," said I, rapidly; "I am your old and esteemed friend the Comte
+de Creganne; you are not compromised in calling me so."
+
+"Nor can your memory fail to recall me as a Lady of Honor at the
+Brazilian court!"
+
+And now some of the company had gathered around us, to most of whom she
+presented me, always adding some few courteous expressions, indicative
+of our ancient friendship, and of the pleasure she felt at our
+unexpected meeting. If I have occasionally given way to those erratic
+flights of fancy which led me to believe myself a scion of a noble
+house, well born and nurtured, with wealth at my command and a high
+station in store, all these delusions were nothing to the creative
+efforts of _her_ imagination, who commenced by reminding me of a hundred
+people who never existed, and places and incidents which were all as
+unreal. How we did bewail the death of some, rejoice over the good
+fortune of other "dear, dear friends" who had never breathed! and with
+what pleasant laughter we remembered eccentricities and oddities that
+once used to amuse us so much!
+
+Never can I forget the look of astonishment of the young attache as he
+came up and found me seated on the ottoman beside the Marchesa, with
+her pet spaniel upon my lap, while my whole air was redolent of that
+triumphant expression so unmistakably denoting security.
+
+"I perceive," said he, with difficulty repressing his ill-humor, "that
+Madame la Marchesa is acquainted with the Comte de Creganne."
+
+"For many years, sir, the Comte and I have known each other, and I have
+only to own my surprise that none of my friends at Naples ever mentioned
+to me the arrival of one in every way so distinguished. But here is the
+Marquese; I must present you, Comte." So saying, she introduced me to a
+tall, pompous-looking elderly gentleman, who, it is but fair to add, did
+not evince half so much satisfaction at sight of me as his wife showed.
+And now was I the lion of the evening. I, who had walked the Chiaia
+every day for weeks back without notice or recognition, and who might,
+had the idea occurred to me, have fallen down and died without one to
+pity me,--I became all of a sudden a most "interesting personage"! My
+African campaign was exalted into a perfect career of glory, and
+even _my_ modesty was pushed hard to accept the praises most lavishly
+bestowed upon acts of heroism of which I had not even heard.
+
+The Duke of Vallabretta, the younger brother of the king, was certain
+he had often heard of me from his "friend De St. Cloud." He was quite
+positive that I was the officer of dragoons who, with one squadron of
+horse, captured "a Smala" defended by twelve hundred Arabs, while fully
+one half of the illustrious cruelties of the Oran war was generously
+laid to my charge. A dash of atrocity adds immensely to the charm of
+heroism in Italian estimation; and so I discovered that various acts of
+roasting prisoners, sending a cargo of noses to Toulon, and such like,
+were exceedingly popular with the ladies, who regarded me as a modern
+"Bayard."
+
+Not all these sensations of triumph, however, gave me one half the
+pleasure that I felt in trampling upon the little French attaché, whom
+I persecuted with a proud disdain that nearly drove him mad. All my
+ignorance of Neapolitan society, the obscurity in which I had lived
+hitherto, I laid at his door. I deplored most feelingly to the prince
+the inefficient mode in which we were represented at his court,
+and promised to use my influence in effecting a change. I fear my
+disposition is not so angelic as I usually conceive it, for I actually
+taxed my ingenuity for little subjects of attack against the unlucky
+diplomatist, and saw him at length retire from the salons crushed,
+crest-fallen, and miserable.
+
+Another consideration, perhaps, added venom to my malignity: I knew not
+how short-lived might be my power, and determined to "make my running
+while the course was free." The vicissitudes of fortune had often
+reversed in one short day all the prospect I trusted to be the most
+stable and certain; and, for the future, I was fully resolved never to
+forego the stroke to-day for which my arm might be too weak to-morrow.
+As I saw him depart, I felt like a naval hero when his enemy has struck,
+and, in the pride of victory, abandoned myself to pleasure.
+
+If the Marchesa watched me at first with an uneasy and anxious eye,
+doubtful, perhaps, how I should acquit myself in that high and polished
+world, I soon saw that her fears were allayed as she saw the easy
+quietude of my manner, and that tranquil self-possession which is
+supposed to be only acquired by long admixture with the world of
+fashion. It was evident, too, that if any failure on my part would
+entail disgrace, success was just as certain to do her honor and credit,
+since I was a strong rebutting evidence against all those who denied
+that the Marchesa was ever known or recognized before in the high
+circles of a court.
+
+"To-morrow, at noon," said she, as I made my bow at parting; and it was
+not likely I should forget the appointment.
+
+It was with very different feelings I drove up to the palace of
+the Marchesa on the day following, from those I had experienced on
+approaching it on the evening of the reception; nor was I long without
+perceiving that my confidence was well founded. The Groom of the
+Chambers received me with his most bland courtesy, and by his manner
+showed that he expected my arrival.
+
+Preceding me through a suite of rooms whose magnificence I had not time
+to observe on the previous evening, he ushered me into a small chamber
+leading into a conservatory, from which the view extended over the wide
+Bay of Naples, and presented Vesuvius from base to summit. As I was
+left by myself here for some minutes, I had leisure to notice the varied
+elegance by which I was surrounded. Rare plants and flowers in jars of
+costly porcelain; alabaster statues and rich bronzes appeared amid the
+clustering foliage; and in the midst of all, two tiny swans, of the rare
+breed of Morocco, lay tranquilly in a little basin, whose water spouted
+from a silver fountain of most elaborate workmanship.
+
+While yet gazing on the tasteful objects around, the Marchesa had
+entered, and so noiselessly that she was at my side ere I knew it. Paler
+than on the previous evening, she looked even handsomer; but in the
+sunken eye and the wearied expression of the mouth I could see that she
+had passed a sleepless night.
+
+Having taken a seat upon a sofa, and motioned me to seat myself beside
+her, she looked fixedly at me for several minutes without a word. At
+last, in a voice of deep feeling, she said, "Do you remember the pledge
+with which we parted? Do you recollect the oath by which you bound
+yourself?'
+
+"Perfectly, Señhora!" said I; "nor was I aware yesterday, till the very
+moment of our meeting, in whose presence I was standing."
+
+"But you had heard of me here?"
+
+"Only as the Marchesa de la Norada, not as the Señhora."
+
+"Hush! let that name never escape your lips; I believe you and trust
+you. The commission I gave you was well and faithfully executed: were it
+otherwise, and did I deem you false, it would not be difficult for me to
+rid myself of the embarrassment. We live in a city where such things are
+well understood." My blood ran cold at this threat, for I remembered the
+accusation which hung over her, in Mexico. She saw what was passing in
+my mind, and added, "You have nothing to fear; we shall be good friends
+while you remain here; but that time must be brief. I cannot, I will
+not, live a life of terror; a moment of impatience, an unguarded word,
+a hasty expression of yours, might compromise me, and then--When can you
+leave Naples?"
+
+"To-morrow--to-day, if you desire it."
+
+"That would be too hurried," she said thoughtfully. "We must not
+encourage suspicion. Why are you here?"
+
+I gave the restoration of my health as the reason, and then alluded to
+the circumstances of my Spanish claim, which I had hoped Naples would
+have proved a suitable place for pressing.
+
+"Who knows of this transaction? What evidence have you of its truth?"
+said she, hurriedly.
+
+"The minister by whose order I was imprisoned, the Governor of Malaga,
+his official underlings, all know of it."
+
+"Enough. Now, by whom was the information given on which you were
+arrested?"
+
+"A man who called himself the Consul at Campecho, and to whose
+early history I am disposed to suspect I have the clew, but to whom,
+unfortunately, in a hasty moment, I betrayed that secret knowledge."
+
+"And thus he dreads and hates you," said she, fixing her dark eyes
+sternly on me.
+
+"He rather fears me without reason," said I.
+
+"But still you would have traded on that fear, had it served your
+purpose?" reiterated she, with a pointedness that showed how the
+application to her own case was uppermost in her thoughts.
+
+"You are less than just to me, Señhora!" said I, proudly. "A variety of
+circumstances led me to connect this man with a very unhappy
+incident which took place years ago in England, and wherein his
+conduct--supposing him to be the same--was base to the last degree.
+This suspicion I was weak enough to let escape me. His enmity was the
+consequence, and from it followed all the misfortunes I have suffered."
+
+"Was he a murderer?"
+
+"No,--not that."
+
+"Nor a forger?--for methinks in English esteem such is the parallel
+offence."
+
+"In the case I speak of, forgery was the least of his crimes: he seduced
+the wife of his friend and benefactor."
+
+"Oh, the wretch!" exclaimed she, with a derisive smile that gave her
+features--beautiful as they were--an almost demoniac expression. "I
+trust he never prospered after such iniquity."
+
+Not heeding the tone of sneer in which she uttered this, I replied,
+"You are right, Señhora; he lived a life of terror and misery. He was
+a coward; and the man he had injured never ceased to track him from
+country to country. Over sea and land he followed him; the thirst for
+vengeance stimulating a heart dead to every other emotion. Accident,
+when I was a mere boy, brought me into close relation with poor
+Broughton."
+
+"With whom?" said she, grasping my wrist, while her eyes strained till
+the very blood started in them.
+
+"Sir Dudley Broughton," said I; but the words were not out ere she fell
+senseless on the floor. I raised her, and placed her on a sofa; and
+then, dipping her handkerchief in the fountain, bathed her temples and
+her lips. But she gave no sign of returning animation; her arms dropped
+powerless at either side; she did not even seem to breathe. What was
+I to do? I knew not where to find a bell to summon the servants, even
+should I dare to leave her. In my excitement, I believed that she was
+dead, and that I had killed her; aud then there darted through my brain
+the terrible conviction that this could be no other than Lady Broughton
+herself,--the unhappy Lydia Delmar. With a long-drawn sigh she at length
+awoke, and, opening her eyes, looked up at me. A convulsive shudder
+speedily followed, and she closed them again, and remained still, with
+her hands clasped tightly over her heart.
+
+"Have I been dreaming a terrible dream," said she, at last, in a weak
+and broken voice, "or are my dreadful thoughts realities? Tell me of
+what were we speaking?"
+
+I did not answer. I could not tell her of the sad theme, nor did I dare
+to deceive her. In this dilemma I became silent; but my confusion did
+not escape her, and with a voice, every syllable of which struck deep
+into my heart, she said, "Is this secret your own, or have you ever
+revealed it to another?"
+
+"I have never told it, nor, indeed, till now, was the full mystery known
+to myself."
+
+These few words, which served to confirm her own wavering terrors, at
+the same time that they showed how she herself had betrayed her dreadful
+secret, increased her suffering, and for a space she seemed overwhelmed
+by affliction.
+
+"Let us speak of this no more," said she at last, in the same hurried
+voice which once before had made me suspect the soundness of her
+intellect. "I cannot, I dare not, trust myself to dwell upon this theme;
+nor will I suffer any one to usurp an ascendency over me from terror.
+No, sir; you shall not deceive yourself by such a delusion. I have
+friends--great and powerful friends--who will protect me. I have money,
+and can buy the aid that outstrips patronage. Beware, then, how you
+threaten me!"
+
+"You are unjust to me, lady," said I, calmly, but resolutely. "I never
+meant to threaten. A mere accident hae put me in possession of a secret
+which, while you live, none shall ever hear from my lips; nor need you
+fear any allusion to it will ever escape me, to yourself."
+
+"Then let us part. Let us see each other no more," said she, rising,
+and approaching a small ivory cabinet which she unlocked. "See, here
+is enough to satisfy the desire for mere money, if your heart be so set
+upon wealth that it has no other idol. Take these, and these, and these;
+they are gems of price, and taken from a royal crown. That necklace
+of rubies once graced the shoulders of an empress; and here are rings,
+whose value will buy long years of dissipation and excess."
+
+"I must interrupt you, Señhora," said I, offended at the tone she
+assumed towards me. "There is no need to 'buy me off;' I am ready to
+take my leave,--to quit Naples within an hour,--and I pledge myself
+that we shall never meet again, or if we do, as utter strangers to each
+other."
+
+"These were the terms of our contract once before," said she, fixing her
+gaze steadfastly on me.
+
+"And by whom broken, and how?" said I.
+
+"True,--too true!" exclaimed she, in a voice of deep emotion. "Fate,
+that did this, has doubtless other punishments in store for me! It
+is plain, then, that I must trust you,--I, who can feel confidence in
+none!"
+
+"I do not seek for it, Señhora," replied I; "my offer is to leave this
+city, where already I see but little prospect of urging my suit
+with success. Why should we meet again in life, when both of us are
+travelling opposite roads?"
+
+"This suit of yours is, then, a real demand, founded upon an actual
+loss,--matter of fact throughout?" This, although said in these few
+words, had nothing offensive in its tone, and I replied by an assurance
+of my good faith and veracity.
+
+"Send me the memorial this evening; to-morrow, or the day after
+at farthest, you shall have an answer. As for your demand upon the
+Havannah, the banker is my own, and I can answer for your being
+honorably dealt with; all your property in his keeping, I will
+guarantee."
+
+"If that be so, Señhora, I am indifferent about the Spanish Minister's
+reply; I shall have wealth more than enough for all my desires, without
+him."
+
+"How do you call yourself in these papers?" asked she, hurriedly.
+
+"El Condé de Cregano."
+
+"And you were known by that title in Mexico?"
+
+"Certainly; I have no other."
+
+She stared at me fixedly for a minute or two, and then muttered to
+herself, "By what pretension should _I_ question his rank!" then,
+turning to me, said, "Señhor el Condé de Cregano, I receive the world at
+large every evening save Saturday; that night I reserve for my friends.
+Come as often as you can during the week, but never omit a Saturday;
+visit me at the opera frequently; speak to me always when we meet in
+public places; be my intimate friend, in fact, but not more,--you have
+too much tact to be my admirer." With this she gave me her hand, which
+I pressed respectfully to my lips, and bowing deeply, moved towards the
+door.
+
+"We understand each other," said she, calmly.
+
+"Perfectly, Madame," replied I.
+
+"Then never say, sir," resumed she, in a stern, determined voice, "never
+say that you are not an adventurer; never dare to tell me that one who
+so quickly assumes a part is not a professed actor on the great boards
+of life, ready to take the character assigned him, be it broad farce
+or comedy,--ay, or even tragedy, if needs were. Do not deny or seek
+to contradict me; I did not care that your countship had fourteen
+quarterings behind it,--nay, I like you even better as you are. There,
+now you look natural and at your ease. Adieu, Monsieur le Comte."
+
+"Adieu, Madame la Marquise," said I putting as much irony into my accent
+as might repay her; and then we parted. Whatever her feelings, I know
+not,--mine, I own, were scarcely of the pleasantest; prompting me to
+make my residence at Naples as brief as might be, and to see no more of
+my "dear friend of former years" than was absolutely indispensable.
+
+Were I to dwell upon those portions of my history which afforded me the
+highest amount of enjoyment, while passing I might linger upon the weeks
+I spent in Naples as perhaps the very pleasantest of my life. The world
+of fashion was new to me. All those fascinations to which habit renders
+men either apathetic or indifferent, came fresh upon _me_. The outward
+show of splendor in dress and jewels, gorgeous saloons, rare flowers,
+exquisite pictures and statues, soon cease to astonish and amaze; but
+it takes a long while ere the charm of intercourse with really brilliant
+society begins to wear off, and ere a man recognizes a degree of
+sameness in the pleasures and amusements of his fashionable friends.
+
+I am not sure that the society which I frequented had not more power of
+captivation than a more rigidly scrupulous circle, since, while exacting
+all the observances of polished life, it yet admitted a degree of
+liberty, almost of familiarity, among its members, that I have since
+remarked is not common in the wider intercourse of the world.
+
+Pretty women were not ashamed to look their best, and dress the most
+becomingly; witty men were not chary of their smartness; courtiers were
+confidential; statesmen were candid; men of the world unbent, as if in
+a circle where their freedom would not be misinterpreted, and said
+a hundred things that in other societies would have been, to say the
+least, indiscreet. It is true that individuals were more discussed than
+events, and that characters, not facts, formed the staple of the talk;
+but how amusing was it, what stores of anecdote were opened, what
+strange histories and curious illustrations of life unfolded! Pretension
+was ridiculed, vulgarity exposed, stupidity laughed at, awkwardness
+criticized, and want of tact condemned, with most unsparing ridicule;
+but I am bound to own that there were few commendations reserved for
+virtuous conduct or honorable action. The debtor side of the account was
+full, but the credit had not an item on it!
+
+No rank, however exalted, could escape the judgments of a "set" who,
+with all the exclusiveness of fashion, affected a most democratic spirit
+of equality. It was, however, a "communism" that assumed to start on the
+basis of every one haviug at least ten thousand a year,--not so bad a
+theory, were it only practicable.
+
+I must not linger longer on this subject, on which I have only touched
+to remark that here it was where I acquired that knowledge of forms
+and conventionalities which constitute the tactique of life,--those
+"gambits" and "openings," to use a chess phrase, by which you at once
+obtain an advantage over an equal adversary, and secure yourself
+against injury with even a superior player. I learned when to use an
+illustration or a story; when to become a mere listener; how to assist
+a slow man without his detecting the aid; and how to close a
+discussion with an epigram,--and all this without the faintest show
+of premeditation or the very slightest sign of forethought. While my
+education as a man of the world was progressing, my material fortune was
+also advancing. The Spanish Ambassador, who had referred my case to his
+court, ascertained that I had been most infamously treated; that not
+alone my rank and fortune were indisputable, but that the individual
+on whose affirmation I was arrested was himself a Carlist spy, and the
+noted agent of a great Northern power. In fact, so manifold were his
+infractions against law, in every country in Europe, that the only
+difficulty was to what particular power to hand him over, so many laying
+claim to the honor of punishing him. In the end, Naples obtained
+this distinction! and at the very period I was enjoying the luxurious
+pleasures of that capital, "my friend the Consul" was expanding
+his chest and his faculties in the less captivating career of a
+galley-slave. "Fortune is just," said I, as I arranged my cravat at the
+window which overlooked the Bay, on whose glassy surface some half-dozen
+boats moved sluggishly, as the red and yellow rowers kept time to the
+"stroke" by the clanking of their fetters.
+
+Governments move slowly, particularly when the case is one of refunding
+a previous spoliation; meanwhile they admitted my claim; and by way of
+keeping me in good-humor, they sent me a cross of the Order of Isabella,
+of the first class,--a very gratifying recognition of my noble birth
+and merits. My intimacy with the Duke of Medina--the brother of the
+king--obtained for me the Neapolitan Order; and thus was I decorated
+with three very distinguished cordons, which I wore in my button-hole as
+a "tricolor,"--a fact insignificant in itself; but I mention it here, as
+many of my imitators have since that affected to be the inventors of the
+method.
+
+Periods of expectancy are generally deemed great trials, making inroads
+upon the health, and sapping the energies of the mind. Such was not
+my case here; I waited like one who loiters in some delicious garden,
+surrounded with blooming flowers and sweet odors. The delays and
+procrastinations of cabinets--for which the most profuse apologies
+were made--I bore with a degree of calm equanimity that won for me
+the appellation of a most finished gentleman; and thus was I almost
+unconsciously perfecting myself in that grand element of breeding whose
+triumph is "impassiveness."
+
+There were moments when I actually dreaded the termination of my cause,
+so agreeable had Naples become to me; but as the rich gamester is
+certain to win, while the poor player is luckless ever, successes
+crowded on me, because I was half indifferent to them.
+
+Six months had now nearly elapsed since my arrival at Naples, and I was
+paying a morning visit to the Marchesa, whom I was engaged to accompany
+to a grand _déjeuner_, to be given on board of a British ship of war in
+the Bay. It was one of those gorgeous days of brilliant coloring, which,
+in Italy, seem to exaggerate the effect of landscape, and defy all
+efforts of art to imitate; the scene was heightened, too, by the objects
+moving across the bay. The various boats, with ensigns floating and
+music playing; the swift "La-teeners," skimming along the glassy
+surface, almost without a breath of wind; and then the great
+three-decker herself, in all the pride of her majestic size, with flags
+of every nation fluttering from her halyards,--were splendid adjuncts to
+the picture.
+
+"Here are three letters for you, Monsieur le Comte," said the Marchesa,
+"they came in the Spanish Minister's bag this morning; but I suppose
+there is nothing sufficiently interesting in them to withdraw your
+thoughts from that magnificent panorama."
+
+Of course I affected concurrence in the sentiment, and thrust them into
+my pocket with assumed indifference. The room soon after filled with
+arriving visitors, and among the rest the Spanish Ambassador.
+
+"Ha, Señhor Condé," said he, approaching me, "let me offer my warmest
+felicitations. How happy am I to be the means through which your good
+tidings have reached you!"
+
+I bowed, smiled, and seemed charmed, without the slightest notion
+wherein lay my good fortune. His practised eye, however, soon detected
+my game, and he said, "You have received your letters, I hope?"
+
+"Yes," replied I, carelessly; "the Marchesa has been kind enough to give
+them to me."
+
+"And you have read them?" asked he again.
+
+"Not yet," said I; "I make it a rule never to risk the pleasure of a
+happy day by opening a letter at hazard."
+
+"What if its contents were but to increase the enjoyment; what if the
+tidings were to fill up the very measure of your wishes, Señhor?"
+
+"In that case," rejoined I, as coldly as before, "they will be very
+acceptable to-morrow morning; and thus I shall have gained two days of
+happiness, _vice_ one."
+
+"Admirable philosophy, indeed," said he. "Still, I must be pardoned for
+interfering with its exercise. I shall therefore take upon me to inform
+the honorable company that her Majesty, my royal mistress, has named the
+Count de Cregano a Grand Cordon of the Fleece, in consideration of
+his distinguished services in arranging the Mexican debt; that all his
+property, taken from him under a false and traitorous imputation, shall
+be at once restored; that any additional recompense he may demand for
+his imprisonment and other inconveniences incurred shall be immediately
+accorded; and that all Envoys and Ministers of the Court of Spain
+are instructed to receive the Count de Cregano with every honor and
+distinction, affording him every protection, and facilitating him in the
+prosecution of any project in which he may be interested."
+
+This speech, delivered in a very imposing manner, was followed by a
+round of felicitation from the assembled company the Marchesa offering
+me her hand in congratulation, and whispering the words, "How soon?"
+
+"To-morrow, if I must," replied I, sorrowfully.
+
+"To-morrow be it," said she, and turned away hastily.
+
+The information conveyed to me by the Ambassador was what formed the
+substance of two of the letters; the third I contrived to peep into
+unobserved, was a formal notification from the Havannah that my bills
+for the amount in the bankers' hands would be accepted and negotiated at
+a well-known house in Paris. Thus, then, and in one moment, was I once
+more rich,--the possessor of immense wealth, and not alone of mere
+fortune, but of all the honors and dignities which can grace and adorn
+it. Of course I became the hero of the day. To me was intrusted the arm
+of the Marchesa as we descended to the pier; to me was accorded the seat
+of honor beside her in the boat. All the pleasant flatteries that are
+reserved for rich men were heaped upon me, and I felt that life had but
+one prize more with which to fill up the most ambitious of my cravings.
+That, alas! could never be,--Donna Maria was the wife of another; and
+thus should I learn that complete happiness is never to be the lot of
+any mere mortal!
+
+The fête on board the "Tariffa" was very splendid; but it had another
+charm still more rarely met with,--I mean that hearty cordiality which
+graces every entertainment where British sailors are the hosts, their
+courtesy being blended with an actual warmth of hospitality that wins
+even upon the coldest guest, and gives a tone of friendliness to the
+most promiscuous gathering.
+
+Every one appeared to experience the influence of this peculiar magic,
+and all gave way to the impulse that suggested the fullest enjoyment of
+the hour.
+
+To waltzes had succeeded the manolo and the bolero; dances of the wild
+regions of Calabria and Sicily were performed by men of noble birth,
+the petty princes of those countries; and all were vying who should
+introduce something new and unknown to the rest, when, suddenly, the
+distant sound of the church bells of the city was borne along the water,
+announcing the "Vinti quatro," as it is called,--the hour of evening
+prayer. In a moment a sudden air of devotional seriousness spread itself
+over the company, and most bent their heads in pious reverence while
+they recited to themselves the words of the "Angelus." If there seemed,
+to the sense of English Protestantism, something strange and unnatural
+in this great revulsion, there was a degree of earnestness and sincerity
+in the features of the worshippers that showed their piety to be
+unfeigned; and here I might leave the theme, were it not for an incident
+which, taking place at the same moment, will remain forever associated
+in my mind with that brief interval of prayer.
+
+The hour of sunset, or, as the Neapolitans term it, the "Vinti quatro,"
+is that in which the galley-slaves, employed from dawn of day at convict
+labor, return to their prisons; and while the streets at that period
+exhibit long lines of men whose terrible appearance needs not the
+heightening accessories of a shocking dress and a heavy lumbering chain
+to pronounce them criminals, over the bay are seen boats moving in sad
+procession, the clanking of the fetters creaking mournfully upon the
+ear, and sounding like the wail of hopeless captivity.
+
+No scene of pleasurable enjoyment can stand the contrast of such a
+sight; the revulsion is too sudden and too painful from the light
+frivolity of mirth to the terrible reality of suffering and sorrow. To
+escape, therefore, from the gloomy picture, the officers of the vessel
+endeavored to withdraw their guests from the deck to the shelter of the
+cabin. The change was accomplished well and naturally, and we were
+all gathered between decks in that turmoil and confusion which form no
+insignificant part of the success of every entertainment, the buzz
+of talking and the sounds of pleasant laughter were heard on every
+side,--when suddenly a cry was heard above, and then the loud voice of
+the officer of the watch, commanding a boat to be instantly manned and
+lowered.
+
+A hundred conjectures at once ran round as to the meaning of the order;
+but one of the officers hastily entering, a few minutes later, put an
+end to all guessing, by informing us that a very dreadful incident had
+just occurred within a short distance from where we lay. "You may have
+remarked a handsome yacht, which anchored last night in the bay, coming
+up from the eastward: she belonged to an English gentleman, with whose
+name we were not acquainted, but whose conduct is calculated to confirm
+all that Frenchmen are accustomed to say of our national taste for
+eccentricity, even in crime. It would seem that at an early hour this
+morning he landed at the Mole, and by means of letters with which he
+was provided to the Minister of Police, obtained leave to inspect
+the different prisons of the city, and to pass under the most minute
+examination all those condemned to the galleys for life. As already all
+those who work at Castelamare had been sent away, he obtained an order
+to visit the galleys there, being determined, as it would seem, to
+leave nothing unseen. On reaching Castelamare, it is said that he again
+commenced his tour of inspection, going over the roll of the prisoners,
+with the muster-book in his hand, as if to compare their features with
+the crimes alleged against them, and scrutinizing each with a most
+searching look. The visit lasted till nigh evening; and although the
+governor was not a little astonished at the proceeding of the stranger,
+still less was he prepared for the singular request which succeeded:
+it was, that he might be permitted to return to Naples in one of the
+convict boats instead of in his own gig. The demand might have been
+treated lightly, or altogether refused, but that the Englishman's
+appearance and manner indicated rank, while the letter he carried from
+the minister showed him to be one with claims for consideration. The
+governor, therefore, gave the permission, smiling at the same time at
+a caprice which could not have proceeded from the native of any other
+country.
+
+"The Englishman took his seat in the stern of the boat, and, as I am
+told by the steersman, never spoke nor moved for nigh an hour's time,
+muffling himself up in his cloak so that his very face was concealed;
+he neither cast his eyes over the bay, nor looked towards the shore, but
+sat like one in deep reflection. As we neared the 'Tariffa,'" said my
+informant, "our passenger affected to feel cold and chilly,--he might
+have been so, since the evening breeze was just springing up,--and said
+that he would like to row for a spell, just to warm himself. The petty
+officer in charge explained that the request could not be complied with,
+since, amongst other reasons, the men were chained two and two on every
+bench, and then obliged to tug at the same oar.
+
+"The Englishman, who throughout the day had invariably overruled every
+objection opposed to him, grew only more positive in his demand, and
+at last produced the minister's order, to strengthen his proposal; and
+finally said, that as he had obtained the permission to learn all he
+could of the condition of the convicts, he was determined not to depart
+without experiencing in his own person the amount of labor exacted from
+them. 'You shall chain me to that fellow in the bow of the boat,' said
+he, 'for I have my doubts that this same punishment is not equal to what
+our own sailors perform every day, as a mere duty.'
+
+"I need not dwell upon the arguments he used, and the reason he pressed;
+and although I have not heard it, I have little doubt that bribery
+was among the rest. His demand was granted, and he was actually placed
+beside the convict, and his left wrist enclosed in the same fetter with
+the other's right.
+
+"His face became almost purple as he grasped the oar, and his eyes
+glared fiercely round upon his fellow-laborer, like the red and staring
+orbs of a wild beast. 'So dreadful was the expression of his face,' said
+the steersman, 'that I believed him to be insane; and a shocking fear of
+evil consequences shot through me for having yielded to him.'
+
+"I at once called out to the crew to ship their oars, determining to
+make him resume his place beside me. The order was obeyed by the bow-oar
+as by the rest. I was then about to issue a command for him to be
+released when, with a yell that I shall never forget, he sprang up in
+the boat, and then, calling out something in English which I could not
+understand, he seized his comrade by the throat and shook him violently.
+
+"The convict--himself a strong man, yet in the prime of life--seemed
+nothing in the grasp of the other, who held him at arm's length, as
+though he were a child; and then, letting go his hold, clasping him
+round the waist with both arms, he jumped into the sea.
+
+"They were seen in mortal conflict for a second or two as they sank in
+the clear water, but they never rose to the surface; the weight of the
+massive fetters and their own struggles soon finished their sufferings!"
+
+Such was the terrible story which now broke in upon the gay current of
+our festivity, and threw a gloom over a scene of brilliant pleasure.
+Of course various surmises as to the motive of this fearful act were
+uttered, but they all tended to the conclusion that it proceeded from
+insanity, which occasionally displays amongst its wonderful phenomena
+all the premeditation and circumspection of accomplished guilt.
+
+There is that of solemnity about an event of this nature that even
+frivolity itself stands rebuked by, and so, now, instead of resuming the
+occupations of pleasure, many took their leave suddenly; and of those
+who still remained, but one topic engrossed the conversation,--that of
+madness as an element in all great cases of guilt.
+
+Of course, as in all similar discussions, the superiority lay with those
+who, with more readiness of expression, also possessed greater resources
+in anecdote and illustration; and of these the greater number were
+disposed to believe that all great criminality is allied with deranged
+intellect. The Marchesa, however, took the opposite side, and insisted
+that the passion which prompted to the most terrible and appalling acts
+was perfectly consistent with right reason and sound judgment.
+
+"It is too rash in us," said she, "to assume a mere blind impulse in
+cases even where recognized insanity exists. Were we to know the secrets
+of the human heart, we might, perhaps, see a long-cherished purpose in
+acts which appear to be dictated by momentary passion. These impulses
+may be excessive, ill-directed, and ill-judging; but still they may have
+their origin in some train of thought where generous feelings and noble
+aspirations mingle. Witness those heroic--for they are, after all,
+heroic--assassinations of the student Sandt and Charlotte Corday. What
+a perfect abrogation of self did these acts evince; what consummate
+devotion to a cause! Deeply as we may condemn the horrid nature of
+the crime, it would be a great error to class these men with vulgar
+criminals, or deny to them the motives, at least, of something great."
+
+I am not able--were I even disposed--to repeat all the ingenious
+arguments by which the Marchesa supported her opinion, nor the instances
+she so readily adduced in support of it. She became highly excited by
+the theme, and soon, by the eloquence of her words and the fascinations
+of her manner, enchained the whole company in a mute attention around
+her.
+
+It was just as she concluded a very animated and glowing description of
+that condition of the human mind when, by a volcanic effort, as it were,
+the long-buried flames burst forth, to scatter ruin and destruction on
+every side, that a young officer entered the cabin, and stood fascinated
+by the powers of her fervid eloquence.
+
+"Well, Mr. Hardy," said the Captain, recalling the youth's attention to
+duty, "have you been on board of her?"
+
+"Yes, sir, she is an English yacht, the 'Firefly,' and her late
+owner was an English baronet, whose name I have written down in my
+pocket-book."
+
+The Captain took the note-book from the young officer's hand, and, after
+reading the name, said, "If I mistake not, this is the same person that
+once was so well known in London life. Most of the present company must
+have heard of the rich and eccentric Sir Dudley Broughton."
+
+A low groan broke from me, and I turned my eyes slowly and stealthily
+towards the end of the table, where the Marchesa sat. Not a word, not
+the faintest sound, had issued from her lips; but she sat still and
+motionless, her lips slightly parted, and her eyes staring straight
+before her. The pallor of her features was that of death itself; and,
+indeed, the rigid contour of the cheeks and the firm tension of the
+muscles gave no evidence of life.
+
+"You are ill, Madame la Marchesa," said a gentleman who sat beside her;
+but as she made no reply, several now turned towards her, to press their
+attentions and suggest advice. She never spoke,--indeed, she seemed
+not to hear them,--but sat with her head erect, and her arms rigidly
+stretched out on either side, motionless as a statue.
+
+The shocking incident that had occurred, and the discussion which
+followed it, were sufficient to account for this sudden attack in one
+whose nervous temperament was so finely strung; but as she showed no
+signs of recovering consciousness, nor gave the slightest indication of
+rallying, it was decided at once that she should be conveyed to shore,
+where in her own house medical aid might be had recourse to.
+
+I was one of those who assisted to carry her to the boat, and sat beside
+her afterwards, and held her hand in mine; but she never recognized
+me; her hand, too, was cold and clammy, and the fingers felt rigid and
+cramped. The stern, impressive look of her features, the cold stare
+of her fixed eyes, were terrible to behold,--far more so than even the
+workings of mere bodily sufferings.
+
+During the passage to the shore, at the landing itself, and on our way
+to the Palazzo, she remained in the same state; nor did she ever evince
+any trait of consciousness till she reached the foot of the great
+staircase, where a crowd of servants, in the richest liveries, awaited
+to offer their services. Then suddenly she moved her head from side to
+side, regarding the crowd with a glance of wild and terrific meaning;
+she raised her hand to her brow, and passed it slowly across her
+forehead. For an instant it seemed as if the lethargic paroxysm was
+about to pass away, for her features softened into a look of calm but
+melancholy beauty. This, too, glided away, and her mouth settled into a
+hard and rigid smile. It was the last change of all, for she had become
+an idiot!
+
+From that hour forth she never spoke again! she never knew those about
+her, neither missing them while absent, nor recognizing them when they
+reappeared. She had none of the childish wilfulness of others in her
+sad condition, nor did she show the likings and dislikings they usually
+manifest; and thus she lingered on to her death.
+
+Of her secret I was the sole depositary; and from that hour to this, in
+which I write, it has never escaped my lips.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV. CONCLUSION
+
+I had few inducements to prolong my stay at Naples. The society in which
+I moved had received a shock so terrible that for some time, at least,
+it could not hope to recover, and an air of gloom and despondency
+prevailed, where so lately all had worn the livery of pleasure.
+
+I made my farewell visit, therefore, at the court, and the various
+embassies, and set out for Paris. This time, grown wiser by experience,
+I did not seek to astonish the world by any gorgeous display of my
+riches. I travelled with but two carriages, one of which contained my
+luggage; the other, a light "coupé," I occupied alone. My route lay
+through Rome and Florence, across the Apennines to Milan, and thence, by
+the glorious scenery of the Splügen, into Switzerland; but I saw little
+of the varied scenes through which I journeyed. My whole thoughts were
+engaged upon the future.
+
+I had once more won the great prize in the world's lottery, and I never
+ceased catechizing myself in what way I should exercise my power.
+
+From what I had already observed of life, the great mistake of rich men
+seemed to me, their addiction to some one pursuit of pleasure, which
+gradually gained an undue ascendency over their minds, and exercised at
+last an unwonted degree of tyranny. The passion for play, the love of
+pictures, the taste for company-seeing, the sports of the field, and so
+on, ought never to be allowed any paramount place, or used as pursuits;
+all these things should be simply employed as means of obtaining an
+ascendency over other men, and of exercising that sway which is never
+denied to success.
+
+Some men are your slaves because your cook is unrivalled, or your cellar
+incomparable: others look up to you because your equipages exhibit an
+elegance with which none can vie; because your thoroughbreds are larger,
+show more bone, and carry the highest condition. Others, again, revere
+you for your Vandykes and your Titians, your Rembrandts and Murillos,
+your illuminated missals, your antique marbles. To every section of
+society you can exhibit some peculiar and special temptation, which, in
+their blind admiration, they refer to as an attribute of yourself.
+Your own fault is it if they ever discover their error! The triumphs
+of Raphael and Velasquez shed a reflected light upon him who possesses
+them; and so of each excellence that wealth can purchase. You stand
+embodied in the exercise of your taste, and in your own person receive
+the adulation which greatness and genius have achieved.
+
+To accomplish this, however, requires infinite tact and a great
+abrogation of self. All individuality must be merged, and a new
+character created, from the "disjecta membra" of many crafts and
+callings.
+
+To have any one inordinate passion is to betray a weak spot in one's
+armor of which the cunning will soon take advantage. Such were among my
+meditations as I rolled along towards Paris; and so long as I journeyed
+alone, with no other companionship than my own thoughts, these opinions
+appeared sage and well reasoned; but how soon were they routed as
+I drove into that gorgeous capital, and saw the full tide of its
+pleasure-loving inhabitants as it rolled proudly past! How vain to
+reason farther upon the regulation of a life to which wealth set no
+limits! how impossible to restrain one's self within the barriers of
+cold prudential thought, where all was to be had for asking!
+
+Ah, Con, your philosophy was excellent while, sitting in the corner of
+your coupe, you rolled along unnoticed, save by the vacant stare of some
+vigneron in a blue cotton nightcap, or some short-legged wench in wooden
+"sabots;" but now that you stand in the window of your great hotel in
+the Place Vendôme and see the gathering crowd which inquires, who is the
+illustrious arrival? your heart begins to beat quicker and fuller; you
+feel like a great actor, for whom the house is already impatient; nor
+is the curtain to remain longer down. You are scarcely an hour in
+Paris when your visitors began to call. Here are cards without
+number,--officers in high command, courtiers, ministers, and
+aides-de-camp of those whose rank precludes the first visit. The "place"
+is like a fair, with its crush of equipages, the hotel is actually
+besieged. Every language of Europe is heard within its "porte-cochère,"
+and your own chasseur is overwhelmed with questionings enough to drive
+him distracted.
+
+Is it any wonder how the poor man adulates wealth, when those in high
+station--the great and titled of the earth--are so ready to worship and
+revere it!
+
+My first care was, of course, to present myself before the Prince,
+my gracious master, and I drove at once to the Tuileries. There was
+a reception that morning by the King, and the Duc de St. Cloud led me
+forward and presented me to his Majesty, with a very eulogistic account
+of my services in Africa.
+
+The King listened most graciously to the narrative, and then, with
+a cordial courtesy that at once put me at my ease, asked me several
+questions about my campaigns, all ingeniously contrived to be
+complimentary to me.
+
+"Yours is not originally a Spanish family, Count; I fancy the name is
+Celtic."
+
+"Yes, Sire, we came from Ireland," said I, blushing in spite of myself.
+
+"Ah, very true. There was always a great interchange of races between
+the two nations. And have you never tried to trace back among your Irish
+ancestors, so as to learn who are the lineal descendants of your house?"
+
+"I have been hitherto, Sire, rather a man of action than of thought or
+reflection. To obtain possession of a property belonging to my family,
+I undertook a journey to, and a long residence in, Mexico; and although
+successful in this, a subsequent misfortune deprived me of all I owned,
+and left me actually in want. The good fortune which led me to take
+service under your Majesty has, however, never deserted me, and I am
+enabled once again to assume the station that belonged to me."
+
+The King heard me with apparent pleasure, and after a few generalities
+about Paris and my acquaintances, said: "His Royal Highness the Duc de
+St. Cloud has asked me to appoint you on my personal staff. There is
+not at the present a vacancy, but you shall be named as an extra
+aide-de-camp in the meanwhile."
+
+Overwhelmed by this distinction, I could only bow my gratitude in
+silence; and, with an air and show of great devotion, I retired from the
+royal presence. Thus did proper feeling suggest the truest politeness;
+for had I been more assured, the chances were I should have endeavored
+to say something, and consequently committed a very grievous breach of
+etiquette.
+
+The following day I received an invitation to dine at Court. The company
+was numerous, and among them I discovered the young English attaché who
+had so insolently treated my demands on my first visit to Paris. With
+what sovereign contempt did I now look down upon him! He was there,
+exactly as I left him, muddling away in the petty details of his little
+routine life,--signing a passport or copying a despatch, playing off the
+airs of grand seigneur to couriers and laquais de place, while in the
+same time I had won honors and rewards upon the field of battle, and now
+stood while the Prince leaned upon my arm and chatted familiarly over
+the assembled company. Nothing gave me a more confident sense of my own
+standing in the world than the feeling with which I now regarded those
+whom once I looked up to with a kind of awe. It is precisely as we
+discover that the hills which in childhood we believed to be gigantic
+mountains are mere hillocks, that in after life we find out how
+indescribably small are many of those we used to think of as "high and
+mighty."
+
+I therefore sneered down my poor attaché, and as I passed him, I believe
+I even suffered my sabre to jar against his leg, not without hoping that
+he might notice the slight, and seek satisfaction for it. In this I was
+disappointed, and I left him, never to trouble my head more about him.
+
+Among the pleasures which awaited me in Paris, none gave me more sincere
+satisfaction than the renewal of my acquaintance with De Minérale, who,
+however, could never believe that my good fortune was other than some
+lucky accident of my African campaign.
+
+"Come, out with it," he would say. "You robbed a 'Smala,' you pillaged
+a 'Deira,' or something of the sort. Tell me frankly how it was, and, on
+my honor, I 'll never print it till you 're dead and gone. In fact, if
+you persist in refusing, I 'll give you to the world, with name in full.
+I 'll describe you as a fellow that picked up a treasure in some small
+island of the Mediterranean, and turned millionnaire after being a
+pirate."
+
+"Put me down for fifty copies of the book," said I, laughing; "I'm rich
+enough now to encourage the small-fry of literature."
+
+Thus did we often jest with each other, and we met continually; for
+when not invited out myself, I gave entertainments at home, at which
+I assembled various members of that artistic set in which I had once
+moved,--a very different order of society from that in which I mixed in
+Naples, and, I am free to own, with far less claim to real agreeability.
+The "wits by profession" were not only less natural than the smart
+people of society, but they wearied you by the exactions of their
+drollery. Not to laugh at the sorriest jest was to discredit the
+jester, and the omission became a serious thing when it touched a man's
+livelihood. In fact, from first to last, in whatever country I
+have lived, I have ever found that the best--that is, the highest
+society--was always the most agreeable as well as the most profitable.
+Its forms were not alone regulated upon the surest basis of comfort, but
+its tone ever tended to promote whatever was pleasurable, and exclude
+everything that could hurt or offend. So is it, your great aristocrats
+are very democratic in a drawing-room,--professing and practising
+the most perfect equality; while your "rights of man" and "popular
+sovereignty advocate" insists upon always being the king of his company.
+Forgive this digression, my dear reader, if for nothing else than
+because it shall be the last time of my offending.
+
+I had now enjoyed myself at Paris about two months, or thereabouts,
+in which, having most satisfactorily arranged all my monetary matters,
+and--besides having a considerable sum in the English funds--found
+myself down in the "Grand Livre" for a couple of million of francs,--a
+feature which made me a much-caressed individual in that new social
+order just then springing up, called the "financière" class, one which,
+if with few claims to the stately manners of the "Faubourg," numbered as
+many pretty women and as agreeable ones as could be found anywhere.
+Had I been matrimonially disposed, this set would certainly have been
+dangerous ground for me,--the attentions which beset me being almost
+like adulation. The truth was, however, Donna Maria had left an
+impression which comparison with others did not efface. I felt, if I
+were to marry, it might as well be for high rank and family influence,
+since I never could do so for love. My nobility required a little
+strengthening, nor was there any easier or more efficient mode of
+supporting it than by an alliance with some of those antiquated houses
+who, with small fortunes but undiminished pride, inhabited the solitudes
+of the "Faubourg St. Germain." I cannot afford space here to recount
+my adventures in that peaceful and deserted quarter, whose amusements
+ranged between masses and tric-trac,--where Piety and Pope Joan divided
+the hours. The antiquity of my family and the pureness of my Castilian
+blood! had been the pretensions which obtained admission for me into
+these sacred precincts; and there, I must say, everything seemed old and
+worn out: the houses, the salons, the furniture, the masters, servants,
+horses, carriages,--all were as old as the formalities and the opinions
+they professed.
+
+Even the young ladies had got a premature cast of seriousness that took
+away every semblance of juvenility. Whether from associating with them,
+or that I had voluntarily conformed to the staid Puritanism of their
+manners, I cannot say, but my other acquaintances began to quiz and
+rally me about my "Legitimist" air, and even said that the change had
+been remarked at Court.
+
+This was an observation that gave me some uneasiness, and I hastened off
+to the Duc de St. Cloud, whose kindness had always admitted me to the
+most open intercourse.
+
+"It is quite true, Creganne," said he, "we all remarked that you were
+coquetting with the 'vieux,'--the old ones of the Faubourg; and although
+_I_ had never any misgivings about you, _others_ were less charitable."
+
+"What is to be done, then?" said I, in my distress at the bare thought
+of seeming ungrateful.
+
+"I'll tell you," said he: "there's the post of secretary of embassy
+just vacant at Madrid; your knowledge of the language, and your Spanish
+blood, admirably fit you for the mission. Shall I ask for it in your
+behalf?"
+
+I could scarcely speak, for gratitude. I was longing for some "charge,"
+some public station that would give me a recognized position as well as
+wealth.
+
+The "Duc" hurried from the room, and after an absence of half-an-hour
+came back, laughing, to say: "This was quite a brilliant idea of mine,
+for the Minister of Foreign Affairs was just in conversation with the
+King, and seeing that they were both in good humor, and discussing the
+Madrid mission, I even asked for the post of ambassador for you,--ay,
+and, what's better, obtained it, too."
+
+I could not believe my ears as I heard these words, and the Prince was
+obliged to repeat his tidings ere I could bring myself to credit them.
+"And now for a little plan of my own," resumed he; "I am about to make
+a short visit to England, and, better still, to Ireland. You must
+accompany me. Of course I travel 'incog.,' which means that my real rank
+will be known to all persons in authority; but, avoiding all state and
+parade, I shall be able to see something of that remarkable country of
+which I have heard so much."
+
+I acknowledged a degree of curiosity to the full as great, but bewailed
+my ignorance of the language as a great drawback to the pleasures of the
+journey.
+
+"But you do know a little English," said the Prince.
+
+"Not a word," said I, coolly. "When a child, I believe I could speak
+it fluently,--so I have heard; but since that period I have utterly
+forgotten all about it." This may seem to have been a gratuitous fiction
+on my part, but it was not so; and to prove it, I must tell the reader
+a little incident which was running in my mind at that moment. A certain
+Tipperary gentleman, whose name is too familiar for me to print, once
+called upon a countryman in Paris, and, after ringing stoutly at the
+bell, the door was opened by a very smartly dressed "maid," whose
+grisette cap and apron immediately seemed to pronounce her to be French.
+"Est Capitaine,--est Monsieur O'Shea ici?" asked he, in considerable
+hesitation.
+
+"Oh, sir! you're English," exclaimed the maid, in a very London accent.
+
+"Yes, my little darlin', I was asking for Captain O'Shea."
+
+"Ah, sir, you 're Irish!" said she, with a very significant fall of the
+voice. "So," as he afterwards remarked, "my French showed that I was
+English, and my English that I was Irish."
+
+Now, although my French would have passed muster from Cannes to Caen, my
+English had something of the idiomatic peculiarity of the gentleman
+just alluded to; and were I only to speak once in Ireland, I must
+be inevitably detected. There was then no choice for it; I must even
+consent to talk through an interpreter,--a rather dull situation for a
+man about to "tour it" in Ireland!
+
+As the Prince's journey was a secret in Paris, our arrangements were
+made with great caution and despatch. We travelled down to Boulogne with
+merely one other companion, an old Colonel Demaunais, who had been for
+some years a prisoner in England, and spoke English fluently, and with
+only three servants; there was nothing in our "cortège" betraying the
+rank of his Royal Highness.
+
+Apartments had been prepared for us at Mivart's, and we dined each
+day at the French Embassy,--going to the Opera in the evening, and
+sight-seeing all the forenoon, like genuine "country cousins." The Court
+was in Scotland; but even had it been in London, I conclude that the
+Prince would have been received in some mode which should not have
+attracted publicity.
+
+Ten days sufficed for "town," and we set out for Ireland, to visit which
+his Royal Highness was all impatience and eagerness.
+
+Never can I forget the sensations with which I landed on that shore,
+which, about a dozen years before, I had quitted barefooted and hungry!
+Was the change alone in me; or what had come over the objects, to
+make them so very different from what they once were? The hotel that
+I remembered to have regarded as a kind of palace, where splendor and
+profusion prevailed, seemed now dirty and uncared-for; the waiters
+slovenly, the landlord rude, the apartments mean, and the food
+detestable! The public itself, as it paraded on the pier, was not that
+gorgeous panorama I once saw there,--the mingled elegance and fashion I
+used to regard with such eyes of wonderment and envy. What had become of
+them? Good looks there were, and in abundance,--for Irish women will
+be pretty, no matter what changes come over the land; but the men! good
+lack, what a strange aspect did they present! Without the air of fashion
+you see in Paris, or that more strongly marked characteristic of style
+and manliness the parks of London exhibit, here were displayed a kind
+of swaggering self-sufficiency whose pretension was awfully at variance
+with the mediocrity of their dress, and the easy jocularity that leered
+from their eyes. Some were aquatics, and wore Jersey shirts and frocks,
+loose trousers, and low shoes; but they overdid their parts, and lounged
+like Tom Cooke in a sea-piece.
+
+Others appeared as _élégans_, and were even greater burlesques on the
+part. It was quite clear, however, that these formed no portion of the
+better classes of the capital, and so I hastened to assure the Prince,
+whose looks bespoke very palpable disappointment.
+
+In Dublin, however, the changes were greater than I expected. It was not
+alone that I had seen other and greater capitals, where affluence and
+taste abound, and where, while the full tide of fashion sets "in" in one
+quarter, the still more exciting course of activity and industry flows
+along in another; but here an actual decline had taken place in the
+appearance of everything. The shops, the streets, the inhabitants, all
+looked in disrepair. There were few carriages, nothing deserving the
+name of equipage,--none of that stir and movement which characterize a
+capital. It all looked like a place where people dwelt to wear out
+their old houses and old garments, and to leave both behind them when
+no longer wearable. Windows mended with paper, pantaloons patched with
+party-colored cloth, "shocking bad hats," mangy car-drivers, and great
+troops of beggars of every age and walk of mendicancy, were met with
+even in the best quarters; and with all these signs of poverty and
+decay, there was an air of swaggering recklessness in every one that was
+particularly striking. All were out of temper with England and
+English rule; and "Ireland for the Irish" was becoming a popular cant
+phrase,--pretty much on the same principle that blacklegs extinguish the
+lights when luck goes against them, and have a scramble for "the bank"
+in the dark. The strangest of all was, however, that nobody seemed to
+have died or left the place since I remembered it as a boy. There went
+the burly barrister down Bachelor's Walk, with the same sturdy stride
+I used to admire of yore,--his cheek a little redder, his presence
+somewhat more portly, perhaps, but with the self-same smile with which
+he then cajoled the jury, and that imposing frown with which he repelled
+the freedom of a witness. There were the same civic magistrates, the
+same attorneys, dancing-masters,--ay, even the dandies had not been
+replaced, but were the old crop, sadly running to seed, and marvellously
+ill cared for.
+
+Even the Castle officials were beautifully consistent, and true to their
+old traditions; they were as empty and insolent as ever. It was the
+English pale performed over again at the Upper Castle Yard, and all
+without its limits were the kerns and "wild Irish" of centuries ago.
+
+How is a craft like this ever to take the sea, thought I, with misery
+and mutiny everywhere! With six feet of water in the hold, the crew are
+turning out for higher wages, and ready to throw overboard the man who
+counsels them to put a hand to the pump!
+
+But what had I to do with all this? Nor would I allude to it here, save
+to mention the straits and difficulties which beset me, to account for
+changes that I had never anticipated.
+
+We dined everywhere, from that viceregal palace in a swamp, to the musty
+halls of the Chief Secretary in the Castle. We partook of a civic feast,
+a picnic at the waterfall; we had one day with the military! And here,
+by the way, I recognized an old acquaintance of other days, the Hon.
+Captain De Courcy. He was still on the staff, and still constant to his
+ancient flame, who, with a little higher complexion and more profuse
+ringlets,--it is strange how color and hair go on increasing with
+years,--looked pretty much what I remembered her of yore.
+
+"You had better wait for your groom, Mons. Le Comte," said De Courcy to
+me at the review, as I was dismounting to speak to some people in the
+crowd of carriages. "Don't trust those fellows. I once had a valuable
+mare stolen by one of those vagrants, and, what was worse, the rascal
+rode her at a steeplechase the same day."
+
+"Pas possible!" exclaimed I, at the bare thought of such an indignity.
+"What became of the young villain?"
+
+"I forget, now, whether I let him off, or whether he was publicly
+whipped; but I am certain he never came to good."
+
+I felt a flush of anger rise to my cheek at this speech, but I checked
+my passion; and well I might, as I thought upon my _own_ condition and
+upon _his_. To have expended any interest or sympathy as to the
+boy, besides, would have been absurd, and I was silent. Among our
+invitations, was one to the house of a baronet who resided in a midland
+county, only a few miles from my native place. We arrived at night at
+Knockdangan Castle, an edifice of modern gothic style, which means a
+marvellously expensive residence, rendered almost uninhabitable by the
+necessity of having winding stairs, narrow corridors, low ceilings, and
+pointed windows. The house was full of company, the greater part of
+whom had arrived unexpectedly; still, our reception was everything that
+genial hospitality could dictate. One of the drawing-rooms had been
+already converted into a kind of barrack-room, with half-a-dozen beds in
+it; and now the library was to be devoted to the Prince, while a small
+octagon tower leading off it, about the size and shape of a tea-tray,
+was reserved for me. If these arrangements were attended with
+inconvenience, certainly nothing in the manner of either host or hostess
+showed it. They and their numerous family of sons and daughters seemed
+to take it as the most natural thing in life to be thrown into disorder
+to accommodate their friends; not alone their friends, but their
+friends' friends: for so proved more than half of the present company.
+Several of "the boys," meaning the sons of the host, slept at houses
+in the neighborhood; we actually bivouacked in a little temple in
+the garden. There seemed no limit to the contrivances of our kind
+entertainers, either in the variety of the plans for pleasure, or the
+hearty good-nature with which they concurred in any suggestion of the
+guests. All that Spanish politeness expresses, as a phrase, was here
+reduced to actual practice. Everything was at the disposal of the
+stranger. Not alone was he at liberty to ride, drive, fish, shoot, hunt,
+boat, or course at will, but all his hours were at his own disposal,
+and his liberty unfettered, even as to whether he dined in his own
+apartment, or joined the general company. Nothing that the most
+courteous attention could provide was omitted, at the same time that the
+most ample freedom was secured to all. Here, too, was found a tone of
+cultivation that would have graced the most polished society of any
+European capital. Foreign languages were well understood and spoken;
+music practised in its higher walks; drawing cultivated with a skill
+rarely seen out of the hands of professed masters; subjects of politics
+and general literature were discussed with a knowledge and a liberality
+that bespoke the highest degree of enlightenment; while to all these
+gifts the general warmth of native character lent an indescribable charm
+of kindliness and cordiality that left none a stranger who spent even
+twelve hours beneath their roof.
+
+The Prince was in ecstasies with everything and every one, and he
+himself no less a favorite with all. Every fall he got in hunting made
+him more popular; every misadventure that occurred to him, in trying to
+conform to native tastes, gave a new grace and charm to his character.
+The ladies pronounced him "a love," and the men, in less polished, but
+not less hearty, encomium, called him "a devilish good fellow for a
+Frenchman."
+
+The habits I have already alluded to, of each guest living exactly how
+he pleased, gave a continual novelty to the company; sometimes two or
+three new faces would appear at the dinner-table or in the drawing-room,
+and conjecture was ever at work whether the last arrivals had been yet
+seen, and who were they who presented themselves at table?
+
+"You will meet two new guests to-day, Count," said the host one day,
+as we entered the drawing-room before dinner: "a Spanish Bishop and his
+niece,--a very charming person, and a widow of nineteen! They came over
+to Ireland about some disputed question of property,--being originally
+Irish by family,--and are now, I regret to say, about to return to Spain
+in a few days. Hitherto a severe cold has confined the Bishop to his
+chamber; and his niece, not being, I fancy, a proficient in any but her
+native language, had not courage to face a miscellaneous party. They
+will both, however, favor us to-day; and as you are the only one here
+who can command the 'true Castilian tongue,' you will take the Countess
+in to dinner."
+
+I bowed my acknowledgments, not sorry to have the occasion of displaying
+my Spanish and playing the agreeable to my fair countrywoman.
+
+The drawing-room each day before dinner had no other light than that
+afforded by a great fire of bog deal, which, although diffusing a rich
+and ruddy glow over all who sat within the circle around it, left the
+remainder of the apartment in comparative darkness; and few, except
+those very intimate, were able to recognize each other in the obscurity.
+Whether this was a whim of the host, or a pardonable artifice to make
+the splendor of the well-lighted dinner-table more effective, on the
+principle of orators, who begin at a whisper to create silence, I know
+not, but we used to jest over the broken shins and upset spider tables
+that each day announced the entrance of some guest less familiarized to
+the geography of the apartment.
+
+On this particular occasion the party was unusually large; possibly a
+certain curiosity to see the new guests had added to the number, while
+some of the neighboring families were also present. Various were the new
+names announced; and at last came the Bishop, with the lady of the house
+upon his arm, the young widow following with one of the daughters of the
+house. I could only distinguish a very white head, with a small
+black skull-cap, a stooping figure, and a great gold cross, which, I
+concluded, represented the holy man; something in black, with a very
+long veil descending from the back of her head, being as evidently the
+niece.
+
+A few formal introductions were gone through in clever pantomime, dinner
+was announced, and the company paired off in all stateliness, while
+the host, seizing my arm, led me across the room, and in a few words
+presented me to the fair widow, who courtesied, and accepted my arm, and
+away we marched in that solemn procession by which people endeavor to
+thaw the ice of first acquaintance.
+
+"Your first visit to Ireland, I believe, Señhora?" said I, in Spanish,
+wishing to say something as we walked along.
+
+"Yes, Señhor, and yours also, I understand?" replied she.
+
+"Not exactly," muttered I, taken too suddenly to recover myself; "when
+I was a boy, a mere child--" I here by accident employed a Mexican
+word almost synonymous with the French "gamin." She started, and said
+eagerly, "How! you have been in Mexico?"
+
+"Yes, Señhora, I have passed some years in that country."
+
+"I am a Mexican," cried she, delightedly. "Tell me, where have you
+traveiled, and whom did you know there?"
+
+"I have travelled a good deal, but scarcely knew any one," replied I.
+"At Guajuaqualla--"
+
+"Oh, were you there? My own neighborhood,--my home," exclaimed she,
+fervidly.
+
+"Then probably you know Don Estaban Olares," said I.
+
+"My own father!"
+
+I turned round; our eyes met; it was just at the very entrance of the
+dinner-room, where a blaze of light was shed on everything, and there
+upon my arm--her hand trembling, her cheek colorless, and her eyes
+swimming in tears--was Donna Maria! Neither of us spoke, neither of us
+could speak!--and while her eyes wandered from my face to the several
+decorations I wore upon my breast, and I watched with agonizing
+intensity the look of terror she threw down the table towards the place
+where her uncle was seated, I saw plainly that some painful mystery was
+struggling within her mind.
+
+"Do not let my uncle recognize you," said she, in a low whisper; "he is
+not likely to do so, for both his sight and hearing are much impaired."
+
+"But why should I not claim him as an old acquaintance, if not a friend,
+Señhora, if he be the same Fra Miguel?"
+
+"Hush! be cautious," cried she; "I will tell you all
+tomorrow,--to-night, if there be a fitting opportunity. Let us talk of
+something else, or we shall be remarked."
+
+I tried my best to obey her, but I fear my attempt was a poor one; I was
+able, however, to listen to her with a certain amount of composure, and,
+while doing so, to remark how much she had improved in grace and beauty
+since we met. Years had developed the charms which girlhood then but
+shadowed forth, and in the full and liquid softness of her dark and
+long-lashed eyes, and the playful delicacy of her mouth, I saw how a
+consciousness of fascination had served to lend new powers of pleasing.
+
+She spoke to me of her widowhood without any affectation of feeling
+grieved or sorry. So long as Don Geloso had lived, her existence had
+been like that of a nun in a cloister; he was too jealous to suffer her
+to go into the world, and, save at the Court Chapel each morning and
+evening, she never saw anything of that brilliant society in which her
+equals were moving. When her uncle was created Bishop of Seville, she
+removed to that city to visit him, and had never seen her husband after.
+Such, in few words, was the story of a life, whose monotony would have
+broken the spirit of any nature less buoyant and elastic than her own.
+Don Estaban was dead; and of him she spoke with deep and affectionate
+feeling; betraying besides that her own lot was rendered almost a
+friendless one by the bereavement.
+
+That same evening, as we walked through the rooms, examining pictures
+and ancient armor, of which our host was somewhat vain, I learned the
+secret to which the Senhora had alluded at table, and divesting which
+of all the embarrassment the revelation occasioned herself, was briefly
+this: The Fra, who had never, for some reasons of his own, either liked
+or trusted me, happened to discover some circumstances of my earlier
+adventures in Texas, and even traced me in my rambles to the night of my
+duel with the Ranchero. Hence he drew the somewhat rash and ungenerous
+conclusion that my character was not so unimpeachable as I affected, and
+that my veracity was actually open to question! An active correspondence
+had taken place between Don Geloso and himself about me, in which the
+former, after great researches, pronounced that no noble family of my
+name had existed in Old Spain, and that, in plain fact, I was nothing
+better than an impostor! In this terrible delusion the old gentleman
+died; but so fearful was he of the bare possibility of injuring one in
+whose veins flowed the pure blood of Castile that on his death-bed he
+besought the Bishop to ascertain the fact to a certainty, and not
+to desist in the investigation till he had traced me to my birth,
+parentage, and country. Upon this condition he had bequeathed all his
+fortune to the Church, and not alone all his own wealth, but all Donna
+Maria's also.
+
+The Bishop's visit to Ireland, therefore, had no other object than to
+look for my baptismal certificate,--an investigation, I need scarcely
+say, somewhat difficult and intricate!
+
+Of course, in this confession, the fair Contessa never hesitated to
+regard me as an injured and calumniated individual; but so assured was
+she of the Bishop's desire to endow the Church with her wealth that
+he would have less brooked to discover me a noble of title and rank
+indisputable, than to find me a poor and ignoble adventurer. "Were he
+but to recognize you," said she, "I should be condemned to a nunnery for
+life!" and this terror, however little startling to _my_ ears, had too
+much of significance to _her_ mind to be undervalued.
+
+Of course my present position, the companionship of me Prince, the
+foreign orders I wore, were more than sufficient to accredit me to her
+as anything I pleased to represent myself; but somehow I felt little
+inclination for that vein of fiction in which so often and so largely
+I had indulged! For the first time in my life I regarded this flow of
+invention as a treachery! and, when pressed by her to relate the full
+story of my life, I limited myself to that period which, beginning with
+my African campaign, brought me down to the moment of telling I was in
+love. Such is the simple solution of the mystery; nor can I cite a more
+convincing evidence of the ennobling nature of the passion than that it
+made me, such as I was, tenacious of the truth.
+
+Every succeeding day brought me into closer intimacy with the Señhora,
+and taught me more and more to value her for other graces than those
+of personal beauty. The seclusion in which she had passed her last few
+years had led her to cultivate her mind by a course of study such as few
+Spanish women ever think of, and which gave an almost serious character
+to a nature of more than childlike buoyancy. We talked of her own joyous
+land, to which she seemed longing to return, and of our first meeting
+beside the "Rio Colloredo," and then of our next meeting on her own
+marriage-day; and she wondered where, if ever, we should see each other
+again! The opportunity was not to be lost. I pressed her hand to my
+lips, and asked her never to leave me! I told her that, for me, country
+had no ties,--that I had neither home nor kindred. I would at that
+moment have confessed everything, even to my humble birth! I pledged
+myself to live with her amidst the sierras of the Far West, or, if she
+liked better, in some city of the Old World. I told her that I was rich,
+and that I needed not that wealth of which her uncle's covetousness
+would rob her. In fact, I said a great deal that was true; and when I
+added anything that was not so, it was simply as painters introduce a
+figure with a "bit of red," to heighten the landscape. I will not weary
+my _fair_ reader with all the little doubts, and hesitations, and fears,
+so natural for her to experience and express; nor will I tire my male
+companion by saying how I combated each in turn. Love, like a lawsuit,
+has but one ritual. First comes the declaration,--usually a pretty
+unintelligible piece of business, in either case; then come the
+"affidavits," the sworn depositions; then follow the cross-examinations;
+after which, the charge and the verdict. In my case it was a favorable
+one, and I was almost out of my senses with delight.
+
+
+
+The Bishop, with whom my acquaintanceship had never betrayed my secret,
+was to leave Ireland in a few days, and the Prince, to whom I told
+everything, with the kindness of a true friend promised that he would
+take the very same day for his own departure. The remainder we were
+to leave to fortune. Love-making left me little time for any other
+thoughts; but still as, for appearance' sake, I was obliged to pass some
+hours of every day apart from Donna Maria, I took the occasion of one of
+these forced absences to visit a scene which had never quitted my mind
+through all the changeful fortunes of my life,--the little spot where I
+was born. Rising one morning at break of day, I set out for Horseleap,
+to see once more, and for the last time, the humble home of my
+childhood. The distance was about sixteen miles; but as I rode slowly,
+my mind full of old memories and reflections, I did not reach the place
+till nigh noon. Alas! I should never have known the spot! There had been
+a season of famine and pestilence, and now the little village was almost
+tenantless. Many of the cabins were unroofed; in some, the blackened
+rafters bore tokens of fire. The one shop that used to supply the humble
+luxuries of the poor was closed, and I passed on with a heavy heart
+towards the cross-roads where "Con's Acre" lay.
+
+I had not gone far when my eye, straining to catch it, detected the roof
+of the cabin rising above the little thorn hedge that flanked the
+road. Ay, there was the old stone-quarry I used to play in, as a child,
+fancying that its granite sides were mountain precipices, and its little
+pools were lakes. There was the gate on which for hours long I have sat,
+gazing at the bleak expanse of moorland, and wondering if all the wide
+world beyond had nothing fairer or more beautiful than this.
+
+"Who lives in that cabin yonder?" asked I, of a peasant on the road.
+
+The man replied that it was "the minister;" adding his name, which,
+however, I could not catch. Long as I had been away from Ireland,
+I could not forget that this was the especial title given to the
+Protestant clergyman of the parish, and I rode up to the door wondering
+how it chanced that he was reduced to a dwelling of such humble
+pretensions. An old woman came out as I drew up, and told me that the
+curate was from home, but would be back in less than an hour; requesting
+me to "put in my beast," and sit down in the parlor till he came.
+
+I accepted the invitation, followed her into the cabin, which, although
+in a condition of neatness very different from what I remembered it
+of old, brought back all my boyish days in an instant. There was the
+fireside, where, with naked feet roasting before the blazing turf, I had
+sat and slept full many an hour, dreaming of adventures which were as
+nothing to those my real life had met with. There the corner where I
+used to sit throughout the night, copying those law papers my father
+would bring back with him from Kilbeggan. There stood the little bed
+where often I have sobbed myself to sleep, when, wearied and worn out,
+I was punished for some trifling omission, some slight and accidental
+mistake. I sat down, and covered my face with my hands, for a sense of
+my utter loneliness in the world came suddenly over me; I felt as if
+this poor hovel was my only real home, and that all my success in life
+was a mere passing dream.
+
+Meanwhile the old woman, with true native volubility, was explaining how
+the Bishop--"bad scran to him!--would n't let his riv'rence have pace
+and ease till he kem and lived in the parish, though there was n't a
+spot fit for a gentleman in the whole length and breadth of it! and
+signs on it," added she, "we had to put up with this little place here,
+they call Con's Acre, and it was all a ruin when we got it."
+
+"And who owned this cabin before?" asked I.
+
+"A villain they call Con Cregan, your honor,--the biggest thief ye
+ever heard of; he was paid for informin' agin the people, and whin the
+Government had done wid him, they transported him too!"
+
+"Had he any children, this same Con?"
+
+"He had a brat of a boy that was drowned at 'say,' they tell me; but I'd
+never believe it was that way that Con Cregan's son was to die!"
+
+I need scarcely remark that I saw no inducement for prolonging this
+conversation, wherein all the facts quoted were already familiar,
+and all the speculations the reverse of flattery; and I was far more
+agreeably occupied in discussing the eggs and milk the old lady had
+placed before me, when the door opened, and the curate entered. A
+deep cavernous cough and a stooped figure announcing the signs of some
+serious chest disease, were all I had time to observe; when, with the
+politeness of a gentleman, he advanced towards me. The first sound of
+his voice was enough, and I cried out, "Lyndsay! my oldest and best
+friend,--don't you know me?"
+
+"I am ashamed to say that I do not," said he, faltering, while he still
+held my hand, and gazed into my face.
+
+"Not yet?" asked I again, smiling at the embarrassment of his
+countenance.
+
+"Not even yet," said he. "Tell me, I beseech you, where did we meet?"
+
+"Come here," said I, leading him to the door, and pointing to the
+wide-stretching moor that lay before us; "it was there,--yonder, where
+you see that heavy cloud-shadow stealing along,--yonder we first met. Do
+you know me now?"
+
+He started; his pale cheek grew paler, and he fell upon my neck in a
+burst of tears. Who shall ever know the source, or what the meaning?
+They were not of joy, still less of sorrow,--they were the outbreak of a
+hundred emotions. Old memories of happy days, never to come back; boyish
+triumphs, successes, failures; moments of ecstasy--of bitter anguish;
+his own bleak, joyless existence, perhaps, contrasting with mine; and
+then at last the fell consciousness of the malady in which he was but
+lingering out life.
+
+"And here are you, and here!" cried he, in a voice which his faltering
+accents made scarce intelligible; "who should say that we were to meet
+thus?" Then, as if his words had conveyed a meaning of which he was
+ashamed, he blushed deeply, and said, "And oh, my friend! how truly you
+told me that life had its path for each, if we but knew how to choose
+it."
+
+I must not say how the hours were passed, nor how it was nightfall ere
+either of us guessed it. Lyndsay insisted upon hearing every adventure
+that had befallen me, questioning me eagerly as I went, how each new
+feature of prosperity had "worked with me," and whether gold had yet
+hardened my heart, and taught me indifference to the poor.
+
+I told him of my love, and with such rapturous delight that he even
+offered to aid me in my object, by marrying me to Donna Maria,--a piece
+of generous zeal, I am certain, that originated less in friendship
+than in the prospect of a proselyte,--the niece of a bishop, too! Poor
+fellow, he might make many converts, if he were thus easily satisfied.
+
+The next day I drove Donna Maria out for an airing, and, while occupying
+her mind with various matters, contrived to prolong our excursion to
+Horseleap. "What a dreary spot you have chosen for our drive!" said she,
+looking around her.
+
+"Do you see yonder little hut," said I, "where the smoke is rising?"
+
+"Yes, that poor cabin yonder! You have not come to show me _that?_" said
+she, laughing.
+
+"Even so, Maria," said I; "to show you that poor and humble hut, and to
+tell you that it was there I was born,--a peasant's son; that from that
+same lowly roof I wandered out upon the world friendless and hungry;
+that partly by energy, partly by a resolution to succeed, partly by the
+daring determination that would not admit a failure, I have become what
+I am,--titled, honored, wealthy, but still the son of a poor man. I
+could not have gone on deceiving you, even though this confession should
+separate us forever." I could not speak more, nor needed I. Her hand had
+already clasped mine as she murmured: "Yours more than ever."
+
+"Now is the moment, then, to become so," said I, as I lifted her from
+the carriage and led her within the cabin.
+
+The company were already waiting dinner ere we returned to the Castle.
+"I have to make our excuses," said I to the hostess; "but we prolonged
+our drive to a considerable distance."
+
+"Ah, we feared you might have taken the road by the lake, where there is
+no turning back," said she.
+
+"Exactly, madam; that is what we did precisely, for we are married!"
+
+Need I dwell upon the surprise and astonishment of this announcement?
+The Bishop--fortunately it was in Spanish--uttered something very like
+an oath. The bride blushed--some of the ladies looked shocked--the men
+shook hands with me, and the Prince, saluting Donna Maria with a most
+hearty embrace, begged to say "that the lady would be very welcomely
+received in Paris, since it was the only drawback to my appointment as
+an ambassador--that I was unmarried."
+
+Here I have done,--not that my Confessions are exhausted, but that I
+fear my reader's patience may be; I may, however, add that this was not
+the only "Spanish marriage" in which I had a share,--that my career in
+greatness was not less eventful than my life in obscurity, and that I
+draw up at this stage, leaving it for the traveller to say if he should
+ever care hereafter to journey further with me.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Confessions Of Con Cregan, by Charles James
+Lever
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