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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Devereux, by Bulwer-Lytton, Book II.
+#53 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: Devereux, Book II.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7625]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on February 25, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
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+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEVEREUX, BY LYTTON, BOOK II. ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Dagny,
+               and David Widger,
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE HERO IN LONDON.--PLEASURE IS OFTEN THE SHORTEST, AS IT IS THE
+EARLIEST ROAD TO WISDOM, AND WE MAY SAY OF THE WORLD WHAT
+ZEAL-OF-THE-LAND-BUSY SAYS OF THE PIG-BOOTH, "WE ESCAPE SO MUCH OF THE
+OTHER VANITIES BY OUR EARLY ENTERING."
+
+IT had, when I first went to town, just become the fashion for young men
+of fortune to keep house, and to give their bachelor establishments the
+importance hitherto reserved for the household of a Benedict.
+
+Let the reader figure to himself a suite of apartments, magnificently
+furnished, in the vicinity of the court.  An anteroom is crowded with
+divers persons, all messengers in the various negotiations of pleasure.
+There, a French valet,--that inestimable valet, Jean Desmarais,--sitting
+over a small fire, was watching the operations of a coffee-pot, and
+conversing, in a mutilated attempt at the language of our nation, though
+with the enviable fluency of his own, with the various loiterers who
+were beguiling the hours they were obliged to wait for an audience of
+the master himself, by laughing at the master's Gallic representative.
+There stood a tailor with his books of patterns just imported from
+Paris,--that modern Prometheus, who makes a man what he is!  Next to him
+a tall, gaunt fellow, in a coat covered with tarnished lace, a night-cap
+wig, and a large whip in his hands, comes to vouch for the pedigree and
+excellence of the three horses he intends to dispose of, out of pure
+love and amity for the buyer.  By the window stood a thin starveling
+poet, who, like the grammarian of Cos, might have put lead in his
+pockets to prevent being blown away, had he not, with a more paternal
+precaution, put so much in his works that he had left none to spare.
+Excellent trick of the times, when ten guineas can purchase every virtue
+under the sun, and when an author thinks to vindicate the sins of his
+book by proving the admirable qualities of the paragon to whom it is
+dedicated.*  There with an air of supercilious contempt upon his smooth
+cheeks, a page, in purple and silver, sat upon the table, swinging his
+legs to and fro, and big with all the reflected importance of a
+/billet-doux/.  There stood the pert haberdasher, with his box of
+silver-fringed gloves, and lace which Diana might have worn.  At that
+time there was indeed no enemy to female chastity like the former
+article of man-millinery: the delicate whiteness of the glove, the
+starry splendour of the fringe, were irresistible, and the fair Adorna,
+in poor Lee's tragedy of "Caesar Borgia," is far from the only lady who
+has been killed by a pair of gloves.
+
+
+* Thank Heaven, for the honour of literature, /nous avons change tout
+cela!--ED.
+
+
+Next to the haberdasher, dingy and dull of aspect, a book-hunter bent
+beneath the load of old works gathered from stall and shed, and about to
+be re-sold according to the price exacted from all literary gallants who
+affect to unite the fine gentleman with the profound scholar.  A little
+girl, whose brazen face and voluble tongue betrayed the growth of her
+intellectual faculties, leaned against the wainscot, and repeated, in
+the anteroom, the tart repartees which her mistress (the most celebrated
+actress of the day) uttered on the stage; while a stout, sturdy,
+bull-headed gentleman, in a gray surtout and a black wig, mingled with
+the various voices of the motley group the gentle phrases of
+Hockley-in-the-Hole, from which place of polite merriment he came
+charged with a message of invitation.  While such were the inmates of
+the anteroom, what picture shall we draw of the /salon/ and its
+occupant?
+
+A table was covered with books, a couple of fencing foils, a woman's
+mask, and a profusion of letters; a scarlet cloak, richly laced, hung
+over, trailing on the ground.  Upon a slab of marble lay a hat, looped
+with diamonds, a sword, and a lady's lute.  Extended upon a sofa,
+loosely robed in a dressing-gown of black velvet, his shirt collar
+unbuttoned, his stockings ungartered, his own hair (undressed and
+released for a brief interval from the false locks universally worn)
+waving from his forehead in short yet dishevelled curls, his whole
+appearance stamped with the morning negligence which usually follows
+midnight dissipation, lay a young man of about nineteen years.  His
+features were neither handsome nor ill-favoured, and his stature was
+small, slight, and somewhat insignificant, but not, perhaps, ill-formed
+either for active enterprise or for muscular effort.  Such, reader, is
+the picture of the young prodigal who occupied the apartments I have
+described, and such (though somewhat flattered by partiality) is a
+portrait of Morton Devereux, six months after his arrival in town.
+
+The door was suddenly thrown open with that unhesitating rudeness by
+which our friends think it necessary to signify the extent of their
+familiarity; and a young man of about eight-and-twenty, richly dressed,
+and of a countenance in which a dissipated /nonchalance/ and an
+aristocratic /hauteur/ seemed to struggle for mastery, abruptly entered.
+
+"What! ho, my noble royster," cried he, flinging himself upon a chair,
+"still suffering from St. John's Burgundy!  Fie, fie, upon your
+apprenticeship!--why, before I had served half your time, I could take
+my three bottles as easily as the sea took the good ship 'Revolution,'
+swallow them down with a gulp, and never show the least sign of them the
+next morning!"
+
+"I really believe you, most magnanimous Tarleton.  Providence gives to
+each of its creatures different favours,--to one wit, to the other a
+capacity for drinking.  A thousand pities that they are never united!"
+
+"So bitter, Count!--ah, what will ever cure you of sarcasm?"
+
+"A wise man by conversation, or fools by satiety."
+
+"Well, I dare say that is witty enough, but I never admire fine things
+of a morning.  I like letting my faculties live till night in a
+deshabille; let us talk easily and sillily of the affairs of the day.
+/Imprimis/, will you stroll to the New Exchange?  There is a black eye
+there that measures out ribbons, and my green ones long to flirt with
+it."
+
+"With all my heart--and in return you shall accompany me to Master
+Powell's puppet-show."
+
+"You speak as wisely as Solomon himself in the puppet-show.  I own that
+I love that sight: 'tis a pleasure to the littleness of human nature to
+see great things abased by mimicry; kings moved by bobbins, and the
+pomps of the earth personated by Punch."
+
+"But how do you like sharing the mirth of the groundlings, the filthy
+plebeians, and letting them see how petty are those distinctions which
+you value so highly, by showing them how heartily you can laugh at such
+distinctions yourself?  Allow, my superb Coriolanus, that one purchases
+pride by the loss of consistency."
+
+"Ah, Devereux, you poison my enjoyment by the mere word 'plebeian'!  Oh,
+what a beastly thing is a common person!--a shape of the trodden clay
+without any alloy; a compound of dirty clothes, bacon breaths, villanous
+smells, beggarly cowardice, and cattish ferocity.  Pah, Devereux! rub
+civet on the very thought!"
+
+"Yet they will laugh to-day at the same things you will, and
+consequently there would be a most flattering congeniality between you.
+Emotion, whether of ridicule, anger, or sorrow; whether raised at a
+puppet-show, a funeral, or a battle,--is your grandest of levellers.
+The man who would be always superior should be always apathetic."
+
+"Oracular, as usual, Count,--but, hark, the clock gives tongue.  One, by
+the Lord!--will you not dress?"
+
+And I rose and dressed.  We passed through the anteroom; my attendant
+assistants in the art of wasting money drew up in a row.
+
+"Pardon me, gentlemen," said I ("gentlemen, indeed!" cried Tarleton),
+"for keeping you so long.  Mr. Snivelship, your waistcoats are
+exquisite: favour me by conversing with my valet on the width of the
+lace for my liveries; he has my instructions.  Mr. Jockelton, your
+horses shall be tried to-morrow at one.  Ay, Mr. Rymer, I beg you a
+thousand pardons; I beseech you to forgive the ignorance of my rascals
+in suffering a gentleman of your merit to remain for a moment unattended
+to.  I have read your ode; it is splendid,--the ease of Horace with the
+fire of Pindar; your Pegasus never touches the earth, and yet in his
+wildest excesses you curb him with equal grace and facility: I object,
+sir, only to your dedication; it is too flattering."
+
+"By no means, my Lord Count, it fits you to a hair."
+
+"Pardon me," interrupted I, "and allow me to transfer the honour to Lord
+Halifax; he loves men of merit; he loves also their dedications.  I will
+mention it to him to-morrow: everything you say of me will suit him
+exactly.  You will oblige me with a copy of your poem directly it is
+printed, and suffer me to pay your bookseller for it now, and through
+your friendly mediation; adieu!"
+
+"Oh, Count, this is too generous."
+
+"A letter for me, my pretty page?  Ah! tell her ladyship I shall wait
+upon her commands at Powell's: time will move with a tortoise speed till
+I kiss her hands.  Mr. Fribbleden, your gloves would fit the giants at
+Guildhall: my valet will furnish you with my exact size; you will see to
+the legitimate breadth of the fringe.  My little beauty, you are from
+Mrs. Bracegirdle: the play /shall/ succeed;  I have taken seven boxes;
+Mr. St. John promised his influence.  Say, therefore, my Hebe, that the
+thing is certain, and let me kiss thee: thou hast dew on thy lip
+already.  Mr. Thumpen, you are a fine fellow, and deserve to be
+encouraged; I will see that the next time your head is broken it shall
+be broken fairly: but I will not patronize the bear; consider that
+peremptory.  What, Mr. Bookworm, again!  I hope you have succeeded
+better this time: the old songs had an autumn fit upon them, and had
+lost the best part of their /leaves/; and Plato had mortgaged one half
+his "Republic," to pay, I suppose, the exorbitant sum you thought proper
+to set upon the other.  As for Diogenes Laertius, and his
+philosophers--"
+
+"Pish!" interrupted Tarleton; "are you going, by your theoretical
+treatises on philosophy, to make me learn the practical part of it, and
+prate upon learning while I am supporting myself with patience?"
+
+"Pardon me!  Mr. Bookworm; you will deposit your load, and visit me
+to-morrow at an earlier hour.  And now, Tarleton, I am at your service."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+GAY SCENES AND CONVERSATIONS.--THE NEW EXCHANGE AND THE
+PUPPET-SHOW.--THE ACTOR, THE SEXTON, AND THE BEAUTY.
+
+"WELL, Tarleton," said I, looking round that mart of millinery and
+love-making, which, so celebrated in the reign of Charles II., still
+preserved the shadow of its old renown in that of Anne,--"well, here we
+are upon the classical ground so often commemorated in the comedies
+which our chaste grandmothers thronged to see.  Here we can make
+appointments, while we profess to buy gloves, and should our mistress
+tarry too long, beguile our impatience by a flirtation with her
+milliner.  Is there not a breathing air of gayety about the place?--does
+it not still smack of the Ethereges and Sedleys?"
+
+"Right," said Tarleton, leaning over a counter and amorously eying the
+pretty coquette to whom it belonged; while, with the coxcombry then in
+fashion, he sprinkled the long curls that touched his shoulders with a
+fragrant shower from a bottle of jessamine water upon the
+counter,--"right; saw you ever such an eye?  Have you snuff of the true
+scent, my beauty--foh! this is for the nostril of a Welsh
+parson--choleric and hot, my beauty,--pulverized horse-radish,--why, it
+would make a nose of the coldest constitution imaginable sneeze like a
+washed school-boy on a Saturday night.--Ah, this is better, my princess:
+there is some courtesy in this snuff; it flatters the brain like a
+poet's dedication.  Right, Devereux, right, there is something
+infectious in the atmosphere; one catches good humour as easily as if it
+were cold.  Shall we stroll on?--/my/ Clelia is on the other side of the
+Exchange.--You were speaking of the play-writers: what a pity that our
+Ethereges and Wycherleys should be so frank in their gallantry that the
+prudish public already begins to look shy on them.  They have a world of
+wit!"
+
+"Ay," said I; "and, as my good uncle would say, a world of knowledge of
+human nature, namely, of the worst part of it.  But they are worse than
+merely licentious: they are positively villanous; pregnant with the most
+redemptionless /scoundrelism/,--cheating, lying, thieving, and fraud;
+their humour debauches the whole moral system; they are like the
+Sardinian herb,--they make you laugh, it is true, but they poison you in
+the act.  But who comes here?"
+
+"Oh, honest Coll!--Ah, Cibber, how goes it with you?"
+
+The person thus addressed was a man of about the middle age, very
+grotesquely attired, and with a periwig preposterously long.  His
+countenance (which, in its features, was rather comely) was stamped with
+an odd mixture of liveliness, impudence, and a coarse yet not unjoyous
+spirit of reckless debauchery.  He approached us with a saunter, and
+saluted Tarleton with an air servile enough, in spite of an affected
+familiarity.
+
+"What think you," resumed my companion, "we were conversing upon?"
+
+"Why, indeed, Mr. Tarleton," answered Cibber, bowing very low, "unless
+it were the exquisite fashion of your waistcoat, or your success with my
+Lady Duchess, I know not what to guess."
+
+"Pooh, man," said Tarleton, haughtily, "none of your compliments;" and
+then added in a milder tone, "No, Colley, we were abusing the
+immoralities that existed on the stage until thou, by the light of thy
+virtuous example, didst undertake to reform it."
+
+"Why," rejoined Cibber, with an air of mock sanctity, "Heaven be
+praised, I have pulled out some of the weeds from our theatrical
+/parterre/--"
+
+"Hear you that, Count?  Does he not look a pretty fellow for a censor?"
+
+"Surely," said Cibber, "ever since Dicky Steele has set up for a saint,
+and assumed the methodistical twang, some hopes of conversion may be
+left even for such reprobates as myself.  Where, may I ask, will Mr.
+Tarleton drink to-night?"
+
+"Not with thee, Coll.  The Saturnalia don't happen every day.  Rid us
+now of thy company: but stop, I will do thee a pleasure; know you this
+gentleman?"
+
+"I have not that extreme honour."
+
+"Know a Count, then!  Count Devereux, demean yourself by sometimes
+acknowledging Colley Cibber, a rare fellow at a song, a bottle, and a
+message to an actress; a lively rascal enough, but without the goodness
+to be loved, or the independence to be respected."
+
+"Mr. Cibber," said I, rather hurt at Tarleton's speech, though the
+object of it seemed to hear this description with the most unruffled
+composure--"Mr. Cibber, I am happy and proud of an introduction to the
+author of the 'Careless Husband.' Here is my address; oblige me with a
+visit at your leisure."
+
+"How could you be so galling to the poor devil?" said I, when Cibber,
+with a profusion of bows and compliments, had left us to ourselves.
+
+"Ah, hang him,--a low fellow, who pins all his happiness to the skirts
+of the quality, is proud of being despised, and that which would
+excruciate the vanity of others only flatters his.  And now for my
+Clelia."
+
+After my companion had amused himself with a brief flirtation with a
+young lady who affected a most edifying demureness, we left the
+Exchange, and repaired to the puppet-show.
+
+On entering the Piazza, in which, as I am writing for the next century,
+it may be necessary to say that Punch held his court, we saw a tall,
+thin fellow, loitering under the columns, and exhibiting a countenance
+of the most ludicrous discontent.  There was an insolent arrogance about
+Tarleton's good-nature, which always led him to consult the whim of the
+moment at the expense of every other consideration, especially if the
+whim referred to a member of the /canaille/ whom my aristocratic friend
+esteemed as a base part of the exclusive and despotic property of
+gentlemen.
+
+"Egad, Devereux," said he, "do you see that fellow? he has the audacity
+to affect spleen.  Faith, I thought melancholy was the distinguishing
+patent of nobility: we will smoke him."  And advancing towards the man
+of gloom, Tarleton touched him with the end of his cane.  The man
+started and turned round.  "Pray, sirrah," said Tarleton, coldly, "pray
+who the devil are you that you presume to look discontented?"
+
+"Why, Sir," said the man, good-humouredly enough, "I have some right to
+be angry."
+
+"I doubt it, my friend," said Tarleton.  "What is your complaint? a rise
+in the price of tripe, or a drinking wife?  Those, I take it, are the
+sole misfortunes incidental to your condition."
+
+"If that be the case," said I, observing a cloud on our new friend's
+brow, "shall we heal thy sufferings?  Tell us thy complaints, and we
+will prescribe thee a silver specific; there is a sample of our skill."
+
+"Thank you humbly, gentlemen," said the man, pocketing the money, and
+clearing his countenance; "and seriously, mine is an uncommonly hard
+case.  I was, till within the last few weeks, the under-sexton of St.
+Paul's, Covent Garden, and my duty was that of ringing the bells for
+daily prayers but a man of Belial came hitherwards, set up a
+puppet-show, and, timing the hours of his exhibition with a wicked
+sagacity, made the bell I rang for church serve as a summons to
+Punch,--so, gentlemen, that whenever your humble servant began to pull
+for the Lord, his perverted congregation began to flock to the devil;
+and, instead of being an instrument for saving souls, I was made the
+innocent means of destroying them.  Oh, gentlemen, it was a shocking
+thing to tug away at the rope till the sweat ran down one, for four
+shillings a week; and to see all the time that one was thinning one's
+own congregation and emptying one's own pockets!"
+
+"It was indeed a lamentable dilemma; and what did you, Mr. Sexton?"
+
+"Do, Sir? why, I could not stifle my conscience, and I left my place.
+Ever since then, Sir, I have stationed myself in the Piazza, to warn my
+poor, deluded fellow-creatures of their error, and to assure them that
+when the bell of St. Paul's rings, it rings for prayers, and not for
+puppet-shows, and--Lord help us, there it goes at this very moment; and
+look, look, gentlemen, how the wigs and hoods are crowding to the
+motion* instead of the minister."
+
+
+* An antiquated word in use for puppet-shows.
+
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" cried Tarleton, "Mr. Powell is not the first man who has
+wrested things holy to serve a carnal purpose, and made use of church
+bells in order to ring money to the wide pouch of the church's enemies.
+Hark ye, my friend, follow my advice, and turn preacher yourself; mount
+a cart opposite to the motion, and I'll wager a trifle that the crowd
+forsake the theatrical mountebank in favour of the religious one; for
+the more sacred the thing played upon, the more certain is the game."
+
+"Body of me, gentlemen," cried the ex-sexton, "I'll follow your advice."
+
+"Do so, man, and never presume to look doleful again; leave dulness to
+your superiors."*
+
+
+* See "Spectator," No. 14, for a letter from this unfortunate
+under-sexton.
+
+
+And with this advice, and an additional compensation for his confidence,
+we left the innocent assistant of Mr. Powell, and marched into the
+puppet-show, by the sound of the very bells the perversion of which the
+good sexton had so pathetically lamented.
+
+The first person I saw at the show, and indeed the express person I came
+to see, was the Lady Hasselton.  Tarleton and myself separated for the
+present, and I repaired to the coquette.  "Angels of grace!" said I,
+approaching; "and, by the by, before I proceed another word, observe,
+Lady Hasselton, how appropriate the exclamation is to /you/!  Angels of
+/grace/! why, you have moved all your patches--one--two--three--six--
+eight--as I am a gentleman, from the left side of your cheek to the
+right!  What is the reason of so sudden an emigration?"
+
+"I have changed my politics, Count,* that is all, and have resolved to
+lose no time in proclaiming the change.  But is it true that you are
+going to be married?"
+
+
+* Whig ladies patched on one side of the cheek, Tories on the other.
+
+
+"Married! Heaven forbid! which of my enemies spread so cruel a report?"
+
+"Oh, the report is universal!" and the Lady Hasselton flirted her fan
+with the most flattering violence.
+
+"It is false, nevertheless; I cannot afford to buy a wife at present,
+for, thanks to jointures and pin-money, these things are all matters of
+commerce; and (see how closely civilized life resembles the savage!) the
+English, like the Tartar gentleman, obtains his wife only by purchase!
+But who is the bride?"
+
+"The Duke of Newcastle's rich daughter, Lady Henrietta Pelham."
+
+"What, Harley's object of ambition!*  Faith, Madam, the report is not so
+cruel as I thought for!"
+
+
+* Lord Bolingbroke tells us that it was the main end of Harley's
+administration to marry his son to this lady.  Thus is the fate of
+nations a bundle made up of a thousand little private schemes.
+
+
+"Oh, you fop!--but is it not true?"
+
+"By my honour, I fear not; my rivals are too numerous and too powerful.
+Look now, yonder!  how they already flock around the illustrious
+heiress; note those smiles and simpers.  Is it not pretty to see those
+very fine gentlemen imitating bumpkins at a fair, and grinning their
+best /for a gold ring/!  But you need not fear me, Lady Hasselton, my
+love cannot wander if it would.  In the quaint thought of Sidney,* love
+having once flown to my heart, burned its wings there, and cannot fly
+away."
+
+
+* In the "Arcadia," that museum of oddities and beauties.
+
+
+"La, you now!" said the Beauty; "I do not comprehend you exactly: your
+master of the graces does not teach you your compliments properly."
+
+"Yes, he does, but in your presence I forget them; and now," I added,
+lowering my voice into the lowest of whispers, "now that you are assured
+of my fidelity, will you not learn at last to discredit rumours and
+trust to me?"
+
+"I love you too well!" answered the Lady Hasselton in the same tone, and
+that answer gives an admirable idea of the affection of every coquette!
+love and confidence with them are qualities that have a natural
+antipathy, and can never be united.  Our /tete-a-tete/ was at an end;
+the people round us became social, and conversation general.
+
+"Betterton acts to-morrow night," cried the Lady Pratterly: "we must
+go!"
+
+"We must go," cried the Lady Hasselton.
+
+"We must go!" cried all.
+
+And so passed the time till the puppet-show was over, and my attendance
+dispensed with.
+
+It is a charming thing to be the lover of a lady of the mode!  One so
+honoured does with his hours as a miser with his guineas; namely,
+nothing but count them!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MORE LIONS.
+
+THE next night, after the theatre, Tarleton and I strolled into Wills's.
+Half-a-dozen wits were assembled.  Heavens! how they talked! actors,
+actresses, poets, statesmen, philosophers, critics, divines, were all
+pulled to pieces with the most gratifying malice imaginable.  We sat
+ourselves down, and while Tarleton amused himself with a dish of coffee
+and the "Flying Post," I listened very attentively to the conversation.
+Certainly if we would take every opportunity of getting a grain or two
+of knowledge, we should soon have a chest-full; a man earned an
+excellent subsistence by asking every one who came out of a
+tobacconist's shop for a pinch of snuff, and retailing the mixture as
+soon as he had filled his box.*
+
+
+* "Tatler."
+
+
+While I was listening to a tall lusty gentleman, who was abusing Dogget,
+the actor, a well-dressed man entered, and immediately attracted the
+general observation.  He was of a very flat, ill-favoured countenance,
+but of a quick eye, and a genteel air; there was, however, something
+constrained and artificial in his address, and he appeared to be
+endeavouring to clothe a natural good-humour with a certain primness
+which could never be made to fit it.
+
+"Ha, Steele!" cried a gentleman in an orange-coloured coat, who seemed
+by a fashionable swagger of importance desirous of giving the tone to
+the company,--"Ha, Steele, whence come you? from the chapel or the
+tavern?" and the speaker winked round the room as if he wished us to
+participate in the pleasure of a good thing.
+
+Mr. Steele drew up, seemingly a little affronted; but his good-nature
+conquering the affectation of personal sanctity, which, at the time I
+refer to, that excellent writer was pleased to assume, he contented
+himself with nodding to the speaker, and saying,--
+
+"All the world knows, Colonel Cleland, that you are a wit, and therefore
+we take your fine sayings as we take change from an honest
+tradesman,--rest perfectly satisfied with the coin we get, without
+paying any attention to it."
+
+"Zounds, Cleland, you got the worst of it there," cried a gentleman in a
+flaxen wig.  And Steele slid into a seat near my own.
+
+Tarleton, who was sufficiently well educated to pretend to the character
+of a man of letters, hereupon thought it necessary to lay aside the
+"Flying Post," and to introduce me to my literary neighbour.
+
+"Pray," said Colonel Cleland, taking snuff and swinging himself to and
+fro with an air of fashionable grace, "has any one seen the new paper?"
+
+"What!" cried the gentleman in the flaxen wig, "what! the 'Tatler's'
+successor,--the 'Spectator'?"
+
+"The same," quoth the colonel.
+
+"To be sure; who has not?" returned he of the flaxen ornament.  "People
+say Congreve writes it."
+
+"They are very much mistaken, then," cried a little square man with
+spectacles; "to my certain knowledge Swift is the author."
+
+"Pooh!" said Cleland, imperiously, "pooh! it is neither the one nor the
+other; I, gentlemen, am in the secret--but--you take me, eh?  One must
+not speak well of one's self; mum is the word."
+
+"Then," asked Steele, quietly, "we are to suppose that you, Colonel, are
+the writer?"
+
+"I never said so, Dicky; but the women will have it that I am," and the
+colonel smoothed down his cravat.
+
+"Pray, Mr. Addison, what say you?" cried the gentleman in the flaxen
+wig; "are you for Congreve, Swift, or Colonel Cleland?"  This was
+addressed to a gentleman of a grave but rather prepossessing mien; who,
+with eyes fixed upon the ground, was very quietly and to all appearance
+very inattentively solacing himself with a pipe; without lifting his
+eyes, this personage, then eminent, afterwards rendered immortal,
+replied,
+
+"Colonel Cleland must produce other witnesses to prove his claim to the
+authorship of the 'Spectator:' the women, we well know, are prejudiced
+in his favour."
+
+"That's true enough, old friend," cried the colonel, looking askant at
+his orange-coloured coat; "but faith, Addison, I wish you would set up a
+paper of the same sort, d'ye see; you're a nice judge of merit, and your
+sketches of character would do justice to your friends."
+
+"If ever I do, Colonel, I, or my coadjutors, will study at least to do
+justice to you."*
+
+
+* This seems to corroborate the suspicion entertained of the identity of
+Colonel Cleland with the Will Honeycomb of the "Spectator."
+
+
+"Prithee, Steele," cried the stranger in spectacles, "prithee, tell us
+thy thoughts on the subject: dost thou know the author of this droll
+periodical?"
+
+"I saw him this morning," replied Steele, carelessly.
+
+"Aha! and what said you to him?"
+
+"I asked him his name."
+
+"And what did he answer?" cried he of the flaxen wig, while all of us
+crowded round the speaker, with the curiosity every one felt in the
+authorship of a work then exciting the most universal and eager
+interest.
+
+"He answered me solemnly," said Steele, "in the following words,--
+
+
+  "'Graeci carent ablativo, Itali dativo, ego nominativo.'"*
+
+
+* "The Greek wants an ablative, the Italians a dative, I a nominative."
+
+
+"Famous--capital!" cried the gentleman in spectacles; and then, touching
+Colonel Cleland, added, "what does it exactly mean?"
+
+"Ignoramus!" said Cleland, disdainfully, "every /schoolboy knows
+Virgil/!"
+
+"Devereux," said Tarleton, yawning, "what a d----d delightful thing it
+is to hear so much wit: pity that the atmosphere is so fine that no
+lungs unaccustomed to it can endure it long, Let us recover ourselves by
+a walk."
+
+"Willingly," said I; and we sauntered forth into the streets.
+
+"Wills's is not what it was," said Tarleton; "'tis a pitiful ghost of
+its former self, and if they had not introduced cards, one would die of
+the vapours there."
+
+"I know nothing so insipid," said I, "as that mock literary air which it
+is so much the fashion to assume.  'Tis but a wearisome relief to
+conversation to have interludes of songs about Strephon and Sylvia,
+recited with a lisp by a gentleman with fringed gloves and a languishing
+look."
+
+"Fie on it," cried Tarleton, "let us seek for a fresher topic.  Are you
+asked to Abigail Masham's to-night, or will you come to Dame de la
+Riviere Manley's?"
+
+"Dame de la what?--in the name of long words who is she?"
+
+"Oh!  Learning made libidinous: one who reads Catullus and profits by
+it."
+
+"Bah, no, we will not leave the gentle Abigail for her.  I have promised
+to meet St. John, too, at the Mashams'."
+
+"As you like.  We shall get some wine at Abigail's, which we should
+never do at the house of her cousin of Marlborough."
+
+And, comforting himself with this belief, Tarleton peaceably accompanied
+me to that celebrated woman, who did the Tories such notable service, at
+the expense of being termed by the Whigs one great want divided into two
+parts; namely, a great want of every shilling belonging to other people,
+and a great want of every virtue that should have belonged to herself.
+As we mounted the staircase, a door to the left (a private apartment)
+was opened, and I saw the favourite dismiss, with the most flattering
+air of respect, my old preceptor, the Abbe Montreuil.  He received her
+attentions as his due, and, descending the stairs, came full upon me.
+He drew back, changed neither hue nor muscle, bowed civilly enough, and
+disappeared.  I had not much opportunity to muse over this circumstance,
+for St. John and Mr. Domville--excellent companions both--joined us; and
+the party being small, we had the unwonted felicity of talking, as well
+as bowing, to each other.  It was impossible to think of any one else
+when St. John chose to exert himself; and so even the Abbe Montreuil
+glided out of my brain as St. John's wit glided into it.  We were all of
+the same way of thinking on politics, and therefore were witty without
+being quarrelsome,--a rare thing.  The trusty Abigail told us stories of
+the good Queen, and we added /bons mots/ by way of corollary.  Wine,
+too, wine that even Tarleton approved, lit up our intellects, and we
+spent altogether an evening such as gentlemen and Tories very seldom
+have the sense to enjoy.
+
+O Apollo! I wonder whether Tories of the next century will be such
+clever, charming, well-informed fellows as we were!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+AN INTELLECTUAL ADVENTURE.
+
+A LITTLE affected by the vinous potations which had been so much an
+object of anticipation with my companion, Tarleton and I were strolling
+homeward when we perceived a remarkably tall man engaged in a contest
+with a couple of watchmen.  Watchmen were in all cases the especial and
+natural enemies of the gallants in my young days; and no sooner did we
+see the unequal contest than, drawing our swords with that true English
+valour which makes all the quarrels of other people its own, we hastened
+to the relief of the weaker party.
+
+"Gentlemen," said the elder watchman, drawing back, "this is no common
+brawl; we have been shamefully beaten by this here madman, and for no
+earthly cause."
+
+"Who ever did beat a watchman for any earthly cause, you rascal?" cried
+the accused party, swinging his walking cane over the complainant's head
+with a menacing air.
+
+"Very true," cried Tarleton, coolly.  "Seigneurs of the watch, you are
+both made and paid to be beaten; /ergo/--you have no right to complain.
+Release this worthy cavalier, and depart elsewhere to make night hideous
+with your voices."
+
+"Come, come," quoth the younger Dogberry, who perceived a reinforcement
+approaching, "move on, good people, and let us do our duty."
+
+"Which," interrupted the elder watchman, "consists in taking this
+hulking swaggerer to the watchhouse."
+
+"Thou speakest wisely, man of peace," said Tarleton; "defend thyself;"
+and without adding another word he ran the watchman through--not the
+body but the coat; avoiding with great dexterity the corporeal substance
+of the attacked party, and yet approaching it so closely as to give the
+guardian of the streets very reasonable ground for apprehension.  No
+sooner did the watchman find the hilt strike against his breast, than he
+uttered a dismal cry and fell upon the pavement as if he had been shot.
+
+"Now for thee, varlet," cried Tarleton, brandishing his rapier before
+the eyes of the other watchman, "tremble at the sword of Gideon."
+
+"O Lord, O Lord!" ejaculated the terrified comrade of the fallen man,
+dropping on his knees, "for Heaven's sake, sir, have a care."
+
+"What argument canst thou allege, thou screech-owl of the metropolis,
+that thou shouldst not share the same fate as thy brother owl?"
+
+"Oh, sir!" cried the craven night-bird (a bit of a humourist in its
+way), "because I have a nest and seven little owlets at home, and t'
+other owl is only a bachelor."
+
+"Thou art an impudent thing to jest at us," said Tarleton; "but thy wit
+has saved thee; rise."
+
+At this moment two other watchmen came up.
+
+"Gentlemen," said the tall stranger whom we had rescued, "we had better
+fly."
+
+Tarleton cast at him a contemptuous look, and placed himself in a
+posture of offence.
+
+"Hark ye," said I, "let us effect an honourable peace.  Messieurs the
+watch, be it lawful for you to carry off the slain, and for us to claim
+the prisoners."
+
+But our new foes understood not a jest, and advanced upon us with a
+ferocity which might really have terminated in a serious engagement, had
+not the tall stranger thrust his bulky form in front of the approaching
+battalion, and cried out with a loud voice, "Zounds, my good fellows,
+what's all this for?  If you take us up you will get broken heads
+to-night, and a few shillings perhaps to-morrow.  If you leave us alone,
+you will have whole heads, and a guinea between you.  Now, what say
+you?"
+
+Well spoke Phaedra against the dangers of eloquence.  The watchmen
+looked at each other.  "Why really, sir," said one, "what you say alters
+the case very much; and if Dick here is not much hurt, I don't know what
+we may say to the offer."
+
+So saying, they raised the fallen watchman, who, after three or four
+grunts, began slowly to recover himself.
+
+"Are you dead, Dick?" said the owl with seven owlets.
+
+"I think I am," answered the other, groaning.
+
+"Are you able to drink a pot of ale, Dick?" cried the tall stranger.
+
+"I think I am," reiterated the dead man, very lack-a-daisically.  And
+this answer satisfying his comrades, the articles of peace were
+subscribed to.
+
+Now, then, the tall stranger began searching his pockets with a most
+consequential air.
+
+"Gad, so!" said he at last; "not in my breeches pocket!--well, it must
+be in my waistcoat.  No.  Well, 'tis a strange thing--demme it is!
+Gentlemen, I have had the misfortune to leave my purse behind me: add to
+your other favours by lending me wherewithal to satisfy these honest
+men."
+
+And Tarleton lent him the guinea.  The watchmen now retired, and we were
+left alone with our portly ally.
+
+Placing his hand to his heart he made us half-a-dozen profound bows,
+returned us thanks for our assistance in some very courtly phrases, and
+requested us to allow him to make our acquaintance.  We exchanged cards
+and departed on our several ways.
+
+"I have met that gentleman before," said Tarleton.  "Let us see what
+name he pretends to.  'Fielding--Fielding;' ah, by the Lord, it is no
+less a person!  It is the great Fielding himself."
+
+"Is Mr. Fielding, then, as elevated in fame as in stature?"
+
+"What, is it possible that you have not yet heard of Beau Fielding, who
+bared his bosom at the theatre in order to attract the admiring
+compassion of the female part of the audience?"
+
+"What!" I cried, "the Duchess of Cleveland's Fielding?"
+
+"The same; the best-looking fellow of his day!  A sketch of his history
+is in the 'Tatler,' under the name of 'Orlando the Fair.'  He is
+terribly fallen as to fortune since the day when he drove about in a car
+like a sea-shell, with a dozen tall fellows, in the Austrian livery,
+black and yellow, running before and behind him.  You know he claims
+relationship to the house of Hapsburg.  As for the present, he writes
+poems, makes love, is still good-natured, humorous, and odd; is rather
+unhappily addicted to wine and borrowing, and rigidly keeps that oath of
+the Carthusians which never suffers them to carry any money about them."
+
+"An acquaintance more likely to yield amusement than profit."
+
+"Exactly so.  He will favour you with a visit--to-morrow, perhaps, and
+you will remember his propensities."
+
+"Ah! who ever forgets a warning that relates to his purse!"
+
+"True!" said Tarleton, sighing.  "Alas! my guinea, thou and I have
+parted company forever! /vale, vale, inquit Iolas/!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE BEAU IN HIS DEN, AND A PHILOSOPHER DISCOVERED.
+
+MR. FIELDING having twice favoured me with visits, which found me from
+home, I thought it right to pay my respects to him; accordingly one
+morning I repaired to his abode.  It was situated in a street which had
+been excessively the mode some thirty years back; and the house still
+exhibited a stately and somewhat ostentatious exterior.  I observed a
+considerable cluster of infantine ragamuffins collected round the door,
+and no sooner did the portal open to my summons than they pressed
+forward in a manner infinitely more zealous than respectful.  A servant
+in the Austrian livery, with a broad belt round his middle, officiated
+as porter.  "Look, look!" cried one of the youthful gazers, "look at the
+Beau's /keeper/!"  This imputation on his own respectability and that of
+his master, the domestic seemed by no means to relish; for, muttering
+some maledictory menace, which I at first took to be German, but which I
+afterwards found to be Irish, he banged the door in the faces of the
+intrusive impertinents, and said, in an accent which suited very ill
+with his Continental attire,--
+
+"And is it my master you're wanting, Sir?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"And you would be after seeing him immediately?"
+
+"Rightly conjectured, my sagacious friend."
+
+"Fait then, your honour, my master's in bed with a terrible fit of the
+megrims."
+
+"Then you will favour me by giving this card to your master, and
+expressing my sorrow at his indisposition."
+
+Upon this the orange-coloured lacquey, very quietly reading the address
+on the card, and spelling letter by letter in an audible mutter,
+rejoined,
+
+"C--o--u (cou) n--t (unt) Count, D--e--v.  Och, by my shoul, and it's
+Count Devereux after all I'm thinking?"
+
+"You think with equal profundity and truth."
+
+"You may well say that, your honour.  Stip in a bit: I'll tell my
+master; it is himself that will see you in a twinkling!"
+
+"But you forget that your master is ill?" said I.
+
+"Sorrow a bit for the matter o' that: my master is never ill to a
+jontleman."
+
+And with this assurance "the Beau's keeper" ushered me up a splendid
+staircase into a large, dreary, faded apartment, and left me to amuse
+myself with the curiosities within, while he went to perform a cure upon
+his master's "megrims."  The chamber, suiting with the house and the
+owner, looked like a place in the other world set apart for the
+reception of the ghosts of departed furniture.  The hangings were wan
+and colourless; the chairs and sofas were most spiritually
+unsubstantial; the mirrors reflected all things in a sepulchral
+sea-green; even a huge picture of Mr. Fielding himself, placed over the
+chimney-piece, seemed like the apparition of a portrait, so dim, watery,
+and indistinct had it been rendered by neglect and damp.  On a huge
+tomb-like table in the middle of the room, lay two pencilled profiles of
+Mr. Fielding, a pawnbroker's ticket, a pair of ruffles, a very little
+muff, an immense broadsword, a Wycherley comb, a jackboot, and an old
+plumed hat; to these were added a cracked pomatum-pot containing ink,
+and a scrap of paper, ornamented with sundry paintings of hearts and
+torches, on which were scrawled several lines in a hand so large and
+round that I could not avoid seeing the first verse, though I turned
+away my eyes as quickly as possible; that verse, to the best of my
+memory, ran thus: "Say, lovely Lesbia, when thy swain."  Upon the ground
+lay a box of patches, a periwig, and two or three well thumbed books of
+songs.  Such was the reception-room of Beau Fielding, one indifferently
+well calculated to exhibit the propensities of a man, half bully, half
+fribble; a poet, a fop, a fighter, a beauty, a walking museum of all odd
+humours, and a living shadow of a past renown.  "There are changes in
+wit as in fashion," said Sir William Temple, and he proceeds to instance
+a nobleman who was the greatest wit of the court of Charles I., and the
+greatest dullard in that of Charles II.*  But Heavens! how awful are the
+revolutions of coxcombry! what a change from Beau Fielding the Beauty,
+to Beau Fielding the Oddity!
+
+
+* The Earl of Norwich.
+
+
+After I had remained in this apartment about ten minutes, the great man
+made his appearance.  He was attired in a dressing-gown of the most
+gorgeous material and colour, but so old that it was difficult to
+conceive any period of past time which it might not have been supposed
+to have witnessed; a little velvet cap, with a tarnished gold tassel,
+surmounted his head, and his nether limbs were sheathed in a pair of
+military boots.  In person he still retained the trace of that
+extraordinary symmetry he had once possessed, and his features were yet
+handsome, though the complexion had grown coarse and florid, and the
+expression had settled into a broad, hardy, farcical mixture of
+effrontery, humour, and conceit.
+
+But how different his costume from that of old!  Where was the long wig
+with its myriad curls? the coat stiff with golden lace? the diamond
+buttons,--"the pomp, pride, and circumstance of glorious war?" the
+glorious war Beau Fielding had carried on throughout the female
+world,--finding in every saloon a Blenheim, in every play-house a
+Ramilies?  Alas! to what abyss of fate will not the love of notoriety
+bring men! to what but the lust of show do we owe the misanthropy of
+Timon, or the ruin of Beau Fielding!
+
+"By the Lord!" cried Mr. Fielding, approaching, and shaking me
+familiarly by the hand, "by the Lord, I am delighted to see thee!  As I
+am a soldier, I thought thou wert a spirit, invisible and incorporeal;
+and as long as I was in that belief I trembled for thy salvation, for I
+knew at least that thou wert not a spirit of Heaven, since thy door is
+the very reverse of the doors above, which we are assured shall be
+opened unto our knocking.  But thou art early, Count; like the ghost in
+"Hamlet," thou snuffest the morning air.  Wilt thou not keep out the
+rank atmosphere by a pint of wine and a toast?"
+
+"Many thanks to you, Mr. Fielding; but I have at least one property of a
+ghost, and don't drink after daybreak."
+
+"Nay, now, 'tis a bad rule! a villanous bad rule, fit /only for/ ghosts
+and graybeards.  We youngsters, Count, should have a more generous
+policy.  Come, now, where didst thou drink last night? has the bottle
+bequeathed thee a qualm or a headache, which preaches repentance and
+abstinence this morning?"
+
+"No, but I visit my mistress this morning; would you have me smell of
+strong potations, and seem a worshipper of the '/Glass/ of Fashion,'
+rather than of 'the Mould of Form'?  Confess, Mr. Fielding, that the
+women love not an early tippler, and that they expect sober and sweet
+kisses from a pair 'of youngsters' like us."
+
+"By the Lord," cried Mr. Fielding, stroking down his comely stomach,
+"there is a great show of reason in thy excuses, but only the show, not
+substance, my noble Count.  You know me, you know my experience with the
+women: I would not boast, as I'm a soldier; but 'tis something! nine
+hundred and fifty locks of hair have I got in my strong box, under
+padlock and key; fifty within the last week,--true, on my soul,--so that
+I may pretend to know a little of the dear creatures; well, I give thee
+my honour, Count, that they like a royster; they love a fellow who can
+carry his six bottles under a silken doublet; there's vigour and manhood
+in it; and, then, too, what a power of toasts can a six-bottle man drink
+to his mistress!  Oh, 'tis your only chivalry now,--your modern
+substitute for tilt and tournament; true, Count, as I am a soldier!"
+
+"I fear my Dulcinea differs from the herd, then; for she quarrelled with
+me for supping with St. John three nights ago, and--"
+
+"St. John," interrupted Fielding, cutting me off in the beginning of a
+witticism, "St. John, famous fellow, is he not?  By the Lord, we will
+drink to his administration, you in chocolate, I in Madeira.  O'Carroll,
+you dog,--O'Carroll--rogue--rascal--ass--dolt!"
+
+"The same, your honour," said the orange-coloured lacquey, thrusting in
+his lean visage.
+
+"Ay, the same indeed, thou anatomized son of Saint Patrick; why dost
+thou not get fat?  Thou shamest my good living, and thy belly is a
+rascally minister to thee, devouring all things for itself, without
+fattening a single member of the body corporate.  Look at /me/, you dog,
+am /I/ thin?  Go and get fat, or I will discharge thee: by the Lord I
+will! the sun shines through thee like an empty wineglass."
+
+"And is it upon your honour's lavings you would have me get fat?"
+rejoined Mr. O'Carroll, with an air of deferential inquiry.
+
+"Now, as I live, thou art the impudentest varlet!" cried Mr. Fielding,
+stamping his foot on the floor, with an angry frown.
+
+"And is it for talking of your honour's lavings? an' sure that's
+/nothing/ at all, at all," said the valet, twirling his thumbs with
+expostulating innocence.
+
+"Begone, rascal!" said Mr. Fielding, "begone; go to the Salop, and bring
+us a pint of Madeira, a toast, and a dish of chocolate."
+
+"Yes, your honour, in a twinkling," said the valet, disappearing.
+
+"A sorry fellow," said Mr. Fielding, "but honest and faithful, and loves
+me as well as a saint loves gold; 'tis his love makes him familiar."
+
+Here the door was again opened, and the sharp face of Mr. O'Carroll
+again intruded.
+
+"How now, sirrah!" exclaimed his master.
+
+Mr. O'Carroll, without answering by voice, gave a grotesque sort of
+signal between a wink and a beckon.  Mr. Fielding rose muttering an
+oath, and underwent a whisper.  "By the Lord," cried he, seemingly in a
+furious passion, "and thou hast not got the bill cashed yet, though I
+told thee twice to have it done last evening?  Have I not my debts of
+honour to discharge, and did I not give the last guinea I had about me
+for a walking cane yesterday?  Go down to the city immediately, sirrah,
+and bring me the change."
+
+The valet again whispered.
+
+"Ah," resumed Fielding, "ah--so far, you say, 'tis true; 'tis a great
+way, and perhaps the Count can't wait till you return.  Prithee (turning
+to me), prithee now, is it not vexatious,--no change about me, and my
+fool has not cashed a trifling bill I have, for a thousand or so, on
+Messrs. Child! and the cursed Salop puts not its /trust/ even in
+princes; 'tis its way; 'Gad now, you have not a guinea about you?"
+
+What could I say?  My guinea joined Tarleton's, in a visit to that
+bourne whence no /such/ traveller e'er returned.
+
+Mr. O'Carroll now vanished in earnest, the wine and the chocolate soon
+appeared.  Mr. Fielding brightened up, recited his poetry, blessed his
+good fortune, promised to call on me in a day or two; and assured me,
+with a round oath, that the next time he had the honour of seeing me, he
+would treat me with another pint of Madeira, exactly of the same sort.
+
+I remember well that it was the evening of the same day in which I had
+paid this visit to the redoubted Mr. Fielding, that, on returning from a
+drum at Lady Hasselton's, I entered my anteroom with so silent a step,
+that I did not arouse even the keen senses of Monsieur Desmarais.  He
+was seated by the fire, with his head supported by his hands, and
+intently poring over a huge folio.  I had often observed that he
+possessed a literary turn, and all the hours in which he was unemployed
+by me he was wont to occupy with books.  I felt now, as I stood still
+and contemplated his absorbed attention in the contents of the book
+before him, a strong curiosity to know the nature of his studies; and so
+little did my taste second the routine of trifles in which I had been
+lately engaged, that in looking upon the earnest features of the man on
+which the solitary light streamed calm and full; and impressed with the
+deep quiet and solitude of the chamber, together with the undisturbed
+sanctity of comfort presiding over the small, bright hearth, and
+contrasting what I saw with the brilliant scene--brilliant with gaudy,
+wearing, wearisome frivolities--which I had just quitted, a sensation of
+envy at the enjoyments of my dependant entered my breast, accompanied
+with a sentiment resembling humiliation at the nature of my own
+pursuits.  I am generally thought a proud man; but I am never proud to
+my inferiors; nor can I imagine pride where there is no competition.  I
+approached Desmarais, and said, in French,--
+
+"How is this? why did you not, like your fellows, take advantage of my
+absence to pursue your own amusements?  They must be dull indeed if they
+do not hold out to you more tempting inducements than that colossal
+offspring of the press."
+
+"Pardon me, Sir," said Desmarais, very respectfully, and closing the
+book, "pardon me, I was not aware of your return.  Will Monsieur doff
+his cloak?"
+
+"No; shut the door, wheel round that chair, and favour me with a sight
+of your book."
+
+"Monsieur will be angry, I fear," said the valet (obeying the first two
+orders, but hesitating about the third), "with my course of reading: I
+confess it is not very compatible with my station."
+
+"Ah, some long romance, the 'Clelia,' I suppose,--nay, bring it hither;
+that is to say, if it be movable by the strength of a single man."
+
+Thus urged, Desmarais modestly brought me the book.  Judge of my
+surprise when I found it was a volume of Leibnitz, a philosopher then
+very much the rage,--because one might talk of him very safely, without
+having read him.* Despite of my surprise, I could not help smiling when
+my eye turned from the book to the student.  It is impossible to
+conceive an appearance less like a philosopher's than that of Jean
+Desmarais.  His wig was of a nicety that would not have brooked the
+irregularity of a single hair; his dress was not preposterous, for I do
+not remember, among gentles or valets, a more really exquisite taste
+than that of Desmarais; but it evinced, in every particular, the arts of
+the toilet.  A perpetual smile sat upon his lips,--sometimes it deepened
+into a sneer, but that was the only change it ever experienced; an
+irresistible air of self-conceit gave piquancy to his long, marked
+features, small glittering eye, and withered cheeks, on which a delicate
+and soft bloom excited suspicion of artificial embellishment.  A very
+fit frame of body this for a valet; but I humbly opine a very unseemly
+one for a student of Leibnitz.
+
+
+* Which is possibly the reason why there are so many disciples of Kant
+at the present moment.--ED.
+
+
+"And what," said I, after a short pause, "is your opinion of this
+philosopher?  I understand that he has just written a work* above all
+praise and comprehension."
+
+
+* The "Theodicaea."
+
+
+"It is true, Monsieur, that it is above his own understanding.  He knows
+not what sly conclusions may be drawn from his premises; but I beg
+Monsieur's pardon, I shall be tedious and intrusive."
+
+"Not a whit! speak out, and at length.  So you conceive that Leibnitz
+makes ropes which /others/ will make into ladders?"
+
+"Exactly so," said Desmarais; "all his arguments go to swell the sails
+of the great philosophical truth,--'Necessity!' We are the things and
+toys of Fate, and its everlasting chain compels even the Power that
+creates as well as the things created."
+
+"Ha!" said I, who, though little versed at that time in these
+metaphysical subtleties, had heard St. John often speak of the strange
+doctrine to which Desmarais referred, "you are, then, a believer in the
+fatalism of Spinoza?"
+
+"No, Monsieur," said Desmarais, with a complacent smile, "my system is
+my own: it is composed of the thoughts of others; but my thoughts are
+the cords which bind the various sticks into a fagot."
+
+"Well," said I, smiling at the man's conceited air, "and what is your
+main dogma?"
+
+"Our utter impotence."
+
+"Pleasing!  Mean you that we have no free will?"
+
+"None."
+
+"Why, then, you take away the very existence of vice and virtue; and,
+according to you, we sin or act well, not from our own accord, but
+because we are compelled and preordained to it."
+
+Desmarais' smile withered into the grim sneer with which, as I have
+said, it was sometimes varied.
+
+"Monsieur's penetration is extreme; but shall I not prepare his nightly
+draught?"
+
+"No; answer me at length; and tell me the difference between good and
+ill, if we are compelled by Necessity to either."
+
+Desmarais hemmed, and began.  Despite of his caution, the coxcomb loved
+to hear himself talk, and he talked, therefore, to the following
+purpose:
+
+"Liberty is a thing impossible!  Can you /will/ a single action, however
+simple, independent of your organization,--independent of the
+organization of others,--independent of the order of things
+past,--independent of the order of things to come?  You cannot.  But if
+not independent, you are dependent; if dependent, where is your liberty?
+where your freedom of will?  Education disposes our characters: can you
+control your own education, begun at the hour of birth?  You cannot.
+Our character, joined to the conduct of others, disposes of our
+happiness, our sorrow, our crime, our virtue.  Can you control your
+character?  We have already seen that you cannot.  Can you control the
+conduct of others,--others perhaps whom you have never seen, but who may
+ruin you at a word; a despot, for instance, or a warrior?  You cannot.
+What remains? that if we cannot choose our characters, nor our fates, we
+cannot be accountable for either.  If you are a good man, you are a
+lucky man; but you are not to be praised for what you could not help.
+If you are a bad man, you are an unfortunate one; but you are not to be
+execrated for what you could not prevent."*
+
+
+* Whatever pretensions Monsieur Desmarais may have had to originality,
+this tissue of opinions is as old as philosophy itself.--ED.
+
+
+"Then, most wise Desmarais, if you steal this diamond loop from my hat,
+you are only an unlucky man, not a guilty one, and worthy of my
+sympathy, not anger?"
+
+"Exactly so; but you must hang me for it.  You cannot control events,
+but you can modify man.  Education, law, adversity, prosperity,
+correction, praise, modify him,--without his choice, and sometimes
+without his perception.  But once acknowledge Necessity, and evil
+passions cease; you may punish, you may destroy others, if for the
+safety and good of the commonwealth; but motives for doing so cease to
+be private: you can have no personal hatred to men for committing
+actions which they were irresistibly compelled to commit."
+
+I felt that, however I might listen to and dislike these sentiments, it
+would not do for the master to argue with the domestic, especially when
+there was a chance that he might have the worst of it.  And so I was
+suddenly seized with a fit of sleepiness, which broke off our
+conversation.  Meanwhile I inly resolved, in my own mind, to take the
+first opportunity of discharging a valet who saw no difference between
+good and evil, but that of luck; and who, by the irresistible compulsion
+of Necessity, might some day or other have the involuntary misfortune to
+cut the throat of his master!
+
+I did not, however, carry this unphilosophical resolution into effect.
+Indeed, the rogue, doubting perhaps the nature of the impression he had
+made on me, redoubled so zealously his efforts to please me in the
+science of his profession that I could not determine upon relinquishing
+such a treasure for a speculative opinion, and I was too much accustomed
+to laugh at my Sosia to believe there could be any reason to fear him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A UNIVERSAL GENIUS.--PERICLES TURNED BARBER.--NAMES OF BEAUTIES IN
+171-.--THE TOASTS OF THE KIT-CAT CLUB.
+
+As I was riding with Tarleton towards Chelsea, one day, he asked me if I
+had ever seen the celebrated Mr. Salter.  "No," said I, "but I heard
+Steele talk of him the other night at Wills's.  He is an antiquarian and
+a barber, is he not?"
+
+"Yes, a shaving virtuoso; really a comical and strange character, and
+has oddities enough to compensate one for the debasement of talking with
+a man in his rank."
+
+"Let us go to him forthwith," said I, spurring my horse into a canter.
+
+"/Quod petis hic est/," cried Tarleton, "there is his house."  And my
+companion pointed to a coffee-house.
+
+"What!" said I, "does he draw wine as well as teeth?"
+
+"To be sure: Don Saltero is a universal genius.  Let us dismount."
+
+Consigning our horses to the care of our grooms, we marched into the
+strangest-looking place I ever had the good fortune to behold.  A long
+narrow coffee-room was furnished with all manner of things that,
+belonging neither to heaven, earth, nor the water under the earth, the
+redoubted Saltero might well worship without incurring the crime of
+idolatry.  The first thing that greeted my eyes was a bull's head, with
+a most ferocious pair of vulture's wings on its neck.  While I was
+surveying this, I felt something touch my hat; I looked up and
+discovered an immense alligator swinging from the ceiling, and fixing a
+monstrous pair of glass eyes upon me.  A thing which seemed to me like
+an immense shoe, upon a nearer approach expanded itself into an Indian
+canoe; and a most hideous spectre with mummy skin, and glittering teeth,
+that made my blood run cold, was labelled, "Beautiful specimen of a
+Calmuc Tartar."
+
+While lost in wonder, I stood in the middle of the apartment, up walks a
+little man as lean as a miser, and says to me, rubbing his hands,--
+
+"Wonderful, Sir, is it not?"
+
+"Wonderful, indeed, Don!" said Tarleton; "you look like a Chinese Adam
+surrounded by a Japanese creation."
+
+"He, he, he, Sir, you have so pleasant a vein," said the little Don, in
+a sharp shrill voice.  "But it has been all done, Sir, by one man; all
+of it collected by me, simple as I stand."
+
+"Simple, indeed," quoth Tarleton; "and how gets on the fiddle?"
+
+"Bravely, Sir, bravely; shall I play you a tune?"
+
+"No, no, my good Don; another time."
+
+"Nay, Sir, nay," cried the antiquarian, "suffer me to welcome your
+arrival properly."
+
+And, forthwith disappearing, he returned in an instant with a
+marvellously ill-favoured old fiddle.  Throwing a /penseroso/ air into
+his thin cheeks, our Don then began a few preliminary thrummings, which
+set my teeth on edge, and made Tarleton put both hands to his ears.
+Three sober-looking citizens, who had just sat themselves down to pipes
+and the journal, started to their feet like so many pieces of clockwork;
+but no sooner had Don Saltero, with a /degage/ air of graceful
+melancholy, actually launched into what he was pleased to term a tune,
+than a universal irritation of nerves seized the whole company.  At the
+first overture, the three citizens swore and cursed, at the second
+division of the tune, they seized their hats, at the third they
+vanished.  As for me, I found all my limbs twitching as if they were
+dancing to St. Vitus's music; the very drawers disappeared; the
+alligator itself twirled round, as if revivified by so harsh an
+experiment on the nervous system; and I verily believe the whole museum,
+bull, wings, Indian canoe, and Calmuc Tartar, would have been set into
+motion by this new Orpheus, had not Tarleton, in a paroxysm of rage,
+seized him by the tail of the coat, and whirled him round, fiddle and
+all, with such velocity that the poor musician lost his equilibrium, and
+falling against a row of Chinese monsters, brought the whole set to the
+ground, where he lay covered by the wrecks that accompanied his
+overthrow, screaming and struggling, and grasping his fiddle, which
+every now and then, touched involuntarily by his fingers, uttered a
+dismal squeak, as if sympathizing in the disaster it had caused, until
+the drawer ran in, and, raising the unhappy antiquarian, placed him on a
+great chair.
+
+"O Lord!" groaned Don Saltero, "O Lord! my monsters--my monsters--the
+pagoda--the mandarin, and the idol where are they?--broken--ruined--
+annihilated!"
+
+"No, Sir; all safe, Sir," said the drawer, a smart, small, smug, pert
+man; "put 'em down in the bill, nevertheless, Sir.  Is it Alderman
+Atkins, Sir, or Mr. Higgins?"
+
+"Pooh," said Tarleton, "bring me some lemonade; send the pagoda to the
+bricklayer, the mandarin to the surgeon, and the idol to the Papist over
+the way!  There's a guinea to pay for their carriage.  How are you,
+Don?"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Tarleton, Mr. Tarleton! how could you be so cruel?"
+
+"The nature of things demanded it, my good Don.  Did I not call you a
+Chinese Adam? and how could you bear that name without undergoing the
+fall?"
+
+"Oh, Sir, this is no jesting matter,--broke the railing of my pagoda,
+bruised my arm, cracked my fiddle, and cut me off in the middle of that
+beautiful air!--no jesting matter."
+
+"Come, Mr. Salter," said I, "'tis very true! but cheer up.  'The gods,'
+says Seneca, 'look with pleasure on a great man falling with the
+statesmen, the temples, and the divinities of his country;' all of
+which, mandarin, pagoda, and idol, accompanied /your/ fall.  Let us have
+a bottle of your best wine, and the honour of your company to drink it."
+
+"No, Count, no," said Tarleton, haughtily; "we can drink not with the
+Don; but we'll have the wine, and he shall drink it.  Meanwhile, Don,
+tell us what possible combination of circumstances made thee fiddler,
+barber, anatomist, and virtuoso!"
+
+Don Saltero loved fiddling better than anything in the world, but next
+to fiddling he loved talking.  So being satisfied that he should be
+reimbursed for his pagoda, and fortifying himself with a glass or two of
+his own wine, he yielded to Tarleton's desire, and told us his history.
+I believe it was very entertaining to the good barber, but Tarleton and
+I saw nothing extraordinary in it; and long before it was over, we
+wished him an excellent good day, and a new race of Chinese monsters.
+
+That evening we were engaged at the Kit-Cat Club, for though I was
+opposed to the politics of its members, they admitted me on account of
+my literary pretensions.  Halifax was there, and I commended the poet to
+his protection.  We were very gay, and Halifax favoured us with three
+new toasts by himself.  O Venus! what beauties we made, and what
+characters we murdered!  Never was there so important a synod to the
+female world as the gods of the Kit-Cat Club.  Alas! I am writing for
+the children of an after age, to whom the very names of those who made
+the blood of their ancestors leap within their veins will be unknown.
+What cheek will colour at the name of Carlisle?  What hand will tremble
+as it touches the paper inscribed by that of Brudenel?  The graceful
+Godolphin, the sparkling enchantment of Harper, the divine voice of
+Claverine, the gentle and bashful Bridgewater, the damask cheek and ruby
+lips of the Hebe Manchester,--what will these be to the race for whom
+alone these pages are penned?  This history is a union of strange
+contrasts! like the tree of the Sun, described by Marco Polo, which was
+green when approached on one side, but white when perceived on the
+other: to me it is clothed in the verdure and spring of the existing
+time; to the reader it comes covered with the hoariness and wanness of
+the Past!
+
+
+
+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.
+
+ST. JOHN was now in power, and in the full flush of his many ambitious
+and restless schemes.  I saw as much of him as the high rank he held in
+the state, and the consequent business with which he was oppressed,
+would suffer me,--me, who was prevented by religion from actively
+embracing any political party, and who, therefore, though inclined to
+Toryism, associated pretty equally with all.  St. John and myself formed
+a great friendship for each other, a friendship which no after change or
+chance could efface, but which exists, strengthened and mellowed by
+time, at the very hour in which I write.
+
+One evening he sent to tell me he should be alone, if I would sup with
+him; accordingly I repaired to his house.  He was walking up and down
+the room with uneven and rapid steps, and his countenance was flushed
+with an expression of joy and triumph, very rare to the thoughtful and
+earnest calm which it usually wore.  "Congratulate me, Devereux," said
+he, seizing me eagerly by the hand, "congratulate me!"
+
+"For what?"
+
+"Ay, true: you are not yet a politician; you cannot yet tell how
+dear--how inexpressibly dear to a politician--is a momentary and petty
+victory,--but--if I were Prime Minister of this country, what would you
+say?"
+
+"That you could bear the duty better than any man living; but remember
+Harley is in the way."
+
+"Ah, there's the rub," said St. John, slowly, and the expression of his
+face again changed from triumph to thoughtfulness; "but this is a
+subject not to your taste: let us choose another."  And flinging himself
+into a chair, this singular man, who prided himself on suiting his
+conversation to every one, began conversing with me upon the lighter
+topics of the day; these we soon exhausted, and at last we settled upon
+that of love and women.
+
+"I own," said I, "that, in this respect, pleasure has disappointed as
+well as wearied me.  I have longed for some better object of worship
+than the trifler of fashion, or the yet more ignoble minion of the
+senses.  I ask a vent for enthusiasm, for devotion, for romance, for a
+thousand subtle and secret streams of unuttered and unutterable feeling.
+I often think that I bear within me the desire and the sentiment of
+poetry, though I enjoy not its faculty of expression; and that that
+desire and that sentiment, denied legitimate egress, centre and shrink
+into one absorbing passion,--which is the want of love.  Where am I to
+satisfy this want?  I look round these great circles of gayety which we
+term the world; I send forth my heart as a wanderer over their regions
+and recesses, and it returns, sated and palled and languid, to myself
+again."
+
+"You express a common want in every less worldly or more morbid nature,"
+said St. John; "a want which I myself have experienced, and if I had
+never felt it, I should never, perhaps, have turned to ambition to
+console or to engross me.  But do not flatter yourself that the want
+will ever be fulfilled.  Nature places us alone in this hospitable
+world, and no heart is cast in a similar mould to that which we bear
+within us.  We pine for sympathy; we make to ourselves a creation of
+ideal beauties, in which we expect to find it: but the creation has no
+reality; it is the mind's phantasma which the mind adores; and it is
+because the phantasma can have no actual being that the mind despairs.
+Throughout life, from the cradle to the grave, it is no real living
+thing which we demand; it is the realization of the idea we have formed
+within us, and which, as we are not gods, we can never call into
+existence.  We are enamoured of the statue ourselves have graven; but,
+unlike the statue of the Cyprian, it kindles not to our homage nor melts
+to our embraces."
+
+"I believe you," said I; "but it is hard to undeceive ourselves.  The
+heart is the most credulous of all fanatics, and its ruling passion the
+most enduring of all superstitions.  Oh! what can tear from us, to the
+last, the hope, the desire, the yearning for some bosom which, while it
+mirrors our own, parts not with the reflection!  I have read that, in
+the very hour and instant of our birth, one exactly similar to
+ourselves, in spirit and form, is born also, and that a secret and
+unintelligible sympathy preserves that likeness, even through the
+vicissitudes of fortune and circumstance, until, in the same point of
+time, the two beings are resolved once more into the elements of earth:
+confess that there is something welcome, though unfounded in the fancy,
+and that there are few of the substances of worldly honour which one
+would not renounce, to possess, in the closest and fondest of all
+relations, this shadow of ourselves!"
+
+"Alas!" said St. John, "the possession, like all earthly blessings,
+carries within it its own principle of corruption.  The deadliest foe to
+love is not change nor misfortune nor jealousy nor wrath, nor anything
+that flows from passion or emanates from fortune; the deadliest foe to
+it is custom!  With custom die away the delusions and the mysteries
+which encircle it; leaf after leaf, in the green poetry on which its
+beauty depends, droops and withers, till nothing but the bare and rude
+trunk is left.  With all passion the soul demands something unexpressed,
+some vague recess to explore or to marvel upon,--some veil upon the
+mental as well as the corporeal deity.  Custom leaves nothing to
+romance, and often but little to respect.  The whole character is bared
+before us like a plain, and the heart's eye grows wearied with the
+sameness of the survey.  And to weariness succeeds distaste, and to
+distaste one of the myriad shapes of the Proteus Aversion; so that the
+passion we would make the rarest of treasures fritters down to a very
+instance of the commonest of proverbs,--and out of familiarity cometh
+indeed contempt!"
+
+"And are we, then," said I, "forever to forego the most delicious of our
+dreams?  Are we to consider love as an entire delusion, and to reconcile
+ourselves to an eternal solitude of heart?  What, then, shall fill the
+crying and unappeasable void of our souls?  What shall become of those
+mighty sources of tenderness which, refused all channel in the rocky
+soil of the world, must have an outlet elsewhere or stagnate into
+torpor?"
+
+"Our passions," said St. John, "are restless, and will make each
+experiment in their power, though vanity be the result of all.
+Disappointed in love, they yearn towards ambition; /and the object of
+ambition, unlike that of love, never being wholly possessed, ambition is
+the more durable passion of the two/.  But sooner or later even that and
+all passions are sated at last; and when wearied of too wide a flight we
+limit our excursions, and looking round us discover the narrow bounds of
+our proper end, we grow satisfied with the loss of rapture if we can
+partake of enjoyment; and the experience which seemed at first so
+bitterly to betray us becomes our most real benefactor, and ultimately
+leads us to content.  For it is the excess and not the nature of our
+passions which is perishable.  Like the trees which grew by the tomb of
+Protesilaus, the passions flourish till they reach a certain height, but
+no sooner is that height attained than they wither away."
+
+Before I could reply, our conversation received an abrupt and complete
+interruption for the night.  The door was thrown open, and a man,
+pushing aside the servant with a rude and yet a dignified air, entered
+the room unannounced, and with the most perfect disregard to ceremony--
+
+"How d'ye do, Mr. St. John," said he,--"how d'ye do?--Pretty sort of a
+day we've had.  Lucky to find you at home,--that is to say if you will
+give me some broiled oysters and champagne for supper."
+
+"With all my heart, Doctor," said St. John, changing his manner at once
+from the pensive to an easy and somewhat brusque familiarity,--"with all
+my heart; but I am glad to hear you are a convert to champagne: you
+spent a whole evening last week in endeavouring to dissuade me from the
+sparkling sin."
+
+"Pish!  I had suffered the day before from it; so, like a true Old
+Bailey penitent, I preached up conversion to others, not from a desire
+of their welfare, but a plaguy sore feeling for my own misfortune.
+Where did you dine to-day?  At home!  Oh! the devil!  I starved on three
+courses at the Duke of Ormond's."
+
+"Aha!  Honest Matt was there?"
+
+"Yes, to my cost.  He borrowed a shilling of me for a chair.  Hang this
+weather, it costs me seven shillings a day for coach-fare, besides my
+paying the fares of all my poor brother parsons, who come over from
+Ireland to solicit my patronage for a bishopric, and end by borrowing
+half-a-crown in the meanwhile.  But Matt Prior will pay me again, I
+suppose, out of the public money?"
+
+"To be sure, if Chloe does not ruin him first."
+
+"Hang the slut: don't talk of her.  How Prior rails against his place!*
+He says the excise spoils his wit, and that the only rhymes he ever
+dreams of now-a-days are 'docket and cocket.'"
+
+
+* In the Customs.
+
+
+"Ha, ha! we must do something better for Matt,--make him a bishop or an
+ambassador.  But pardon me, Count, I have not yet made known to you the
+most courted, authoritative, impertinent, clever, independent, haughty,
+delightful, troublesome parson of the age: do homage to Dr. Swift.
+Doctor, be merciful to my particular friend, Count Devereux."
+
+Drawing himself up, with a manner which contrasted his previous one
+strongly enough, Dr. Swift saluted me with a dignity which might even be
+called polished, and which certainly showed that however he might
+prefer, as his usual demeanour, an air of negligence and semi-rudeness,
+be had profited sufficiently by his acquaintance with the great to equal
+them in the external graces, supposed to be peculiar to their order,
+whenever it suited his inclination.  In person Swift is much above the
+middle height, strongly built, and with a remarkably fine outline of
+throat and chest; his front face is certainly displeasing, though far
+from uncomely; but the clear chiselling of the nose, the curved upper
+lip, the full, round Roman chin, the hanging brow, and the resolute
+decision, stamped upon the whole expression of the large forehead, and
+the clear blue eye, make his profile one of the most striking I ever
+saw.  He honoured me, to my great surprise, with a fine speech and a
+compliment; and then, with a look, which menaced to St. John the retort
+that ensued, he added: "And I shall always be glad to think that I owe
+your acquaintance to Mr. Secretary St. John, who, if he talked less
+about operas and singers,--thought less about Alcibiades and
+Pericles,--if he never complained of the load of business not being
+suited to his temper, at the very moment he had been working, like
+Gumdragon, to get the said load upon his shoulders; and if he persuaded
+one of his sincerity being as great as his genius,--would appear to all
+time as adorned with the choicest gifts that Heaven has yet thought fit
+to bestow on the children of men.  Prithee now, Mr. Sec., when shall we
+have the oysters?  Will you be merry to-night, Count?"
+
+"Certainly; if one may find absolution for the champagne."
+
+"I'll absolve you, with a vengeance, on condition that you'll walk home
+with me, and protect the poor parson from the Mohawks.  Faith, they ran
+young Davenant's chair through with a sword, t' other night.  I hear
+they have sworn to make daylight through my Tory cassock,--all Whigs you
+know, Count Devereux, nasty, dangerous animals, how I hate them! they
+cost me five-and-sixpence a week in chairs to avoid them."
+
+"Never mind, Doctor, I'll send my servants home with you," said St.
+John.
+
+"Ay, a nice way of mending the matter--that's curing the itch by
+scratching the skin off.  I could not give your tall fellows less than a
+crown a-piece, and I could buy off the bloodiest Mohawk in the kingdom,
+if he's a Whig, for half that sum.  But, thank Heaven, the supper is
+ready."
+
+And to supper we went.  The oysters and champagne seemed to exhilarate,
+if it did not refine, the Doctor's wit.  St. John was unusually
+brilliant.  I myself caught the infection of their humour, and
+contributed my quota to the common stock of jest and repartee; and that
+evening, spent with the two most extraordinary men of the age, had in it
+more of broad and familiar mirth than any I have ever wasted in the
+company of the youngest and noisiest disciples of the bowl and its
+concomitants.  Even amidst all the coarse ore of Swift's conversation,
+the diamond perpetually broke out; his vulgarity was never that of a
+vulgar mind.  Pity that, while he condemned St. John's over affectation
+of the grace of life, he never perceived that his own affectation of
+coarseness and brutality was to the full as unworthy of the simplicity
+of intellect;* and that the aversion to cant, which was the strongest
+characteristic of his mind, led him into the very faults he despised,
+only through a more displeasing and offensive road.  That same aversion
+to cant is, by the way, the greatest and most prevalent enemy to the
+reputation of high and of strong minds; and in judging Swift's character
+in especial, we should always bear it in recollection.  This
+aversion--the very antipodes to hypocrisy--leads men not only to
+disclaim the virtues they have, but to pretend to the vices they have
+not.  Foolish trick of disguised vanity! the world, alas, readily
+believes them!  Like Justice Overdo, in the garb of poor Arthur of
+Bradley, they may deem it a virtue to have assumed the disguise; but
+they must not wonder if the sham Arthur is taken for the real, beaten as
+a vagabond, and set in the stocks as a rogue!
+
+
+* It has been said that Swift was only coarse in his later years, and,
+with a curious ignorance both of fact and of character, that Pope was
+the cause of the Dean's grossness of taste.  There is no doubt that he
+grew coarser with age; but there is also no doubt that, graceful and
+dignified as that great genius could be when he pleased, he affected at
+a period earlier than the one in which he is now introduced, to be
+coarse both in speech and manner.  I seize upon this opportunity, /mal a
+propos/ as it is, to observe that Swift's preference of Harley to St.
+John is by no means so certain as writers have been pleased generally to
+assert.  Warton has already noted a passage in one of Swift's letters to
+Bolingbroke, to which I will beg to call the reader's attention.
+
+"It is /you were/ my hero, but the other (Lord Oxford) /never was/; yet
+if he were, it was your own fault, who taught me to love him, and often
+vindicated him, in the beginning of your ministry, from my accusations.
+But I granted he had the greatest inequalities of any man alive; and his
+whole scene was fifty times more a what-d'ye-call-it than yours; for I
+declare yours was /unie/, and I wish you would so order it that the
+world may be as wise as I upon that article."
+
+I have to apologize for introducing this quotation, which I have done
+because (and I entreat the reader to remember this) I observe that Count
+Devereux always speaks of Lord Bolingbroke as he was spoken of by the
+eminent men of that day,--not as he is now rated by the judgment of
+posterity.--ED.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+LIGHTLY WON, LIGHTLY LOST.--A DIALOGUE OF EQUAL INSTRUCTION AND
+AMUSEMENT.--A VISIT TO SIR GODFREY KNELLER.
+
+ONE morning Tarleton breakfasted with me.  "I don't see the little
+page," said he, "who was always in attendance in your anteroom; what the
+deuce has become of him?"
+
+"You must ask his mistress; she has quarrelled with me, and withdrawn
+both her favour and her messenger."
+
+"What! the Lady Hasselton quarrelled with you! / Diable/!  Wherefore?"
+
+"Because I am not enough of the 'pretty fellow;' am tired of carrying
+hood and scarf, and sitting behind her chair through five long acts of a
+dull play; because I disappointed her in not searching for her at every
+drum and quadrille party; because I admired not her monkey; and because
+I broke a teapot with a toad for a cover."
+
+"And is not that enough?" cried Tarleton.  "Heavens! what a black
+bead-roll of offences; Mrs. Merton would have discarded me for one of
+them.  However, thy account has removed my surprise; I heard her praise
+thee the other day; now, as long as she loved thee, she always abused
+thee like a pickpocket."
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!--and what said she in my favour?"
+
+"Why, that you were certainly very handsome, though you were small; that
+you were certainly a great genius, though every one would not discover
+it; and that you certainly had the air of high birth, though you were
+not nearly so well dressed as Beau Tippetly.  But /entre nous/,
+Devereux, I think she hates you, and would play you a trick of
+spite--revenge is too strong a word--if she could find an opportunity."
+
+"Likely enough, Tarleton; but a coquette's lover is always on his guard;
+so she will not take me unawares."
+
+"So be it.  But tell me, Devereux, who is to be your next mistress, Mrs.
+Denton or Lady Clancathcart? the world gives them both to you."
+
+"The world is always as generous with what is worthless as the bishop in
+the fable was with his blessing.  However, I promise thee, Tarleton,
+that I will not interfere with thy claims either upon Mrs. Denton or
+Lady Clancathcart."
+
+"Nay," said Tarleton, "I will own that you are a very Scipio; but it
+must be confessed, even by you, satirist as you are, that Lady
+Clancathcart has a beautiful set of features."
+
+"A handsome face, but so vilely made.  She would make a splendid picture
+if, like the goddess Laverna, she could be painted as a head without a
+body."
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!--you have a bitter tongue, Count; but Mrs. Denton, what
+have you to say against her?"
+
+"Nothing; she has no pretensions for me to contradict.  She has a green
+eye and a sharp voice; a mincing gait and a broad foot.  What friend of
+Mrs. Denton would not, therefore, counsel her to a prudent obscurity?"
+
+"She never had but one lover in the world," said Tarleton, "who was old,
+blind, lame, and poor; she accepted him, and became Mrs. Denton."
+
+"Yes," said I, "she was like the magnet, and received her name from the
+very first person* sensible of her attraction."
+
+
+*Magnes.
+
+
+"Well, you have a shrewd way of saying sweet things," said Tarleton;
+"but I must own that you rarely or never direct it towards women
+individually.  What makes you break through your ordinary custom?"
+
+"Because I am angry with women collectively; and must pour my spleen
+through whatever channel presents itself."
+
+"Astonishing," said Tarleton; "I despise women myself.  I always did;
+but you were their most enthusiastic and chivalrous defender a month or
+two ago.  What makes thee change, my Sir Amadis?"
+
+"Disappointment! they weary, vex, disgust me; selfish, frivolous, mean,
+heartless: out on them! 'tis a disgrace to have their love!"
+
+"O /Ciel/!  What a sensation the news of thy misogyny will cause; the
+young, gay, rich Count Devereux, whose wit, vivacity, splendour of
+appearance, in equipage and dress, in the course of one season have
+thrown all the most established beaux and pretty fellows into the shade;
+to whom dedications and odes and /billet-doux/ are so much waste paper;
+who has carried off the most general envy and dislike that any man ever
+was blest with, since St. John turned politician; what! thou all of a
+sudden to become a railer against the divine sex that made thee what
+thou art!  Fly, fly, unhappy apostate, or expect the fate of Orpheus, at
+least!"
+
+"None of your raileries, Tarleton, or I shall speak to you of plebeians
+and the /canaille!"
+
+"/Sacre/! my teeth are on edge already!  Oh, the base, base /canaille/,
+how I loathe them!  Nay, Devereux, joking apart, I love you twice as
+well for your humour.  I despise the sex heartily.  Indeed, /sub rosa/
+be it spoken, there are few things that breathe that I do not despise.
+Human nature seems to me a most pitiful bundle of rags and scraps, which
+the gods threw out of Heaven, as the dust and rubbish there."
+
+"A pleasant view of thy species," said I.
+
+"By my soul it is.  Contempt is to me a luxury.  I would not lose the
+privilege of loathing for all the objects which fools ever admired.
+What does old Persius say on the subject?
+
+
+  "'Hoc ridere meum, tam nil, nulla tibi vendo Iliade.'"*
+
+
+* "This privilege of mine, to laugh,--such a nothing as it seems,--I
+would not barter to thee for an Iliad."
+
+
+"And yet, Tarleton," said I, "the littlest feeling of all is a delight
+in contemplating the littleness of other people.  Nothing is more
+contemptible than habitual contempt."
+
+"Prithee, now," answered the haughty aristocrat, "let us not talk of
+these matters so subtly: leave me my enjoyment without refining upon it.
+What is your first pursuit for the morning?"
+
+"Why, I have promised my uncle a picture of that invaluable countenance
+which Lady Hasselton finds so handsome; and I am going to give Kneller
+my last sitting."
+
+"So, so, I will accompany you; I like the vain old dog; 'tis a pleasure
+to hear him admire himself so wittily."
+
+"Come, then!" said I, taking up my hat and sword; and, entering
+Tarleton's carriage, we drove to the painter's abode.
+
+We found him employed in finishing a portrait of Lady Godolphin.
+
+"He, he!" cried he, when he beheld me approach.  "By Got, I am glad to
+see you, Count Tevereux; dis painting is tamned poor work by one's self,
+widout any one to make /des grands yeux/, and cry, 'Oh, Sir Godfrey
+Kneller, how fine dis is!'"
+
+"Very true, indeed," said I, "no great man can be expected to waste his
+talents without his proper reward of praise.  But, Heavens, Tarleton,
+did you ever see anything so wonderful? that hand, that arm, how
+exquisite!  If Apollo turned painter, and borrowed colours from the
+rainbow and models from the goddesses, he would not be fit to hold the
+pallet to Sir Godfrey Kneller."
+
+"By Got, Count Tevereux, you are von grand judge of painting," cried the
+artist, with sparkling eyes, "and I will paint you as von tamned
+handsome man!"
+
+"Nay, my Apelles, you might as well preserve some likeness."
+
+"Likeness, by Got!  I vill make you like and handsome both.  By my shoul
+you make me von Apelles, I vill make you von Alexander!"
+
+"People in general," said Tarleton, gravely, "believe that Alexander had
+a wry neck, and was a very plain fellow; but no one can know about
+Alexander like Sir Godfrey Kneller, who has studied military tactics so
+accurately, and who, if he had taken up the sword instead of the pencil,
+would have been at least an Alexander himself."
+
+"By Got, Meester Tarleton, you are as goot a judge of de talents for de
+war as Count Tevereux of de /genie/ for de painting!  Meester Tarleton,
+I vill paint your picture, and I vill make your eyes von goot inch
+bigger than dey are!"
+
+"Large or small," said I (for Tarleton, who had a haughty custom of
+contracting his orbs till they were scarce perceptible, was so much
+offended, that I thought it prudent to cut off his reply), "large or
+small, Sir Godfrey, Mr. Tarleton's eyes are capable of admiring your
+genius; why, your painting is like lightning, and one flash of your
+brush would be sufficient to restore even a blind man to sight."
+
+"It is tamned true," said Sir Godfrey, earnestly; "and it did restore
+von man to sight once!  By my shoul, it did! but sit yourself town,
+Count Tevereux, and look over your left shoulder--ah, dat is it--and
+now, praise on, Count Tevereux; de thought of my genius gives you--vat
+you call it--von animation--von fire, look you--by my shoul, it does!"
+
+And by dint of such moderate panegyric, the worthy Sir Godfrey completed
+my picture, with equal satisfaction to himself and the original.  See
+what a beautifier is flattery: a few sweet words will send the Count
+Devereux down to posterity with at least three times as much beauty as
+he could justly lay claim to.*
+
+
+* This picture represents the Count in an undress.  The face is
+decidedly, though by no means remarkably, handsome; the nose is
+aquiline,--the upper lip short and chiselled,--the eyes gray, and the
+forehead, which is by far the finest feature in the countenance, is
+peculiarly high, broad, and massive.  The mouth has but little beauty;
+it is severe, caustic, and rather displeasing, from the extreme
+compression of the lips.  The great and prevalent expression of the face
+is energy.  The eye, the brow, the turn of the head, the erect,
+penetrating aspect,--are all strikingly bold, animated, and even daring.
+And this expression makes a singular contrast to that in another
+likeness to the Count, which was taken at a much later period of life.
+The latter portrait represents him in a foreign uniform, decorated with
+orders.  The peculiar sarcasm of the month is hidden beneath a very long
+and thick mustachio, of a much darker colour than the hair (for in both
+portraits, as in Jervas's picture of Lord Bolingbroke, the hair is left
+undisguised by the odious fashion of the day).  Across one cheek there
+is a slight scar, as of a sabre cut.  The whole character of this
+portrait is widely different from that in the earlier one.  Not a trace
+of the fire, the animation, which were so striking in the physiognomy of
+the youth of twenty, is discoverable in the calm, sedate, stately, yet
+somewhat stern expression, which seems immovably spread over the paler
+hue and the more prominent features of the man of about four or five and
+thirty.  Yet, upon the whole, the face in the latter portrait is
+handsomer; and, from its air of dignity and reflection, even more
+impressive than that in the one I have first described.--ED.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER, AND A LONG LETTER; A CHAPTER, ON THE WHOLE,
+MORE IMPORTANT THAN IT SEEMS.
+
+THE scenes through which, of late, I have conducted my reader are by no
+means episodical: they illustrate far more than mere narration the
+career to which I was so honourably devoted.
+
+Dissipation,--women,--wine,--Tarleton for a friend, Lady Hasselton for a
+mistress.  Let me now throw aside the mask.
+
+To people who have naturally very intense and very acute feelings,
+nothing is so fretting, so wearing to the heart, as the commonplace
+affections, which are the properties and offspring of the world.  We
+have seen the birds which, with wings unclipt, children fasten to a
+stake.  The birds seek to fly, and are pulled back before their wings
+are well spread; till, at last, they either perpetually strain at the
+end of their short tether, exciting only ridicule by their anguish and
+their impotent impatience; or, sullen and despondent, they remain on the
+ground, without any attempt to fly, nor creep, even to the full limit
+which their fetters will allow.  Thus it is with the feelings of the
+keen, wild nature I speak of: they are either striving forever to pass
+the little circle of slavery to which they are condemned, and so move
+laughter by an excess of action and a want of adequate power; or they
+rest motionless and moody, disdaining the petty indulgence they /might/
+enjoy, till sullenness is construed into resignation, and despair seems
+the apathy of content.  Time, however, cures what it does not kill; and
+both bird and beast, if they pine not to the death at first, grow tame
+and acquiescent at last.
+
+What to me was the companionship of Tarleton, or the attachment of Lady
+Hasselton?  I had yielded to the one, and I had half eagerly, half
+scornfully, sought the other.  These, and the avocations they brought
+with them, consumed my time, and of Time murdered there is a ghost which
+we term /ennui/.  The hauntings of this spectre are the especial curse
+of the higher orders; and hence springs a certain consequence to the
+passions.  Persons in those ranks of society so exposed to /ennui/ are
+either rendered totally incapable of real love, or they love far more
+intensely than those in a lower station; for the affections in them are
+either utterly frittered away on a thousand petty objects (poor shifts
+to escape the persecuting spectre), or else, early disgusted with the
+worthlessness of these objects, the heart turns within and languishes
+for something not found in the daily routine of life.  When this is the
+case, and when the pining of the heart is once satisfied, and the object
+of love is found, there are two mighty reasons why the love should be
+most passionately cherished.  The first is, the utter indolence in which
+aristocratic life oozes away, and which allows full food for that
+meditation which can nurse by sure degrees the weakest desire into the
+strongest passion; and the second reason is, that the insipidity and
+hollowness of all patrician pursuits and pleasures render the excitement
+of love more delicious and more necessary to the "/ignavi terrarum
+domini/," than it is to those orders of society more usefully, more
+constantly, and more engrossingly engaged.
+
+Wearied and sated with the pursuit of what was worthless, my heart, at
+last, exhausted itself in pining for what was pure.  I recurred with a
+tenderness which I struggled with at first, and which in yielding to I
+blushed to acknowledge, to the memory of Isora.  And in the world,
+surrounded by all which might be supposed to cause me to forget her, my
+heart clung to her far more endearingly than it had done in the rural
+solitudes in which she had first allured it.  The truth was this; at the
+time I first loved her, other passions--passions almost equally
+powerful--shared her empire.  Ambition and pleasure--vast whirlpools of
+thought--had just opened themselves a channel in my mind, and thither
+the tides of my desires were hurried and lost.  Now those whirlpools had
+lost their power, and the channels, being dammed up, flowed back upon my
+breast.  Pleasure had disgusted me, and the only ambition I had yet
+courted and pursued had palled upon me still more.  I say, the only
+ambition, for as yet that which is of the loftier and more lasting kind
+had not afforded me a temptation; and the hope which had borne the name
+and rank of ambition had been the hope rather to glitter than to rise.
+
+These passions, not yet experienced when I lost Isora, had afforded me
+at that period a ready comfort and a sure engrossment.  And, in
+satisfying the hasty jealousies of my temper, in deeming Isora unworthy
+and Gerald my rival, I naturally aroused in my pride a dexterous orator
+as well as a firm ally.  Pride not only strengthened my passions, it
+also persuaded them by its voice; and it was not till the languid yet
+deep stillness of sated wishes and palled desires fell upon me, that the
+low accent of a love still surviving at my heart made itself heard in
+answer.
+
+I now began to take a different view of Isora's conduct.  I now began to
+doubt where I had formerly believed; and the doubt, first allied to
+fear, gradually brightened into hope.  Of Gerald's rivalry, at least of
+his identity with Barnard, and, consequently, of his power over Isora,
+there was, and there could be, no feeling short of certainty.  But of
+what nature was that power?  Had not Isora assured me that it was not
+love?  Why should I disbelieve her?  Nay, did she not love myself? had
+not her cheek blushed and her hand trembled when I addressed her?  Were
+these signs the counterfeits of love?  Were they not rather of that
+heart's dye which no skill /can/ counterfeit?  She had declared that she
+could not, that she could never, be mine; she had declared so with a
+fearful earnestness which seemed to annihilate hope; but had she not
+also, in the same meeting, confessed that I was dear to her?  Had not
+her lip given me a sweeter and a more eloquent assurance of that
+confession than words?--and could hope perish while love existed?  She
+had left me,--she had bid me farewell forever; but that was no proof of
+a want of love, or of her unworthiness.  Gerald, or Barnard, evidently
+possessed an influence over father as well as child.  Their departure
+from ------ might have been occasioned by him, and she might have
+deplored, while she could not resist it; or she might not even have
+deplored; nay, she might have desired, she might have advised it, for my
+sake as well as hers, were she thoroughly convinced that the union of
+our loves was impossible.
+
+But, then, of what nature could be this mysterious authority which
+Gerald possessed over her?  That which he possessed over the sire,
+political schemes might account for; but these, surely, could not have
+much weight for the daughter.  This, indeed, must still remain doubtful
+and unaccounted for.  One presumption, that Gerald was either no
+favoured lover or that he was unacquainted with her retreat, might be
+drawn from his continued residence at Devereux Court.  If he loved
+Isora, and knew her present abode, would he not have sought her?  Could
+he, I thought, live away from that bright face, if once allowed to
+behold it? unless, indeed (terrible thought!) there hung over it the
+dimness of guilty familiarity, and indifference had been the offspring
+of possession.  But was that delicate and virgin face, where changes
+with every moment coursed each other, harmonious to the changes of the
+mind, as shadows in a valley reflect the clouds of heaven!--was that
+face, so ingenuous, so girlishly revelant of all,--even of the
+slightest, the most transitory, emotion,--the face of one hardened in
+deceit and inured to shame?  The countenance is, it is true, but a
+faithless mirror; but what man that has studied women will not own that
+there is, at least while the down of first youth is not brushed away, in
+the eye and cheek of zoned and untainted Innocence, that which survives
+not even the fruition of a lawful love, and has no (nay, not even a
+shadowed and imperfect) likeness in the face of guilt?  Then, too, had
+any worldlier or mercenary sentiment entered her breast respecting me,
+would Isora have flown from the suit of the eldest scion of the rich
+house of Devereux? and would she, poor and destitute, the daughter of an
+alien and an exile, would she have spontaneously relinquished any hope
+of obtaining that alliance which maidens of the loftiest houses of
+England had not disdained to desire?  Thus confused and incoherent, but
+thus yearning fondly towards her image and its imagined purity, did my
+thoughts daily and hourly array themselves; and, in proportion as I
+suffered common ties to drop from me one by one, those thoughts clung
+the more tenderly to that which, though severed from the rich argosy of
+former love, was still indissolubly attached to the anchor of its hope.
+
+It was during this period of revived affection that I received the
+following letter from my uncle:--
+
+
+I thank thee for thy long letter, my dear boy; I read it over three
+times with great delight.  Ods fish, Morton, you are a sad Pickle, I
+fear, and seem to know all the ways of the town as well as your old
+uncle did some thirty years ago!  'Tis a very pretty acquaintance with
+human nature that your letters display.  You put me in mind of little
+Sid, who was just about your height, and who had just such a pretty,
+shrewd way of expressing himself in simile and point.  Ah, it is easy to
+see that you have profited by your old uncle's conversation, and that
+Farquhar and Etherege were not studied for nothing.
+
+But I have sad news for thee, my child, or rather it is sad for me to
+tell thee my tidings.  It is sad for the old birds to linger in their
+nest when the young ones take wing and leave them; but it is merry for
+the young birds to get away from the dull old tree, and frisk it in the
+sunshine,--merry for them to get mates, and have young themselves.  Now,
+do not think, Morton, that by speaking of mates and young I am going to
+tell thee thy brothers are already married; nay, there is time enough
+for those things, and I am not friendly to early weddings, nor to speak
+truly, a marvellous great admirer of that holy ceremony at any age; for
+the which there may be private reasons too long to relate to thee now.
+Moreover, I fear my young day was a wicked time,--a heinous wicked time,
+and we were wont to laugh at the wedded state, until, body of me, some
+of us found it no laughing matter.
+
+But to return, Morton,--to return to thy brothers: they have both left
+me; and the house seems to me not the good old house it did when ye were
+all about me; and, somehow or other, I look now oftener at the
+churchyard than I was wont to do.  You are all gone now,--all shot up
+and become men; and when your old uncle sees you no more, and recollects
+that all his own contemporaries are out of the world, he cannot help
+saying, as William Temple, poor fellow, once prettily enough said,
+"Methinks it seems an impertinence in me to be still alive."  You went
+first, Morton; and I missed you more than I cared to say: but you were
+always a kind boy to those you loved, and you wrote the old knight merry
+letters, that made him laugh, and think he was grown young again (faith,
+boy, that was a jolly story of the three Squires at Button's!), and once
+a week comes your packet, well filled, as if you did not think it a task
+to make me happy, which your handwriting always does; nor a shame to my
+gray hairs that I take pleasure in the same things that please thee!
+So, thou seest, my child, that I have got through thy absence pretty
+well, save that I have had no one to read thy letters to; for Gerald and
+thou are still jealous of each other,--a great sin in thee, Morton,
+which I prithee to reform.  And Aubrey, poor lad, is a little too rigid,
+considering his years, and it looks not well in the dear boy to shake
+his head at the follies of his uncle.  And as to thy mother, Morton, I
+read her one of thy letters, and she said thou wert a graceless
+reprobate to think so much of this wicked world, and to write so
+familiarly to thine aged relative.  Now, I am not a young man, Morton;
+but the word aged has a sharp sound with it when it comes from a lady's
+mouth.
+
+Well, after thou hadst been gone a month, Aubrey and Gerald, as I wrote
+thee word long since, in the last letter I wrote thee with my own hand,
+made a tour together for a little while, and that was a hard stroke on
+me.  But after a week or two Gerald returned; and I went out in my chair
+to see the dear boy shoot,--'sdeath, Morton, he handles the gun well.
+And then Aubrey returned alone: but he looked pined and moping, and shut
+himself up, and as thou dost love him so, I did not like to tell thee
+till now, when he is quite well, that he alarmed me much for him; he is
+too much addicted to his devotions, poor child, and seems to forget that
+the hope of the next world ought to make us happy in this.  Well,
+Morton, at last, two months ago, Aubrey left us again, and Gerald last
+week set off on a tour through the sister kingdom, as it is called.
+Faith, boy, if Scotland and England are sister kingdoms, 'tis a thousand
+pities for Scotland that they are not co-heiresses!
+
+I should have told thee of this news before, but I have had, as thou
+knowest, the gout so villanously in my hand that, till t' other day, I
+have not held a pen, and old Nicholls, my amanuensis, is but a poor
+scribe; and I did not love to let the dog write to thee on all our
+family affairs, especially as I have a secret to tell thee which makes
+me plaguy uneasy.  Thou must know, Morton, that after thy departure
+Gerald asked me for thy rooms; and though I did not like that any one
+else should have what belonged to thee, yet I have always had a foolish
+antipathy to say "No!" so thy brother had them, on condition to leave
+them exactly as they were, and to yield them to thee whenever thou
+shouldst return to claim them.  Well, Morton, when Gerald went on his
+tour with thy youngest brother, old Nicholls--you know 'tis a garrulous
+fellow--told me one night that his son Hugh--you remember Hugh, a thin
+youth and a tall--lingering by the beach one evening, saw a man, wrapped
+in a cloak, come out of the castle cave, unmoor one of the boats, and
+push off to the little island opposite.  Hugh swears by more than yea
+and nay that the man was Father Montreuil.  Now, Morton, this made me
+very uneasy, and I saw why thy brother Gerald wanted thy rooms, which
+communicate so snugly with the sea.  So I told Nicholls, slyly, to have
+the great iron gate at the mouth of the passage carefully locked; and
+when it was locked, I had an iron plate put over the whole lock, that
+the lean Jesuit might not creep even through the keyhole.  Thy brother
+returned, and I told him a tale of the smugglers, who have really been
+too daring of late, and insisted on the door being left as I had
+ordered; and I told him, moreover, though not as if I had suspected his
+communication with the priest, that I interdicted all further converse
+with that limb of the Church.  Thy brother heard me with an
+indifferently bad grace; but I was peremptory, and the thing was agreed
+on.
+
+Well, child, the day before Gerald last left us, I went to take leave of
+him in his own room,--to tell thee the truth, I had forgotten his
+travelling expenses; when I was on the stairs of the tower I heard--by
+the Lord I did--Montreuil's voice in the outer room, as plainly as ever
+I heard it at prayers.  Ods fish, Morton, I was an angered, and I made
+so much haste to the door that my foot slipped by the way: thy brother
+heard me fall, and came out; but I looked at him as I never looked at
+thee, Morton, and entered the room.  Lo, the priest was not there: I
+searched both chambers in vain; so I made thy brother lift up the
+trapdoor, and kindle a lamp, and I searched the room below, and the
+passage.  The priest was invisible.  Thou knowest, Morton, that there is
+only one egress in the passage, and that was locked, as I have said
+before, so where the devil--the devil indeed--could thy tutor have
+escaped?  He could not have passed me on the stairs without my seeing
+him; he could not have leaped the window without breaking his neck; he
+could not have got out of the passage without making himself a current
+of air.  Ods fish, Morton, this thing might puzzle a wiser man, than
+thine uncle.  Gerald affected to be mighty indignant at my suspicions;
+but, God forgive him, I saw he was playing a part.  A man does not write
+plays, my child, without being keen-sighted in these little intrigues;
+and, moreover, it is impossible I could have mistaken thy tutor's voice,
+which, to do it justice, is musical enough, and is the most singular
+voice I ever heard,--unless little Sid's be excepted.
+
+/A propos/ of little Sid.  I remember that in the Mall, when I was
+walking there alone, three weeks after my marriage, De Grammont and Sid
+joined me.  I was in a melancholic mood ('sdeath, Morton, marriage tames
+a man as water tames mice!)--"Aha, Sir William," cried Sedley, "thou
+hast a cloud on thee; prithee now brighten it away: see, thy wife shines
+on thee from the other end of the Mall."  "Ah, talk not to a dying man
+of his physic!" said Grammont (that Grammont was a shocking rogue,
+Morton!) "Prithee, Sir William, what is the chief characteristic of
+wedlock? is it a state of war or of peace?"  "Oh, peace to be sure!"
+cried Sedley, "and Sir William and his lady carry with them the emblem."
+"How!" cried I; for I do assure thee, Morton, I was of a different turn
+of mind.  "How!" said Sid, gravely, "why, the emblem of peace is the
+/cornucopia/, which your lady and you equitably divide: she carries the
+/copia/, and you the /cor/--."  Nay, Morton, nay, I cannot finish the
+jest; for, after all, it was a sorry thing in little Sid, whom I had
+befriended like a brother, with heart and purse, to wound me so
+cuttingly; but 'tis the way with your jesters.
+
+Ods fish, now how I have got out of my story!  Well, I did not go back
+to my room, Morton, till I had looked to the outside of the iron door,
+and seen that the plate was as firm as ever: so now you have the whole
+of the matter.  Gerald went the next day, and I fear me much lest he
+should already be caught in some Jacobite trap.  Write me thy advice on
+the subject.  Meanwhile, I have taken the precaution to have the
+trap-door removed, and the aperture strongly boarded over.
+
+But 'tis time for me to give over.  I have been four days on this
+letter, for the gout comes now to me oftener than it did, and I do not
+know when I may again write to thee with my own hand; so I resolved I
+would e'en empty my whole budget at once.  Thy mother is well and
+blooming; she is, at the present, abstractedly employed in a prodigious
+piece of tapestry which old Nicholls informs me is the wonder of all the
+women.
+
+Heaven bless thee, my child!  Take care of thyself, and drink
+moderately.  It is hurtful, at thy age, to drink above a gallon or so at
+a sitting.  Heaven bless thee again, and when the weather gets warmer,
+thou must come with thy kind looks, to make me feel at home again.  At
+present the country wears a cheerless face, and everything about us is
+harsh and frosty, except the blunt, good-for-nothing heart of thine
+uncle, and that, winter or summer, is always warm to thee.
+
+               WILLIAM DEVEREUX.
+
+P. S.  I thank thee heartily for the little spaniel of the new breed
+thou gottest me from the Duchess of Marlborough.  It has the prettiest
+red and white, and the blackest eyes possible.  But poor Ponto is as
+jealous as a wife three years married, and I cannot bear the old hound
+to be vexed, so I shall transfer the little creature, its rival, to thy
+mother.
+
+
+This letter, tolerably characteristic of the blended simplicity,
+penetration, and overflowing kindness of the writer, occasioned me much
+anxious thought.  There was no doubt in my mind but that Gerald and
+Montreuil were engaged in some intrigue for the exiled family.  The
+disguised name which the former assumed, the state reasons which
+D'Alvarez confessed that Barnard, or rather Gerald, had for concealment,
+and which proved, at least, that some state plot in which Gerald was
+engaged was known to the Spaniard, joined to those expressions of
+Montreuil, which did all but own a design for the restoration of the
+deposed line, and the power which I knew he possessed over Gerald, whose
+mind, at once bold and facile, would love the adventure of the intrigue,
+and yield to Montreuil's suggestions on its nature,--these combined
+circumstances left me in no doubt upon a subject deeply interesting to
+the honour of our house, and the very life of one of its members.
+Nothing, however, for me to do, calculated to prevent or impede the
+designs of Montreuil and the danger of Gerald, occurred to me.  Eager
+alike in my hatred and my love, I said, inly, "What matters it whether
+one whom the ties of blood never softened towards me, with whom, from my
+childhood upwards, I have wrestled as with an enemy, what matters it
+whether he win fame or death in the perilous game he has engaged in?"
+And turning from this most generous and most brotherly view of the
+subject, I began only to think whether the search or the society of
+Isora also influenced Gerald in his absence from home.  After a
+fruitless and inconclusive meditation on that head, my thoughts took a
+less selfish turn, and dwelt with all the softness of pity, and the
+anxiety of love, upon the morbid temperament and ascetic devotions of
+Aubrey.  What, for one already so abstracted from the enjoyments of
+earth, so darkened by superstitious misconceptions of the true nature of
+God and the true objects of His creatures,--what could be anticipated
+but wasted powers and a perverted life?  Alas! when will men perceive
+the difference between religion and priestcraft?  When will they
+perceive that reason, so far from extinguishing religion by a more gaudy
+light, sheds on it all its lustre?  It is fabled that the first
+legislator of the Peruvians received from the Deity a golden rod, with
+which in his wanderings he was to strike the earth, until in some
+destined spot the earth entirely absorbed it, and there--and there
+alone--was he to erect a temple to the Divinity.  What is this fable but
+the cloak of an inestimable moral?  Our reason is the rod of gold; the
+vast world of truth gives the soil, which it is perpetually to sound;
+and only where without resistance the soil receives the rod which guided
+and supported us will our altar be sacred and our worship be accepted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+BEING A SHORT CHAPTER, CONTAINING A MOST IMPORTANT EVENT.
+
+SIR WILLIAM'S letter was still fresh in my mind, when, for want of some
+less noble quarter wherein to bestow my tediousness, I repaired to St.
+John.  As I crossed the hall to his apartment, two men, just dismissed
+from his presence, passed me rapidly; one was unknown to me, but there
+was no mistaking the other,--it was Montreuil.  I was greatly startled;
+the priest, not appearing to notice me, and conversing in a whispered
+yet seemingly vehement tone with his companion, hurried on and vanished
+through the street door.  I entered St. John's room: he was alone, and
+received me with his usual gayety.
+
+"Pardon me, Mr. Secretary," said I; "but if not a question of state, do
+inform me what you know respecting the taller one of those two gentlemen
+who have just quitted you."
+
+"It is a question of state, my dear Devereux, so my answer must be
+brief,--very little."
+
+"You know who he is?"
+
+"Yes, a Jesuit, and a marvellously shrewd one: the Abbe Montreuil."
+
+"He was my tutor."
+
+"Ah, so I have heard."
+
+"And your acquaintance with him is positively and /bona fide/ of a state
+nature?"
+
+"Positively and /bona fide/."
+
+"I could tell you something of him; he is certainly in the service of
+the Court at St. Germains, and a terrible plotter on this side the
+Channel."
+
+"Possibly; but I wish to receive no information respecting him."
+
+One great virtue of business did St. John possess, and I have never
+known any statesman who possessed it so eminently: it was the discreet
+distinction between friends of the statesman and friends of the man.
+Much and intimately as I knew St. John, I could never glean from him a
+single secret of a state nature, until, indeed, at a later period, I
+leagued myself to a portion of his public schemes.  Accordingly I found
+him, at the present moment, perfectly impregnable to my inquiries; and
+it was not till I knew Montreuil's companion was that celebrated
+intriguant, the Abbe Gaultier, that I ascertained the exact nature of
+the priest's business with St. John, and the exact motive of the
+civilities he had received from Abigail Masham.* Being at last forced,
+despairingly, to give over the attempt on his discretion, I suffered St.
+John to turn the conversation upon other topics, and as these were not
+much to the existent humour of my mind, I soon rose to depart.
+
+
+* Namely, that Count Devereux ascertained the priest's communications
+and overtures from the Chevalier.  The precise extent of Bolingbroke's
+secret negotiations with the exiled Prince is still one of the darkest
+portions of the history of that time.  That negotiations /were/ carried
+on, both by Harley and by St. John, very largely, and very closely, I
+need not say that there is no doubt.
+
+
+"Stay, Count," said St. John; "shall you ride to-day?"
+
+"If you will bear me company."
+
+"/Volontiers/,--to say the truth, I was about to ask you to canter your
+bay horse with me first to Spring Gardens,* where I have a promise to
+make to the director; and, secondly, on a mission of charity to a poor
+foreigner of rank and birth, who, in his profound ignorance of this
+country, thought it right to enter into a plot with some wise heads, and
+to reveal it to some foolish tongues, who brought it to us with as much
+clatter as if it were a second gunpowder project.  I easily brought him
+off that scrape, and I am now going to give him a caution for the
+future.  Poor gentleman, I hear that he is grievously distressed in
+pecuniary matters, and I always had a kindness for exiles.  Who knows
+but that a state of exile may be our own fate! and this alien is sprung
+from a race as haughty as that of St. John or of Devereux.  The /res
+angusta domi/ must gall him sorely!"
+
+
+* Vauxhall.
+
+"True," said I, slowly.  "What may be the name of the foreigner?"
+
+"Why--complain not hereafter that I do not trust you in state matters--I
+will indulge--D'Alvarez--Don Diego,--a hidalgo of the best blood of
+Andalusia; and not unworthy of it, I fancy, in the virtues of fighting,
+though he may be in those of council.  But--Heavens!  Devereux--you seem
+ill!"
+
+"No, no!  Have you ever seen this man?"
+
+"Never."
+
+At this word a thrill of joy shot across me, for I knew St. John's fame
+for gallantry, and I was suspicious of the motives of his visit.
+
+"St. John, I know this Spaniard; I know him well, and intimately.  Could
+you not commission me to do your errand, and deliver your caution?
+Relief from me he might accept; from you, as a stranger, pride might
+forbid it; and you would really confer on me a personal and essential
+kindness, if you would give me so fair an opportunity to confer kindness
+upon him."
+
+"Very well, I am delighted to oblige you in any way.  Take his
+direction; you see his abode is in a very pitiful suburb.  Tell him from
+me that he is quite safe at present; but tell him also to avoid,
+henceforth, all imprudence, all connection with priests, plotters, /et
+tous ces gens-la, as he values his personal safety, or at least his
+continuance in this most hospitable country.  It is not from every wood
+that we make a Mercury, nor from every brain that we can carve a
+Mercury's genius of intrigue."
+
+"Nobody ought to be better skilled in the materials requisite for such
+productions than Mr. Secretary St. John!" said I; "and now, adieu."
+
+"Adieu, if you will not ride with me.  We meet at Sir William Wyndham's
+to-morrow."
+
+Masking my agitation till I was alone, I rejoiced when I found myself in
+the open streets.  I summoned a hackney-coach, and drove as rapidly as
+the vehicle would permit to the petty and obscure suburb to which St.
+John had directed me.  The coach stopped at the door of a very humble
+but not absolutely wretched abode.  I knocked at the door.  A woman
+opened it, and, in answer to my inquiries, told me that the poor foreign
+gentleman was very ill,--very ill indeed,--had suffered a paralytic
+stroke,--not expected to live.  His daughter was with him now,--would
+see no one,--even Mr. Barnard had been denied admission.
+
+At that name my feelings, shocked and stunned at first by the unexpected
+intelligence of the poor Spaniard's danger, felt a sudden and fierce
+revulsion.  I combated it.  "This is no time," I thought, "for any
+jealous, for any selfish, emotion.  If I can serve her, if I can relieve
+her father, let me be contented."--"She will see me," I said aloud, and
+I slipped some money in the woman's hand.  "I am an old friend of the
+family, and I shall not be an unwelcome intruder on the sickroom of the
+sufferer."
+
+"Intruder, sir,--bless you, the poor gentleman is quite speechless and
+insensible."
+
+At hearing this I could refrain no longer.  Isora's disconsolate,
+solitary, destitute condition broke irresistibly upon me, and all
+scruple of more delicate and formal nature vanished at once.  I ascended
+the stairs, followed by the old woman--she stopped me by the threshold
+of a room on the second floor, and whispered "/There/!"  I paused an
+instant,--collected breath and courage, and entered.  The room was
+partially darkened.  The curtains were drawn closely around the bed.  By
+a table, on which stood two or three phials of medicine, I beheld Isora,
+listening with an eager, a /most/ eager and intent face to a man whose
+garb betrayed his healing profession, and who, laying a finger on the
+outstretched palm of his other hand, appeared giving his precise
+instructions, and uttering that oracular breath which--mere human words
+to him--was a message of fate itself,--a fiat on which hung all that
+makes life life to his trembling and devout listener.  Monarchs of
+earth, ye have not so supreme a power over woe and happiness as one
+village leech!  As he turned to leave her, she drew from a most slender
+purse a few petty coins, and I saw that she muttered some words
+indicative of the shame of poverty, as she tremblingly tended them to
+the outstretched palm.  Twice did that palm close and open on the paltry
+sum; and the third time the native instinct of the heart overcame the
+later impulse of the profession.  The limb of Galen drew back, and
+shaking with a gentle oscillation his capitalian honours, he laid the
+money softly on the table, and buttoning up the pouch of his nether
+garment, as if to resist temptation, he pressed the poor hand still
+extended towards him, and bowing over it with a kind respect for which I
+did long to approach and kiss his most withered and undainty cheek, he
+turned quickly round, and almost fell against me in the abstracted hurry
+of his exit.
+
+"Hush!" said I, softly.  "What hope of your patient?"
+
+The leech glanced at me meaningly, and I whispered to him to wait for me
+below.  Isora had not yet seen me.  It is a notable distinction in the
+feelings, that all but the solitary one of grief sharpen into exquisite
+edge the keenness of the senses, but grief blunts them to a most dull
+obtuseness.  I hesitated now to come forward; and so I stood, hat in
+hand, by the door, and not knowing that the tears streamed down my
+cheeks as I fixed my gaze upon Isora.  She too stood still, just where
+the leech had left her, with her eyes fixed upon the ground, and her
+head drooping.  The right hand, which the man had pressed, had sunk
+slowly and heavily by her side, with the small snowy fingers half closed
+over the palm.  There is no describing the despondency which the
+listless position of that hand spoke, and the left hand lay with a like
+indolence of sorrow on the table, with one finger outstretched and
+pointing towards the phials, just as it bad, some moments before,
+seconded the injunctions of the prim physician.  Well, for my part, if I
+were a painter I would come now and then to a sick chamber for a study.
+
+At last Isora, with a very quiet gesture of self-recovery, moved towards
+the bed, and the next moment I was by her side.  If my life depended on
+it, I could not write one, no, not /one/ syllable more of this scene.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CONTAINING MORE THAN ANY OTHER CHAPTER IN THE SECOND BOOK OF THIS
+HISTORY.
+
+MY first proposal was to remove the patient, with all due care and
+gentleness, to a better lodging, and a district more convenient for the
+visits of the most eminent physicians.  When I expressed this wish to
+Isora, she looked at me long and wistfully, and then burst into tears.
+"/You/ will not deceive us," said she, "and I accept your kindness at
+once,--from /him/ I rejected the same offer."
+
+"Him?--of whom speak you?--this Barnard, or rather--but I know him!"  A
+startling expression passed over Isora's speaking face.
+
+"Know him!" she cried, interrupting me, "you do not,--you cannot!"
+
+"Take courage, dearest Isora,--if I may so dare to call you,--take
+courage: it is fearful to have a rival in that quarter; but I am
+prepared for it.  This Barnard, tell me again, do you love him?"
+
+"Love--O God, no!"
+
+"What then? do you still fear him?--fear him, too, protected by the
+unsleeping eye and the vigilant hand of a love like mine?"
+
+"Yes!" she said falteringly, "I fear for /you/!"
+
+"Me!" I cried, laughing scornfully, "me! nay, dearest, there breathes
+not that man whom you need fear on /my/ account.  But, answer me; is
+not--"
+
+"For Heaven's sake, for mercy's sake!" cried Isora, eagerly, "do not
+question me; I may not tell you who, or what this man is; I am bound, by
+a most solemn oath, never to divulge that secret."
+
+"I care not," said I, calmly, "I want no confirmation of my knowledge:
+this masked rival is my own brother!"
+
+I fixed my eyes full on Isora while I said this, and she quailed beneath
+my gaze: her cheek, her lips, were utterly without colour, and an
+expression of sickening and keen anguish was graven upon her face.  She
+made no answer.
+
+"Yes!" resumed I, bitterly, "it is my brother,--be it so,--I am
+prepared; but if you can, Isora, say one word to deny it."
+
+Isora's tongue seemed literally to cleave to her mouth; at last with a
+violent effort, she muttered, "I have told you, Morton, that I am bound
+by oath not to divulge this secret; nor may I breathe a single syllable
+calculated to do so,--if I deny one name, you may question me on
+more,--and, therefore, to deny one is a breach of my oath.  But,
+beware!" she added vehemently, "oh! beware how your suspicions--mere
+vague, baseless suspicions--criminate a brother; and, above all,
+whomsoever you believe to be the real being under this disguised name,
+as you value your life, and therefore mine,--breathe not to him a
+syllable of your belief."
+
+I was so struck with the energy with which this was said, that, after a
+short pause, I rejoined, in an altered tone,--
+
+"I cannot believe that I have aught against life to fear from a
+brother's hand; but I will promise you to guard against latent danger.
+But is your oath so peremptory that you cannot deny even one name?--if
+not, and you /can/ deny this, I swear to you that I will never question
+you upon another."
+
+Again a fierce convulsion wrung the lip and distorted the perfect
+features of Isora.  She remained silent for some moments, and then
+murmured, "My oath forbids me even that single answer: tempt me no more;
+now, and forever, I am mute upon this subject."
+
+Perhaps some slight and momentary anger, or doubt, or suspicion,
+betrayed itself upon my countenance; for Isora, after looking upon me
+long and mournfully, said, in a quiet but melancholy tone, "I see your
+thoughts, and I do not reproach you for them--it is natural that you
+should think ill of one whom this mystery surrounds,--one too placed
+under such circumstances of humiliation and distrust.  I have lived long
+in your country: I have seen, for the last few months, much of its
+inhabitants; I have studied too the works which profess to unfold its
+national and peculiar character: I know that you have a distrust of the
+people of other climates; I know that you are cautious and full of
+suspicious vigilance, even in your commerce with each other; I know, too
+[and Isora's heart swelled visibly as she spoke], that poverty itself,
+in the eyes of your commercial countrymen, is a crime, and that they
+rarely feel confidence or place faith in those who are unhappy;--why,
+Count Devereux, why should I require more of you than of the rest of
+your nation?  Why should you think better of the penniless and
+friendless girl, the degraded exile, the victim of doubt,--which is so
+often the disguise of guilt,--than any other, any one even among my own
+people, would think of one so mercilessly deprived of all the decent and
+appropriate barriers by which a maiden should be surrounded?  No--no:
+leave me as you found me; leave my poor father where you see him; any
+place will do for us to die in."
+
+"Isora!" I said, clasping her in my arms, "you do not know me yet: had I
+found you in prosperity, and in the world's honour; had I wooed you in
+your father's halls, and girt around with the friends and kinsmen of
+your race,--I might have pressed for more than you will now tell me; I
+might have indulged suspicion where I perceived mystery, and I might not
+have loved as I love you now!  Now, Isora, in misfortune, in
+destitution, I place without reserve my whole heart--its trust, its
+zeal, its devotion--in your keeping; come evil or good, storm or
+sunshine, I am yours, wholly and forever.  Reject me if you will, I will
+return to you again; and never, never--save from my own eyes or your own
+lips--will I receive a single evidence detracting from your purity, or,
+Isora,--mine own, own Isora,--may I not add also--from your love?"
+
+"Too, too generous!" murmured Isora, struggling passionately with her
+tears, "may Heaven forsake me if ever I am ungrateful to thee; and
+believe--believe, that if love more fond, more true, more devoted than
+woman ever felt before can repay you, you shall be repaid!"
+
+Why, at that moment, did my heart leap so joyously within me?--why did I
+say inly,--"The treasure I have so long yearned for is found at last: we
+have met, and through the waste of years, we will work together, and
+never part again"?  Why, at that moment of bliss, did I not rather feel
+a foretaste of the coming woe?  Oh, blind and capricious Fate, that
+gives us a presentiment at one while and withholds it at an other!
+Knowledge, and Prudence, and calculating Foresight, what are
+ye?--warnings unto others, not ourselves.  Reason is a lamp which
+sheddeth afar a glorious and general light, but leaveth all that is
+around it in darkness and in gloom.  We foresee and foretell the destiny
+of others: we march credulous and benighted to our own; and like
+Laocoon, from the very altars by which we stand as the soothsayer and
+the priest, creep forth, unsuspected and undreamt of, the serpents which
+are fated to destroy us!
+
+That very day, then, Alvarez was removed to a lodging more worthy of his
+birth, and more calculated to afford hope of his recovery.  He bore the
+removal without any evident signs of fatigue; but his dreadful malady
+had taken away both speech and sense, and he was already more than half
+the property of the grave.  I sent, however, for the best medical advice
+which London could afford.  They met, prescribed, and left the patient
+just as they found him.  I know not, in the progress of science, what
+physicians may be to posterity, but in my time they are false witnesses
+subpoenaed against death, whose testimony always tells less in favour of
+the plaintiff than the defendant.
+
+Before we left the poor Spaniard's former lodging, and when I was on the
+point of giving some instructions to the landlady respecting the place
+to which the few articles of property belonging to Don Diego and Isora
+were to be moved, Isora made me a sign to be silent, which I obeyed.
+"Pardon me," said she afterwards; "but I confess that I am anxious our
+next residence should not be known,--should not be subject to the
+intrusion of--of this--"
+
+"Barnard, as you call him.  I understand you; be it so!" and accordingly
+I enjoined the goods to be sent to my own house, whence they were
+removed to Don Diego's new abode and I took especial care to leave with
+the good lady no clew to discover Alvarez and his daughter, otherwise
+than /through me/.  The pleasure afforded me of directing Gerald's
+attention to myself, I could not resist.  "Tell Mr. Barnard, when he
+calls," said I, "that only through Count Morton Devereux will he hear of
+Don Diego d'Alvarez and the lady his daughter."
+
+"I will, your honour," said the landlady; and then looking at me more
+attentively, she added: "Bless me! now when you speak, there is a very
+strong likeness between yourself and Mr. Barnard."
+
+I recoiled as if an adder had stung me, and hurried into the coach to
+support the patient, who was already placed there.
+
+Now then my daily post was by the bed of disease and suffering: in the
+chamber of death was my vow of love ratified; and in sadness and in
+sorrow was it returned.  But it is in such scenes that the deepest, the
+most endearing, and the most holy species of the passion is engendered.
+As I heard Isora's low voice tremble with the suspense of one who
+watches over the hourly severing of the affection of Nature and of early
+years; and as I saw her light step flit by the pillow which she
+smoothed, and her cheek alternately flush and fade, in watching the
+wants which she relieved; as I marked her mute, her unwearying
+tenderness, breaking into a thousand nameless but mighty cares, and
+pervading like an angel's vigilance every--yea, the minutest--course
+into which it flowed,--did I not behold her in that sphere in which
+woman is most lovely, and in which love itself consecrates its
+admiration and purifies its most ardent desires?  That was not a time
+for our hearts to speak audibly to each other; but we felt that they
+grew closer and closer, and we asked not for the poor eloquence of
+words.  But over this scene let me not linger.
+
+One morning, as I was proceeding on foot to Isora's, I perceived on the
+opposite side of the way Montreuil and Gerald: they were conversing
+eagerly; they both saw me.  Montreuil made a slight, quiet, and
+dignified inclination of the head: Gerald coloured, and hesitated.  I
+thought he was about to leave his companion and address me; but, with a
+haughty and severe air, I passed on, and Gerald, as if stung by my
+demeanour, bit his lip vehemently and followed my example.  A few
+minutes afterwards I felt an inclination to regret that I had not
+afforded him an opportunity of addressing me.  "I might," thought I,
+"have then taunted him with his persecution of Isora, and defied him to
+execute those threats against me, in which it is evident, from her
+apprehensions for my safety, that he indulged."
+
+I had not, however, much leisure for these thoughts.  When I arrived at
+the lodgings of Alvarez, I found that a great change had taken place in
+his condition; he had recovered speech, though imperfectly, and
+testified a return to sense.  I flew upstairs with a light step to
+congratulate Isora: she met me at the door.  "Hush!" she whispered: "my
+father sleeps!" But she did not speak with the animation I had
+anticipated.
+
+"What is the matter, dearest?" said I, following her into another
+apartment: "you seem sad, and your eyes are red with tears, which are
+not, methinks, entirely the tears of joy at this happy change in your
+father."
+
+"I am marked out for suffering," returned Isora, more keenly than she
+was wont to speak.  I pressed her to explain her meaning; she hesitated
+at first, but at length confessed that her father had always been
+anxious for her marriage with this /soi-disant/ Barnard, and that his
+first words on his recovery had been to press her to consent to his
+wishes.
+
+"My poor father," said she, weepingly, "speaks and thinks only for my
+fancied good; but his senses as yet are only recovered in part, and he
+cannot even understand me when I speak of you.  'I shall die,' he said,
+'I shall die, and you will be left on the wide world!' I in vain
+endeavoured to explain to him that I should have a protector: he fell
+asleep muttering those words, and with tears in his eyes."
+
+"Does he know as much of this Barnard as you do?" said I.
+
+"Heavens, no!--or he would never have pressed me to marry one so
+wicked."
+
+"Does he know even who he is?"
+
+"Yes!" said Isora, after a pause; "but he has not known it long."
+
+Here the physician joined us, and taking me aside, informed me that, as
+he had foreboded, sleep had been the harbinger of death, and that Don
+Diego was no more.  I broke the news as gently as I could to Isora: but
+her grief was far more violent than I could have anticipated; and
+nothing seemed to cut her so deeply to the heart as the thought that his
+last wish had been one with which she had not complied, and could never
+comply.
+
+I pass over the first days of mourning: I come to the one after Don
+Diego's funeral.  I had been with Isora in the morning; I left her for a
+few hours, and returned at the first dusk of evening with some books and
+music, which I vainly hoped she might recur to for a momentary
+abstraction from her grief.  I dismissed my carriage, with the intention
+of walking home, and addressing the woman-servant who admitted me,
+inquired, as was my wont, after Isora.  "She has been very ill," replied
+the woman, "ever since the strange gentleman left her."
+
+"The strange gentleman?"
+
+Yes, he had forced his way upstairs, despite of the denial the servant
+had been ordered to give to all strangers.  He had entered Isora's room;
+and the woman, in answer to my urgent inquiries, added that she had
+heard his voice raised to a loud and harsh key in the apartment; he had
+stayed there about a quarter of an hour, and had then hurried out,
+seemingly in great disorder and agitation.
+
+"What description of man was he?" I asked.
+
+The woman answered that he was mantled from head to foot in his cloak,
+which was richly laced, and his hat was looped with diamonds, but
+slouched over that part of his face which the collar of his cloak did
+not hide, so that she could not further describe him than as one of a
+haughty and abrupt bearing, and evidently belonging to the higher ranks.
+
+Convinced that Gerald had been the intruder, I hastened up the stairs to
+Isora.  She received me with a sickly and faint smile, and endeavoured
+to conceal the traces of her tears.
+
+"So!" said I, "this insolent persecutor of yours has discovered your
+abode, and again insulted or intimidated you.  He shall do so no more!
+I will seek him to-morrow; and no affinity of blood shall prevent--"
+
+"Morton, dear Morton!" cried Isora, in great alarm, and yet with a
+certain determination stamped upon her features, "hear me!  It is true
+this man has been here; it is true that, fearful and terrible as he is,
+he has agitated and alarmed me: but it was only for you, Morton,--by the
+Holy Virgin, it was only for you!  'The moment,' said he, and his voice
+ran shiveringly through my heart like a dagger, 'the moment Morton
+Devereux discovers who is his rival, that moment his death-warrant is
+irrevocably sealed!'"
+
+"Arrogant boaster!" I cried, and my blood burned with the intense rage
+which a much slighter cause would have kindled from the natural
+fierceness of my temper.  "Does he think my life is at his bidding, to
+allow or to withhold?  Unhand me, Isora, unhand me!  I tell you I will
+seek him this moment, and dare him to do his worst!"
+
+"Do so," said Isora, calmly, and releasing her hold; "do so; but hear me
+first: the moment you breathe to him your suspicions you place an
+eternal barrier betwixt yourself and me!  Pledge me your faith that you
+will never, while I live at least, reveal to him--to any one whom you
+suspect--your reproach, your defiance, your knowledge--nay, not even
+your lightest suspicion--of his identity with my persecutor; promise me
+this, Morton Devereux, or I, in my turn, before that crucifix, whose
+sanctity we both acknowledge and adore,--that crucifix which has
+descended to my race for three unbroken centuries,--which, for my
+departed father, in the solemn vow, and in the death-agony, has still
+been a witness, a consolation, and a pledge, between the soul and its
+Creator,--by that crucifix which my dying mother clasped to her bosom
+when she committed me, an infant, to the care of that Heaven which hears
+and records forever our lightest word,--I swear that I will never be
+yours!"
+
+"Isora!" said I, awed and startled, yet struggling against the
+impression her energy had made upon me, "you know not to what you pledge
+yourself, nor what you require of me.  If I do not seek out this man, if
+I do not expose to him my knowledge of his pursuit and unhallowed
+persecution of you, if I do not effectually prohibit and prevent their
+continuance, think well, what security have I for your future peace of
+mind,--nay, even for the safety of your honour or your life?  A man thus
+bold, daring and unbaffled in his pursuit, thus vigilant and skilful in
+his selection of time and occasion,--so that, despite my constant and
+anxious endeavour to meet him in your presence, I have never been able
+to do so,--from a man, I say, thus pertinacious in resolution, thus
+crafty in disguise, what may you not dread when you leave him utterly
+fearless by the license of impunity?  Think too, again, Isora, that the
+mystery dishonours as much as the danger menaces.  Is it meet that my
+betrothed and my future bride should be subjected to these secret and
+terrible visitations,--visitations of a man professing himself her
+lover, and evincing the vehemence of his passion by that of his pursuit?
+Isora--Isora--you have not weighed these things; you know not what you
+demand of me."
+
+"I do!" answered Isora; "I do know all that I demand of you; I demand of
+you only to preserve your life."
+
+"How," said I, impatiently, "cannot my hand preserve my life? and is it
+for you, the daughter of a line of warriors, to ask your lover and your
+husband to shrink from a single foe?"
+
+"No, Morton," answered Isora.  "Were you going to battle, I would gird
+on your sword myself; were, too, this man other than he is, and you were
+about to meet him in open contest, I would not wrong you, nor degrade
+your betrothed, by a fear.  But I know my persecutor well,--fierce,
+unrelenting,--dreadful in his dark and ungovernable passions as he is,
+he has not the courage to confront you: I fear not the open foe, but the
+lurking and sure assassin.  His very earnestness to avoid you, the
+precautions he has taken, are alone sufficient to convince you that he
+dreads personally to oppose your claim or to vindicate himself."
+
+"Then what have I to fear?"
+
+"Everything!  Do you not know that from men, at once fierce, crafty, and
+shrinking from bold violence, the stuff for assassins is always made?
+And if I wanted surer proof of his designs than inference, his oath--it
+rings in my ears now--is sufficient.  'The moment Morton Devereux
+discovers who is his rival, that moment his death-warrant is irrevocably
+sealed.' Morton, I demand your promise; or, though my heart break, I
+will record my own vow."
+
+"Stay--stay," I said, in anger, and in sorrow: "were I to promise this,
+and for my own safety hazard yours, what could you deem me?"
+
+"Fear not for me, Morton," answered Isora; "you have no cause.  I tell
+you that this man, villain as he is, ever leaves me humbled and abased.
+Do not think that in all times, and all scenes, I am the foolish and
+weak creature you behold me now.  Remember that you said rightly I was
+the daughter of a line of warriors; and I have that within me which will
+not shame my descent."
+
+"But, dearest, your resolution may avail you for a time; but it cannot
+forever baffle the hardened nature of a man.  I know my own sex, and I
+know my own ferocity, were it once aroused."
+
+"But, Morton, you do not know me," said Isora, proudly, and her face, as
+she spoke, was set, and even stern: "I am only the coward when I think
+of you; a word--a look of mine--can abash this man; or, if it could not,
+I am never without a weapon to defend myself, or--or--"  Isora's voice,
+before firm and collected, now faltered, and a deep blush flowed over
+the marble paleness of her face.
+
+"Or what?" said I, anxiously.
+
+"Or thee, Morton!" murmured Isora, tenderly, and withdrawing her eyes
+from mine.
+
+The tone, the look that accompanied these words, melted me at once.  I
+rose,--I clasped Isora to my heart.
+
+"You are a strange compound, my own fairy queen; but these lips, this
+cheek, those eyes, are not fit features for a heroine."
+
+"Morton, if I had less determination in my heart, I could not love you
+so well."
+
+"But tell me," I whispered, with a smile, "where is this weapon on which
+you rely so strongly?"
+
+"Here!" answered Isora, blushingly; and, extricating herself from me,
+she showed me a small two-edged dagger, which she wore carefully
+concealed between the folds of her dress.  I looked over the bright,
+keen blade, with surprise, and yet with pleasure, at the latent
+resolution of a character seemingly so soft.  I say with pleasure, for
+it suited well with my own fierce and wild temper.  I returned the
+weapon to her, with a smile and a jest.
+
+"Ah!" said Isora, shrinking from my kiss, "I should not have been so
+bold, if I only feared danger for myself."
+
+But if, for a moment, we forgot, in the gushings of our affection, the
+object of our converse and dispute, we soon returned to it again.  Isora
+was the first to recur to it.  She reminded me of the promise she
+required; and she spoke with a seriousness and a solemnity which I found
+myself scarcely able to resist.
+
+"But," I said, "if he ever molest you hereafter; if again I find that
+bright cheek blanched, and those dear eyes dimmed with tears; and I know
+that, in my own house, some one has dared thus to insult its queen,--am
+I to be still torpid and inactive, lest a dastard and craven hand should
+avenge my assertion of your honour and mine?"
+
+"No, Morton; after our marriage, whenever that be, you will have nothing
+to apprehend from him on the same ground as before; my fear for you,
+too, will not be what it is now; your honour will be bound in mine, and
+nothing shall induce me to hazard it,--no, not even your safety.  I have
+every reason to believe that, after that event, he will subject me no
+longer to his insults: how, indeed, can he, under your perpetual
+protection? or, for what cause should he attempt it, if he could?  I
+shall be then yours,--only and ever yours; what hope could, therefore,
+then nerve his hardihood or instigate his intrusions?  Trust to me at
+that time, and suffer me to--nay, I repeat, promise me that I may--trust
+in you now!"
+
+What could I do?  I still combated her wish and her request; but her
+steadiness and rigidity of purpose made me, though reluctantly, yield to
+them at last.  So sincere, and so stern, indeed, appeared her
+resolution, that I feared, by refusal, that she would take the rash oath
+that would separate us forever.  Added to this, I felt in her that
+confidence which, I am apt to believe, is far more akin to the latter
+stages of real love than jealousy and mistrust; and I could not believe
+that either now, or, still less after our nuptials, she would risk aught
+of honour, or the seemings of honour, from a visionary and superstitious
+fear.  In spite, therefore, of my deep and keen interest in the thorough
+discovery of this mysterious persecution; and, still more, in the
+prevention of all future designs from his audacity, I constrained myself
+to promise her that I would on no account seek out the person I
+suspected, or wilfully betray to him by word or deed my belief of his
+identity with Barnard.
+
+Though greatly dissatisfied with my self-compulsion, I strove to
+reconcile myself to its idea.  Indeed, there was much in the peculiar
+circumstances of Isora, much in the freshness of her present affliction,
+much in the unfriended and utter destitution of her situation, that,
+while on the one hand, it called forth her pride, and made stubborn that
+temper which was naturally so gentle and so soft; on the other hand,
+made me yield even to wishes that I thought unreasonable, and consider
+rather the delicacy and deference due to her condition, than insist upon
+the sacrifices which, in more fortunate circumstances, I might have
+imagined due to myself.  Still more indisposed to resist her wish and
+expose myself to its penalty was I, when I considered her desire was the
+mere excess and caution of her love, and when I felt that she spoke
+sincerely when she declared that it was only for me that she was the
+coward.  Nevertheless, and despite all these considerations, it was with
+a secret discontent that I took my leave of her, and departed homeward.
+
+I had just reached the end of the street where the house was situated,
+when I saw there, very imperfectly, for the night was extremely dark,
+the figure of a man entirely enveloped in a long cloak, such as was
+commonly worn by gallants in affairs of secrecy or intrigue; and, in the
+pale light of a single lamp near which he stood, something like the
+brilliance of gems glittered on the large Spanish hat which overhung his
+brow.  I immediately recalled the description the woman had given me of
+Barnard's dress, and the thought flashed across me that it was he whom I
+beheld.  "At all events," thought I, "I may confirm my doubts, if I may
+not communicate them, and I may watch over her safety if I may not
+avenge her injuries."  I therefore took advantage of my knowledge of the
+neighbourhood, passed the stranger with a quick step, and then, running
+rapidly, returned by a circuitous route to the mouth of a narrow and
+dark street, which was exactly opposite to Isora's house.  Here I
+concealed myself by a projecting porch, and I had not waited long before
+I saw the dim form of the stranger walk slowly by the house.  He passed
+it three or four times, and each time I thought--though the darkness
+might deceive me--that he looked up to the windows.  He made, however,
+no attempt at admission, and appeared as if he had no other object than
+that of watching by the house.  Wearied and impatient at last, I came
+from my concealment.  "I may /confirm/ my suspicions," I repeated,
+recurring to my oath, and I walked straight towards the stranger.
+
+"Sir," I said very calmly, "I am the last person in the world to
+interfere with the amusements of any other gentleman; but I humbly opine
+that no man can parade by this house upon so very cold a night, without
+giving just ground for suspicion to the friends of its inhabitants.  I
+happen to be among that happy number; and I therefore, with all due
+humility and respect, venture to request you to seek some other spot for
+your nocturnal perambulations."
+
+I made this speech purposely prolix, in order to have time fully to
+reconnoitre the person of the one I addressed.  The dusk of the night,
+and the loose garb of the stranger, certainly forbade any decided
+success to this scrutiny; but methought the figure seemed, despite of my
+prepossessions, to want the stately height and grand proportions of
+Gerald Devereux.  I must own, however, that the necessary inexactitude
+of my survey rendered this idea without just foundation, and did not by
+any means diminish my firm impression that it was Gerald whom I beheld.
+While I spoke, he retreated with a quick step, but made no answer.  I
+pressed upon him: he backed with a still quicker step; and when I had
+ended, he fairly turned round, and made at full speed along the dark
+street in which I had fixed my previous post of watch.  I fled after
+him, with a step as fleet as his own: his cloak encumbered his flight; I
+gained upon him sensibly; he turned a sharp corner, threw me out, and
+entered into a broad thoroughfare.  As I sped after him, Bacchanalian
+voices burst upon my ear, and presently a large band of those young men
+who, under the name of Mohawks, were wont to scour the town nightly,
+and, sword in hand, to exercise their love of riot under the disguise of
+party zeal, became visible in the middle of the street.  Through them my
+fugitive dashed headlong, and, profiting by their surprise, escaped
+unmolested.  I attempted to follow with equal speed, but was less
+successful.  "Hallo!" cried the foremost of the group, placing himself
+in my way.
+
+"No such haste!  Art Whig or Tory?  Under which king, Bezonian? speak or
+die!"
+
+"Have a care, Sir," said I, fiercely, drawing my sword.
+
+"Treason, treason!" cried the speaker, confronting me with equal
+readiness.  "Have a care, indeed! have /at thee/."
+
+"Ha!" cried another, "'tis a Tory; 'tis the Secretary's popish friend,
+Devereux: pike him, pike him."
+
+I had already run my opponent through the sword arm, and was in hopes
+that this act would intimidate the rest, and allow my escape; but at the
+sound of my name and political bias, coupled with the drawn blood of
+their confederate, the patriots rushed upon me with that amiable fury
+generally characteristic of all true lovers of their country.  Two
+swords passed through my body simultaneously, and I fell bleeding and
+insensible to the ground.  When I recovered I was in my own apartments,
+whither two of the gentler Mohawks had conveyed me: the surgeons were by
+my bedside; I groaned audibly when I saw them.  If there is a thing in
+the world I hate, it is in any shape the disciples of Hermes; they
+always remind me of that Indian people (the Padaei, I think) mentioned
+by Herodotus, who sustained themselves by devouring the sick.  "All is
+well," said one, when my groan was heard.  "He will not die," said
+another.  "At least not till we have had more fees," said a third, more
+candid than the rest.  And thereupon they seized me and began torturing
+my wounds anew, till I fainted away with the pain.  However, the next
+day I was declared out of immediate danger; and the first proof I gave
+of my convalescence was to make Desmarais discharge four surgeons out of
+five: the remaining one I thought my youth and constitution might enable
+me to endure.
+
+That very evening, as I was turning restlessly in my bed, and muttering
+with parched lips the name of "Isora," I saw by my side a figure covered
+from head to foot in a long veil, and a voice, low, soft, but thrilling
+through my heart like a new existence, murmured, "She is here!"
+
+I forgot my wounds; I forgot my pain and my debility; I sprang upwards:
+the stranger drew aside the veil from her countenance, and I beheld
+Isora!
+
+"Yes!" said she, in her own liquid and honeyed accents, which fell like
+balm upon my wound and my spirit, "yes, she whom /you/ have hitherto
+tended is come, in her turn, to render some slight but woman's services
+to you.  She has come to nurse, and to soothe, and to pray for you, and
+to be, till you yourself discard her, your hand-maid and your slave!"
+
+I would have answered, but raising her finger to her lips, she arose and
+vanished; but from that hour my wound healed, my fever slaked, and
+whenever I beheld her flitting round my bed, or watching over me, or
+felt her cool fingers wiping the dew from my brow, or took from her hand
+my medicine or my food, in those moments, the blood seemed to make a new
+struggle through my veins, and I felt palpably within me a fresh and
+delicious life--a life full of youth and passion and hope--replace the
+vaguer and duller being which I had hitherto borne.
+
+There are some extraordinary incongruities in that very mysterious thing
+/sympathy/.  One would imagine that, in a description of things most
+generally interesting to all men, the most general interest would be
+found; nevertheless, I believe few persons would hang breathless over
+the progressive history of a sick-bed.  Yet those gradual stages from
+danger to recovery, how delightfully interesting they are to all who
+have crawled from one to the other! and who, at some time or other in
+his journey through that land of diseases--civilized life--has not taken
+that gentle excursion?  "I would be ill any day for the pleasure of
+getting well," said Fontenelle to me one morning with his usual
+/naivete/; but who would not be ill for the more pleasure of being ill,
+if he could be tended by her whom he most loves?
+
+I shall not therefore dwell upon that most delicious period of my
+life,--my sick bed, and my recovery from it.  I pass on to a certain
+evening in which I heard from Isora's lips the whole of her history,
+save what related to her knowledge of the real name of one whose
+persecution constituted the little of romance which had yet mingled with
+her innocent and pure life.  That evening--how well I remember it!--we
+were alone; still weak and reduced, I lay upon the sofa beside the
+window, which was partially open, and the still air of an evening in the
+first infancy of spring came fresh, and fraught as it were with a
+prediction of the glowing woods and the reviving verdure, to my cheek.
+The stars, one by one, kindled, as if born of Heaven and Twilight, into
+their nightly being; and, through the vapour and thick ether of the
+dense city, streamed their most silent light, holy and pure, and
+resembling that which the Divine Mercy sheds upon the gross nature of
+mankind.  But, shadowy and calm, their rays fell full upon the face of
+Isora, as she lay on the ground beside my couch, and with one hand
+surrendered to my clasp, looked upward till, as she felt my gaze, she
+turned her cheek blushingly away.  There was quiet around and above us;
+but beneath the window we heard at times the sounds of the common earth,
+and then insensibly our hands knit into a closer clasp, and we felt them
+thrill more palpably to our hearts; for those sounds reminded us both of
+our existence and of our separation from the great herd of our race!
+
+What is love but a division from the world, and a blending of two souls,
+two immortalities divested of clay and ashes, into one? it is a severing
+of a thousand ties from whatever is harsh and selfish, in order to knit
+them into a single and sacred bond!  Who loves hath attained the
+anchorite's secret; and the hermitage has become dearer than the world.
+O respite from the toil and the curse of our social and banded state, a
+little interval art thou, suspended between two eternities,--the Past
+and the Future,--a star that hovers between the morning and the night,
+sending through the vast abyss one solitary ray from heaven, but too far
+and faint to illumine, while it hallows the earth!
+
+There was nothing in Isora's tale which the reader has not already
+learned or conjectured.  She had left her Andalusian home in her early
+childhood, but she remembered it well, and lingeringly dwelt over it in
+description.  It was evident that little, in our colder and less genial
+isle, had attracted her sympathy, or wound itself into her affection.
+Nevertheless, I conceive that her naturally dreamy and abstracted
+character had received from her residence and her trials here much of
+the vigour and the heroism which it now possessed.  Brought up alone,
+music, and books--few, though not ill-chosen, for Shakspeare was one,
+and the one which had made upon her the most permanent impression, and
+perhaps had coloured her temperament with its latent but rich hues of
+poetry--constituted her amusement and her studies.
+
+But who knows not that a woman's heart finds its fullest occupation
+within itself?  There lies its real study, and within that narrow orbit,
+the mirror of enchanted thought reflects the whole range of earth.
+Loneliness and meditation nursed the mood which afterwards, with Isora,
+became love itself.  But I do not wish now so much to describe her
+character as to abridge her brief history.  The first English stranger
+of the male sex whom her father admitted to her acquaintance was
+Barnard.  This man was, as I had surmised, connected with him in certain
+political intrigues, the exact nature of which she did not know.  I
+continue to call him by a name which Isora acknowledged was fictitious.
+He had not, at first, by actual declaration, betrayed to her his
+affections: though, accompanied by a sort of fierceness which early
+revolted her, they soon became visible.  On the evening in which I had
+found her stretched insensible in the garden, and had myself made my
+first confession of love, I learned that he had divulged to her his
+passion and real name; that her rejection had thrown him into a fierce
+despair; that he had accompanied his disclosure with the most terrible
+threats against me, for whom he supposed himself rejected, and against
+the safety of her father, whom he said a word of his could betray; and
+her knowledge of his power to injure us--/us/--yes, Isora then loved me,
+and then trembled for my safety! had terrified and overcome her; and
+that in the very moment in which my horse's hoofs were heard, and as the
+alternative of her non-compliance, the rude suitor swore deadly and sore
+vengeance against Alvarez and myself, she yielded to the oath he
+prescribed to her,--an oath that she would never reveal the secret he
+had betrayed to her, or suffer me to know who was my real rival.
+
+This was all that I could gather from her guarded confidence; he heard
+the oath and vanished, and she felt no more till she was in my arms;
+then it was that she saw in the love and vengeance of my rival a barrier
+against our union; and then it was that her generous fear for me
+conquered her attachment, and she renounced me.  Their departure from
+the cottage so shortly afterwards was at her father's choice and at the
+instigation of Barnard, for the furtherance of their political projects;
+and it was from Barnard that the money came which repaid my loan to
+Alvarez.  The same person, no doubt, poisoned her father against me, for
+henceforth Alvarez never spoke of me with that partiality he had
+previously felt.  They repaired to London: her father was often absent,
+and often engaged with men whom she had never seen before; he was
+absorbed and uncommunicative, and she was still ignorant of the nature
+of his schemings and designs.
+
+At length, after an absence of several weeks, Barnard reappeared, and
+his visits became constant; he renewed his suit to her father as well as
+herself.  Then commenced that domestic persecution, so common in this
+very tyrannical world, which makes us sicken to bear, and which, had
+Isora been wholly a Spanish girl, she, in all probability, would never
+have resisted: so much of custom is there in the very air of a climate.
+But she did resist it, partly because she loved me,--and loved me more
+and more for our separation,--and partly because she dreaded and
+abhorred the ferocious and malignant passions of my rival, far beyond
+any other misery with which fortune could threaten her.  "Your father
+then shall hang or starve!" said Barnard, one day in uncontrollable
+frenzy, and left her.  He did not appear again at the house.  The
+Spaniard's resources, fed, probably, alone by Barnard, failed.  From
+house to house they removed, till they were reduced to that humble one
+in which I had found them.  There, Barnard again sought them; there,
+backed by the powerful advocate of want, he again pressed his suit, and
+at that exact moment her father was struck with the numbing curse of his
+disease.  "There and then," said Isora, candidly, "I might have yielded
+at last, for my poor father's sake, if you had not saved me."
+
+Once only (I have before recorded the time) did Barnard visit her in the
+new abode I had provided for her, and the day after our conversation on
+that event Isora watched and watched for me, and I did not come.  From
+the woman of the house she at last learned the cause.  "I forgot," she
+said timidly,--and in conclusion, "I forgot womanhood, and modesty, and
+reserve; I forgot the customs of your country, the decencies of my own;
+I forgot everything in this world, but you,--you suffering and in
+danger; my very sense of existence seemed to pass from me, and to be
+supplied by a breathless, confused, and overwhelming sense of impatient
+agony, which ceased not till I was in your chamber, and by your side!
+And--now, Morton, do not despise me for not having considered more, and
+loved you less."
+
+"Despise you!" I murmured, and I threw my arms around her, and drew her
+to my breast.  I felt her heart beat against my own: those hearts spoke,
+though our lips were silent, and in their language seemed to say, "We
+are united now, and we will not part."
+
+The starlight, shining with a mellow and deep stillness, was the only
+light by which we beheld each other: it shone, the witness and the
+sanction of that internal voice, which we owned, but heard not.  Our
+lips drew closer and closer together, till they met! and in that kiss
+was the type and promise of the after ritual which knit two spirits into
+one.  Silence fell around us like a curtain, and the eternal Night, with
+her fresh dews and unclouded stars, looked alone upon the compact of our
+hearts,--an emblem of the eternity, the freshness, and the unearthly
+though awful brightness of the love which it hallowed and beheld!
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEVEREUX, BY LYTTON, BOOK II. ***
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