initial commit of ebook 7624HEADmain

5 files changed, 4233 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/7624.txt b/7624.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a6d9c2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/7624.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,4217 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook Devereux, by Bulwer-Lytton, Book I.
+#52 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: Devereux, Book I.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7624]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on February 25, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEVEREUX, BY LYTTON, BOOK I. ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Dagny,
+               and David Widger,
+
+
+
+
+
+DEVEREUX
+
+BY
+
+EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
+(Lord Lytton)
+
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT TO THE PRESENT EDITION.
+
+IN this edition of a work composed in early youth, I have not attempted
+to remove those faults of construction which may be sufficiently
+apparent in the plot, but which could not indeed be thoroughly rectified
+without re-writing the whole work.  I can only hope that with the
+defects of inexperience may be found some of the merits of frank and
+artless enthusiasm.  I have, however, lightened the narrative of certain
+episodical and irrelevant passages, and relieved the general style of
+some boyish extravagances of diction.  At the time this work was written
+I was deeply engaged in the study of metaphysics and ethics, and out of
+that study grew the character of Algernon Mordaunt.  He is represented
+as a type of the Heroism of Christian Philosophy,--a union of love and
+knowledge placed in the midst of sorrow, and labouring on through the
+pilgrimage of life, strong in the fortitude that comes from belief in
+Heaven.
+
+KNEBWORTH, May 3, 1852.
+
+E. B. L.
+
+
+
+DEDICATORY EPISTLE
+
+TO
+
+JOHN AULDJO, ESQ., ETC.,
+
+AT NAPLES
+
+
+
+LONDON.
+
+MY DEAR AULDJO,--Permit me, as a memento of the pleasant hours we passed
+together, and the intimacy we formed by the winding shores and the rosy
+seas of the old Parthenope, to dedicate to you this romance.  It was
+written in perhaps the happiest period of my literary life,--when
+success began to brighten upon my labours, and it seemed to me a fine
+thing to make a name.  Reputation, like all possessions, fairer in the
+hope than the reality, shone before me in the gloss of novelty; and I
+had neither felt the envy it excites, the weariness it occasions, nor
+(worse than all) that coarse and painful notoriety, that, something
+between the gossip and the slander, which attends every man whose
+writings become known,--surrendering the grateful privacies of life to
+
+     "The gaudy, babbling, and remorseless day."
+
+In short, yet almost a boy (for, in years at least, I was little more,
+when "Pelham" and "The Disowned" were conceived and composed), and full
+of the sanguine arrogance of hope, I pictured to myself far greater
+triumphs than it will ever be mine to achieve: and never did architect
+of dreams build his pyramid upon (alas!) a narrower base, or a more
+crumbling soil! . . . Time cures us effectually of these self-conceits,
+and brings us, somewhat harshly, from the gay extravagance of
+confounding the much that we design with the little that we can
+accomplish.
+
+"The Disowned" and "Devereux" were both completed in retirement, and in
+the midst of metaphysical studies and investigations, varied and
+miscellaneous enough, if not very deeply conned.  At that time I was
+indeed engaged in preparing for the press a Philosophical Work which I
+had afterwards the good sense to postpone to a riper age and a more
+sobered mind.  But the effect of these studies is somewhat prejudicially
+visible in both the romances I have referred to; and the external and
+dramatic colourings which belong to fiction are too often forsaken for
+the inward and subtile analysis of motives, characters, and actions.
+The workman was not sufficiently master of his art to forbear the vanity
+of parading the wheels of the mechanism, and was too fond of calling
+attention to the minute and tedious operations by which the movements
+were to be performed and the result obtained.  I believe that an author
+is generally pleased with his work less in proportion as it is good,
+than in proportion as it fulfils the idea with which he commenced it.
+He is rarely perhaps an accurate judge how far the execution is in
+itself faulty or meritorious; but he judges with tolerable success how
+far it accomplishes the end and objects of the conception.  He is
+pleased with his work, in short, according as he can say, "This has
+expressed what I meant it to convey."  But the reader, who is not in the
+secret of the author's original design, usually views the work through a
+different medium; and is perhaps in this the wiser critic of the two:
+for the book that wanders the most from the idea which originated it may
+often be better than that which is rigidly limited to the unfolding and
+/denouement/ of a single conception.  If we accept this solution, we may
+be enabled to understand why an author not unfrequently makes favourites
+of some of his productions most condemned by the public.  For my own
+part, I remember that "Devereux" pleased me better than "Pelham" or "The
+Disowned," because the execution more exactly corresponded with the
+design.  It expressed with tolerable fidelity what I meant it to
+express.  That was a happy age, my dear Auldjo, when, on finishing a
+work, we could feel contented with our labour, and fancy we had done our
+best!  Now, alas I I have learned enough of the wonders of the Art to
+recognize all the deficiencies of the Disciple; and to know that no
+author worth the reading can ever in one single work do half of which he
+is capable.
+
+What man ever wrote anything really good who did not feel that he had
+the ability to write something better?  Writing, after all, is a cold
+and a coarse interpreter of thought.  How much of the imagination, how
+much of the intellect, evaporates and is lost while we seek to embody it
+in words!  Man made language and God the genius.  Nothing short of an
+eternity could enable men who imagine, think, and feel, to express all
+they have imagined, thought, and felt.  Immortality, the spiritual
+desire, is the intellectual /necessity/.
+
+In "Devereux" I wished to portray a man flourishing in the last century
+with the train of mind and sentiment peculiar to the present; describing
+a life, and not its dramatic epitome, the historical characters
+introduced are not closely woven with the main plot, like those in the
+fictions of Sir Walter Scott, but are rather, like the narrative
+romances of an earlier school, designed to relieve the predominant
+interest, and give a greater air of truth and actuality to the supposed
+memoir.  It is a fiction which deals less with the Picturesque than the
+Real.  Of the principal character thus introduced (the celebrated and
+graceful, but charlatanic, Bolingbroke) I still think that my sketch,
+upon the whole, is substantially just.  We must not judge of the
+politicians of one age by the lights of another.  Happily we now demand
+in a statesman a desire for other aims than his own advancement; but at
+that period ambition was almost universally selfish--the Statesman was
+yet a Courtier--a man whose very destiny it was to intrigue, to plot, to
+glitter, to deceive.  It is in proportion as politics have ceased to be
+a secret science, in proportion as courts are less to be flattered and
+tools to be managed, that politicians have become useful and honest men;
+and the statesman now directs a people, where once he outwitted an
+ante-chamber.  Compare Bolingbroke--not with the men and by the rules of
+this day, but with the men and by the rules of the last.  He will lose
+nothing in comparison with a Walpole, with a Marlborough on the one
+side,--with an Oxford or a Swift upon the other.
+
+And now, my dear Auldjo, you have had enough of my egotisms.  As our
+works grow up,--like old parents, we grow garrulous, and love to recur
+to the happier days of their childhood; we talk over the pleasant pain
+they cost us in their rearing, and memory renews the season of dreams
+and hopes; we speak of their faults as of things past, of their merits
+as of things enduring: we are proud to see them still living, and, after
+many a harsh ordeal and rude assault, keeping a certain station in the
+world; we hoped perhaps something better for them in their cradle, but
+as it is we have good cause to be contented.  You, a fellow-author, and
+one whose spirited and charming sketches embody so much of personal
+adventure, and therefore so much connect themselves with associations of
+real life as well as of the studious closet; /you/ know, and must feel
+with me, that these our books are a part of us, bone of our bone and
+flesh of our flesh!  They treasure up the thoughts which stirred us, the
+affections which warmed us, years ago; they are the mirrors of how much
+of what we were!  To the world they are but as a certain number of
+pages,--good or bad,--tedious or diverting; but to ourselves, the
+authors, they are as marks in the wild maze of life by which we can
+retrace our steps, and be with our youth again.  What would I not give
+to feel as I felt, to hope as I hoped, to believe as I believed, when
+this work was first launched upon the world!  But time gives while it
+takes away; and amongst its recompenses for many losses are the memories
+I referred to in commencing this letter, and gratefully revert to at its
+close.  From the land of cloud and the life of toil, I turn to that
+golden clime and the happy indolence that so well accords with it; and
+hope once more, ere I die, with a companion whose knowledge can recall
+the past and whose gayety can enliven the present, to visit the
+Disburied City of Pompeii, and see the moonlight sparkle over the waves
+of Naples.  Adieu, my dear Auldjo,
+
+  And believe me,
+    Your obliged and attached friend,
+      E. B. LYTTON.
+
+
+
+THE AUTOBIOGRAPHER'S INTRODUCTION.
+
+MY life has been one of frequent adventure and constant excitement.  It
+has been passed, to this present day, in a stirring age, and not without
+acquaintance of the most eminent and active spirits of the time.  Men of
+all grades and of every character have been familiar to me.  War, love,
+ambition, the scroll of sages, the festivals of wit, the intrigues of
+states,--all that agitate mankind, the hope and the fear, the labour and
+the pleasure, the great drama of vanities, with the little interludes of
+wisdom; these have been the occupations of my manhood; these will
+furnish forth the materials of that history which is now open to your
+survey.  Whatever be the faults of the historian, he has no motive to
+palliate what he has committed nor to conceal what he has felt.
+
+Children of an after century, the very time in which these pages will
+greet you destroys enough of the connection between you and myself to
+render me indifferent alike to your censure and your applause.  Exactly
+one hundred years from the day this record is completed will the seal I
+shall place on it be broken and the secrets it contains be disclosed.  I
+claim that congeniality with you which I have found not among my own
+coevals.  /Their/ thoughts, their feelings, their views, have nothing
+kindred to my own.  I speak their language, but it is not as a native:
+/they/ know not a syllable of mine!  With a future age my heart may have
+more in common; to a future age my thoughts may be less unfamiliar, and
+my sentiments less strange.  I trust these confessions to the trial!
+
+Children of an after century, between you and the being who has traced
+the pages ye behold--that busy, versatile, restless being--there is but
+one step,--but that step is a century!  His /now/ is separated from your
+now by an interval of three generations!  While he writes, he is
+exulting in the vigour of health and manhood; while ye read, the very
+worms are starving upon his dust.  This commune between the living and
+the dead; this intercourse between that which breathes and moves and
+/is/, and that which life animates not nor mortality knows,--annihilates
+falsehood, and chills even self-delusion into awe.  Come, then, and look
+upon the picture of a past day and of a gone being, without apprehension
+of deceit; and as the shadows and lights of a checkered and wild
+existence flit before you, watch if in your own hearts there be aught
+which mirrors the reflection.
+
+  MORTON DEVEREUX.
+
+
+
+NOTE TO THE PRESENT EDITION (1852).
+
+If this work possess any merit of a Narrative order, it will perhaps be
+found in its fidelity to the characteristics of an Autobiography.  The
+reader must, indeed, comply with the condition exacted from his
+imagination and faith; that is to say, he must take the hero of the
+story upon the terms for which Morton Devereux himself stipulates; and
+regard the supposed Count as one who lived and wrote in the last
+century, but who (dimly conscious that the tone of his mind harmonized
+less with his own age than with that which was to come) left his
+biography as a legacy to the present.  This assumption (which is not an
+unfair one) liberally conceded, and allowed to account for occasional
+anachronisms in sentiment, Morton Devereux will be found to write as a
+man who is not constructing a romance, but narrating a life.  He gives
+to Love, its joy and its sorrow, its due share in an eventful and
+passionate existence; but it is the share of biography, not of fiction.
+He selects from the crowd of personages with whom he is brought into
+contact, not only those who directly influence his personal destinies,
+but those of whom a sketch or an anecdote would appear to a biographer
+likely to have interest for posterity.  Louis XIV., the Regent Orleans,
+Peter the Great, Lord Bolingbroke, and others less eminent, but still of
+mark in their own day, if growing obscure to ours, are introduced not
+for the purposes and agencies of fiction, but as an autobiographer's
+natural illustrations of the men and manners of his time.
+
+And here be it pardoned if I add that so minute an attention has been
+paid to accuracy that even in petty details, and in relation to
+historical characters but slightly known to the ordinary reader, a
+critic deeply acquainted with the memoirs of the age will allow that the
+novelist is always merged in the narrator.
+
+Unless the Author has failed more in his design than, on revising the
+work of his early youth with the comparatively impartial eye of maturer
+judgment, he is disposed to concede, Morton Devereux will also be found
+with that marked individuality of character which distinguishes the man
+who has lived and laboured from the hero of romance.  He admits into his
+life but few passions; those are tenacious and intense: conscious that
+none who are around him will sympathize with his deeper feelings, he
+veils them under the sneer of an irony which is often affected and never
+mirthful.  Wherever we find him, after surviving the brief episode of
+love, we feel--though he does not tell us so--that he is alone in the
+world.  He is represented as a keen observer and a successful actor in
+the busy theatre of mankind, precisely in proportion as no cloud from
+the heart obscures the cold clearness of the mind.  In the scenes of
+pleasure there is no joy in his smile; in the contests of ambition there
+is no quicker beat of the pulse.  Attaining in the prime of manhood such
+position and honour as would first content and then sate a man of this
+mould, he has nothing left but to discover the vanities of this world
+and to ponder on the hopes of the next; and, his last passion dying out
+in the retribution that falls on his foe, he finally sits down in
+retirement to rebuild the ruined home of his youth,--unconscious that to
+that solitude the Destinies have led him to repair the waste and ravages
+of his own melancholy soul.
+
+But while outward Dramatic harmonies between cause and effect, and the
+proportionate agencies which characters introduced in the Drama bring to
+bear upon event and catastrophe, are carefully shunned,--as real life
+does for the most part shun them,--yet there is a latent coherence in
+all that, by influencing the mind, do, though indirectly, shape out the
+fate and guide the actions.
+
+Dialogue and adventures which, considered dramatically, would be
+episodical,--considered biographically, will be found essential to the
+formation, change, and development of the narrator's character.  The
+grave conversations with Bolingbroke and Richard Cromwell, the light
+scenes in London and at Paris, the favour obtained with the Czar of
+Russia, are all essential to the creation of that mixture of wearied
+satiety and mournful thought which conducts the Probationer to the
+lonely spot in which he is destined to learn at once the mystery of his
+past life and to clear his reason from the doubts that had obscured the
+future world.
+
+Viewing the work in this more subtile and contemplative light, the
+reader will find not only the true test by which to judge of its design
+and nature, but he may also recognize sources of interest in the story
+which might otherwise have been lost to him; and if so, the Author will
+not be without excuse for this criticism upon the scope and intention of
+his own work.  For it is not only the privilege of an artist, but it is
+also sometimes his duty to the principles of Art, to place the spectator
+in that point of view wherein the light best falls upon the canvas.  "Do
+not place yourself there," says the painter; "to judge of my composition
+you must stand where I place you."
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+
+Book I.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+Of the Hero's Birth and Parentage.--Nothing can differ more from the
+  End of Things than their Beginning
+
+CHAPTER II.
+A Family Consultation.--A Priest, and an Era in Life
+
+CHAPTER III.
+A Change in Conduct and in Character: our evil Passions will some-
+  times produce good Effects; and on the contrary, an Alteration for
+  the better in Manners will, not unfrequently, have amongst its
+  Causes a little Corruption of Mind; for the Feelings are so blended
+  that, in suppressing those disagreeable to others, we often suppress
+  those which are amiable in themselves
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+A Contest of Art and a League of Friendship.--Two Characters in
+  mutual Ignorance of each other, and the Reader no wiser than
+  either of them
+
+CHAPTER V.
+Rural Hospitality.--An extraordinary Guest.--A Fine Gentleman is
+  not necessarily a Fool
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+A Dialogue, which might be dull if it were longer
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+A Change of Prospects.--A new Insight into the Character of the Hero.
+  --A Conference between two Brothers
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+First Love
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+A Discovery and a Departure
+
+CHAPTER X.
+A very short Chapter,--containing a Valet
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+The Hero acquits himself honourably as a Coxcomb.--A Fine Lady of
+  the Eighteenth Century, and a fashionable Dialogue; the Substance
+  of fashionable Dialogue being in all Centuries the same
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+The Abbe's Return.--A Sword, and a Soliloquy
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+A mysterious Letter.-A Duel.--The Departure of one of the Family
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+Being a Chapter of Trifles
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+The Mother and Son.--Virtue should be the Sovereign of the Feelings,
+  not their Destroyer
+
+
+
+Book II.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+The Hero in London.--Pleasure is often the shortest, as it is the
+  earliest road to Wisdom, and we may say of the World what Zeal-of-
+  the-Land-Busy says of the Pig-Booth, "We escape so much of the
+  other Vanities by our early Entering"
+
+CHAPTER II.
+Gay Scenes and Conversations.--The New Exchange and the Puppet-
+  Show.--The Actor, the Sexton, and the Beauty
+
+CHAPTER III.
+More Lions
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+An intellectual Adventure
+
+CHAPTER V.
+The Beau in his Den, and a Philosopher discovered
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+A universal Genius.--Pericles turned Barber.--Names of Beauties in
+  171-.--The Toasts of the Kit-Cat Club
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+A Dialogue of Sentiment succeeded by the Sketch of a Character, in
+  whose Eyes Sentiment was to Wise Men what Religion is to Fools;
+  namely, a Subject of Ridicule
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+Lightly won, lightly lost.--A Dialogue of equal Instruction and
+  Amusement.--A Visit to Sir Godfrey Kneller
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+A Development of Character, and a long Letter; a Chapter, on the
+  whole, more important than it seems
+
+CHAPTER X.
+Being a short Chapter, containing a most important Event
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+Containing more than any other Chapter in the Second Book of this
+History
+
+
+
+Book III.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+Wherein the History makes great Progress and is marked by one
+  important Event in Human Life
+
+CHAPTER II.
+Love; Parting; a Death-Bed.--After all human Nature is a beautiful
+  Fabric; and even its Imperfections are not odious to him who has
+  studied the Science of its Architecture, and formed a reverent
+  Estimate of its Creator
+
+CHAPTER III.
+A great Change of Prospects
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+An Episode.--The Son of the Greatest Man who (one only excepted)
+  /ever rose to a Throne/, but by no means of the Greatest Man (save
+  one) /who ever existed/
+
+CHAPTER V.
+In which the Hero shows Decision on more Points than one.--More of
+  Isora's Character is developed
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+An Unexpected Meeting.--Conjecture and Anticipation
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+The Events of a Single Night.--Moments make the Hues in which
+  Years are coloured
+
+
+
+Book IV.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+A Re-entrance into Life through the Ebon Gate, Affliction
+
+CHAPTER II.
+Ambitious Projects
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The real Actors Spectators to the false ones
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+Paris.--A Female Politician, and an Ecclesiastical One.--Sundry other
+  Matters
+
+CHAPTER V.
+A Meeting of Wits.--Conversation gone out to Supper in her Dress of
+  Velvet and Jewels
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+A Court, Courtiers, and a King
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+Reflections.--A Soiree.--The Appearance of one important in the
+  History.--A Conversation with Madame de Balzac highly satisfactory
+  and cheering.--A Rencontre with a curious old Soldier.--
+  The Extinction of a once great Luminary
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+In which there is Reason to fear that Princes are not invariably free
+  from Human Peccadilloes
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+A Prince, an Audience, and a Secret Embassy
+
+CHAPTER X.
+Royal Exertions for the Good of the People
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+An Interview
+
+
+
+Book V.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+A Portrait
+
+CHAPTER II.
+The Entrance into Petersburg.--A Rencontre with an inquisitive and
+  mysterious Stranger.--Nothing like Travel
+
+CHAPTER III.
+The Czar.--The Czarina.--A Feast at a Russian Nobleman's
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+Conversations with the Czar.--If Cromwell was the greatest Man
+  (Caesar excepted) who ever /rose/ to the Supreme Power, Peter was
+  the greatest Man ever /born/ to it
+
+CHAPTER V.
+Return to Paris.--Interview with Bolingbroke.--A gallant Adventure.
+  --Affair with Dubois.--Public Life is a Drama, in which private
+  Vices generally play the Part of the Scene-shifters
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+A long Interval of Years.--A Change of Mind and its Causes
+
+
+
+Book VI.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+The Retreat
+
+CHAPTER II.
+The Victory
+
+CHAPTER III.
+The Hermit of the Well
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+The Solution of many Mysteries.--A dark View of the Life and Nature
+  of Man
+
+CHAPTER V.
+In which the History makes a great Stride towards the final Catastrophe.
+  --The Return to England, and the Visit to a Devotee
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+The Retreat of a celebrated Man, and a Visit to a great Poet
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+The Plot approaches its /Denouement/
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+The Catastrophe
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+DEVEREUX.
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+OF THE HERO'S BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.--NOTHING CAN DIFFER MORE FROM THE END
+OF THINGS THAN THEIR BEGINNING.
+
+MY grandfather, Sir Arthur Devereux (peace be with his ashes!) was a
+noble old knight and cavalier, possessed of a property sufficiently
+large to have maintained in full dignity half a dozen peers,--such as
+peers have been since the days of the first James.  Nevertheless, my
+grandfather loved the equestrian order better than the patrician,
+rejected all offers of advancement, and left his posterity no titles but
+those to his estate.
+
+Sir Arthur had two children by wedlock,--both sons; at his death, my
+father, the younger, bade adieu to the old hall and his only brother,
+prayed to the grim portraits of his ancestors to inspire him, and set
+out--to join as a volunteer the armies of that Louis, afterwards
+surnamed /le grand/.  Of him I shall say but little; the life of a
+soldier has only two events worth recording,--his first campaign and his
+last.  My uncle did as his ancestors had done before him, and, cheap as
+the dignity had grown, went up to court to be knighted by Charles II.
+He was so delighted with what he saw of the metropolis that he forswore
+all intention of leaving it, took to Sedley and champagne, flirted with
+Nell Gwynne, lost double the value of his brother's portion at one
+sitting to the chivalrous Grammont, wrote a comedy corrected by
+Etherege, and took a wife recommended by Rochester.  The wife brought
+him a child six months after marriage, and the infant was born on the
+same day the comedy was acted.  Luckily for the honour of the house, my
+uncle shared the fate of Plemneus, king of Sicyon, and all the offspring
+he ever had (that is to say, the child and the play) "died as soon as
+they were born."  My uncle was now only at a loss what to do with his
+wife,--that remaining treasure, whose readiness to oblige him had been
+so miraculously evinced.  She saved him the trouble of long cogitation,
+an exercise of intellect to which he was never too ardently inclined.
+There was a gentleman of the court, celebrated for his sedateness and
+solemnity; my aunt was piqued into emulating Orpheus, and, six weeks
+after her confinement, she put this rock into motion,--they eloped.
+Poor gentleman! it must have been a severe trial of patience to a man
+never known before to transgress the very slowest of all possible walks,
+to have had two events of the most rapid nature happen to him in the
+same week: scarcely had he recovered the shock of being run away with by
+my aunt, before, terminating forever his vagrancies, he was run through
+by my uncle.  The wits made an epigram upon the event, and my uncle, who
+was as bold as a lion at the point of a sword, was, to speak frankly,
+terribly disconcerted by the point of a jest.  He retired to the country
+in a fit of disgust and gout.  Here his natural goodness soon recovered
+the effects of the artificial atmosphere to which it had been exposed,
+and he solaced himself by righteously governing domains worthy of a
+prince, for the mortifications he had experienced in the dishonourable
+career of a courtier.
+
+Hitherto I have spoken somewhat slightingly of my uncle, and in his
+dissipation he deserved it, for he was both too honest and too simple to
+shine in that galaxy of prostituted genius of which Charles II. was the
+centre.  But in retirement he was no longer the same person; and I do
+not think that the elements of human nature could have furnished forth a
+more amiable character than Sir William Devereux presiding at Christmas
+over the merriment of his great hall.
+
+Good old man! his very defects were what we loved best in him: vanity
+was so mingled with good-nature, that it became graceful, and we
+reverenced one the most, while we most smiled at the other.
+
+One peculiarity had he which the age he had lived in and his domestic
+history rendered natural enough; namely, an exceeding distaste to the
+matrimonial state: early marriages were misery, imprudent marriages
+idiotism, and marriage, at the best, he was wont to say, with a kindling
+eye and a heightened colour, marriage at the best was the devil!  Yet it
+must not be supposed that Sir William Devereux was an ungallant man.  On
+the contrary, never did the /beau sexe/ have a humbler or more devoted
+servant.  As nothing in his estimation was less becoming to a wise man
+than matrimony, so nothing was more ornamental than flirtation.
+
+He had the old man's weakness, garrulity; and he told the wittiest
+stories in the world, without omitting anything in them but the point.
+This omission did not arise from the want either of memory or of humour;
+but solely from a deficiency in the malice natural to all jesters.  He
+could not persuade his lips to repeat a sarcasm hurting even the dead or
+the ungrateful; and when he came to the drop of gall which should have
+given zest to the story, the milk of human kindness broke its barrier,
+despite of himself,--and washed it away.  He was a fine wreck, a little
+prematurely broken by dissipation, but not perhaps the less interesting
+on that account; tall, and somewhat of the jovial old English girth,
+with a face where good-nature and good living mingled their smiles and
+glow.  He wore the garb of twenty years back, and was curiously
+particular in the choice of his silk stockings.  Between you and me, he
+was not a little vain of his leg, and a compliment on that score was
+always sure of a gracious reception.
+
+The solitude of my uncle's household was broken by an invasion of three
+boys,--none of the quietest,--and their mother, who, the gentlest and
+saddest of womankind, seemed to follow them, the emblem of that primeval
+silence from which all noise was born.  These three boys were my two
+brothers and myself.  My father, who had conceived a strong personal
+attachment for Louis XIV., never quitted his service, and the great King
+repaid him by orders and favours without number; he died of wounds
+received in battle,--a Count and a Marshal, full of renown and destitute
+of money.  He had married twice: his first wife, who died without issue,
+was a daughter of the noble house of La Tremouille; his second, our
+mother, was of a younger branch of the English race of Howard.  Brought
+up in her native country, and influenced by a primitive and retired
+education, she never loved that gay land which her husband had adopted
+as his own.  Upon his death she hastened her return to England, and
+refusing, with somewhat of honourable pride, the magnificent pension
+which Louis wished to settle upon the widow of his favourite, came to
+throw herself and her children upon those affections which she knew they
+were entitled to claim.
+
+My uncle was unaffectedly rejoiced to receive us; to say nothing of his
+love for my father, and his pride at the honours the latter had won to
+their ancient house, the good gentleman was very well pleased with the
+idea of obtaining four new listeners, out of whom he might select an
+heir, and he soon grew as fond of us as we were of him.  At the time of
+our new settlement, I had attained the age of twelve; my second brother
+(we were twins) was born an hour after me; my third was about fifteen
+months younger.  I had never been the favourite of the three.  In the
+first place, my brothers (my youngest especially) were uncommonly
+handsome, and, at most, I was but tolerably good-looking: in the second
+place, my mind was considered as much inferior to theirs as my body; I
+was idle and dull, sullen and haughty,--the only wit I ever displayed
+was in sneering at my friends, and the only spirit, in quarrelling with
+my twin brother; so said or so thought all who saw us in our childhood;
+and it follows, therefore, that I was either very unamiable or very much
+misunderstood.
+
+But, to the astonishment of myself and my relations, my fate was now to
+be reversed; and I was no sooner settled at Devereux Court than I became
+evidently the object of Sir William's pre-eminent attachment.  The fact
+was, that I really liked both the knight and his stories better than my
+brothers did; and the very first time I had seen my uncle, I had
+commented on the beauty of his stocking, and envied the constitution of
+his leg; from such trifles spring affection!  In truth, our attachment
+to each other so increased that we grew to be constantly together; and
+while my childish anticipations of the world made me love to listen to
+stories of courts and courtiers, my uncle returned the compliment by
+declaring of my wit, as the angler declared of the River Lea, that one
+would find enough in it, if one would but angle sufficiently long.
+
+Nor was this all; my uncle and myself were exceedingly like the waters
+of Alpheus and Arethusa,--nothing was thrown into the one without being
+seen very shortly afterwards floating upon the other.  Every witticism
+or legend Sir William imparted to me (and some, to say truth, were a
+little tinged with the licentiousness of the times he had lived in), I
+took the first opportunity of retailing, whatever might be the audience;
+and few boys, at the age of thirteen, can boast of having so often as
+myself excited the laughter of the men and the blushes of the women.
+This circumstance, while it aggravated my own vanity, delighted my
+uncle's; and as I was always getting into scrapes on his account, so he
+was perpetually bound, by duty, to defend me from the charges of which
+he was the cause.  No man defends another long without loving him the
+better for it; and perhaps Sir William Devereux and his eldest nephew
+were the only allies in the world who had no jealousy of each other.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+A FAMILY CONSULTATION.--A PRIEST, AND AN ERA IN LIFE.
+
+"YOU are ruining the children, my dear Sir William," said my gentle
+mother, one day when I had been particularly witty; "and the Abbe
+Montreuil declares it absolutely necessary that they should go to
+school."
+
+"To school!" said my uncle, who was caressing his right leg, as it lay
+over his left knee,--"to school, Madam! you are joking.  What for,
+pray?"
+
+"Instruction, my dear Sir William," replied my mother.
+
+"Ah, ah; I forgot that; true, true!" said my uncle, despondingly, and
+there was a pause.  My mother counted her rosary; my uncle sank into a
+revery; my twin brother pinched my leg under the table, to which I
+replied by a silent kick; and my youngest fixed his large, dark,
+speaking eyes upon a picture of the Holy Family, which hung opposite to
+him.
+
+My uncle broke the silence; he did it with a start.
+
+"Od's fish, Madam,"--(my uncle dressed his oaths, like himself, a little
+after the example of Charles II.)--"od's fish, Madam, I have thought of
+a better plan than that; they shall have instruction without going to
+school for it."
+
+"And how, Sir William?"
+
+"I will instruct them myself, Madam," and William slapped the calf of
+the leg he was caressing.
+
+My mother smiled.
+
+"Ay, Madam, you may smile; but I and my Lord Dorset were the best
+scholars of the age; you shall read my play."
+
+"Do, Mother," said I, "read the play.  Shall I tell her some of the
+jests in it, Uncle?"
+
+My mother shook her head in anticipative horror, and raised her finger
+reprovingly.  My uncle said nothing, but winked at me; I understood the
+signal, and was about to begin, when the door opened, and the Abbe
+Montreuil entered.  My uncle released his right leg, and my jest was cut
+off.  Nobody ever inspired a more dim, religious awe than the Abbe
+Montreuil.  The priest entered with a smile.  My mother hailed the
+entrance of an ally.
+
+"Father," said she, rising, "I have just represented to my good brother
+the necessity of sending my sons to school; he has proposed an
+alternative which I will leave you to discuss with him."
+
+"And what is it?" said Montreuil, sliding into a chair, and patting
+Gerald's head with a benignant air.
+
+"To educate them himself," answered my mother, with a sort of satirical
+gravity.  My uncle moved uneasily in his seat, as if, for the first
+time, he saw something ridiculous in the proposal.
+
+The smile, immediately fading from the thin lips of the priest, gave way
+to an expression of respectful approbation.  "An admirable plan," said
+he slowly, "but liable to some little exceptions, which Sir William will
+allow me to point out."
+
+My mother called to us, and we left the room with her.  The next time we
+saw my uncle, the priest's reasonings had prevailed.  The following week
+we all three went to school.  My father had been a Catholic, my mother
+was of the same creed, and consequently we were brought up in that
+unpopular faith.  But my uncle, whose religion had been sadly undermined
+at court, was a terrible caviller at the holy mysteries of Catholicism;
+and while his friends termed him a Protestant, his enemies hinted,
+falsely enough, that he was a sceptic.  When Montreuil first followed us
+to Devereux Court, many and bitter were the little jests my worthy uncle
+had provided for his reception; and he would shake his head with a
+notable archness whenever he heard our reverential description of the
+expected guest.  But, somehow or other, no sooner had he seen the priest
+than all his proposed railleries deserted him.  Not a single witticism
+came to his assistance, and the calm, smooth face of the ecclesiastic
+seemed to operate upon the fierce resolves of the facetious knight in
+the same manner as the human eye is supposed to awe into impotence the
+malignant intentions of the ignobler animals.  Yet nothing could be
+blander than the demeanour of the Abbe Montreuil; nothing more worldly,
+in their urbanity, than his manner and address.  His garb was as little
+clerical as possible, his conversation rather familiar than formal, and
+he invariably listened to every syllable the good knight uttered with a
+countenance and mien of the most attentive respect.
+
+What then was the charm by which the singular man never failed to obtain
+an ascendency, in some measure allied with fear, over all in whose
+company he was thrown?  This was a secret my uncle never could solve,
+and which only in later life I myself was able to discover.  It was
+partly by the magic of an extraordinary and powerful mind, partly by an
+expression of manner, if I may use such a phrase, that seemed to sneer
+most, when most it affected to respect; and partly by an air like that
+of a man never exactly at ease; not that he was shy, or ungraceful, or
+even taciturn,--no! it was an indescribable embarrassment, resembling
+that of one playing a part, familiar to him, indeed, but somewhat
+distasteful.  This embarrassment, however, was sufficient to be
+contagious, and to confuse that dignity in others, which, strangely
+enough, never forsook himself.
+
+He was of low origin, but his address and appearance did not betray his
+birth.  Pride suited his mien better than familiarity; and his
+countenance, rigid, thoughtful, and cold, even through smiles, in
+expression was strikingly commanding.  In person he was slightly above
+the middle standard; and had not the texture of his frame been
+remarkably hard, wiry, and muscular, the total absence of all
+superfluous flesh would have given the lean gauntness of his figure an
+appearance of almost spectral emaciation.  In reality, his age did not
+exceed twenty-eight years; but his high broad forehead was already so
+marked with line and furrow, his air was so staid and quiet, his figure
+so destitute of the roundness and elasticity of youth, that his
+appearance always impressed the beholder with the involuntary idea of a
+man considerably more advanced in life.  Abstemious to habitual penance,
+and regular to mechanical exactness in his frequent and severe
+devotions, he was as little inwardly addicted to the pleasures and
+pursuits of youth, as he was externally possessed of its freshness and
+its bloom.
+
+Nor was gravity with him that unmeaning veil to imbecility which
+Rochefoucauld has so happily called "the mystery of the body."  The
+variety and depth of his learning fully sustained the respect which his
+demeanour insensibly created.  To say nothing of his lore in the dead
+tongues, he possessed a knowledge of the principal European languages
+besides his own, namely, English, Italian, German, and Spanish, not less
+accurate and little less fluent than that of a native; and he had not
+only gained the key to these various coffers of intellectual wealth, but
+he had also possessed himself of their treasures.  He had been educated
+at St. Omer: and, young as he was, he had already acquired no
+inconsiderable reputation among his brethren of that illustrious and
+celebrated Order of Jesus which has produced some of the worst and some
+of the best men that the Christian world has ever known,--which has, in
+its successful zeal for knowledge, and the circulation of mental light,
+bequeathed a vast debt of gratitude to posterity; but which, unhappily
+encouraging certain scholastic doctrines, that by a mind at once subtle
+and vicious can be easily perverted into the sanction of the most
+dangerous and systematized immorality, has already drawn upon its
+professors an almost universal odium.
+
+So highly established was the good name of Montreuil that when, three
+years prior to the time of which I now speak, he had been elected to the
+office he held in our family, it was scarcely deemed a less fortunate
+occurrence for us to gain so learned and so pious a preceptor, than it
+was for him to acquire a situation of such trust and confidence in the
+household of a Marshal of France and the especial favourite of Louis
+XIV.
+
+It was pleasant enough to mark the gradual ascendency he gained over my
+uncle; and the timorous dislike which the good knight entertained for
+him, yet struggled to conceal.  Perhaps that was the only time in his
+life in which Sir William Devereux was a hypocrite.
+
+Enough of the priest at present; I return to his charge.  To school we
+went: our parting with our uncle was quite pathetic; mine in especial.
+"Hark ye, Sir Count," whispered he (I bore my father's title), "hark ye,
+don't mind what the old priest tells you; your real man of wit never
+wants the musty lessons of schools in order to make a figure in the
+world.  Don't cramp your genius, my boy; read over my play, and honest
+George Etherege's 'Man of Mode;' they'll keep your spirits alive, after
+dozing over those old pages which Homer (good soul!) dozed over before.
+God bless you, my child; write to me; no one, not even your mother,
+shall see your letters; and--and be sure, my fine fellow, that you don't
+fag too hard.  The glass of life is the best book, and one's natural wit
+the only diamond that can write legibly on it."
+
+Such were my uncle's parting admonitions; it must be confessed that,
+coupled with the dramatic gifts alluded to, they were likely to be of
+infinite service to the /debutant/ for academical honours.  In fact, Sir
+William Devereux was deeply impregnated with the notion of his
+time,--that ability and inspiration were the same thing, and that,
+unless you were thoroughly idle, you could not be thoroughly a genius.
+I verily believe that he thought wisdom got its gems, as Abu Zeid al
+Hassan* declares some Chinese philosophers thought oysters got their
+pearls, namely, /by gaping/!
+
+
+* In his Commentary on the account of China by two Travellers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A CHANGE IN CONDUCT AND IN CHARACTER: OUR EVIL PASSIONS WILL SOMETIMES
+PRODUCE GOOD EFFECTS; AND ON THE CONTRARY, AN ALTERATION FOR THE BETTER
+IN MANNERS WILL, NOT UNFREQUENTLY, HAVE AMONGST ITS CAUSES A LITTLE
+CORRUPTION OF MIND; FOR THE FEELINGS ARE SO BLENDED THAT, IN SUPPRESSING
+THOSE DISAGREEABLE TO OTHERS, WE OFTEN SUPPRESS THOSE WHICH ARE AMIABLE
+IN THEMSELVES.
+
+MY twin brother, Gerald, was a tall, strong, handsome boy, blessed with
+a great love for the orthodox academical studies, and extraordinary
+quickness of ability.  Nevertheless, he was indolent by nature in things
+which were contrary to his taste; fond of pleasure; and, amidst all his
+personal courage, ran a certain vein of irresolution, which rendered it
+easy for a cool and determined mind to awe or to persuade him.  I cannot
+help thinking, too, that, clever as he was, there was something
+commonplace in the cleverness; and that his talent was of that
+mechanical yet quick nature which makes wonderful boys but mediocre men.
+In any other family he would have been considered the beauty; in ours he
+was thought the genius.
+
+My youngest brother, Aubrey, was of a very different disposition of mind
+and frame of body; thoughtful, gentle, susceptible, acute; with an
+uncertain bravery, like a woman's, and a taste for reading, that varied
+with the caprice of every hour.  He was the beauty of the three, and my
+mother's favourite.  Never, indeed, have I seen the countenance of man
+so perfect, so glowingly yet delicately handsome, as that of Aubrey
+Devereux.  Locks, soft, glossy, and twining into ringlets, fell in dark
+profusion over a brow whiter than marble; his eyes were black and tender
+as a Georgian girl's; his lips, his teeth, the contour of his face, were
+all cast in the same feminine and faultless mould; his hands would have
+shamed those of Madame de la Tisseur, whose lover offered six thousand
+marks to any European who could wear her glove; and his figure would
+have made Titania give up her Henchman, and the King of the Fairies be
+anything but pleased with the exchange.
+
+Such were my two brothers; or, rather (so far as the internal qualities
+are concerned), such they seemed to me; for it is a singular fact that
+we never judge of our near kindred so well as we judge of others; and I
+appeal to any one, whether, of all people by whom he has been mistaken,
+he has not been most often mistaken by those with whom he was brought
+up.
+
+I had always loved Aubrey, but they had not suffered him to love me; and
+we had been so little together that we had in common none of those
+childish remembrances which serve, more powerfully than all else in
+later life, to cement and soften affection.  In fact, I was the
+scapegoat of the family.  What I must have been in early childhood I
+cannot tell; but before I was ten years old I was the object of all the
+despondency and evil forebodings of my relations.  My father said I
+laughed at /la gloire et le grand monarque/ the very first time he
+attempted to explain to me the value of the one and the greatness of the
+other.  The countess said I had neither my father's eye nor her own
+smile,--that I was slow at my letters and quick with my tongue; and
+throughout the whole house nothing was so favourite a topic as the
+extent of my rudeness and the venom of my repartee.  Montreuil, on his
+entrance into our family, not only fell in with, but favoured and
+fostered, the reigning humour against me; whether from that /divide et
+impera/ system, which was so grateful to his temper, or from the mere
+love of meddling and intrigue, which in him, as in Alberoni, attached
+itself equally to petty as to large circles, was not then clearly
+apparent; it was only certain that he fomented the dissensions and
+widened the breach between my brothers and myself.  Alas! after all, I
+believe my sole crime was my candour.  I had a spirit of frankness which
+no fear could tame, and my vengeance for any infantine punishment was in
+speaking veraciously of my punishers.  Never tell me of the pang of
+falsehood to the slandered: nothing is so agonizing to the fine skin of
+vanity as the application of a rough truth!
+
+As I grew older, I saw my power and indulged it; and, being scolded for
+sarcasm, I was flattered into believing I had wit; so I punned and
+jested, lampooned and satirized, till I was as much a torment to others
+as I was tormented myself.  The secret of all this was that I was
+unhappy.  Nobody loved me: I felt it to my heart of hearts.  I was
+conscious of injustice, and the sense of it made me bitter.  Our
+feelings, especially in youth, resemble that leaf which, in some old
+traveller, is described as expanding itself to warmth, but when chilled,
+not only shrinking and closing, but presenting to the spectator thorns
+which had lain concealed upon the opposite side of it before.
+
+With my brother Gerald, I had a deadly and irreconcilable feud.  He was
+much stouter, taller, and stronger than myself; and, far from conceding
+to me that respect which I imagined my priority of birth entitled me to
+claim, he took every opportunity to deride my pretensions, and to
+vindicate the cause of the superior strength and vigour which
+constituted his own.  It would have done your heart good to have seen us
+cuff one another, we did it with such zeal.  There is nothing in human
+passion like a good brotherly hatred!  My mother said, with the most
+feeling earnestness, that she used to feel us fighting even before our
+birth: we certainly lost no time directly after it.  Both my parents
+were secretly vexed that I had come into the world an hour sooner than
+my brother; and Gerald himself looked upon it as a sort of juggle,--a
+kind of jockeyship by which he had lost the prerogative of birthright.
+This very early rankled in his heart, and he was so much a greater
+favourite than myself that, instead of rooting out so unfortunate a
+feeling on his part, my good parents made no scruple of openly lamenting
+my seniority.  I believe the real cause of our being taken from the
+domestic instructions of the Abbe (who was an admirable teacher) and
+sent to school, was solely to prevent my uncle deciding everything in my
+favour.  Montreuil, however, accompanied us to our academy, and remained
+with us during the three years in which we were perfecting ourselves in
+the blessings of education.
+
+At the end of the second year, a prize was instituted for the best
+proficient at a very severe examination; two months before it took place
+we went home for a few days.  After dinner my uncle asked me to walk
+with him in the park.  I did so: we strolled along to the margin of a
+rivulet which ornamented the grounds.  There my uncle, for the first
+time, broke silence.
+
+"Morton," said he, looking down at his left leg, "Morton, let me see;
+thou art now of a reasonable age,--fourteen at the least."
+
+"Fifteen, if it please you, sir," said I, elevating my stature as much
+as I was able.
+
+"Humph! my boy; and a pretty time of life it is, too.  Your brother
+Gerald is taller than you by two inches."
+
+"But I can beat him for all that, uncle," said I, colouring, and
+clenching my fist.
+
+My uncle pulled down his right ruffle.  "'Gad so, Morton, you're a brave
+fellow," said he; "but I wish you were less of a hero and more of a
+scholar.  I wish you could beat him in Greek as well as in boxing.  I
+will tell you what Old Rowley said," and my uncle occupied the next
+quarter of an hour with a story.  The story opened the good old
+gentleman's heart; my laughter opened it still more.  "Hark ye, sirrah!"
+said he, pausing abruptly, and grasping my hand with a vigorous effort
+of love and muscle, "hark ye, sirrah,--I love you,--'Sdeath, I do.  I
+love you better than both your brothers, and that crab of a priest into
+the bargain; but I am grieved to the heart to hear what I do of you.
+They tell me you are the idlest boy in the school; that you are always
+beating your brother Gerald, and making a scurrilous jest of your mother
+or myself."
+
+"Who says so? who dares say so?" said I, with an emphasis that would
+have startled a less hearty man than Sir William Devereux.  "They lie,
+Uncle; by my soul they do.  Idle I am; quarrelsome with my brother I
+confess myself; but jesting at you or my mother--never--never.  No, no;
+/you/, too, who have been so kind to me,--the only one who ever was.
+No, no; do not think I could be such a wretch:" and as I said this the
+tears gushed from my eyes.
+
+My good uncle was exceedingly affected.  "Look ye, child," said he, "I
+do not believe them.  'Sdeath, not a word; I would repeat to you a good
+jest now of Sedley's, 'Gad, I would, but I am really too much moved just
+at present.  I tell you what, my boy, I tell you what you shall do:
+there is a trial coming on at school--eh?--well, the Abbe tells me
+Gerald is certain of being first, and you of being last.  Now, Morton,
+you shall beat your brother, and shame the Jesuit.  There; my mind's
+spoken; dry your tears, my boy, and I'll tell you the jest Sedley made:
+it was in the Mulberry Garden one day--"  And the knight told his story.
+
+I dried my tears, pressed my uncle's hand, escaped from him as soon as I
+was able, hastened to my room, and surrendered myself to reflection.
+
+When my uncle so good-naturedly proposed that I should conquer Gerald at
+the examination, nothing appeared to him more easy; he was pleased to
+think I had more talent than my brother, and talent, according to his
+creed, was the only master-key to unlock every science.  A problem in
+Euclid or a phrase in Pindar, a secret in astronomy or a knotty passage
+in the Fathers, were all riddles, with the solution of which application
+had nothing to do.  One's mother-wit was a precious sort of necromancy,
+which could pierce every mystery at first sight; and all the gifts of
+knowledge, in his opinion, like reading and writing in that of the sage
+Dogberry, "came by nature."  Alas! I was not under the same pleasurable
+delusion; I rather exaggerated than diminished the difficulty of my
+task, and thought, at the first glance, that nothing short of a miracle
+would enable me to excel my brother.  Gerald, a boy of natural talent,
+and, as I said before, of great assiduity in the orthodox
+studies,--especially favoured too by the instruction of Montreuil,--had
+long been esteemed the first scholar of our little world; and though I
+knew that with some branches of learning I was more conversant than
+himself, yet, as my emulation had been hitherto solely directed to
+bodily contention, I had never thought of contesting with him a
+reputation for which I cared little, and on a point in which I had been
+early taught that I could never hope to enter into any advantageous
+comparison with the "genius" of the Devereuxs.
+
+A new spirit now passed into me: I examined myself with a jealous and
+impartial scrutiny; I weighed my acquisitions against those of my
+brother; I called forth, from their secret recesses, the unexercised and
+almost unknown stores I had from time to time laid up in my mental
+armoury to moulder and to rust.  I surveyed them with a feeling that
+they might yet be polished into use; and, excited alike by the stimulus
+of affection on one side and hatred on the other, my mind worked itself
+from despondency into doubt, and from doubt into the sanguineness of
+hope.  I told none of my design; I exacted from my uncle a promise not
+to betray it; I shut myself in my room; I gave out that I was ill; I saw
+no one, not even the Abbe; I rejected his instructions, for I looked
+upon him as an enemy; and, for the two months before my trial, I spent
+night and day in an unrelaxing application, of which, till then, I had
+not imagined myself capable.
+
+Though inattentive to the school exercises, I had never been wholly
+idle.  I was a lover of abstruser researches than the hackneyed subjects
+of the school, and we had really received such extensive and judicious
+instructions from the Abbe during our early years that it would have
+been scarcely possible for any of us to have fallen into a thorough
+distaste for intellectual pursuits.  In the examination I foresaw that
+much which I had previously acquired might be profitably
+displayed,--much secret and recondite knowledge of the customs and
+manners of the ancients, as well as their literature, which curiosity
+had led me to obtain, and which I knew had never entered into the heads
+of those who, contented with their reputation in the customary
+academical routine, had rarely dreamed of wandering into less beaten
+paths of learning.  Fortunately too for me, Gerald was so certain of
+success that latterly he omitted all precaution to obtain it; and as
+none of our schoolfellows had the vanity to think of contesting with
+him, even the Abbe seemed to imagine him justified in his supineness.
+
+The day arrived.  Sir William, my mother, the whole aristocracy of the
+neighbourhood, were present at the trial.  The Abbe came to my room a
+few hours before it commenced: he found the door locked.
+
+"Ungracious boy," said he, "admit me; I come at the earnest request of
+your brother Aubrey to give you some hints preparatory to the
+examination."
+
+"He has indeed come at my wish," said the soft and silver voice of
+Aubrey, in a supplicating tone: "do admit him, dear Morton, for my
+sake!"
+
+"Go," said I, bitterly, from within, "go: ye are both my foes and
+slanderers; you come to insult my disgrace beforehand; but perhaps you
+will yet be disappointed."
+
+"You will not open the door?" said the priest.
+
+"I will not; begone."
+
+"He will indeed disgrace his family," said Montreuil, moving away.
+
+"He will disgrace himself," said Aubrey, dejectedly.
+
+I laughed scornfully.  If ever the consciousness of strength is
+pleasant, it is when we are thought most weak.
+
+The greater part of our examination consisted in the answering of
+certain questions in writing, given to us in the three days immediately
+previous to the grand and final one; for this last day was reserved the
+paper of composition (as it was termed) in verse and prose, and the
+personal examination in a few showy, but generally understood, subjects.
+When Gerald gave in his paper, and answered the verbal questions, a buzz
+of admiration and anxiety went round the room.  His person was so
+handsome, his address so graceful, his voice so assured and clear, that
+a strong and universal sympathy was excited in his favour.  The
+head-master publicly complimented him.  He regretted only the deficiency
+of his pupil in certain minor but important matters.  I came next, for I
+stood next to Gerald in our class.  As I walked up the hall, I raised my
+eyes to the gallery in which my uncle and his party sat.  I saw that my
+mother was listening to the Abbe, whose eye, severe, cold, and
+contemptuous, was bent upon me.  But my uncle leaned over the railing of
+the gallery, with his plumed hat in his hand, which, when he caught my
+look, he waved gently,--as if in token of encouragement, and with an air
+so kind and cheering, that I felt my step grow prouder as I approached
+the conclave of the masters.
+
+"Morton Devereux," said the president of the school, in a calm, loud,
+austere voice, that filled the whole hall, "we have looked over your
+papers on the three previous days, and they have given us no less
+surprise than pleasure.  Take heed and time how you answer us now."
+
+At this speech a loud murmur was heard in my uncle's party, which
+gradually spread round the hall.  I again looked up: my mother's face
+was averted; that of the Abbe was impenetrable; but I saw my uncle
+wiping his eyes, and felt a strange emotion creeping into my own, I
+turned hastily away, and presented my paper; the head master received
+it, and, putting it aside, proceeded to the verbal examination.
+Conscious of the parts in which Gerald was likely to fail, I had paid
+especial attention to the minutiae of scholarship, and my forethought
+stood me in good stead at the present moment.  My trial ceased; my last
+paper was read.  I bowed, and retired to the other end of the hall.  I
+was not so popular as Gerald; a crowd was assembled round him, but I
+stood alone.  As I leaned against a column, with folded arms, and a
+countenance which I felt betrayed little of my internal emotions, my eye
+caught Gerald's.  He was very pale, and I could see that his hand
+trembled.  Despite of our enmity, I felt for him.  The worst passions
+are softened by triumph, and I foresaw that mine was at hand.
+
+The whole examination was over.  Every boy had passed it.  The masters
+retired for a moment; they reappeared and reseated themselves.  The
+first sound I heard was that of my own name.  I was the victor of the
+day: I was more; I was one hundred marks before my brother.  My head
+swam round; my breath forsook me.  Since then I have been placed in many
+trials of life, and had many triumphs; but never was I so overcome as at
+that moment.  I left the hall; I scarcely listened to the applauses with
+which it rang.  I hurried to my own chamber, and threw myself on the bed
+in a delirium of intoxicated feeling, which had in it more of rapture
+than anything but the gratification of first love or first vanity can
+bestow.
+
+Ah! it would be worth stimulating our passions if it were only for the
+pleasure of remembering their effect; and all violent excitement should
+be indulged less for present joy than for future retrospection.
+
+My uncle's step was the first thing which intruded on my solitude.
+
+"Od's fish, my boy," said he, crying like a child, "this is fine
+work,--'Gad, so it is.  I almost wish I were a boy myself to have a
+match with you,--faith I do,--see what it is to learn a little of life!
+If you had never read my play, do you think you would have done half so
+well?--no, my boy, I sharpened your wits for you.  Honest George
+Etherege and I,--we were the making of you! and when you come to be a
+great man, and are asked what made you so, you shall say, 'My uncle's
+play;' 'Gad, you shall.  Faith, boy, never smile!  Od's fish, I'll tell
+you a story as /a propos/ to the present occasion as if it had been made
+on purpose.  Rochester and I and Sedley were walking one day,
+and--/entre nous/--awaiting certain appointments--hem!--for my part I
+was a little melancholy or so, thinking of my catastrophe,--that is, of
+my play's catastrophe; and so, said Sedley, winking at Rochester, 'Our
+friend is sorrowful.'  'Truly,' said I, seeing they were about to banter
+me,--for you know they were arch fellows,--'truly, little Sid' (we
+called Sedley Sid), 'you are greatly mistaken;'--you see, Morton, I was
+thus sharp upon him because when you go to court you will discover that
+it does not do to take without giving.  And then Rochester said, looking
+roguishly towards me, the wittiest thing against Sedley that ever I
+heard; it was the most celebrated /bon mot/ at court for three weeks; he
+said--no, boy, od's fish, it was so stinging I can't tell it thee;
+faith, I can't.  Poor Sid; he was a good fellow, though malicious,--and
+he's dead now.  I'm sorry I said a word about it.  Nay, never look so
+disappointed, boy.  You have all the cream of the story as it is.  And
+now put on your hat, and come with me.  I've got leave for you to take a
+walk with your old uncle."
+
+That night, as I was undressing, I heard a gentle rap at the door, and
+Aubrey entered.  He approached me timidly, and then, throwing his arms
+round my neck, kissed me in silence.  I had not for years experienced
+such tenderness from him; and I sat now mute and surprised.  At last I
+said, with the sneer which I must confess I usually assumed towards
+those persons whom I imagined I had a right to think ill of:--
+
+"Pardon me, my gentle brother, there is something portentous in this
+sudden change.  Look well round the room, and tell me at your earliest
+leisure what treasure it is that you are desirous should pass from my
+possession into your own."
+
+"Your love, Morton," said Aubrey, drawing back, but apparently in pride,
+not anger; "your love: I ask nothing more."
+
+"Of a surety, kind Aubrey," said I, "the favour seems somewhat slight to
+have caused your modesty such delay in requesting it.  I think you have
+been now some years nerving your mind to the exertion."
+
+"Listen to me, Morton," said Aubrey, suppressing his emotion; "you have
+always been my favourite brother.  From our first childhood my heart
+yearned to you.  Do you remember the time when an enraged bull pursued
+me, and you, then only ten years old, placed yourself before it and
+defended me at the risk of your own life?  Do you think I could ever
+forget that,--child as I was?--never, Morton, never!"
+
+Before I could answer the door was thrown open, and the Abbe entered.
+"Children," said he, and the single light of the room shone full upon
+his unmoved, rigid, commanding features--"children, be as Heaven
+intended you,--friends and brothers.  Morton, I have wronged you, I own
+it; here is my hand: Aubrey, let all but early love, and the present
+promise of excellence which your brother displays, be forgotten."
+
+With these words the priest joined our hands.  I looked on my brother,
+and my heart melted.  I flung myself into his arms and wept.
+
+"This is well," said Montreuil, surveying us with a kind of grim
+complacency, and, taking my brother's arm, he blest us both, and led
+Aubrey away.
+
+That day was a new era in my boyish life.  I grew henceforth both better
+and worse.  Application and I having once shaken hands became very good
+acquaintance.  I had hitherto valued myself upon supplying the frailties
+of a delicate frame by an uncommon agility in all bodily exercises.  I
+now strove rather to improve the deficiencies of my mind, and became
+orderly, industrious, and devoted to study.  So far so well; but as I
+grew wiser, I grew also more wary.  Candour no longer seemed to me the
+finest of virtues.  I thought before i spoke: and second thought
+sometimes quite changed the nature of the intended speech; in short,
+gentlemen of the next century, to tell you the exact truth, the little
+Count Devereux became somewhat of a hypocrite!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A CONTEST OF ART AND A LEAGUE OF FRIENDSHIP.--TWO CHARACTERS IN MUTUAL
+IGNORANCE OF EACH OTHER, AND THE READER NO WISER THAN EITHER OF THEM.
+
+THE Abbe was now particularly courteous to me.  He made Gerald and
+myself breakfast with him, and told us nothing was so amiable as
+friendship among brothers.  We agreed to the sentiment, and, like all
+philosophers, did not agree a bit the better for acknowledging the same
+first principles.  Perhaps, notwithstanding his fine speeches, the Abbe
+was the real cause of our continued want of cordiality.  However, we did
+not fight any more: we avoided each other, and at last became as civil
+and as distant as those mathematical lines which appear to be taking all
+possible pains to approach one another and never get a jot the nearer
+for it.  Oh! your civility is the prettiest invention possible for
+dislike!  Aubrey and I were inseparable, and we both gained by the
+intercourse.  I grew more gentle, and he more masculine; and, for my
+part, the kindness of his temper so softened the satire of mine that I
+learned at last to smile full as often as to sneer.
+
+The Abbe had obtained a wonderful hold over Aubrey; he had made the poor
+boy think so much of the next world, that he had lost all relish for
+this.  He lived in a perpetual fear of offence: he was like a chemist of
+conscience, and weighed minutiae by scruples.  To play, to ride, to run,
+to laugh at a jest, or to banquet on a melon, were all sins to be atoned
+for; and I have found (as a penance for eating twenty-three cherries
+instead of eighteen) the penitent of fourteen standing, barefooted, in
+the coldest nights of winter, upon the hearthstones, almost utterly
+naked, and shivering like a leaf, beneath the mingled effect of frost
+and devotion.  At first I attempted to wrestle with this exceeding
+holiness, but finding my admonitions received with great distaste and
+some horror, I suffered my brother to be happy in his own way.  I only
+looked with a very evil and jealous eye upon the good Abbe, and
+examined, while I encouraged them, the motives of his advances to
+myself.  What doubled my suspicions of the purity of the priest was my
+perceiving that he appeared to hold out different inducements for
+trusting him to each of us, according to his notions of our respective
+characters.  My brother Gerald he alternately awed and persuaded, by the
+sole effect of superior intellect.  With Aubrey he used the mechanism of
+superstition.  To me, he, on the one hand, never spoke of religion, nor,
+on the other, ever used threats or persuasion, to induce me to follow
+any plan suggested to my adoption; everything seemed to be left to my
+reason and my ambition.  He would converse with me for hours upon the
+world and its affairs, speak of courts and kings, in an easy and
+unpedantic strain; point out the advantage of intellect in acquiring
+power and controlling one's species; and, whenever I was disposed to be
+sarcastic upon the human nature I had read of, he supported my sarcasm
+by illustrations of the human nature he had seen.  We were both, I think
+(for myself I can answer), endeavouring to pierce the real nature of the
+other; and perhaps the talent of diplomacy for which, years afterwards,
+I obtained some applause, was first learnt in my skirmishing warfare
+with the Abbe Montreuil.
+
+At last, the evening before we quitted school for good arrived.  Aubrey
+had just left me for solitary prayers, and I was sitting alone by my
+fire, when Montreuil entered gently.  He sat himself down by me, and,
+after giving me the salutation of the evening, sank into a silence which
+I was the first to break.
+
+"Pray, Abbe," said I, "have one's years anything to do with one's age?"
+
+The priest was accustomed to the peculiar tone of my sagacious remarks,
+and answered dryly,--
+
+"Mankind in general imagine that they have."
+
+"Faith, then," said I, "mankind know very little about the matter.
+To-day I am at school, and a boy; to-morrow I leave school; if I hasten
+to town I am presented at court; and lo! I am a man; and this change
+within half-a-dozen changes of the sun! therefore, most reverend father,
+I humbly opine that age is measured by events, not years."
+
+"And are you not happy at the idea of passing the age of thraldom, and
+seeing arrayed before you the numberless and dazzling pomps and
+pleasures of the great world?" said Montreuil, abruptly, fixing his dark
+and keen eye upon me.
+
+"I have not yet fully made up my mind whether to be happy or not," said
+I, carelessly.
+
+"It is a strange answer;" said the priest; "but" (after a pause) "you
+are a strange youth: a character that resembles a riddle is at your age
+uncommon, and, pardon me, unamiable.  Age, naturally repulsive, requires
+a mask; and in every wrinkle you may behold the ambush of a scheme: but
+the heart of youth should be open as its countenance!  However, I will
+not weary you with homilies; let us change the topic.  Tell me, Morton,
+do you repent having turned your attention of late to those graver and
+more systematic studies which can alone hereafter obtain you
+distinction?"
+
+"No, father," said I, with a courtly bow, "for the change has gained me
+your good opinion."
+
+A smile, of peculiar and undefinable expression, crossed the thin lips
+of the priest; he rose, walked to the door, and saw that it was
+carefully closed.  I expected some important communication, but in vain;
+pacing the small room to and fro, as if in a musing mood, the Abbe
+remained silent, till, pausing opposite some fencing foils, which among
+various matters (books, papers, quoits, etc.) were thrown idly in one
+corner of the room, he said,--
+
+"They tell me that you are the best fencer in the school--is it so?"
+
+"I hope not, for fencing is an accomplishment in which Gerald is very
+nearly my equal," I replied.
+
+"You run, ride, leap, too, better than any one else, according to the
+votes of your comrades?"
+
+"It is a noble reputation," said I, "in which I believe I am only
+excelled by our huntsman's eldest son."
+
+"You are a strange youth," repeated the priest; "no pursuit seems to
+give you pleasure, and no success to gratify your vanity.  Can you not
+think of any triumph which would elate you?"
+
+I was silent.
+
+"Yes," cried Montreuil, approaching me,--"yes," cried he, "I read your
+heart, and I respect it; these are petty competitions and worthless
+honours.  You require a nobler goal, and a more glorious reward.  He who
+feels in his soul that Fate has reserved for him a great and exalted
+part in this world's drama may reasonably look with indifference on
+these paltry rehearsals of common characters."
+
+I raised my eye, and as it met that of the priest, I was irresistibly
+struck with the proud and luminous expression which Montreuil's look had
+assumed.  Perhaps something kindred to its nature was perceptible in my
+own; for, after surveying me with an air of more approbation than he had
+ever honoured me with before, he grasped my arm firmly, and said,
+"Morton, you know me not; for many years I have not known you: that time
+is past.  No sooner did your talents develop themselves than I was the
+first to do homage to their power: let us henceforth be more to each
+other than we have been; let us not be pupil and teacher; let us be
+friends.  Do not think that I invite you to an unequal exchange of good
+offices: you may be the heir to wealth and a distinguished name; I may
+seem to you but an unknown and undignified priest; but the authority of
+the Almighty can raise up, from the sheepfold and the cotter's shed, a
+power, which, as the organ of His own, can trample upon sceptres and
+dictate to the supremacy of kings.  And /I/--/I/"--the priest abruptly
+paused, checked the warmth of his manner, as if he thought it about to
+encroach on indiscretion, and, sinking into a calmer tone, continued,
+"yes, I, Morton, insignificant as I appear to you, can, in /every/ path
+through this intricate labyrinth of life, be more useful to your desires
+than you can ever be to mine.  I offer to you in my friendship a fervour
+of zeal and energy of power which in none of your equals, in age and
+station, you can hope to find.  Do you accept my offer?"
+
+"Can you doubt," said I, with eagerness, "that I would avail myself of
+the services of any man, however displeasing to me, and worthless in
+himself?  How, then, can I avoid embracing the friendship of one so
+extraordinary in knowledge and intellect as yourself?  I do embrace it,
+and with rapture."
+
+The priest pressed my hand.  "But," continued he, fixing his eyes upon
+mine, "all alliances have their conditions: I require implicit
+confidence; and for some years, till time gives you experience, regard
+for your interests induces me also to require obedience.  Name any wish
+you may form for worldly advancement, opulence, honour, the smile of
+kings, the gifts of states, and--I--I will pledge myself to carry that
+wish into effect.  Never had eastern prince so faithful a servant among
+the Dives and Genii as Morton Devereux shall find in me: but question me
+not of the sources of my power; be satisfied when their channel wafts
+you the success you covet.  And, more, when I in my turn (and this shall
+be but rarely) request a favour of you, ask me not for what end nor
+hesitate to adopt the means I shall propose.  You seem startled; are you
+content at this understanding between us, or will you retract the bond?"
+
+"My father," said I, "there is enough to startle me in your proposal; it
+greatly resembles that made by the Old Man of the Mountains to his
+vassals, and it would not exactly suit my inclinations to be called upon
+some morning to act the part of a private executioner."
+
+The priest smiled.  "My young friend," said he, "those days have passed;
+neither religion nor friendship requires of her votaries sacrifices of
+blood.  But make yourself easy; whenever I ask of you what offends your
+conscience, even in a punctilio, refuse my request.  With this
+exception, what say you?"
+
+"That I think I will agree to the bond: but, father, I am an irresolute
+person; I must have time to consider."
+
+"Be it so.  To-morrow, having surrendered my charge to your uncle, I
+depart for France."
+
+"For France!" said I; "and how?  Surely the war will prevent your
+passage."
+
+The priest smiled.  Nothing ever displeased me more than that priest's
+smile.  "The ecclesiastics," said he, "are the ambassadors of Heaven,
+and have nothing to do with the wars of earth.  I shall find no
+difficulty in crossing the Channel.  I shall not return for several
+months, perhaps not till the expiration of a year: I leave you, till
+then, to decide upon the terms I have proposed to you.  Meanwhile,
+gratify my vanity by employing my power; name some commission in France
+which you wish me to execute."
+
+"I can think of none,--yet, stay;" and I felt some curiosity to try the
+power of which he boasted,--"I have read that kings are blest with a
+most accommodating memory, and perfectly forget their favourites when
+they can be no longer useful.  You will see, perhaps, if my father's
+name has become a Gothic and unknown sound at the court of the Great
+King.  I confess myself curious to learn this, though I can have no
+personal interest in it."
+
+"Enough, the commission shall be done.  And now, my child, Heaven bless
+you! and send you many such friends as the humble priest, who, whatever
+be his failings, has, at least, the merit of wishing to serve those whom
+he loves."
+
+So saying, the priest closed the door.  Sinking into a revery, as his
+footsteps died upon my ear, I muttered to myself: "Well, well, my sage
+ecclesiastic, the game is not over yet; let us see if, at sixteen, we
+cannot shuffle cards, and play tricks with the gamester of thirty.  Yet
+he may be in earnest, and faith I believe he is; but I must look well
+before I leap, or consign my actions into such spiritual keeping.
+However, if the worst come to the worst, if I do make this compact, and
+am deceived,--if, above all, I am ever seduced, or led blindfold into
+one of those snares which priestcraft sometimes lays to the cost of
+honour,--why, I shall have a sword, which I shall never be at a loss to
+use, and it can find its way through a priest's gown as well as a
+soldier's corselet."
+
+Confess that a youth who could think so promptly of his sword was well
+fitted to wear one!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+RURAL HOSPITALITY.--AN EXTRAORDINARY GUEST.--A FIN$ GENTLEMAN IS NOT
+NECESSARILY A FOOL.
+
+WE were all three (my brothers and myself) precocious geniuses.  Our
+early instructions, under a man like the Abbe, at once learned and
+worldly, and the society into which we had been initiated from our
+childhood, made us premature adepts in the manners of the world; and I,
+in especial, flattered myself that a quick habit of observation rendered
+me no despicable profiter by my experience.  Our academy, too, had been
+more like a college than a school; and we had enjoyed a license that
+seemed to the superficial more likely to benefit our manners than to
+strengthen our morals.  I do not think, however, that the latter
+suffered by our freedom from restraint.  On the contrary, we the earlier
+learned that vice, but for the piquancy of its unlawfulness, would never
+be so captivating a goddess; and our errors and crimes in after life had
+certainly not their origin in our wanderings out of academical bounds.
+
+It is right that I should mention our prematurity of intellect, because,
+otherwise, much of my language and reflections, as detailed in the first
+book of this history, might seem ill suited to the tender age at which
+they occurred.  However, they approach, as nearly as possible, to my
+state of mind at that period; and I have, indeed, often mortified my
+vanity in later life by thinking how little the march of time has
+ripened my abilities, and how petty would have been the intellectual
+acquisitions of manhood, if they had not brought me something like
+content!
+
+My uncle had always, during his retirement, seen as many people as he
+could assemble out of the "mob of gentlemen who /live at/ ease."  But,
+on our quitting school and becoming men, he resolved to set no bounds to
+his hospitality.  His doors were literally thrown open; and as he was by
+far the greatest person in the district--to say nothing of his wines,
+and his French cook--many of the good people of London did not think it
+too great an honour to confer upon the wealthy representative of the
+Devereuxs the distinction of their company and compliments.  Heavens!
+what notable samples of court breeding and furbelows did the crane-neck
+coaches, which made our own family vehicle look like a gilt tortoise,
+pour forth by couples and leashes into the great hall; while my gallant
+uncle, in new periwig and a pair of silver-clocked stockings (a present
+from a /ci-devant/ fine lady), stood at the far end of the
+picture-gallery to receive his visitors with all the graces of the last
+age.
+
+My mother, who had preserved her beauty wonderfully, sat in a chair of
+green velvet, and astonished the courtiers by the fashion of a dress
+only just imported.  The worthy Countess (she had dropped in England the
+loftier distinction of /Madame la Marechale/) was however quite innocent
+of any intentional affectation of the /mode/; for the new stomacher, so
+admired in London, had been the last alteration in female garniture at
+Paris a month before my father died.  Is not this "Fashion" a noble
+divinity to possess such zealous adherents?--a pitiful, lackey-like
+creature, which struts through one country with the cast-off finery of
+another!
+
+As for Aubrey and Gerald, they produced quite an effect; and I should
+most certainly have been thrown irrevocably into the background had I
+not been born to the good fortune of an eldest son.  This was far more
+than sufficient to atone for the comparative plainness of my person; and
+when it was discovered that I was also Sir William's favourite, it is
+quite astonishing what a beauty I became!  Aubrey was declared too
+effeminate; Gerald too tall.  And the Duchess of Lackland one day, when
+she had placed a lean, sallow ghost of a daughter on either side of me,
+whispered my uncle in a voice, like the /aside/ of a player, intended
+for none but the whole audience, that the young Count had the most
+imposing air and the finest eyes she had ever seen.  All this inspired
+me with courage, as well as contempt; and not liking to be beholden
+solely to my priority of birth for my priority of distinction, I
+resolved to become as agreeable as possible.  If I had not in the vanity
+of my heart resolved also to be "myself alone," Fate would have
+furnished me at the happiest age for successful imitation with an
+admirable model.
+
+Time rolled on; two years were flown since I had left school, and
+Montreuil was not yet returned.  I had passed the age of eighteen, when
+the whole house, which, as it was summer, when none but cats and
+physicians were supposed gifted by Providence with the power to exist in
+town, was uncommonly full,--the whole house, I say, was thrown into a
+positive fever of expectation.  The visit of a guest, if not of greater
+consequence at least of greater interest than any who had hitherto
+honoured my uncle, was announced.  Even the young Count, with the most
+imposing air in the world and the finest eyes, was forgotten by
+everybody but the Duchess of Lackland and her daughters, who had just
+returned to Devereux Court to observe how amazingly the Count had grown!
+Oh! what a prodigy wisdom would be, if it were but blest with a memory
+as keen and constant as that of interest!
+
+Struck with the universal excitement, I went to my uncle to inquire the
+name of the expected guest.  My uncle was occupied in fanning the Lady
+Hasselton, a daughter of one of King Charles's Beauties.  He had only
+time to answer me literally, and without comment; the guest's name was
+Mr. St. John.
+
+I had never conned the "Flying Post," and I knew nothing about politics.
+"Who is Mr. St. John?" said I; my uncle had renewed the office of a
+zephyr.  The daughter of the Beauty heard and answered, "The most
+charming person in England."  I bowed and turned away.  "How vastly
+explanatory!" said I.  I met a furious politician.  "Who is Mr. St.
+John?" I asked.
+
+"The cleverest man in England," answered the politician, hurrying off
+with a pamphlet in his hand.
+
+"Nothing can be more satisfactory," thought I.  Stopping a coxcomb of
+the first water, "Who is Mr. St. John?" I asked.
+
+"The finest gentleman in England," answered the coxcomb, settling his
+cravat.
+
+"Perfectly intelligible!" was my reflection on this reply; and I
+forthwith arrested a Whig parson,--"Who is Mr. St. John?" said I.
+
+"The greatest reprobate in England!" answered the Whig parson, and I was
+too stunned to inquire more.
+
+Five minutes afterwards the sound of carriage wheels was heard in the
+courtyard, then a slight bustle in the hall, and the door of the
+ante-room being thrown open Mr. St. John entered.
+
+He was in the very prime of life, about the middle height, and of a mien
+and air so strikingly noble that it was some time before you recovered
+the general effect of his person sufficiently to examine its peculiar
+claims to admiration.  However, he lost nothing by a further survey: he
+possessed not only an eminently handsome but a very extraordinary
+countenance.  Through an air of /nonchalance/, and even something of
+lassitude; through an ease of manners sometimes sinking into effeminate
+softness, sometimes bordering upon licentious effrontery,--his eye
+thoughtful, yet wandering, seemed to announce that the mind partook but
+little of the whim of the moment, or of those levities of ordinary life
+over which the grace of his manner threw so peculiar a charm.  His brow
+was, perhaps, rather too large and prominent for the exactness of
+perfect symmetry, but it had an expression of great mental power and
+determination.  His features were high, yet delicate, and his mouth,
+which, when closed, assumed a firm and rather severe expression,
+softened, when speaking, into a smile of almost magical enchantment.
+Richly but not extravagantly dressed, he appeared to cultivate rather
+than disdain the ornaments of outward appearance; and whatever can
+fascinate or attract was so inherent in this singular man that all which
+in others would have been most artificial was in him most natural: so
+that it is no exaggeration to add that to be well dressed seemed to the
+elegance of his person not so much the result of art as of a property
+innate and peculiar to himself.
+
+Such was the outward appearance of Henry St. John; one well suited to
+the qualities of a mind at once more vigorous and more accomplished than
+that of any other person with whom the vicissitudes of my life have ever
+brought me into contact.
+
+I kept my eye on the new guest throughout the whole day: I observed the
+mingled liveliness and softness which pervaded his attentions to women,
+the intellectual yet unpedantic superiority he possessed in his
+conversations with men; his respectful demeanour to age; his careless,
+yet not over-familiar, ease with the young; and, what interested me more
+than all, the occasional cloud which passed over his countenance at
+moments when he seemed sunk into a revery that had for its objects
+nothing in common with those around him.
+
+Just before dinner St. John was talking to a little group, among whom
+curiosity seemed to have drawn the Whig parson whom I have before
+mentioned.  He stood at a little distance, shy and uneasy; one of the
+company took advantage of so favourable a butt for jests, and alluded to
+the bystander in a witticism which drew laughter from all but St. John,
+who, turning suddenly towards the parson, addressed an observation to
+him in the most respectful tone.  Nor did he cease talking with him
+(fatiguing as the conference must have been, for never was there a
+duller ecclesiastic than the gentleman conversed with) until we
+descended to dinner.  Then, for the first time, I learned that nothing
+can constitute good breeding that has not good-nature for its
+foundation; and then, too, as I was leading Lady Barbara Lackland to the
+great hall by the tip of her forefinger I made another observation.
+Passing the priest, I heard him say to a fellow-clerk,--
+
+"Certainly, he is the greatest man in England;" and I mentally remarked,
+"There is no policy like politeness; and a good manner is the best thing
+in the world, either to get one a good name or to supply the want of
+it."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A DIALOGUE, WHICH MIGHT BE DULL IF IT WERE LONGER.
+
+THREE days after the arrival of St. John, I escaped from the crowd of
+impertinents, seized a volume of Cowley, and, in a fit of mingled poetry
+and melancholy, strolled idly into the park.  I came to the margin of
+the stream, and to the very spot on which I had stood with my uncle on
+the evening when he had first excited my emulation to scholastic rather
+than manual contention with my brother; I seated myself by the
+water-side, and, feeling indisposed to read, leaned my cheek upon my
+hand, and surrendered my thoughts as prisoners to the reflections which
+I could not resist.
+
+I continued I know not how long in my meditation, till I was roused by a
+gentle touch upon my shoulder; I looked up, and saw St. John.
+
+"Pardon me, Count," said he, smiling, "I should not have disturbed your
+reflections had not your neglect of an old friend emboldened me to
+address you upon his behalf."  And St. John pointed to the volume of
+Cowley which he had taken up without my perceiving it.
+
+"Well," added he, seating himself on the turf beside me, "in my younger
+days, poetry and I were better friends than we are now.  And if I had
+had Cowley as a companion, I should not have parted with him as you have
+done, even for my own reflections."
+
+"You admire him then?" said I.
+
+"Why, that is too general a question.  I admire what is fine in him, as
+in every one else, but I do not love him the better for his points and
+his conceits.  He reminds me of what Cardinal Pallavicino said of
+Seneca, that he 'perfumes his conceits with civet and ambergris.'
+However, Count, I have opened upon a beautiful motto for you:--
+
+  "'Here let me, careless and unthoughtful lying,
+    Hear the soft winds above me flying,
+    With all their wanton boughs dispute,
+    And the more tuneful birds to both replying;
+    Nor be myself too mute.'
+
+"What say you to that wish?  If you have a germ of poetry in you such
+verse ought to bring it into flower."
+
+"Ay," answered I, though not exactly in accordance with the truth; "but
+I have not that germ.  I destroyed it four years ago.  Reading the
+dedications of poets cured me of the love for poetry.  What a pity that
+the Divine Inspiration should have for its oracles such mean souls!"
+
+"Yes, and how industrious the good gentlemen are in debasing themselves!
+Their ingenuity is never half so much shown in a simile as in a
+compliment; I know nothing in nature more melancholy than the discovery
+of any meanness in a great man.  There is so little to redeem the dry
+mass of follies and errors from which the materials of this life are
+composed, that anything to love or to reverence becomes, as it were, the
+sabbath for the mind.  It is better to feel, as we grow older, how the
+respite is abridged, and how the few objects left to our admiration are
+abased.  What a foe not only to life, but to all that dignifies and
+ennobles it, is Time!  Our affections and our pleasures resemble those
+fabulous trees described by Saint Oderic: the fruits which they bring
+forth are no sooner ripened into maturity than they are transformed into
+birds and fly away.  But these reflections cannot yet be familiar to
+you.  Let us return to Cowley.  Do you feel any sympathy with his prose
+writings?  For some minds they have a great attraction."
+
+"They have for mine," answered I: "but then I am naturally a dreamer;
+and a contemplative egotist is always to me a mirror in which I behold
+myself."
+
+"The world," answered St. John, with a melancholy smile, "will soon
+dissolve, or forever confirm, your humour for dreaming; in either case,
+Cowley will not be less a favourite.  But you must, like me, have long
+toiled in the heat and travail of business, or of pleasure, which is
+more wearisome still, in order fully to sympathize with those beautiful
+panegyrics upon solitude which make perhaps the finest passages in
+Cowley.  I have often thought that he whom God hath gifted with a love
+of retirement possesses, as it were, an extra sense.  And among what our
+poet so eloquently calls 'the vast and noble scenes of Nature,' we find
+the balm for the wounds we have sustained among the 'pitiful shifts of
+policy;' for the attachment to solitude is the surest preservative from
+the ills of life: and I know not if the Romans ever instilled, under
+allegory, a sublimer truth than when they inculcated the belief that
+those inspired by Feronia, the goddess of woods and forests, could walk
+barefoot and uninjured over burning coals."
+
+At this part of our conference, the bell swinging hoarsely through the
+long avenues, and over the silent water, summoned us to the grand
+occupation of civilized life; we rose and walked slowly towards the
+house.
+
+"Does not," said I, "this regular routine of petty occurrence, this
+periodical solemnity of trifles, weary and disgust you?  For my part, I
+almost long for the old days of knight-errantry, and would rather be
+knocked on the head by a giant, or carried through the air by a flying
+griffin, than live in this circle of dull regularities,--the brute at
+the mill."
+
+"You may live even in these days," answered St. John, "without too tame
+a regularity.  Women and politics furnish ample food for adventure, and
+you must not judge of all life by country life."
+
+"Nor of all conversation," said I, with a look which implied a
+compliment, "by the insipid idlers who fill our saloons.  Behold them
+now, gathered by the oriel window, yonder; precious distillers of
+talk,--sentinels of society with certain set phrases as watchwords,
+which they never exceed; sages, who follow Face's advice to Dapper,--
+
+  "'Hum thrice, and buzz as often.'"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+A CHANGE OF PROSPECTS.--A NEW INSIGHT INTO THE CHARACTER OF THE HERO.--A
+CONFERENCE BETWEEN TWO BROTHERS.
+
+A DAY or two after the conversation recorded in my last chapter, St.
+John, to my inexpressible regret, left us for London; however, we had
+enjoyed several conferences together during his stay, and when we parted
+it was with a pressing invitation on his side to visit him in London,
+and a most faithful promise on mine to avail myself of the request.
+
+No sooner was he fairly gone than I went to seek my uncle; I found him
+reading one of Farquhar's comedies.  Despite my sorrow at interrupting
+him in so venerable a study, I was too full of my new plot to heed
+breaking off that in the comedy.  In very few words I made the good
+knight understand that his descriptions had infected me, and that I was
+dying to ascertain their truth; in a word, that his hopeful nephew was
+fully bent on going to town.  My uncle first stared, then swore, then
+paused, then looked at his leg, drew up his stocking, frowned, whistled,
+and told me at last to talk to him about it another time.  Now, for my
+part, I think there are only two classes of people in the world
+authorized to put one off to "another time,"--prime ministers and
+creditors; accordingly, I would not take my uncle's dismissal.  I had
+not read plays, studied philosophy, and laid snares for the Abbe
+Montreuil without deriving some little wisdom from my experience; so I
+took to teasing, and a notable plan it is too!  Whoever has pursued it
+may guess the result.  My uncle yielded, and that day fortnight was
+fixed for my departure.
+
+Oh! with what transport did I look forward to the completion of my
+wishes, the goal of my ambition!  I hastened forth; I hurried into the
+woods; I sang out in the gladness of my heart, like a bird released; I
+drank in the air with a rapturous sympathy in its freedom; my step
+scarcely touched the earth, and my whole frame seemed ethereal, elated,
+exalted by the vivifying inspiration of my hopes.  I paused by a little
+streamlet, which, brawling over stones and through unpenetrated
+thicknesses of wood, seemed, like confined ambition, not the less
+restless for its obscurity.
+
+"Wild brooklet," I cried, as my thoughts rushed into words, "fret on,
+our lot is no longer the same; your wanderings and your murmurs are
+wasted in solitude and shade; your voice dies and re-awakes, but without
+an echo; your waves spread around their path neither fertility nor
+terror; their anger is idle, and their freshness is lavished on a
+sterile soil; the sun shines in vain for you, through these unvarying
+wastes of silence and gloom; Fortune freights not your channel with her
+hoarded stores, and Pleasure ventures not her silken sails upon your
+tide; not even the solitary idler roves beside you, to consecrate with
+human fellowship your melancholy course; no shape of beauty bends over
+your turbid waters, or mirrors in your breast the loveliness that
+hallows earth.  Lonely and sullen, through storm or sunshine, you repine
+along your desolate way, and only catch, through the matted boughs that
+darken over you, the beams of the wan stars, which, like human hopes,
+tremble upon your breast, and are broken, even before they fade, by the
+very turbulence of the surface on which they fall.  Rove, repine, murmur
+on!  Such was my fate, but the resemblance is no more.  I shall no
+longer be a lonely and regretful being; my affections will no longer
+waste themselves upon barrenness and stone.  I go among the living and
+warm world of mortal energies and desires; my existence shall glide
+alternately through crested cities, and bowers in which Poetry worships
+Love; and the clear depths of my heart shall reflect whatever its young
+dreams have shadowed forth, the visioned form, the gentle and fairy
+spirit, the Eve of my soul's imagined and foreboded paradise."
+
+Venting, in this incoherent strain, the exultation which filled my
+thoughts, I wandered on, throughout the whole day, till my spirits had
+exhausted themselves by indulgence; and, wearied alike by mental
+excitement and bodily exertion, I turned, with slow steps, towards the
+house.  As I ascended the gentle acclivity on which it stood, I saw a
+figure approaching towards me: the increasing shades of the evening did
+not allow me to recognize the shape until it was almost by my side; it
+was Aubrey.
+
+Of late I had seen very little of him.  His devotional studies and
+habits seemed to draw him from the idle pursuits of myself and my
+uncle's guests; and Aubrey was one peculiarly susceptible of neglect,
+and sore, to morbidity, at the semblance of unkindness; so that he
+required to be sought, and rarely troubled others with advances: that
+night, however, his greeting was unusually warm.
+
+"I was uneasy about you, Morton," said he, drawing my arm in his; "you
+have not been seen since morning; and, oh! Morton, my uncle told me,
+with tears in his eyes, that you were going to leave us.  Is it so?"
+
+"Had he tears in his eyes?  Kind old man!  And you, Aubrey, shall you,
+too, grieve for my departure?"
+
+"Can you ask it, Morton?  But why will you leave us? Are we not all
+happy here, now?  /Now/ that there is no longer any barrier or
+difference between us,--/now/ that I may look upon you, and listen to
+you, and love you, and /own/ that I love you?  Why will you leave us
+now?  And [continued Aubrey, as if fearful of giving me time to
+answer]--and every one praises you so here; and my uncle and all of us
+are so proud of you.  Why should you desert our affections merely
+because they are not new?  Why plunge into that hollow and cold world
+which all who have tried it picture in such fearful hues?  Can you find
+anything there to repay you for the love you leave behind?"
+
+"My brother," said I, mournfully, and in a tone which startled him,--it
+was so different from that which I usually assumed,--"my brother, hear
+before you reproach me.  Let us sit down upon this bank, and I will
+suffer you to see more of my restless and secret heart than any hitherto
+have beheld."
+
+We sat down upon a little mound: how well I remember the spot!  I can
+see the tree which shadows it from my window at this moment.  How many
+seasons have the sweet herb and the emerald grass been withered there
+and renewed!  Ah, what is this revival of all things fresh and youthful
+in external Nature but a mockery of the wintry spot which lies perished
+and /irrenewable/ within!
+
+We drew near to each other, and as my arm wound around him, I said,
+"Aubrey, your love has been to me a more precious gift than any who have
+not, like me, thirsted and longed even for the love of a dog, can
+conceive.  Never let me lose that affection!  And do not think of me
+hereafter as of one whose heart echoed all that his lip uttered.  Do not
+believe that irony, and sarcasm, and bitterness of tongue flowed from a
+malignant or evil source.  That disposition which seems to you
+alternately so light and gloomy had, perhaps, its origin in a mind too
+intense in its affections, and too exacting in having them returned.
+Till you sought my friendship, three short years ago, none but my uncle,
+with whom I could have nothing in common but attachment, seemed to care
+for my very existence.  I blame them not; they were deceived in my
+nature: but blame /me/ not too severely if my temper suffered from their
+mistake.  Your friendship came to me, not too late to save me from a
+premature misanthropy, but too late to eradicate every morbidity of
+mind.  Something of sternness on the one hand, and of satire on the
+other, has mingled so long with my better feelings that the taint and
+the stream have become inseparable.  Do not sigh, Aubrey.  To be
+unamiable is not to be ungrateful; and I shall not love you the less if
+I have but a few objects to love.  You ask me my inducement to leave
+you.  'The World' will be sufficient answer.  I cannot share your
+contempt of it, nor your fear.  I am, and have been of late, consumed
+with a thirst,--eager, and burning, and unquenchable: it is ambition!"
+
+"Oh, Morton!" said Aubrey, with a second sigh, longer and deeper than
+the first, "that evil passion! the passion which lost an angel heaven."
+
+"Let us not now dispute, my brother, whether it be sinful in itself, or
+whether, if its object be virtuous, it is not a virtue.  In baring my
+soul before you, I only speak of my motives, and seek not to excuse
+them.  Perhaps on this earth there is no good without a little evil.
+When my mind was once turned to the acquisition of mental superiority,
+every petty acquisition I made increased my desire to attain more, and
+partial emulation soon widened into universal ambition.  We three,
+Gerald and ourselves, are the keepers of a treasure more valuable than
+gold,--the treasure of a not ignoble nor sullied name.  For my part, I
+confess that I am impatient to increase the store of honour which our
+father bequeathed to us.  Nor is this all: despite our birth, we are
+poor in the gifts of fortune.  We are all dependants on my uncle's
+favour; and, however we may deserve it, there would be something better
+in earning an independence for ourselves."
+
+"That," said Aubrey, "may be an argument for mine and Gerald's
+exertions; but not for yours.  You are the eldest, and my uncle's
+favourite.  Nature and affection both point to you as his heir."
+
+"If so, Aubrey, may many years pass before that inheritance be mine!
+Why should those years that might produce so much lie fallow?  But
+though I would not affect an unreal delicacy, and disown my chance of
+future fortune, yet you must remember that it is a matter possible, not
+certain.  My birthright gives me no claim over my uncle, whose estates
+are in his own gift; and favour, even in the good, is a wind which
+varies without power on our side to calculate the season or the cause.
+However this be,--and I love the person on whom fortune depends so much
+that I cannot, without pain, speak of the mere chance of its passing
+from his possession into mine,--you will own at least that I shall not
+hereafter deserve wealth the less for the advantages of experience."
+
+"Alas!" said Aubrey, raising his eyes, "the worship of our Father in
+Heaven finds us ample cause for occupation, even in retirement; and the
+more we mix with His creatures, the more, I fear, we may forget the
+Creator.  But if it must be so, I will pray for you, Morton; and you
+will remember that the powerless and poor Aubrey can still lift up his
+voice in your behalf."
+
+As Aubrey thus spoke, I looked with mingled envy and admiration upon the
+countenance beside me, which the beauty of a spirit seemed at once to
+soften and to exalt.
+
+Since our conference had begun, the dusk of twilight had melted away;
+and the moon had called into lustre--living, indeed, but unlike the
+common and unhallowing life of day--the wood and herbage, and silent
+variations of hill and valley, which slept around us; and, as the still
+and shadowy light fell over the upward face of my brother, it gave to
+his features an additional, and not wholly earth-born, solemnity of
+expression.  There was indeed in his face and air that from which the
+painter of a seraph might not have disdained to copy: something
+resembling the vision of an angel in the dark eyes that swam with tears,
+in which emotion had so little of mortal dross; in the youthful and soft
+cheeks, which the earnestness of divine thought had refined by a pale
+but transparent hue; in the high and unclouded forehead, over which the
+hair, parted in the centre, fell in long and wavelike curls; and in the
+lips, silent, yet moving with internal prayer, which seemed the more
+fervent, because unheard.
+
+I did not interrupt him in the prayer, which my soul felt, though my ear
+caught it not, was for me.  But when he had ceased, and turned towards
+me, I clasped him to my breast.  "My brother," I said, "we shall part,
+it is true, but not till our hearts have annihilated the space that was
+between them; not till we have felt that the love of brotherhood can
+pass the love of woman.  Whatever await you, your devoted and holy mind
+will be, if not your shield from affliction, at least your balm for its
+wounds.  Remain here.  The quiet which breathes around you well becomes
+your tranquillity within; and sometimes bless me in your devotions, as
+you have done now.  For me, I shall not regret those harder and harsher
+qualities which you blame in me, if thereafter their very sternness can
+afford me an opportunity of protecting your gentleness from evil, or
+redressing the wrongs from which your nature may be too innocent to
+preserve you.  And now let us return home in the conviction that we have
+in our friendship one treasure beyond the reach of fate."
+
+Aubrey did not answer; but he kissed my forehead, and I felt his tears
+upon my cheek.  We rose, and with arms still embracing each other as we
+walked, bent our steps to the house.
+
+Ah, earth! what hast thou more beautiful than the love of those whose
+ties are knit by nature, and whose union seems ordained to begin from
+the very moment of their birth?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+FIRST LOVE.
+
+WE are under very changeful influences in this world!  The night on
+which occurred the interview with Aubrey that I have just narrated, I
+was burning to leave Devereux Court.  Within one little week from that
+time my eagerness was wonderfully abated.  The sagacious reader will
+readily discover the cause of this alteration.  About eight miles from
+my uncle's house was a seaport town; there were many and varied rides
+leading to it, and the town was a favourite place of visitation with all
+the family.  Within a few hundred yards of the town was a small cottage,
+prettily situated in the midst of a garden, kept with singular neatness,
+and ornamented with several rare shrubs and exotics.  I had more than
+once observed in the garden of this house a female in the very first
+blush of youth, and beautiful enough to excite within me a strong
+curiosity to learn the owner of the cottage.  I inquired, and
+ascertained that its tenant was a Spaniard of high birth, and one who
+had acquired a melancholy celebrity by his conduct and misfortunes in
+the part he had taken in a certain feeble but gallant insurrection in
+his native country.  He had only escaped with life and a very small sum
+of money, and now lived in the obscure seaport of ------, a refugee and
+a recluse.  He was a widower, and had only one child,--a daughter; and I
+was therefore at no loss to discover who was the beautiful female I had
+noted and admired.
+
+On the day after my conversation with Aubrey detailed in the last
+chapter, in riding past this cottage alone, I perceived a crowd
+assembled round the entrance; I paused to inquire the cause.
+
+"Why, your honour," quoth a senior of the village, "I believe the
+tipstaves be come to take the foreigner for not paying his rent; and he
+does not understand our English liberty like, and has drawn his sword,
+and swears, in his outlandish lingo, he will not be made prisoner
+alive."
+
+I required no further inducement to make me enter the house.  The crowd
+gave way when they saw me dismount, and suffered me to penetrate into
+the first apartment.  There I found the gallant old Spaniard with his
+sword drawn, keeping at bay a couple of sturdy-looking men, who appeared
+to be only prevented from using violence by respect for the person or
+the safety of a young woman, who clung to her father's knees and
+implored him not to resist where resistance was so unavailing.  Let me
+cut short this scene; I dismissed the bailiffs, and paid the debt.  I
+then endeavoured to explain to the Spaniard, in French, for he scarcely
+understood three words of our language, the cause of a rudeness towards
+him which he persisted in calling a great insult and inhospitality
+manifested to a stranger and an exile.  I succeeded at length in
+pacifying him.  I remained for more than an hour at the cottage, and I
+left it with a heart beating at a certain persuasion that I had
+established therein the claim of acquaintance and visitation.
+
+Will the reader pardon me for having curtailed this scene?  It is
+connected with a subject on which I shall better endure to dwell as my
+narrative proceeds.  From that time I paid frequent visits to the
+cottage; the Spaniard soon grew intimate with me, and I thought the
+daughter began to blush when I entered, and to sigh when I departed.
+
+One evening I was conversing with Don Diego D'Alvarez (such was the
+Spaniard's name), as he sat without the threshold, inhaling the gentle
+air, that stole freshness from the rippling sea that spread before us,
+and fragrance from the earth, over which the summer now reigned in its
+most mellow glory.  Isora (the daughter) sat at a little distance.
+
+"How comes it," said Don Diego, "that you have never met our friend
+Senor Bar--Bar--these English names are always escaping my memory.  How
+is he called, Isora?"
+
+"Mr.--Mr. Barnard," said Isora (who, brought early to England, spoke its
+language like a native), but with evident confusion, and looking down as
+she spoke--"Mr. Barnard, I believe, you mean."
+
+"Right, my love," rejoined the Spaniard, who was smoking a long pipe
+with great gravity, and did not notice his daughter's embarrassment,--"a
+fine youth, but somewhat shy and over-modest in manner."
+
+"Youth!" thought I, and I darted a piercing look towards Isora.  "How
+comes it, indeed," I said aloud, "that I have not met him?  Is he a
+friend of long standing?"
+
+"Nay, not very,--perhaps of some six weeks earlier date than you, Senor
+Don Devereux.  I pressed him, when he called this morning, to tarry your
+coming: but, poor youth, he is diffident, and not yet accustomed to mix
+freely with strangers, especially those of rank; our own presence a
+little overawes him;" and from Don Diego's gray mustachios issued a yet
+fuller cloud than was ordinarily wont to emerge thence.
+
+My eyes were still fixed on Isora; she looked up, met them, blushed
+deeply, rose, and disappeared within the house.  I was already
+susceptible of jealousy.  My lip trembled as I resumed: "And will Don
+Diego pardon me for inquiring how commenced his knowledge of this
+ingenuous youth?"
+
+The question was a little beyond the pale of good breeding; perhaps the
+Spaniard, who was tolerably punctilious in such matters, thought so, for
+he did not reply.  I was sensible of my error, and apologizing for it,
+insinuated, nevertheless, the question in a more respectful and covert
+shape.  Still Don Diego, inhaling the fragrant weed with renewed
+vehemence, only--like Pion's tomb, recorded by Pausanias--replied to the
+request of his petitioner /by smoke/.  I did not venture to renew my
+interrogatories, and there was a long silence.  My eyes fixed their gaze
+on the door by which Isora had disappeared.  In vain; she returned not;
+and as the chill of the increasing evening began now to make itself felt
+by the frame of one accustomed to warmer skies, the Spaniard soon rose
+to re-enter his house, and I took my farewell for the night.
+
+There were many ways (as I before said) by which I could return home,
+all nearly equal in picturesque beauty; for the county in which my
+uncle's estates were placed was one where stream roved and woodland
+flourished even to the very strand or cliff of the sea.  The shortest
+route, though one the least frequented by any except foot-passengers,
+was along the coast, and it was by this path that I rode slowly
+homeward.  On winding a curve in the road about one mile from Devereux
+Court, the old building broke slowly, tower by tower, upon me.  I have
+never yet described the house, and perhaps it will not be uninteresting
+to the reader if I do so now.
+
+It had anciently belonged to Ralph de Bigod.  From his possession it had
+passed into that of the then noblest branch the stem of Devereux,
+whence, without break or flaw in the direct line of heritage, it had
+ultimately descended to the present owner.  It was a pile of vast
+extent, built around three quadrangular courts, the farthest of which
+spread to the very verge of the gray, tall cliffs that overhung the sea;
+in this court was a rude tower, which, according to tradition, had
+contained the apartments ordinarily inhabited by our ill-fated namesake
+and distant kinsman, Robert Devereux, the favourite and the victim of
+Elizabeth, whenever he had honoured the mansion with a visit.  There was
+nothing, it is true, in the old tower calculated to flatter the
+tradition, for it contained only two habitable rooms, communicating with
+each other, and by no means remarkable for size or splendour; and every
+one of our household, save myself, was wont to discredit the idle rumour
+which would assign to so distinguished a guest so unseemly a lodgment.
+But, as I looked from the narrow lattices of the chambers, over the wide
+expanse of ocean and of land which they commanded; as I noted, too, that
+the tower was utterly separated from the rest of the house, and that the
+convenience of its site enabled one on quitting it, to escape at once,
+and privately, either to the solitary beach, or to the glades and groves
+of the wide park which stretched behind,--I could not help indulging the
+belief that the unceremonious and not unromantic noble had himself
+selected his place of retirement, and that, in so doing, the gallant of
+a stately court was not perhaps undesirous of securing at well-chosen
+moments a brief relaxation from the heavy honours of country homage; or
+that the patron and poetic admirer of the dreaming Spenser might have
+preferred, to all more gorgeous accommodation, the quiet and unseen
+egress to that sea and shore, which, if we may believe the accomplished
+Roman,* are so fertile in the powers of inspiration.
+
+
+* "O mare, O litus, verum secretumque Movoetov, quam multa dictatis,
+quam multa invenitis!"--PLINIUS.
+
+"O sea, O shore, true and secret sanctuary of the Muses, how many things
+ye dictate, how many things ye discover!"
+
+
+However this be, I had cheated myself into the belief that my conjecture
+was true, and I had petitioned my uncle, when, on leaving school, he
+assigned to each of us our several apartments, to grant me the exclusive
+right to this dilapidated tower.  I gained my boon easily enough;
+and--so strangely is our future fate compounded from past trifles--I
+verily believe that the strong desire which thenceforth seized me to
+visit courts and mix with statesmen--which afterwards hurried me into
+intrigue, war, the plots of London, the dissipations of Paris, the
+perilous schemes of Petersburg, nay, the very hardships of a Cossack
+tent--was first formed by the imaginary honour of inhabiting the same
+chamber as the glittering but ill-fated courtier of my own name.  Thus
+youth imitates where it should avoid; and thus that which should have
+been to me a warning became an example.
+
+In the oaken floor to the outer chamber of this tower was situated a
+trap-door, the entrance into a lower room or rather cell, fitted up as a
+bath; and here a wooden door opened into a long subterranean passage
+that led out into a cavern by the sea-shore.  This cave, partly by
+nature, partly by art, was hollowed into a beautiful Gothic form; and
+here, on moonlight evenings, when the sea crept gently over the yellow
+and smooth sands and the summer tempered the air from too keen a
+freshness, my uncle had often in his younger days, ere gout and rheum
+had grown familiar images, assembled his guests.  It was a place which
+the echoes peculiarly adapted for music; and the scene was certainly not
+calculated to diminish the effect of "sweet sounds."  Even now, though
+my uncle rarely joined us, we were often wont to hold our evening revels
+in this spot; and the high cliffs, circling either side in the form of a
+bay, tolerably well concealed our meetings from the gaze of the vulgar.
+It is true (for these cliffs were perforated with numerous excavations)
+that some roving peasant, mariner, or perchance smuggler, would now and
+then, at low water, intrude upon us.  But our London Nereids and courtly
+Tritons were always well pleased with the interest of what they
+graciously termed "an adventure;" and our assemblies were too numerous
+to think an unbroken secrecy indispensable.  Hence, therefore, the
+cavern was almost considered a part of the house itself; and though
+there was an iron door at the entrance which it gave to the passage
+leading to my apartments, yet so great was our confidence in our
+neighbours or ourselves that it was rarely secured, save as a defence
+against the high tides of winter.
+
+The stars were shining quietly over the old gray castle (for castle it
+really was), as I now came within view of it.  To the left, and in the
+rear of the house, the trees of the park, grouped by distance, seemed
+blent into one thick mass of wood; to the right, as I now (descending
+the cliff by a gradual path) entered on the level sands, and at about
+the distance of a league from the main shore, a small islet, notorious
+as the resort and shelter of contraband adventurers, scarcely relieved
+the wide and glassy azure of the waves.  The tide was out; and passing
+through one of the arches worn in the bay, I came somewhat suddenly by
+the cavern.  Seated there on a crag of stone I found Aubrey.
+
+My acquaintance with Isora and her father had so immediately succeeded
+the friendly meeting with Aubrey which I last recorded, and had so
+utterly engrossed my time and thoughts, that I had not taken of that
+interview all the brotherly advantage which I might have done.  My heart
+now smote me for my involuntary negligence.  I dismounted, and fastening
+my horse to one of a long line of posts that ran into the sea,
+approached Aubrey and accosted him.
+
+"Alone, Aubrey? and at an hour when my uncle always makes the old walls
+ring with revel?  Hark! can you not hear the music even now?  It comes
+from the ball-room, I think, does it not?"
+
+"Yes," said Aubrey, briefly, and looking down upon a devotional book,
+which (as was his wont) he had made his companion.
+
+"And we are the only truants!--Well, Gerald will supply our places with
+a lighter step, and, perhaps, a merrier heart."
+
+Aubrey sighed.  I bent over him affectionately (I loved that boy with
+something of a father's as well as a brother's love), and as I did bend
+over him, I saw that his eyelids were red with weeping.
+
+"My brother--my own dear brother," said I, "what grieves you?--are we
+not friends, and more than friends?--what can grieve you that grieves
+not me?"
+
+Suddenly raising his head, Aubrey gazed at me with a long, searching
+intentness of eye; his lips moved, but he did not answer.
+
+"Speak to me, Aubrey," said I, passing my arm over his shoulder; "has
+any one, anything, hurt you?  See, now, if I cannot remedy the evil."
+
+"Morton," said Aubrey, speaking very slowly, "do you believe that Heaven
+pre-orders as well as foresees our destiny?"
+
+"It is the schoolman's question," said I, smiling; "but I know how these
+idle subtleties vex the mind; and you, my brother, are ever too occupied
+with considerations of the future.  If Heaven does pre-order our
+destiny, we know that Heaven is merciful, and we should be fearless, as
+we arm ourselves in that knowledge."
+
+"Morton Devereux," said Aubrey, again repeating my name, and with an
+evident inward effort that left his lip colourless, and yet lit his dark
+dilating eye with a strange and unwonted fire,--"Morton Devereux, I feel
+that I am predestined to the power of the Evil One!"
+
+I drew back, inexpressibly shocked.  "Good Heavens!" I exclaimed, "what
+can induce you to cherish so terrible a phantasy?  what can induce you
+to wrong so fearfully the goodness and mercy of our Creator?"
+
+Aubrey shrank from my arm, which had still been round him, and covered
+his face with his hands.  I took up the book he had been reading; it was
+a Latin treatise on predestination, and seemed fraught with the most
+gloomy and bewildering subtleties.  I sat down beside him, and pointed
+out the various incoherencies and contradictions of the work, and the
+doctrine it espoused: so long and so earnestly did I speak that at
+length Aubrey looked up, seemingly cheered and relieved.
+
+"I wish," said he, timidly, "I wish that you loved me, and that you
+loved /me only/: but you love pleasure, and power, and show, and wit,
+and revelry; and you know not what it is to feel for me as I feel at
+times for you,--nay, perhaps you really dislike or despise me."
+
+Aubrey's voice grew bitter in its tone as he concluded these words, and
+I was instantly impressed with the belief that some one had insinuated
+distrust of my affection for him.
+
+"Why should you think thus?" I said; "has any cause occurred of late to
+make you deem my affection for you weaker than it was?  Has any one
+hinted a surmise that I do not repay your brotherly regard?"
+
+Aubrey did not answer.
+
+"Has Gerald," I continued, "jealous of our mutual attachment, uttered
+aught tending to diminish it?  Yes, I see that he has."
+
+Aubrey remained motionless, sullenly gazing downward and still silent.
+
+"Speak," said I, "in justice to both of us,--speak!  You know, Aubrey,
+how I /have/ loved and love you: put your arms round me, and say that
+thing on earth which you wish me to do, and it shall be done!"
+
+Aubrey looked up; he met my eyes, and he threw himself upon my neck, and
+burst into a violent paroxysm of tears.
+
+I was greatly affected.  "I see my fault," said I, soothing him; "you
+are angry, and with justice, that I have neglected you of late; and,
+perhaps, while I ask your confidence, you suspect that there is some
+subject on which I should have granted you mine.  You are right, and, at
+a fitter moment, I will.  Now let us return homeward: our uncle is never
+merry when we are absent; and when my mother misses your dark locks and
+fair cheek, I fancy that she sees little beauty in the ball.  And yet,
+Aubrey," I added, as he now rose from my embrace and dried his tears, "I
+will own to you that I love this scene better than any, however gay,
+within;" and I turned to the sea, starlit as it was, and murmuring with
+a silver voice, and I became suddenly silent.
+
+There was a long pause.  I believe we both felt the influence of the
+scene around us, softening and tranquillizing our hearts; for, at
+length, Aubrey put his hand in mine, and said, "You were always more
+generous and kind than I, Morton, though there are times when you seem
+different from what you are; and I know you have already forgiven me."
+
+I drew him affectionately towards me, and we went home.  But although I
+meant from that night to devote myself more to Aubrey than I had done of
+late, my hourly increasing love for Isora interfered greatly with my
+resolution.  In order, however, to excuse any future neglect, I, the
+very next morning, bestowed upon him my confidence.  Aubrey did not much
+encourage my passion: he represented to me Isora's situation, my own
+youth, my own worldly ambition; and, more than all (reminding me of my
+uncle's aversion even to the most prosperous and well-suited marriage),
+he insisted upon the certainty that Sir William would never yield
+consent to the lawful consummation of so unequal a love.  I was not too
+well pleased with this reception of my tale, and I did not much trouble
+my adviser with any further communication and confidence on the subject.
+Day after day I renewed my visits to the Spaniard's cottage; and yet
+time passed on, and I had not told Isora a syllable of my love.  I was
+inexpressibly jealous of this Barnard, whom her father often eulogized,
+and whom I never met.  There appeared to be some mystery in his
+acquaintance with Don Diego, which that personage carefully concealed;
+and once, when I was expressing my surprise to have so often missed
+seeing his friend, the Spaniard shook his head gravely, and said that he
+had now learnt the real reason for it: there were circumstances of state
+which made men fearful of new acquaintances even in their own country.
+He drew back, as if he had said too much, and left me to conjecture that
+Barnard was connected with him in some intrigue, more delightful in
+itself than agreeable to the government.  This belief was strengthened
+by my noting that Alvarez was frequently absent from home, and this too
+in the evening, when he was generally wont to shun the bleakness of the
+English air,--an atmosphere, by the by, which I once heard a Frenchman
+wittily compare to Augustus placed between Horace and Virgil; namely, in
+the /bon mot/ of the emperor himself, /between sighs and tears/.
+
+But Isora herself never heard the name of this Barnard mentioned without
+a visible confusion, which galled me to the heart; and at length, unable
+to endure any longer my suspense upon the subject, I resolved to seek
+from her own lips its termination.  I long tarried my opportunity; it
+was one evening that coming rather unexpectedly to the cottage, I was
+informed by the single servant that Don Diego had gone to the
+neighbouring town, but that Isora was in the garden.  Small as it was,
+this garden had been cultivated with some care, and was not devoid of
+variety.  A high and very thick fence of living box-wood, closely
+interlaced with the honeysuckle and the common rose, screened a few
+plots of rarer flowers, a small circular fountain, and a rustic arbour,
+both from the sea breezes and the eyes of any passer-by, to which the
+open and unsheltered portion of the garden was exposed.  When I passed
+through the opening cut in the fence, I was somewhat surprised at not
+immediately seeing Isora.  Perhaps she was in the arbour.  I approached
+the arbour trembling.  What was my astonishment and my terror when I
+beheld her stretched lifeless on the ground!
+
+I uttered a loud cry, and sprang forward.  I raised her from the earth,
+and supported her in my arms; her complexion--through whose pure and
+transparent white the wandering blood was wont so gently, yet so
+glowingly, to blush, undulating while it blushed, as youngest
+rose-leaves which the air just stirs into trembling--was blanched into
+the hues of death.  My kisses tinged it with a momentary colour not its
+own; and yet as I pressed her to my heart, methought hers, which seemed
+still before, began as if by an involuntary sympathy, palpably and
+suddenly to throb against my own.  My alarm melted away as I held her
+thus,--nay, I would not, if I could, have recalled her /yet/ to life; I
+was forgetful, I was unheeding, I was unconscious of all things else,--a
+few broken and passionate words escaped my lips, but even they ceased
+when I felt her breath just stirring and mingling with my own.  It
+seemed to me as if all living kind but ourselves had, by a spell,
+departed from the earth, and we were left alone with the breathless and
+inaudible Nature from which spring the love and the life of all things.
+
+Isora slowly recovered; her eyes in opening dwelt upon mine; her blood
+rushed at once to her cheek, and as suddenly left it hueless as before.
+She rose from my embrace, but I still extended my arms towards her; and
+words over which I had no control, and of which now I have no
+remembrance, rushed from my lips.  Still pale, and leaning against the
+side of the arbour, Isora heard me, as--confused, incoherent, impetuous,
+but still intelligible to her--my released heart poured itself forth.
+And when I had ceased, she turned her face towards me, and my blood
+seemed at once frozen in its channel.  Anguish, deep ineffable anguish,
+was depicted upon every feature; and when she strove at last to speak,
+her lips quivered so violently that, after a vain effort, she ceased
+abruptly.  I again approached; I seized her hand, which I covered with
+my kisses.
+
+"Will you not answer me, Isora?"  said I, trembling.  "/Be/ silent,
+then; but give me one look, one glance of hope, of pardon, from those
+dear eyes, and I ask no more."
+
+Isora's whole frame seemed sinking beneath her emotions; she raised her
+head, and looked hurriedly and fearfully round; my eye followed hers,
+and I then saw upon the damp ground the recent print of a man's
+footstep, not my own: and close to the spot where I had found Isora lay
+a man's glove.  A pang shot through me; I felt my eyes flash fire, and
+my brow darken, as I turned to Isora and said, "I see it; I see all: I
+have a rival, who has but just left you; you love me not; your
+affections are for him!"  Isora sobbed violently, but made no reply.
+"You love him," said I, but in a milder and more mournful tone, "you
+love him; it is enough; I will persecute you no more; and yet--"  I
+paused a moment, for the remembrance of many a sign, which my heart had
+interpreted flatteringly, flashed upon me, and my voice faltered.
+"Well, I have no right to murmur--only, Isora--only tell me with your
+lips that you love another, and I will depart in peace."
+
+Very slowly Isora turned her eyes to me, and even through her tears they
+dwelt upon me with a tender and a soft reproach.
+
+"You love another?" said I; and from her lips, which scarcely parted,
+came a single word which thrilled to my heart like fire,--"No!"
+
+"No!" I repeated, "no? say that again, and again; yet who then is this
+that has dared so to agitate and overpower you?  Who is he whom you have
+met, and whom, even now while I speak, you tremble to hear me recur to?
+Answer me one word: is it this mysterious stranger whom your father
+honours with his friendship? is it Barnard?"
+
+Alarm and fear again wholly engrossed the expression of Isora's
+countenance.
+
+"Barnard!" she said; "yes--yes--it is Barnard!"
+
+"Who is he?" I cried vehemently; "who or what is he; and of what nature
+is his influence upon you?  Confide in me," and I poured forth a long
+tide of inquiry and solicitation.
+
+By the time I had ended, Isora seemed to have recovered herself.  With
+her softness was mingled something of spirit and self-control, which was
+rare alike in her country and her sex.
+
+"Listen to me!" said she, and her voice, which faltered a little at
+first, grew calm and firm as she proceeded.  "You profess to love me: I
+am not worthy your love; and if, Count Devereux, I do not reject nor
+disclaim it--for I am a woman, and a weak and fond one--I will not at
+least wrong you by encouraging hopes which I may not and I dare not
+fulfil.  I cannot,--" here she spoke with a fearful distinctness,--"I
+cannot, I can never be yours; and when you ask me to be so, you know not
+what you ask nor what perils you incur.  Enough; I am grateful to you.
+The poor exiled girl is grateful for your esteem--and--and your
+affection.  She will never forget them,--never!  But be this our last
+meeting--our very last--God bless you, Morton!" and, as she read my
+heart, pierced and agonized as it was, in my countenance, Isora bent
+over me, for I knelt beside her, and I felt her tears upon my
+cheek,--"God bless you--and farewell!"
+
+"You insult, you wound me," said I, bitterly, "by this cold and taunting
+kindness; tell me, tell me only, who it is that you love better than
+me."
+
+Isora had turned to leave me, for I was too proud to detain her; but
+when I said this, she came back, after a moment's pause, and laid her
+hand upon my arm.
+
+"If it make you happy to know /my/ unhappiness," she said, and the tone
+of her voice made me look full in her face, which was one deep blush,
+"know that I am not insensible--"
+
+I heard no more: my lips pressed themselves involuntarily to hers,--a
+long, long kiss,--burning, intense, concentrating emotion, heart, soul,
+all the rays of life's light into a single focus; and she tore herself
+away from me,--and I was alone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A DISCOVERY AND A DEPARTURE.
+
+I HASTENED home after my eventful interview with Isora, and gave myself
+up to tumultuous and wild conjecture.  Aubrey sought me the next
+morning: I narrated to him all that had occurred: he said little, but
+that little enraged me, for it was contrary to the dictates of my own
+wishes.  The character of Morose in the "Silent Woman" is by no means an
+uncommon one.  Many men--certainly many lovers--would say with equal
+truth, always provided they had equal candour, "All discourses but my
+own afflict me; they seem harsh, impertinent, and irksome."  Certainly I
+felt that amiable sentiment most sincerely with regard to Aubrey.  I
+left him abruptly: a resolution possessed me.  "I will see," said I,
+"this Barnard; I will lie in wait for him; I will demand and obtain,
+though it be by force, the secret which evidently subsists between him
+and this exiled family."
+
+Full of this idea, I drew my cloak round me, and repaired on foot to the
+neighbourhood of the Spaniard's cottage.  There was no place near it
+very commodious for accommodation both of vigil and concealment.
+However, I made a little hill, in a field opposite the house, my
+warder's station, and, lying at full length on the ground, wrapt in my
+cloak, I trusted to escape notice.  The day passed: no visitor appeared.
+The next morning I went from my own rooms, through the subterranean
+passage into the castle cave, as the excavation I have before described
+was generally termed.  On the shore I saw Gerald by one of the small
+fishing-boats usually kept there.  I passed him with a sneer at his
+amusements, which were always those of conflicts against fish or fowl.
+He answered me in the same strain, as he threw his nets into the boat,
+and pushed out to sea.  "How is it that you go alone?" said I; "is there
+so much glory in the capture of mackerel and dogfish that you will allow
+no one to share it?"
+
+"There are other sports besides those for men," answered Gerald,
+colouring indignantly: "my taste is confined to amusements in which he
+is but a fool who seeks companionship; and if you could read character
+better, my wise brother, you would know that the bold rover is ever less
+idle and more fortunate than the speculative dreamer."
+
+As Gerald said this, which he did with a significant emphasis, he rowed
+vigorously across the water, and the little boat was soon half way to
+the opposite islet.  My eyes followed it musingly as it glided over the
+waves, and my thoughts painfully revolved the words which Gerald had
+uttered.  "What can he mean?" said I, half aloud; "yet what matters it?
+Perhaps some low amour, some village conquest, inspires him with that
+becoming fulness of pride and vain-glory; joy be with so bold a rover!"
+and I strode away along the beach towards my place of watch; once only I
+turned to look at Gerald; he had then just touched the islet, which was
+celebrated as much for the fishing it afforded as the smuggling it
+protected.
+
+I arrived at last at the hillock, and resumed my station.  Time passed
+on, till, at the dusk of evening, the Spaniard came out.  He walked
+slowly towards the town; I followed him at a distance.  Just before he
+reached the town, he turned off by a path which led to the beach.  As
+the evening was unusually fresh and chill, I felt convinced that some
+cause, not wholly trivial, drew the Spaniard forth to brave it.  My
+pride a little revolted at the idea of following him; but I persuaded
+myself that Isora's happiness, and perhaps her father's safety, depended
+on my obtaining some knowledge of the character and designs of this
+Barnard, who appeared to possess so dangerous an influence over both
+daughter and sire; nor did I doubt but that the old man was now gone
+forth to meet him.  The times were those of mystery and of intrigue: the
+emissaries of the House of Stuart were restlessly at work among all
+classes; many of them, obscure and mean individuals, made their way the
+more dangerously from their apparent insignificance.  My uncle, a
+moderate Tory, was opposed, though quietly and without vehemence, to the
+claims of the banished House.  Like Sedley, who became so stanch a
+revolutionist, he had seen the Court of Charles II. and the character of
+that King's brother too closely to feel much respect for either; but he
+thought it indecorous to express opposition loudly against a party among
+whom were many of his early friends; and the good old knight was too
+much attached to private ties to be very much alive to public feeling.
+However, at his well-filled board, conversation, generally, though
+displeasingly to himself, turned upon politics, and I had there often
+listened, of late, to dark hints of the danger to which we were exposed,
+and of the restless machinations of the Jacobites.  I did not,
+therefore, scruple to suspect this Barnard of some plot against the
+existing state, and I did it the more from observing that the Spaniard
+often spoke bitterly of the English Court, which had rejected some
+claims he had imagined himself entitled to make upon it; and that he was
+naturally of a temper vehemently opposed to quiet and alive to
+enterprise.  With this impression, I deemed it fair to seize any
+opportunity of seeing, at least, even if I could not question, the man
+whom the Spaniard himself confessed to have state reasons for
+concealment; and my anxiety to behold one whose very name could agitate
+Isora, and whose presence could occasion the state in which I had found
+her, sharpened this desire into the keenness of a passion.
+
+While Alvarez descended to the beach, I kept the upper path, which wound
+along the cliff.  There was a spot where the rocks were rude and broken
+into crags, and afforded me a place where, unseen, I could behold what
+passed below.  The first thing I beheld was a boat approaching rapidly
+towards the shore; one man was seated in it; he reached the shore, and I
+recognized Gerald.  That was a dreadful moment.  Alvarez now slowly
+joined him; they remained together for nearly an hour.  I saw Gerald
+give the Spaniard a letter, which appeared to make the chief subject of
+their conversation.  At length they parted, with the signs rather of
+respect than familiarity.  Don Diego returned homeward, and Gerald
+re-entered the boat.  I watched its progress over the waves with
+feelings of a dark and almost unutterable nature.  "My enemy! my rival!
+ruiner of my hopes!--/my brother/!--/my twin brother/!" I muttered
+bitterly between my ground teeth.
+
+The boat did not make to the open sea: it skulked along the shore, till
+distance and shadow scarcely allowed me to trace the outline of Gerald's
+figure.  It then touched the beach, and I could just descry the dim
+shape of another man enter; and Gerald, instead of returning homewards,
+pushed out towards the islet.  I spent the greater part of the night in
+the open air.  Wearied and exhausted by the furious indulgence of my
+passions, I gained my room at length.  There, however, as elsewhere,
+thought succeeded to thought, and scheme to scheme.  Should I speak to
+Gerald?  Should I confide in Alvarez?  Should I renew my suit to Isora?
+If the first, what could I hope to learn from my enemy?  If the second,
+what could I gain from the father, while the daughter remained averse to
+me?  If the third,--there my heart pointed, and the third scheme I
+resolved to adopt.
+
+But was I sure that Gerald was this Barnard?  Might there not be some
+hope that he was not?  No, I could perceive none.  Alvarez had never
+spoken to me of acquaintance with any other Englishman than Barnard; I
+had no reason to believe that he ever held converse with any other.
+Would it not have been natural too, unless some powerful cause, such as
+love to Isora, induced silence,--would it not have been natural that
+Gerald should have mentioned his acquaintance with the Spaniard?  Unless
+some dark scheme, such as that which Barnard appeared to have in common
+with Don Diego, commanded obscurity, would it have been likely that
+Gerald should have met Alvarez alone,--at night,--on an unfrequented
+spot?  What that scheme /was/, I guessed not,--I cared not.  All my
+interest in the identity of Barnard with Gerald Devereux was that
+derived from the power he seemed to possess over Isora.  Here, too, at
+once, was explained the pretended Barnard's desire of concealment, and
+the vigilance with which it had been effected.  It was so certain that
+Gerald, if my rival, would seek to avoid me; it was so easy for him, who
+could watch all my motions, to secure the power of doing so.  Then I
+remembered Gerald's character through the country as a gallant and a
+general lover; and I closed my eyes as if to shut out the vision when I
+recalled the beauty of his form contrasted with the comparative
+plainness of my own.
+
+"There is no hope," I repeated; and an insensibility, rather than sleep,
+crept over me.  Dreadful and fierce dreams peopled my slumbers; and,
+when I started from them at a late hour the next day, I was unable to
+rise from my bed: my agitation and my wanderings had terminated in a
+burning fever.  In four days, however, I recovered sufficiently to mount
+my horse: I rode to the Spaniard's house; I found there only the woman
+who had been Don Diego's solitary domestic.  The morning before, Alvarez
+and his daughter had departed, none knew for certain whither; but it was
+supposed their destination was London.  The woman gave me a note: it was
+from Isora; it contained only these lines:
+
+
+Forget me: we are now parted forever.  As you value my peace of mind--of
+happiness I do not speak--seek not to discover our next retreat.  I
+implore you to think no more of what has been; you are young, very
+young.  Life has a thousand paths for you; any one of them will lead you
+from remembrance of me.  Farewell, again and again!
+
+               ISORA D'ALVAREZ.
+
+
+With this note was another, in French, from Don Diego: it was colder and
+more formal than I could have expected; it thanked me for my attentions
+towards him; it regretted that he could not take leave of me in person,
+and it enclosed the sum by the loan of which our acquaintance had
+commenced.
+
+"It is well!" said I, calmly, to myself, "it is well; I will forget
+her:" and I rode instantly home.  "But," I resumed in my soliloquy, "I
+will yet strive to obtain confirmation to what perhaps needs it not.  I
+will yet strive to see if Gerald can deny the depth of his injuries
+towards me; there will be at least some comfort in witnessing either his
+defiance or his confusion."
+
+Agreeably to this thought, I hastened to seek Gerald.  I found him in
+his apartment; I shut the door, and seating myself, with a smile thus
+addressed him,--
+
+"Dear Gerald, I have a favour to ask of you."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"How long have you known a certain Mr. Barnard?"  Gerald changed colour;
+his voice faltered as he repeated the name "Barnard!"
+
+"Yes," said I, with affected composure, "Barnard! a great friend of Don
+Diego D'Alvarez."
+
+"I perceive," said Gerald, collecting himself, "that you are in some
+measure acquainted with my secret: how far it is known to you I cannot
+guess; but I tell you, very fairly, that from me you will not increase
+the sum of your knowledge."
+
+When one is in a good sound rage, it is astonishing how calm one can be!
+I was certainly somewhat amazed by Gerald's hardihood and assurance, but
+I continued, with a smile,
+
+"And Donna Isora, how long, if not very intrusive on your confidence,
+have you known her?"
+
+"I tell you," answered Gerald, doggedly, "that I will answer no
+questions."
+
+"You remember the old story," returned I, "of the two brothers, Eteocles
+and Polynices, whose very ashes refused to mingle; faith, Gerald, our
+love seems much of the same sort.  I know not if our ashes will exhibit
+so laudible an antipathy: but I think our hearts and hands will do so
+while a spark of life animates them; yes, though our blood" (I added, in
+a voice quivering with furious emotion) "prevents our contest by the
+sword, it prevents not the hatred and the curses of the heart."
+
+Gerald turned pale.  "I do not understand you," he faltered out,--"I
+know you abhor me; but why, why this excess of malice?"
+
+I cast on him a look of bitter scorn, and turned from the room.
+
+It is not pleasing to place before the reader these dark passages of
+fraternal hatred: but in the record of all passions there is a moral;
+and it is wise to see to how vast a sum the units of childish animosity
+swell, when they are once brought into a heap, by some violent event,
+and told over by the nice accuracy of Revenge.
+
+But I long to pass from these scenes, and my history is about to glide
+along others of more glittering and smiling aspect.  Thank Heaven, I
+write a tale, not only of love, but of a life; and that which I cannot
+avoid I can at least condense.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A VERY SHORT CHAPTER,--CONTAINING A VALET.
+
+MY uncle for several weeks had flattered himself that I had quite
+forgotten or foregone the desire of leaving Devereux Court for London.
+Good easy man! he was not a little distressed when I renewed the subject
+with redoubled firmness, and demanded an early period for that event.
+He managed, however, still to protract the evil day.  At one time it was
+impossible to part with me, because the house was so full; at another
+time it was cruel to leave him, when the house was so empty.  Meanwhile,
+a new change came over me.  As the first shock of Isora's departure
+passed away, I began to suspect the purity of her feelings towards me.
+Might not Gerald--the beautiful, the stately, the glittering
+Gerald--have been a successful wooer under the disguised name of
+Barnard, and /hence/ Isora's confusion when that name was mentioned, and
+hence the power which its possessor exercised over her?
+
+This idea, once admitted, soon gained ground.  It is true that Isora had
+testified something of favourable feelings towards me; but this might
+spring from coquetry or compassion.  My love had been a boy's love,
+founded upon beauty and coloured by romance.  I had not investigated the
+character of the object; and I had judged of the mind solely by the
+face.  I might easily have been deceived: I persuaded myself that I was.
+Perhaps Gerald had provided their present retreat for sire and daughter;
+perhaps they at this moment laughed over my rivalry and my folly.
+Methought Gerald's lip wore a contemptuous curve when we met.  "It shall
+have no cause," I said, stung to the soul; "I will indeed forget this
+woman, and yet, though in other ways, eclipse this rival.  Pleasure,
+ambition, the brilliancy of a court, the resources of wealth, invite me
+to a thousand joys.  I will not be deaf to the call.  Meanwhile I will
+not betray to Gerald, to any one, the scar of the wound I have received;
+and I will mortify Gerald, by showing him that, handsome as he is, he
+shall be forgotten in my presence!"
+
+Agreeably to this exquisite resolution, I paid incessant court to the
+numerous dames by whom my uncle's mansion was thronged; and I resolved
+to prepare, among them, the reputation for gallantry and for wit which I
+proposed to establish in town.
+
+"You are greatly altered since your love," said Aubrey, one day to me,
+"but not by your love.  Own that I did right in dissuading you from its
+indulgence!"
+
+"Tell me!" said I, sinking my voice to a whisper, "do you think Gerald
+was my rival?" and I recounted the causes of my suspicion.
+
+Aubrey's countenance testified astonishment as he listened.  "It is
+strange, very strange," said he; "and the evidence of the boat is almost
+conclusive; still I do not think it quite sufficient to leave no
+loop-hole of doubt.  But what matters it? you have conquered your love
+now."
+
+"Ay," I said, with a laugh, "I have conquered it, and I am now about to
+find some other empress of the heart.  What think you of the Lady
+Hasselton?--a fair dame and a sprightly.  I want nothing but her love to
+be the most enviable of men, and a French /valet-de-chambre/ to be the
+most irresistible."
+
+"The former is easier to obtain than the latter, I fear," returned
+Aubrey; "all places produce light dames, but the war makes a scarcity of
+French valets."
+
+"True," said I, "but I never thought of instituting a comparison between
+their relative value.  The Lady Hasselton, no disparagement to her
+merits, is but one woman; but a French valet who knows his /metier/ arms
+one for conquest over a thousand;" and I turned to the saloon.
+
+Fate, which had destined to me the valuable affections of the Lady
+Hasselton, granted me also, at a yet earlier period, the greater boon of
+a French valet.  About two or three weeks after this sapient
+communication with Aubrey, the most charming person in the world
+presented himself a candidate /pour le supreme bonheur de soigner
+Monsieur le Comte/.  Intelligence beamed in his eye; a modest assurance
+reigned upon his brow; respect made his step vigilant as a zephyr's; and
+his ruffles were the envy of the world!
+
+I took him at a glance; and I presented to the admiring inmates of the
+house a greater coxcomb than the Count Devereux in the ethereal person
+of Jean Desmarais.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE HERO ACQUITS HIMSELF HONOURABLY AS A COXCOMB.--A FINE LADY OF THE
+EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, AND A FASHIONABLE DIALOGUE; THE SUBSTANCE OF
+FASHIONABLE DIALOGUE BEING IN ALL CENTURIES THE SAME.
+
+"I AM thinking, Morton," said my uncle, "that if you are to go to town,
+you should go in a style suitable to your rank.  What say you to flying
+along the road in my green and gold chariot?  'Sdeath!  I'll make you a
+present of it.  Nay--no thanks; and you may have four of my black
+Flanders mares to draw you."
+
+"Now, my dear Sir William," cried Lady Hasselton, who, it may be
+remembered, was the daughter of one of King Charles's Beauties, and who
+alone shared the breakfast-room with my uncle and myself,--"now, my dear
+Sir William, I think it would be a better plan to suffer the Count to
+accompany us to town.  We go next week.  He shall have a seat in our
+coach, help Lovell to pay our post-horses, protect us at inns, scold at
+the drawers in the pretty oaths of the fashion, which are so innocent
+that I will teach them to his Countship myself; and unless I am much
+more frightful than my honoured mother, whose beauties you so gallantly
+laud, I think you will own, Sir William, that this is better for your
+nephew than doing solitary penance in your chariot of green and gold,
+with a handkerchief tied over his head to keep away cold, and with no
+more fanciful occupation than composing sonnets to the four Flanders
+mares."
+
+"'Sdeath, Madam, you inherit your mother's wit as well as beauty," cried
+my uncle, with an impassioned air.
+
+"And his Countship," said I, "will accept your invitation without asking
+his uncle's leave."
+
+"Come, that is bold for a gentleman of--let me see, thirteen--are you
+not?"
+
+"Really," answered I, "one learns to forget time so terribly in the
+presence of Lady Hasselton that I do not remember even how long it has
+existed for me."
+
+"Bravo!" cried the knight, with a moistening eye; "you see, Madam, the
+boy has not lived with his old uncle for nothing."
+
+"I am lost in astonishment!" said the lady, glancing towards the glass;
+"why, you will eclipse all our beaux at your first appearance;
+but--but--Sir William--how green those glasses have become!  Bless me,
+there is something so contagious in the effects of the country that the
+very mirrors grow verdant.  But--Count--Count--where are you, Count?  [I
+was exactly opposite to the fair speaker.]  Oh, there you are!  Pray, do
+you carry a little pocket-glass of the true quality about you?  But, of
+course you do; lend it me."
+
+"I have not the glass you want, but I carry with me a mirror that
+reflects your features much more faithfully."
+
+"How!  I protest I do not understand you!"
+
+"The mirror is here!" said I, laying my hand to my heart.
+
+"'Gad, I must kiss the boy!" cried my uncle, starting up.
+
+"I have sworn," said I, fixing my eyes upon the lady,--"I have sworn
+never to be kissed, even by women.  You must pardon me, Uncle."
+
+"I declare," cried the Lady Hasselton, flirting her fan, which was
+somewhat smaller than the screen that one puts into a great hall, in
+order to take off the discomfort of too large a room,--"I declare,
+Count, there is a vast deal of originality about you.  But tell me, Sir
+William, where did your nephew acquire, at so early an age--eleven, you
+say, he is--such a fund of agreeable assurance?"
+
+"Nay, Madam, let the boy answer for himself."
+
+"/Imprimis/, then," said I, playing with the ribbon of my
+cane,--"/imprimis/, early study of the best authors,--Congreve and
+Farquhar, Etherege and Rochester; secondly, the constant intercourse of
+company which gives one the spleen so overpoweringly that despair
+inspires one with boldness--to get rid of them; thirdly, the personal
+example of Sir William Devereux; and, fourthly, the inspiration of
+hope."
+
+"Hope, sir?" said the Lady Hasselton, covering her face with her fan, so
+as only to leave me a glimpse of the farthest patch upon her left
+cheek,--"hope, sir?"
+
+"Yes, the hope of being pleasing to you.  Suffer me to add that the hope
+has now become certainty."
+
+"Upon my word, Count--"
+
+"Nay, you cannot deny it; if one can once succeed in impudence, one is
+irresistible."
+
+"Sir William," cried Lady Hasselton, "you may give the Count your
+chariot of green and gold, and your four Flanders mares, and send his
+mother's maid with him.  He shall not go with me."
+
+"Cruel! and why?" said I.
+
+"You are too"--the lady paused, and looked at me over her fan.  She was
+really very handsome--"you are too /old/, Count.  You must be more than
+nine."
+
+"Pardon me," said I, "I /am/ nine,--a very mystical number nine is too,
+and represents the Muses, who, you know, were always attendant upon
+Venus--or you, which is the same thing; so you can no more dispense with
+my company than you can with that of the Graces."
+
+"Good morning, Sir William," cried the Lady Hasselton, rising.
+
+I offered to hand her to the door; with great difficulty, for her hoop
+was of the very newest enormity of circumference; I effected this
+object.  "Well, Count," said she, "I am glad to see you have brought so
+much learning from school; make the best use of it while it lasts, for
+your memory will not furnish you with a single simile out of the
+mythology by the end of next winter."
+
+"That would be a pity," said I, "for I intend having as many goddesses
+as the heathens had, and I should like to worship them in a classical
+fashion."
+
+"Oh, the young reprobate!" said the beauty, tapping me with her fan.
+"And pray, what other deities besides Venus do I resemble?"
+
+"All!" said I,--"at least, all the celestial ones!"
+
+Though half way through the door, the beauty extricated her hoop, and
+drew back.  "Bless me, the gods as well as the goddesses?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"You jest: tell me how."
+
+"Nothing can be easier; you resemble Mercury because of your thefts."
+
+"Thefts!"
+
+"Ay; stolen hearts, and," added I, in a whisper, "glances; Jupiter,
+partly because of your lightning, which you lock up in the said
+glances,--principally because all things are subservient to you;
+Neptune, because you are as changeable as the seas; Vulcan, because you
+live among the flames you excite; and Mars, because--"
+
+"You are so destructive," cried my uncle.
+
+"Exactly so; and because," added I--as I shut the door upon the
+beauty--"because, thanks to your hoop, you cover nine acres of ground."
+
+"Ods fish, Morton," said my uncle, "you surprise me at times: one while
+you are so reserved, at another so assured; to-day so brisk, to-morrow
+so gloomy.  Why now, Lady Hasselton (she is very comely, eh! faith, but
+not comparable to her mother) told me, a week ago, that she, gave you up
+in despair, that you were dull, past hoping for; and now, 'Gad, you had
+a life in you that Sid himself could not have surpassed.  How comes it,
+Sir, eh?"
+
+"Why, Uncle, you have explained the reason; it was exactly because she
+said I was dull that I was resolved to convict her in an untruth."
+
+"Well, now, there is some sense in that, boy; always contradict ill
+report by personal merit.  But what think you of her ladyship?  'Gad,
+you know what old Bellair said of Emilia.  'Make much of her: she's one
+of the best of your acquaintance.  I like her countenance and behaviour.
+Well, she has a modesty not i' this age, a-dad she has.'  Applicable
+enough; eh, boy?"
+
+"'I know her value, Sir, and esteem her accordingly,'" answered I, out
+of the same play, which by dint of long study I had got by heart.  "But,
+to confess the truth," added I, "I think you might have left out the
+passage about her modesty."
+
+"There, now; you young chaps are so censorious; why, 'sdeath, sir, you
+don't think the worse of her virtue because of her wit?"
+
+"Humph!"
+
+"Ah, boy! when you are my age, you'll know that your demure cats are not
+the best; and that reminds me of a little story; shall I tell it you,
+child?"
+
+"If it so please you, Sir."
+
+"Zauns--where's my snuff-box?--oh, here it is.  Well, Sir, you shall
+have the whole thing, from beginning to end.  Sedley and I were one day
+conversing together about women.  Sid was a very deep fellow in that
+game: no passion you know; no love on his own side; nothing of the sort;
+all done by rule and compass; knew women as well as dice, and calculated
+the exact moment when his snares would catch them, according to the
+principles of geometry.  D----d clever fellow, faith; but a confounded
+rascal: but let it go no further; mum's the word! must not slander the
+dead; and 'tis only my suspicion, you know, after all.  Poor fellow: I
+don't think he was such a rascal; he gave a beggar an angel once,--well,
+boy, have a pinch?--Well, so I said to Sir Charles, 'I think you will
+lose the widow, after all,--'Gad I do.'  'Upon what principle of
+science, Sir William?' said he.  'Why, faith, man, she is so modest, you
+see, and has such a pretty way of blushing.'  'Hark ye, friend
+Devereux,' said Sir Charles, smoothing his collar and mincing his words
+musically, as he was wont to do,--'hark ye, friend Devereux, I will give
+you the whole experience of my life in one maxim: I can answer for its
+being new, and I think it is profound; and that maxim is--,' no, faith,
+Morton--no, I can't tell it thee: it is villanous, and then it's so
+desperately against all the sex."
+
+"My dear uncle, don't tantalize me so: pray tell it me; it shall be a
+secret."
+
+"No, boy, no: it will corrupt thee; besides, it will do poor Sid's
+memory no good.  But, 'sdeath, it was a most wonderfully shrewd
+saying,--i' faith, it was.  But, zounds, Morton, I forgot to tell you
+that I have had a letter from the Abbe to-day."
+
+"Ha! and when does he return?"
+
+"To-morrow, God willing!" said the knight, with a sigh.
+
+"So soon, or rather after so long an absence!  Well, I am glad of it.  I
+wish much to see him before I leave you."
+
+"Indeed!" quoth my uncle; "you have an advantage over me, then!  But,
+ods fish, Morton, how is it that you grew so friendly with the priest
+before his departure?  He used to speak very suspiciously of thee
+formerly; and, when I last saw him, he lauded thee to the skies."
+
+"Why, the clergy of his faith have a habit of defending the strong and
+crushing the weak, I believe; that's all.  He once thought I was dull
+enough to damn my fortune, and then he had some strange doubts for my
+soul; now he thinks me wise enough to become prosperous, and it is
+astonishing what a respect he has conceived for my principles."
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!--you have a spice of your uncle's humour in you; and, 'Gad,
+you have no small knowledge of the world, considering you have seen so
+little of it."
+
+A hit at the popish clergy was, in my good uncle's eyes, the exact acme
+of wit and wisdom.  We are always clever with those who imagine we think
+as they do.  To be shallow you must differ from people: to be profound
+you must agree with them.  "Why, Sir," answered the sage nephew, "you
+forget that I have seen more of the world than many of twice my age.
+Your house has been full of company ever since I have been in it, and
+you set me to making observations on what I saw before I was thirteen.
+And then, too, if one is reading books about real life, at the very time
+one is mixing in it, it is astonishing how naturally one remarks and how
+well one remembers."
+
+"Especially if one has a genius for it,--eh, boy?  And then too, you
+have read my play; turned Horace's Satires into a lampoon upon the boys
+at school; been regularly to assizes during the vacation; attended the
+county balls, and been a most premature male coquette with the ladies.
+Ods fish, boy! it is quite curious to see how the young sparks of the
+present day get on with their lovemaking."
+
+"Especially if one has a genius for it,--eh, sir?" said I.
+
+"Besides, too," said my uncle, ironically, "you have had the Abbe's
+instructions."
+
+"Ay, and if the priests would communicate to their pupils their
+experience in frailty, as well as in virtue, how wise they would make
+us!"
+
+"Ods fish!  Morton, you are quite oracular.  How got you that fancy of
+priests?--by observation in life already?"
+
+"No, Uncle: by observation in plays, which you tell me are the mirrors
+of life; you remember what Lee says,--
+
+
+               "''Tis thought
+  That earth is more obliged to priests for bodies
+  Than Heaven for souls.'"
+
+
+And my uncle laughed, and called me a smart fellow.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE ABBE'S RETURN.--A SWORD, AND A SOLILOQUY.
+
+THE next evening, when I was sitting alone in my room, the Abbe
+Montreuil suddenly entered.  "Ah, is it you? welcome!" cried I.  The
+priest held out his arms, and embraced me in the most paternal manner.
+
+"It is your friend," said he, "returned at last to bless and
+congratulate you.  Behold my success in your service," and the Abbe
+produced a long leather case richly inlaid with gold.
+
+"Faith, Abbe," said I, "am I to understand that this is a present for
+your eldest pupil?"
+
+"You are," said Montreuil, opening the case, and producing a sword.  The
+light fell upon the hilt, and I drew back, dazzled with its lustre; it
+was covered with stones, apparently of the most costly value.  Attached
+to the hilt was a label of purple velvet, on which, in letters of gold,
+was inscribed, "To the son of Marshal Devereux, the soldier of France,
+and the friend of Louis XIV."
+
+Before I recovered my surprise at this sight, the Abbe said: "It was
+from the King's own hand that I received this sword, and I have
+authority to inform you that if ever you wield it in the service of
+France it will be accompanied by a post worthy of your name."
+
+"The service of France!" I repeated; "why, at present that is the
+service of an enemy."
+
+"An enemy only to a /part/ of England!" said the Abbe, emphatically;
+"perhaps I have overtures to you from other monarchs, and the friendship
+of the court of France may be synonymous with the friendship of the true
+sovereign of England."
+
+There was no mistaking the purport of this speech, and even in the midst
+of my gratified vanity I drew back alarmed.
+
+The Abbe noted the changed expression of my countenance, and artfully
+turned the subject to comments on the sword, on which I still gazed with
+a lover's ardour.  Thence he veered to a description of the grace and
+greatness of the royal donor: he dwelt at length upon the flattering
+terms in which Louis had spoken of my father, and had inquired
+concerning myself; he enumerated all the hopes that the illustrious
+house into which my father had first married expressed for a speedy
+introduction to his son; he lingered with an eloquence more savouring of
+the court than of the cloister on the dazzling circle which surrounded
+the French throne; and when my vanity, my curiosity, my love of
+pleasure, my ambition, all that are most susceptible in young minds,
+were fully aroused, he suddenly ceased, and wished me a good night.
+
+"Stay," said I; and looking at him more attentively than I had hitherto
+done, I perceived a change in his external appearance which somewhat
+startled and surprised me.  Montreuil had always hitherto been
+remarkably plain in his dress; but he was now richly attired, and by his
+side hung a rapier, which had never adorned it before.  Something in his
+aspect seemed to suit the alteration in his garb: and whether it was
+that long absence had effaced enough of the familiarity of his features
+to allow me to be more alive than formerly to the real impression they
+were calculated to produce, or whether a commune with kings and nobles
+had of late dignified their old expression, as power was said to have
+clothed the soldier-mien of Cromwell with a monarch's bearing,--I do not
+affect to decide; but I thought that, in his high brow and Roman
+features, the compression of his lip, and his calm but haughty air,
+there was a nobleness, which I acknowledged for the first time.  "Stay,
+my father," said I, surveying him, "and tell me, if there be no
+irreverence in the question, whether brocade and a sword are compatible
+with the laws of the Order of Jesus?"
+
+"Policy, Morton," answered Montreuil, "often dispenses with custom; and
+the declarations of the Institute provide, with their usual wisdom, for
+worldly and temporary occasions.  Even while the constitution ordains us
+to discard habits repugnant to our professions of poverty, the following
+exception is made: 'Si in occurrenti aliqua occasione, vel necessitate,
+quis vestibus melioribus, honestis tamen, indueretur.'"*
+
+
+* "But should there chance any occasion or necessity, one may wear
+better though still decorous garments."
+
+
+"There is now, then, some occasion for a more glittering display than
+ordinary?" said I.
+
+"There is, my pupil," answered Montreuil; "and whenever you embrace the
+offer of my friendship made to you more than two years ago,--whenever,
+too, your ambition points to a lofty and sublime career,--whenever to
+make and unmake kings, and in the noblest sphere to execute the will of
+God, indemnifies you for a sacrifice of petty wishes and momentary
+passions,--I will confide to you schemes worthy of your ancestors and
+yourself."
+
+With this the priest departed.  Left to myself, I revolved his hints,
+and marvelled at the power he seemed to possess.  "Closeted with kings,"
+said I, soliloquizing,--"bearing their presents through armed men and
+military espionage; speaking of empires and their overthrow as of
+ordinary objects of ambition; and he himself a low-born and undignified
+priest, of a poor though a wise order,--well, there is more in this than
+I can fathom: but I will hesitate before I embark in his dangerous and
+concealed intrigues; above all, I will look well ere I hazard my safe
+heritage of these broad lands in the service of that House which is
+reported to be ungrateful, and which is certainly exiled."
+
+After this prudent and notable resolution, I took up the sword,
+re-examined it, kissed the hilt once and the blade twice, put it under
+my pillow, sent for my valet, undressed, went to bed, fell asleep, and
+dreamed that I was teaching the Marechal de Villars the thrust /en
+seconde/.
+
+But Fate, that arch-gossip, who, like her prototypes on earth, settles
+all our affairs for us without our knowledge of the matter, had decreed
+that my friendship with the Abbe Montreuil should be of very short
+continuance, and that my adventures on earth should flow through a
+different channel than, in all probability, they would have done under
+his spiritual direction.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+A MYSTERIOUS LETTER.--A DUEL.--THE DEPARTURE OF ONE OF THE FAMILY.
+
+THE next morning I communicated to the Abbe my intention of proceeding
+to London.  He received it with favour.  "I myself," said he, "shall
+soon meet you there: my office in your family has expired; and your
+mother, after so long an absence, will perhaps readily dispense with my
+spiritual advice to her.  But time presses: since you depart so soon,
+give me an audience to-night in your apartment.  Perhaps our
+conversation may be of moment."
+
+I agreed; the hour was fixed, and I left the Abbe to join my uncle and
+his guests.  While I was employing among them my time and genius with
+equal dignity and profit, one of the servants informed me that a man at
+the gate wished to see me--and alone.
+
+Somewhat surprised, I followed the servant out of the room into the
+great hall, and desired him to bid the stranger attend me there.  In a
+few minutes, a small, dark man, dressed between gentility and meanness,
+made his appearance.  He greeted me with great respect, and presented a
+letter, which, he said, he was charged to deliver into my own hands,
+"with," he added in a low tone, "a special desire that none should, till
+I had carefully read it, be made acquainted with its contents."  I was
+not a little startled by this request; and, withdrawing to one of the
+windows, broke the seal.  A letter, enclosed in the envelope, in the
+Abbe's own handwriting, was the first thing that met my eyes.  At that
+instant the Abbe himself rushed into the hall.  He cast one hasty look
+at the messenger, whose countenance evinced something of surprise and
+consternation at beholding him; and, hastening up to me, grasped my hand
+vehemently, and, while his eye dwelt upon the letter I held, cried, "Do
+not read it--not a word--not a word: there is poison in it!"  And so
+saying, he snatched desperately at the letter.  I detained it from him
+with one hand, and pushing him aside with the other, said,--
+
+"Pardon me, Father, directly I have read it you shall have that
+pleasure,--not till then!" and, as I said this, my eye falling upon the
+letter discovered my own name written in two places.  My suspicions were
+aroused.  I raised my eyes to the spot where the messenger had stood,
+with the view of addressing some question to him respecting his
+employer, when, to my surprise, I perceived he was already gone; I had
+no time, however, to follow him.
+
+"Boy," said the Abbe, gasping for breath, and still seizing me with his
+lean, bony hand,--"boy, give me that letter instantly; I charge you not
+to disobey me."
+
+"You forget yourself, Sir," said I, endeavouring to shake him off, "you
+forget yourself: there is no longer between us the distinction of pupil
+and teacher; and if you have not yet learned the respect due to my
+station, suffer me to tell you that it is time you should."
+
+"Give me that letter, I beseech you," said Montreuil, changing his voice
+from anger to supplication; "I ask your pardon for my violence: the
+letter does not concern you but me; there is a secret in those lines
+which you see are in my handwriting that implicates my personal safety.
+Give it me, my dear, dear son: your own honour, if not your affection
+for me, demands that you should."
+
+I was staggered.  His violence had confirmed my suspicions, but his
+gentleness weakened them.  "Besides," thought I, "the handwriting /is
+his/; and even if my life depended upon reading the letter of another, I
+do not think my honour would suffer me to do so against his consent."  A
+thought struck me,--
+
+"Will you swear," said I, "that this letter does not concern me?"
+
+"Solemnly," answered the Abbe, raising his eyes.
+
+"Will you swear that I am not even mentioned in it?"
+
+"Upon peril of my soul, I will."
+
+"Liar! traitor! perjured blasphemer!" cried I, in an inexpressible rage,
+"look here, and here!" and I pointed out to the priest various lines in
+which my name legibly and frequently occurred.  A change came over
+Montreuil's face: he released my arm and staggered back against the
+wainscot; but recovering his composure instantaneously, he said, "I
+forgot, my son--I forgot--your name is mentioned, it is true, but with
+honourable eulogy, that is all."
+
+"Bravo, honest Father!" cried I, losing my fury in admiring surprise at
+his address,--"bravo!  However, if that be all, you can have no
+objection to allow me to read the lines in which my name occurs; your
+benevolence cannot refuse me such a gratification as the sight of your
+written panegyric!"
+
+"Count Devereux," said the Abbe, sternly, while his dark face worked
+with suppressed passion, "this is trifling with me, and I warn you not
+to push my patience too far.  I /will/ have that letter, or--" he ceased
+abruptly, and touched the hilt of his sword.
+
+"Dare you threaten me?" I said, and the natural fierceness of my own
+disposition, deepened by vague and strong suspicions of some treachery
+designed against me, spoke in the tones of my voice.
+
+"Dare I?" repeated Montreuil, sinking and sharpening his voice into a
+sort of inward screech.  "Dare I!--ay, were your whole tribe arrayed
+against me.  Give me the letter, or you will find me now and forever
+your most deadly foe; deadly--ay--deadly, deadly!" and he shook his
+clenched hand at me, with an expression of countenance so malignant and
+menacing that I drew back involuntarily, and laid my hand on my sword.
+
+The action seemed to give Montreuil a signal for which he had hitherto
+waited.  "Draw then," he said through his teeth, and unsheathed his
+rapier.
+
+Though surprised at his determination, I was not backward in meeting it.
+Thrusting the letter in my bosom, I drew my sword in time to parry a
+rapid and fierce thrust.  I had expected easily to master Montreuil, for
+I had some skill at my weapon: I was deceived; I found him far more
+adroit than myself in the art of offence; and perhaps it would have
+fared ill for the hero of this narrative had Montreuil deemed it wise to
+direct against my life all the science he possessed.  But the moment our
+swords crossed, the constitutional coolness of the man, which rage or
+fear had for a brief time banished, returned at once, and he probably
+saw that it would be as dangerous to him to take away the life of his
+pupil as to forfeit the paper for which he fought.  He, therefore,
+appeared to bend all his efforts towards disarming me.  Whether or not
+he would have effected this it is hard to say, for my blood was up, and
+any neglect of my antagonist, in attaining an object very dangerous,
+when engaged with a skilful and quick swordsman, might have sent him to
+the place from which the prayers of his brethren have (we are bound to
+believe) released so many thousands of souls.  But, meanwhile, the
+servants, who at first thought the clashing of swords was the wanton
+sport of some young gallants as yet new to the honour of wearing them,
+grew alarmed by the continuance of the sound, and flocked hurriedly to
+the place of contest.  At their intrusion we mutually drew back.
+Recovering my presence of mind (it was a possession I very easily lost
+at that time), I saw the unseemliness of fighting with my preceptor, and
+a priest.  I therefore burst, though awkwardly enough, into a laugh,
+and, affecting to treat the affair as a friendly trial of skill between
+the Abbe and myself, resheathed my sword and dismissed the intruders,
+who, evidently disbelieving my version of the story, retreated slowly,
+and exchanging looks.  Montreuil, who had scarcely seconded my attempt
+to gloss over our /rencontre/, now approached me.
+
+"Count," he said, with a collected and cool voice, "suffer me to request
+you to exchange three words with me in a spot less liable than this to
+interruption."
+
+"Follow me then!" said I; and I led the way to a part of the grounds
+which lay remote and sequestered from intrusion.  I then turned round,
+and perceived that the Abbe had left his sword behind.  "How is this?" I
+said, pointing to his unarmed side, "have you not come hither to renew
+our engagement?"
+
+"No!" answered Montreuil, "I repent me of my sudden haste, and I have
+resolved to deny myself all further possibility of unseemly warfare.
+That letter, young man, I still demand from you; I demanded it from your
+own sense of honour and of right: it was written by me; it was not
+intended for your eye; it contains secrets implicating the lives of
+others besides myself; now, read it if you will."
+
+"You are right, Sir," said I, after a short pause; "there is the letter;
+never shall it be said of Morton Devereux that he hazarded his honour to
+secure his safety.  But the tie between us is broken now and forever!"
+
+So saying, I flung down the debated epistle, and strode away.  I
+re-entered the great hall.  I saw by one of the windows a sheet of
+paper; I picked it up, and perceived that it was the envelope in which
+the letter had been enclosed.  It contained only these lines, addressed
+me in French:--
+
+
+A friend of the late Marshal Devereux encloses to his son a letter, the
+contents of which it is essential for His safety that he should know.
+
+               C. D. B.
+
+
+"Umph!" said I, "a very satisfactory intimation, considering that the
+son of the late Marshal Devereux is so very well assured that he shall
+not know one line of the contents of the said letter.  But let me see
+after this messenger!" and I immediately hastened to institute inquiry
+respecting him.  I found that he was already gone; on leaving the hall
+he had remounted his horse and taken his departure.  One servant,
+however, had seen him, as he passed the front court, address a few words
+to my valet, Desmarais, who happened to be loitering there.  I summoned
+Desmarais and questioned him.
+
+"The dirty fellow," said the Frenchman, pointing to his spattered
+stockings with a lachrymose air, "splashed me, by a prance of his horse,
+from head to foot, and while I was screaming for very anguish, he
+stopped and said, 'Tell the Count Devereux that I was unable to tarry,
+but that the letter requires no answer.'"
+
+I consoled Desmarais for his misfortune, and hastened to my uncle with a
+determination to reveal to him all that had occurred.  Sir William was
+in his dressing-room, and his gentleman was very busy in adorning his
+wig.  I entreated him to dismiss the /coiffeur/, and then, without much
+preliminary detail, acquainted him with all that had passed between the
+Abbe and myself.
+
+The knight seemed startled when I came to the story of the sword.
+"'Gad, Sir Count, what have you been doing?" said he; "know you not that
+this may be a very ticklish matter?  The King of France is a very great
+man, to be sure,--a very great man,--and a very fine gentleman; but you
+will please to remember that we are at war with his Majesty, and I
+cannot guess how far the accepting such presents may be held
+treasonable."
+
+And Sir William shook his head with a mournful significance.  "Ah,"
+cried he, at last (when I had concluded my whole story), with a
+complacent look, "I have not lived at court, and studied human nature,
+for nothing: and I will wager my best full-bottom to a night-cap that
+the crafty old fox is as much a Jacobite as he is a rogue!  The letter
+would have proved it, Sir; it would have proved it!"
+
+"But what shall be done now?" said I; "will you suffer him to remain any
+longer in the house?"
+
+"Why," replied the knight, suddenly recollecting his reverence to the
+fair sex, "he is your mother's guest, not mine; we must refer the matter
+to her.  But zauns, Sir, with all deference to her ladyship, we cannot
+suffer our house to be a conspiracy-hatch as well as a popish chapel;
+and to attempt your life too--the devil!  Ods fish, boy, I will go to
+the countess myself, if you will just let Nicholls finish my wig,--never
+attend the ladies /en deshabille/,--always, with them, take care of your
+person most, when you most want to display your mind;" and my uncle
+ringing a little silver bell on his dressing-table, the sound
+immediately brought Nicholls to his toilet.
+
+Trusting the cause to the zeal of my uncle, whose hatred to the
+ecclesiastic would, I knew, be an efficacious adjunct to his diplomatic
+address, and not unwilling to avoid being myself the person to acquaint
+my mother with the suspected delinquency of her favourite, I hastened
+from the knight's apartment in search of Aubrey.  He was not in the
+house.  His attendants (for my uncle, with old-fashioned grandeur of
+respect, suitable to his great wealth and aristocratic temper, allotted
+to each of us a separate suite of servants as well as of apartments)
+believed he was in the park.  Thither I repaired, and found him, at
+length, seated by an old tree, with a large book of a religious cast
+before him, on which his eyes were intently bent.
+
+"I rejoice to have found thee, my gentle brother," said I, throwing
+myself on the green turf by his side; "in truth you have chosen a
+fitting and fair place for study."
+
+"I have chosen," said Aubrey, "a place meet for the peculiar study I am
+engrossed in; for where can we better read of the power and benevolence
+of God than among the living testimonies of both?  Beautiful--how very
+beautiful!--is this happy world; but I fear," added Aubrey, and the glow
+of his countenance died away,--"I fear that we enjoy it too much."
+
+"We hold different interpretations of our creed then," said I, "for I
+esteem enjoyment the best proof of gratitude; nor do I think we can pay
+a more acceptable duty to the Father of all Goodness than by showing
+ourselves sensible of the favours He bestows upon us."
+
+Aubrey shook his head gently, but replied not.
+
+"Yes," resumed I, after a pause,--"yes, it is indeed a glorious and fair
+world which we have for our inheritance.  Look how the sunlight sleeps
+yonder upon fields covered with golden corn; and seems, like the divine
+benevolence of which you spoke, to smile upon the luxuriance which its
+power created.  This carpet at our feet, covered with flowers that
+breathe, sweet as good deeds, to Heaven; the stream that breaks through
+that distant copse, laughing in the light of noon, and sending its voice
+through the hill and woodland, like a messenger of glad tidings; the
+green boughs over our head, vocal with a thousand songs, all
+inspirations of a joy too exquisite for silence; the very leaves, which
+seem to dance and quiver with delight,--think you, Aubrey, that these
+are so sullen as not to return thanks for the happiness they imbibe with
+being: what are those thanks but the incense of their joy?  The flowers
+send it up to heaven in fragrance; the air and the wave, in music.
+Shall the heart of man be the only part of His creation that shall
+dishonour His worship with lamentation and gloom?  When the inspired
+writers call upon us to praise our Creator, do they not say to us,--'Be
+/joyful/ in your God?'"
+
+"How can we be joyful with the Judgment-Day ever before us?" said
+Aubrey; "how can we be joyful" (and here a dark shade crossed his
+countenance, and his lip trembled with emotion) "while the deadly
+passions of this world plead and rankle at the heart?  Oh, none but they
+who have known the full blessedness of a commune with Heaven can dream
+of the whole anguish and agony of the conscience, when it feels itself
+sullied by the mire and crushed by the load of earth!" Aubrey paused,
+and his words, his tone, his look, made upon me a powerful impression.
+I was about to answer, when, interrupting me, he said, "Let us talk not
+of these matters; speak to me on more worldly topics."
+
+"I sought you," said I; "that I might do so," and I proceeded to detail
+to Aubrey as much of my private intercourse with the Abbe as I deemed
+necessary in order to warn him from too close a confidence in the wily
+ecclesiastic.  Aubrey listened to me with earnest attention: the affair
+of the letter; the gross falsehood of the priest in denying the mention
+of my name, in his epistle, evidently dismayed him.  "But," said he,
+after a long silence,--"but it is not for us, Morton,--weak, ignorant,
+inexperienced as we are,--to judge prematurely of our spiritual pastors.
+To them also is given a far greater license of conduct than to us, and
+ways enveloped in what to our eyes are mystery and shade; nay, I know
+not whether it be much less impious to question the paths of God's
+chosen than to scrutinize those of the Deity Himself."
+
+"Aubrey, Aubrey, this is childish!" said I, somewhat moved to anger.
+"Mystery is always the trick of imposture: God's chosen should be
+distinguished from their flock only by superior virtue, and not by a
+superior privilege in deceit."
+
+"But," said Aubrey, pointing to a passage in the book before him, "see
+what a preacher of the word has said!" and Aubrey recited one of the
+most dangerous maxims in priestcraft, as reverently as if he were
+quoting from the Scripture itself.  "'The nakedness of truth should
+never be too openly exposed to the eyes of the vulgar.  It was wisely
+feigned by the ancients that Truth did lie concealed in a well!'"
+
+"Yes," said I, with enthusiasm, "but that well is like the holy stream
+at Dodona, which has the gift of enlightening those who seek it, and the
+power of illumining every torch which touches the surface of its water!"
+
+Whatever answer Aubrey might have made was interrupted by my uncle, who
+appeared approaching towards us with unusual satisfaction depicted on
+his comely countenance.
+
+"Well, boys, well," said he, when he came within hearing, "a holyday for
+you!  Ods fish,--and a holier day than my old house has known since its
+former proprietor, Sir Hugo, of valorous memory, demolished the nunnery,
+of which some remains yet stand on yonder eminence.  Morton, my man of
+might, the thing is done; the court is purified; the wicked one is
+departed.  Look here, and be as happy as I am at our release;" and he
+threw me a note in Montreuil's writing:--
+
+
+TO SIR WILLIAM DEVEREUX, KT.
+
+MY HONOURED FRIEND,--In consequence of a dispute between your eldest
+nephew, Count Morton Devereux, and myself, in which he desired me to
+remember, not only that our former relationship of tutor and pupil was
+at an end, but that friendship for his person was incompatible with the
+respect due to his superior station, I can neither so far degrade the
+dignity of letters, nor, above all, so meanly debase the sanctity of my
+divine profession, as any longer to remain beneath your hospitable
+roof,--a guest not only unwelcome to, but insulted by, your relation and
+apparent heir.  Suffer me to offer you my gratitude for the favours you
+have hitherto bestowed on me, and to bid you farewell forever.
+
+     I have the honour to be,
+          With the most profound respect, etc.,
+               JULIAN MONTREUIL.
+
+
+"Well, sir, what say you?" cried my uncle, stamping his cane firmly on
+the ground, when I had finished reading the letter, and had transmitted
+it to Aubrey.
+
+"That the good Abbe has displayed his usual skill in composition.  And
+my mother?  Is she imbued with our opinion of his priestship?"
+
+"Not exactly, I fear.  However, Heaven bless her, she is too soft to say
+'nay.' But those Jesuits are so smooth-tongued to women.  'Gad, they
+threaten damnation with such an irresistible air, that they are as much
+like William the Conqueror as Edward the Confessor.  Ha! master Aubrey,
+have you become amorous of the old Jacobite, that you sigh over his
+crabbed writing, as if it were a /billet-doux/?"
+
+"There seems a great deal of feeling in what he says, Sir," said Aubrey,
+returning the letter to my uncle.
+
+"Feeling!" cried the knight; "ay, the reverend gentry always have a
+marvellously tender feeling for their own interest,--eh, Morton?"
+
+"Right, dear sir," said I, wishing to change a subject which I knew
+might hurt Aubrey; "but should we not join yon party of dames and
+damsels?  I see they are about to make a water excursion."
+
+"'Sdeath, sir, with all my heart," cried the good-natured knight; "I
+love to see the dear creatures amuse themselves; for, to tell you the
+truth, Morton," said he, sinking his voice into a knowing whisper, "the
+best thing to keep them from playing the devil is to encourage them in
+playing the fool!" and, laughing heartily at the jest he had purloined
+from one of his favourite writers, Sir William led the way to the
+water-party.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+BEING A CHAPTER OF TRIFLES.
+
+THE Abby disappeared!  It is astonishing how well everybody bore his
+departure.  My mother scarcely spoke on the subject; but along the
+irrefragable smoothness of her temperament all things glided without
+resistance to their course, or trace where they had been.  Gerald, who,
+occupied solely in rural sports or rustic loves, seldom mingled in the
+festivities of the house, was equally silent on the subject.  Aubrey
+looked grieved for a day or two: but his countenance soon settled into
+its customary and grave softness; and, in less than a week, so little
+was the Abbe spoken of or missed that you would scarcely have imagined
+Julian Montreuil had ever passed the threshold of our gate.  The
+oblivion of one buried is nothing to the oblivion of one disgraced.
+
+Meanwhile I pressed for my departure; and, at length, the day was
+finally fixed.  Ever since that conversation with Lady Hasselton which
+has been set before the reader, that lady had lingered and
+lingered--though the house was growing empty, and London, in all
+seasons, was, according to her, better than the country in any--until
+the Count Devereux, with that amiable modesty which so especially
+characterized him, began to suspect that the Lady Hasselton lingered on
+his account.  This emboldened that bashful personage to press in earnest
+for the fourth seat in the beauty's carriage, which we have seen in the
+conversation before mentioned had been previously offered to him in
+jest.  After a great affectation of horror at the proposal, the Lady
+Hasselton yielded.  She had always, she said, been dotingly fond of
+children, and it was certainly very shocking to send such a chit as the
+little Count to London by himself.
+
+My uncle was charmed with the arrangement.  The beauty was a peculiar
+favourite of his, and, in fact, he was sometimes pleased to hint that he
+had private reasons for love towards her mother's daughter.  Of the
+truth of this insinuation I am, however, more than somewhat suspicious,
+and believe it was only a little ruse of the good knight, in order to
+excuse the vent of those kindly affections with which (while the
+heartless tone of the company his youth had frequented made him ashamed
+to own it) his breast overflowed.  There was in Lady Hasselton's
+familiarity--her ease of manner--a certain good-nature mingled with her
+affectation, and a gayety of spirit, which never flagged,--something
+greatly calculated to win favour with a man of my uncle's temper.
+
+An old gentleman who filled in her family the office of "the
+/chevalier/" in a French one; namely, who told stories; not too long,
+and did not challenge you for interrupting them; who had a good air, and
+unexceptionable pedigree,--a turn for wit, literature, note-writing, and
+the management of lap-dogs; who could attend /Madame/ to auctions,
+plays, courts, and the puppet-show; who had a right to the best company,
+but would, on a signal, give up his seat to any one the pretty
+/capricieuse/ whom he served might select from the worst,--in short a
+very useful, charming personage, "vastly" liked by all, and
+"prodigiously" respected by none,--this gentleman, I say, by name Mr.
+Lovell, had attended her ladyship in her excursion to Devereux Court.
+Besides him there came also a widow lady, a distant relation, with one
+eye and a sharp tongue,--the Lady Needleham, whom the beauty carried
+about with her as a sort of /gouvernante/ or duenna.  These excellent
+persons made my /compagnons de voyage/, and filled the remaining
+complements of the coach.  To say truth, and to say nothing of my
+/tendresse/ for the Lady Hasselton, I was very anxious to escape the
+ridicule of crawling up to the town like a green beetle, in my uncle's
+verdant chariot, with the four Flanders mares trained not to exceed two
+miles an hour.  And my Lady Hasselton's /private/ raileries--for she was
+really well bred, and made no jest of my uncle's antiquities of taste,
+in his presence, at least--had considerably heightened my intuitive
+dislike to that mode of transporting myself to the metropolis.  The day
+before my departure, Gerald, for the first time, spoke of it.
+
+Glancing towards the mirror, which gave in full contrast the magnificent
+beauty of his person, and the smaller proportions and plainer features
+of my own, he said with a sneer, "Your appearance must create a
+wonderful sensation in town."
+
+"No doubt of it," said I, taking his words literally, and arraying my
+laced cravat with the air of a /petit-maitre/.
+
+"What a wit the Count has!" whispered the Duchess of Lackland, who had
+not yet given up all hope of the elder brother.
+
+"Wit!" said the Lady Hasselton; "poor child, he is a perfect simpleton!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE MOTHER AND SON.--VIRTUE SHOULD BE THE SOVEREIGN OF THE FEELINGS, NOT
+THEIR DESTROYER.
+
+I TOOK the first opportunity to escape from the good company who were so
+divided in opinion as to my mental accomplishments, and repaired to my
+mother; for whom, despite of her evenness of disposition, verging
+towards insensibility, I felt a powerful and ineffaceable affection.
+Indeed, if purity of life, rectitude of intentions, and fervour of piety
+can win love, none ever deserved it more than she.  It was a pity that,
+with such admirable qualities, she had not more diligently cultivated
+her affections.  The seed was not wanting; but it had been neglected.
+Originally intended for the veil, she had been taught, early in life,
+that much feeling was synonymous with much sin; and she had so long and
+so carefully repressed in her heart every attempt of the forbidden fruit
+to put forth a single blossom, that the soil seemed at last to have
+become incapable of bearing it.  If, in one corner of this barren but
+sacred spot, some green and tender verdure of affection did exist, it
+was, with a partial and petty reserve for my twin-brother, kept
+exclusive, and consecrated to Aubrey.  His congenial habits of pious
+silence and rigid devotion; his softness of temper; his utter freedom
+from all boyish excesses, joined to his almost angelic beauty,--a
+quality which, in no female heart, is ever without its value,--were
+exactly calculated to attract her sympathy, and work themselves into her
+love.  Gerald was also regular in his habits, attentive to devotion, and
+had, from an early period, been high in the favour of her spiritual
+director.  Gerald, too, if he had not the delicate and dream-like beauty
+of Aubrey, possessed attractions of a more masculine and decided order;
+and for Gerald, therefore, the Countess gave the little of love that she
+could spare from Aubrey.  To me she manifested the most utter
+indifference.  My difficult and fastidious temper; my sarcastic turn of
+mind; my violent and headstrong passions; my daring, reckless and, when
+roused, almost ferocious nature,--all, especially, revolted the even and
+polished and quiescent character of my maternal parent.  The little
+extravagances of my childhood seemed to her pure and inexperienced mind
+the crimes of a heart naturally distorted and evil; my jesting vein,
+which, though it never, even in the wantonness of youth, attacked the
+substances of good, seldom respected its semblances and its forms, she
+considered as the effusions of malignity; and even the bursts of love,
+kindness, and benevolence, which were by no means unfrequent in my wild
+and motley character, were so foreign to her stillness of temperament
+that they only revolted her by their violence, instead of affecting her
+by their warmth.
+
+Nor did she like me the better for the mutual understanding between my
+uncle and myself.  On the contrary, shocked by the idle and gay turn of
+the knight's conversation, the frivolities of his mind, and his
+heretical disregard for the forms of the religious sect which she so
+zealously espoused, she was utterly insensible to the points which
+redeemed and ennobled his sterling and generous character; utterly
+obtuse to his warmth of heart,--his overflowing kindness of
+disposition,--his charity,--his high honour,--his justice of principle,
+that nothing save benevolence could warp,--and the shrewd, penetrating
+sense, which, though often clouded by foibles and humorous eccentricity,
+still made the stratum of his intellectual composition.  Nevertheless,
+despite her prepossessions against us both, there was in her temper
+something so gentle, meek, and unupbraiding, that even the sense of
+injustice lost its sting, and one could not help loving the softness of
+her character, while one was most chilled by its frigidity.  Anger,
+hope, fear, the faintest breath or sign of passion, never seemed to stir
+the breezeless languor of her feelings; and quiet was so inseparable
+from her image that I have almost thought, like that people described by
+Herodotus, her very sleep could never be disturbed by dreams.
+
+Yes! how fondly, how tenderly I loved her!  What tears, secret but deep,
+bitter but unreproaching, have I retired to shed, when I caught her cold
+and unaffectionate glance!  How (unnoticed and uncared for) have I
+watched and prayed and wept without her door when a transitory sickness
+or suffering detained her within; and how, when stretched myself upon
+the feverish bed to which my early weakness of frame often condemned
+me,--how have I counted the moments to her punctilious and brief visit,
+and started as I caught her footstep, and felt my heart leap within me
+as she approached! and then, as I heard her cold tone and looked upon
+her unmoved face, how bitterly have I turned away with all that
+repressed and crushed affection which was construed into sullenness or
+disrespect!  O mighty and enduring force of early associations, that
+almost seems, in its unconquerable strength, to partake of an innate
+prepossession, that binds the son to the mother who concealed him in her
+womb and purchased life for him with the travail of death?--fountain of
+filial love, which coldness cannot freeze, nor injustice embitter, nor
+pride divert into fresh channels, nor time, and the hot suns of our
+toiling manhood, exhaust,--even at this moment, how livingly do you gush
+upon my heart, and water with your divine waves the memories that yet
+flourish amidst the sterility of years?
+
+I approached the apartments appropriated to my mother: I knocked at her
+door; one of her women admitted me.  The Countess was sitting on a
+high-backed chair, curiously adorned with tapestry.  Her feet, which
+were remarkable for their beauty, were upon a velvet cushion; three
+hand-maids stood round her, and she herself was busily employed in a
+piece of delicate embroidery, an art in which she eminently excelled.
+
+"The Count, Madam!" said the woman who had admitted me, placing a chair
+beside my mother, and then retiring to join her sister maidens.
+
+"Good day to you, my son," said the Countess, lifting her eyes for a
+moment, and then dropping them again upon her work.
+
+"I have come to seek you, dearest mother, as I know not, if, among the
+crowd of guests and amusements which surround us, I shall enjoy another
+opportunity of having a private conversation with you: will it please
+you to dismiss your women?"
+
+My mother again lifted up her eyes.  "And why, my son? surely there
+/can/ be nothing between us which requires their absence; what is your
+reason?"
+
+"I leave you to-morrow, Madam: is it strange that a son should wish to
+see his mother alone before his departure?"
+
+"By no means, Morton; but your absence will not be very long, will it?"
+
+"Forgive my importunity, dear Mother; but /will/ you dismiss your
+attendants?"
+
+"If you wish it, certainly; but I dislike feeling alone, especially in
+these large rooms; nor did I think being unattended quite consistent
+with our rank: however, I never contradict you, my son," and the
+Countess directed her women to wait in the anteroom.
+
+"Well, Morton, what is your wish?"
+
+"Only to bid you farewell, and to ask if London contains nothing which
+you will commission me to obtain for you?"
+
+The Countess again raised her eyes from her work.  "I am greatly obliged
+to you, my dear son; this is a very delicate attention on your part.  I
+am informed that stomachers are worn a thought less pointed than they
+were.  I care not, you well know, for such vanities; but respect for the
+memory of your illustrious father renders me desirous to retain a seemly
+appearance to the world, and my women shall give you written
+instructions thereon to Madame Tourville; she lives in St. James's
+Street, and is the only person to be employed in these matters.  She is
+a woman who has known misfortune, and appreciates the sorrowful and
+subdued tastes of those whom an exalted station has not preserved from
+like afflictions.  So you go to-morrow: will you get me the scissors?
+They are on the ivory table yonder.  When do you return?"
+
+"Perhaps never!" said I, abruptly.
+
+"Never, Morton; how singular--why?"
+
+"I may join the army, and be killed."
+
+"I hope not.  Dear, how cold it is: will you shut the window? pray
+forgive my troubling you, but you /would/ send away the women.  Join the
+army, you say?  It is a very dangerous profession; your poor father
+might be alive now but for having embraced it; nevertheless, in a
+righteous cause, under the Lord of Hosts, there is great glory to be
+obtained beneath its banners.  Alas, however, for its private evils!
+alas, for the orphan and the widow!  You will be sure, my dear son, to
+give the note to Madame Tourville herself?  Her assistants have not her
+knowledge of my misfortunes, nor indeed of my exact proportions; and at
+my age, and in my desolate state, I would fain be decorous in these
+things, and that reminds me of dinner.  Have you aught else to say,
+Morton?"
+
+"Yes!" said I, suppressing my emotions, "yes, Mother! do bestow on me
+one warm wish, one kind word, before we part: see,--I kneel for your
+blessing,--will you not give it me?"
+
+"Bless you, my child,--bless you! look you now; I have dropped my
+needle!"
+
+I rose hastily, bowed profoundly (my mother returned the courtesy with
+the grace peculiar to herself), and withdrew. I hurried into the great
+drawing-room, found Lady Needleham alone, rushed out in despair,
+encountered the Lady Hasselton, and coquetted with her the rest of the
+evening.  Vain hope! to forget one's real feelings by pretending those
+one never felt!
+
+The next morning, then, after suitable adieux to all (Gerald excepted)
+whom I left behind; after some tears too from my uncle, which, had it
+not been for the presence of the Lady Hasselton, I could have returned
+with interest; and after a long caress to his dog Ponto, which now, in
+parting with that dear old man, seemed to me as dog never seemed before,
+I hurried into the Beauty's carriage, bade farewell forever to the
+Rubicon of Life, and commenced my career of manhood and citizenship by
+learning, under the tuition of the prettiest coquette of her time, the
+dignified duties of a Court Gallant and a Town Beau.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEVEREUX, BY LYTTON, BOOK I. ***
+
+******** This file should be named 7624.txt or 7624.zip *********
+
+This eBook was produced by Dagny,
+               and David Widger,
+
+Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+https://gutenberg.org or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information online at:
+
+https://www.gutenberg.org/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
+when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
+Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
+used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
+they hardware or software or any other related product without
+express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
diff --git a/7624.zip b/7624.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..93501c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/7624.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f24d349
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #7624 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7624)