The Duchess danced as if she was bitten by that Neapolitan spider which, according to the legend, is such a wonderful dance-incentor. She would have the music quicker and quicker. She sank on Kew's arm, and clung on his support. She poured out all the light of her languishing eyes into his face. Their glances rather confused than charmed him. But the bystanders were pleased; they thought it so good-hearted of the Duchesse, after the little quarrel, to make a public avowal of reconciliation!

Lord Rooster looking on, at the entrance of the dancing-room, over Monsieur de Florac's shoulder, said, "It's all right! She's a clipper to dance, the little Duchess."

"The viper!" said Florac, "how she writhes!"

"I suppose that business with the Frenchman is all over," says Lord Rooster. "Confounded piece of nonsense."

"You believe it finished? We shall see!" said Florac, who perhaps knew his fair cousin better. When the waltz was over, Kew led his partner to a seat, and bowed to her; but though she made room for him at her side, pointing to it, and gathering up her rustling robes so that he might sit down, he moved away, his face full of gloom. He never wished to be near her again. There was something more odious to him in her friendship than her hatred. He knew hers was the hand that had dealt that stab at him and Ethel in the morning. He went back and talked with his two friends in the doorway. "Couch yourself, my little Kiou," said Florac. "You are all pale. You were best in bed, mon garcon!"

"She has made me promise to take her in to supper," Kew said, with a sigh.

"She will poison you," said the other. "Why have they abolished the roue chez nous? My word of honour they should retabliche it for this woman."

"There is one in the next room," said Kew, with a laugh, "Come, Vicomte, let us try our fortune," and he walked back into the play-room.

That was the last night on which Lord Kew ever played a gambling game. He won constantly. The double zero seemed to obey him; so that the croupiers wondered at his fortune. Florac backed it; saying with the superstition of a gambler, "I am sure something goes to arrive to this boy." From time to time M. de Florac went back to the dancing-room, leaving his mise under Kew's charge. He always found his heaps increased; indeed the worthy Vicomte wanted a turn of luck in his favour. On one occasion he returned with a grave face, saying to Lord Rooster, "She has the other one in hand. We are going to see." "Trente-six encor! et rouge gagne," cried the croupier with his nasal tone, Monsieur de Florac's pockets overflowed with double Napoleons, and he stopped his play, luckily, for Kew putting down his winnings, once, twice, thrice, lost them all.

When Lord Kew had left the dancing-room, Madame d'Ivry saw Stenio following him with fierce looks, and called back that bearded bard. "You were going to pursue M. de Kew," she said: "I knew you were. Sit down here, sir," and she patted him down on her seat with her fan.

"Do you wish that I should call him back, madame?" said the poet, with the deepest tragic accents.

"I can bring him when I want him, Victor," said the lady.

"Let us hope others will be equally fortunate," the Gascon said, with one hand in his breast, the other stroking his moustache.

"Fi, monsieur, que vous sentez le tabac! je vous le defends, entendez-vous, monsieur?"

"Pourtant, I have seen the day when Madame la Duchesse did not disdain a cigar," said Victor. "If the odour incommodes, permit that I retire."

"And you also would quit me, Stenio? Do you think I did not mark your eyes towards Miss Newcome? your anger when she refused you to dance? Ah! we see all. A woman does not deceive herself, do you see? You send me beautiful verses, Poet. You can write as well of a statue or a picture, of a rose or a sunset, as of the heart of a woman. You were angry just now because I danced with M. de Kew. Do you think in a woman's eyes jealousy is unpardonable?"

"You know how to provoke it, madame," continued the tragedian.

"Monsieur," replied the lady, with dignity, "am I to render you an account of all my actions, and ask your permission for a walk?"

"In fact, I am but the slave, madame," groaned the Gascon, "I am not the master."

"You are a very rebellious slave, monsieur," continues the lady, with a pretty moue, and a glance of the large eyes artfully brightened by her rouge. "Suppose—suppose I danced with M. de Kew, not for his sake—Heaven knows to dance with him is not a pleasure—but for yours. Suppose I do not want a foolish quarrel to proceed. Suppose I know that he is ni sot ni poltron as you pretend. I overheard you, sir, talking with one of the basest of men, my good cousin, M. de Florac: but it is not of him I speak. Suppose I know the Comte de Kew to be a man, cold and insolent, ill-bred, and grossier, as the men of his nation are—but one who lacks no courage—one who is terrible when roused; might I have no occasion to fear, not for him, but——"

"But for me! Ah, Marie! Ah, madame! Believe you that a man of my blood will yield a foot to any Englishman? Do you know the story of my race? do you know that since my childhood I have vowed hatred to that nation? Tenez, madame, this M. Jones who frequents your salon, it was but respect for you that has enabled me to keep my patience with this stupid islander. This Captain Blackball, whom you distinguish, who certainly shoots well, who mounts well to horse, I have always thought his manners were those of the marker of a billiard. But I respect him because he has made war with Don Carlos against the English. But this young M. de Kew, his laugh crisps me the nerves; his insolent air makes me bound; in beholding him I said to myself, I hate you; think whether I love him better after having seen him as I did but now, madame!" Also, but this Victor did not say, he thought Kew had laughed at him at the beginning of the evening, when the blanche Miss had refused to dance with him.

"Ah, Victor, it is not him, but you that I would save," said the Duchess. And the people round about, and the Duchess herself, afterwards said, yes, certainly, she had a good heart. She entreated Lord Kew; she implored M. Victor; she did everything in her power to appease the quarrel between him and the Frenchman.

After the ball came the supper, which was laid at separate little tables, where parties of half a dozen enjoyed themselves. Lord Kew was of the Duchess's party, where our Gascon friend had not a seat. But being one of the managers of the entertainment, his lordship went about from table to table, seeing that the guests at each lacked nothing. He supposed too that the dispute with the Gascon had possibly come to an end; at any rate, disagreeable as the other's speech had been, he had resolved to put up with it, not having the least inclination to drink the Frenchman's blood, or to part with his own on so absurd a quarrel. He asked people in his good-natured way to drink wine with him; and catching M. Victor's eye scowling at him from a distant table, he sent a waiter with a champagne-bottle to his late opponent, and lifted his glass as a friendly challenge. The waiter carried the message to M. Victor, who, when he heard it, turned up his glass, and folded his arms in a stately manner. "M. de Castillonnes dit qu'il refuse, milor," said the waiter, rather scared. "He charged me to bring that message to milor." Florac ran across to the angry Gascon. It was not while at Madame d'Ivry's table that Lord Kew sent his challenge and received his reply; his duties as steward had carried him away from that pretty early.

Meanwhile the glimmering dawn peered into the windows of the refreshment-room, and behold, the sun broke in and scared all the revellers. The ladies scurried away like so many ghosts at cock-crow, some of them not caring to face that detective luminary. Cigars had been lighted ere this; the men remained smoking them with those sleepless German waiters still bringing fresh supplies of drink. Lord Kew gave the Duchesse d'Ivry his arm, and was leading her out; M. de Castillonnes stood scowling directly in their way, upon which, with rather an abrupt turn of the shoulder, and a "Pardon, monsieur," Lord Kew pushed by, and conducted the Duchesse to her carriage. She did not in the least see what had happened between the two gentlemen in the passage; she ogled, and nodded, and kissed her hands quite affectionately to Kew as the fly drove away.

Florac in the meanwhile had seized his compatriot, who had drunk champagne copiously with others, if not with Kew, and was in vain endeavouring to make him hear reason. The Gascon was furious; he vowed that Lord Kew had struck him. "By the tomb of my mother," he bellowed, "I swear I will have his blood!" Lord Rooster was bawling out, "D—— him, carry him to bed, and shut him up;" which remarks Victor did not understand, or two victims would doubtless have been sacrificed on his mamma's mausoleum.

When Kew came back (as he was only too sure to do), the little Gascon rushed forward with a glove in his hand, and having an audience of smokers round about him, made a furious speech about England, leopards, cowardice, insolent islanders, and Napoleon at St. Helena; and demanded reason for Kew's conduct during the night. As he spoke, he advanced towards Lord Kew, glove in hand, and lifted it as if he was actually going to strike.

"There is no need for further words," said Lord Kew, taking his cigar out of his mouth. "If you don't drop that glove, upon my word I will pitch you out of the window. Ha!—Pick the man up, somebody. You'll bear witness, gentlemen, I couldn't help myself. If he wants me in the morning, he knows where to find me."

"I declare that my Lord Kew has acted with great forbearance, and under the most brutal provocation—the most brutal provocation, entendez-vows, M. Cabasse?" cried out M. de Florac, rushing forward to the Gascon, who had now risen; "monsieur's conduct has been unworthy of a Frenchman and a gallant homme."

"D—— it, he has had it on his nob, though," said Lord Viscount Rooster, laconically.

"Ah, Roosterre! ceci n'est pas pour rire," Florac cried sadly, as they both walked away with Lord Kew; "I wish that first blood was all that was to be shed in this quarrel"

"Gaw! how he did go down!" cried Rooster, convulsed with laughter.

"I am very sorry for it," said Kew, quite seriously; "I couldn't help it. God forgive me." And he hung down his head. He thought of the past, and its levities, and punishment coming after him pede claudo. It was with all his heart the contrite young man said "God forgive me." He would take what was to follow as the penalty of what had gone before.

"Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas immolat, mon pauvre Kiou," said his French friend. And Lord Rooster, whose classical education had been much neglected, turned round and said, "Hullo, mate, what ship's that?"

Viscount Rooster had not been two hours in bed, when the Count de Punter (formerly of the Black Jaegers) waited upon him upon the part of M. de Castillonnes and the Earl of Kew, who had referred him to the Viscount to arrange matters for a meeting between them. As the meeting must take place out of the Baden territory, and they ought to move before the police prevented them, the Count proposed that they should at once make for France; where, as it was an affair of honneur, they would assuredly be let to enter without passports.

Lady Anne and Lady Kew heard that the gentlemen after the ball had all gone out on a hunting-party, and were not alarmed for four-and-twenty hours at least. On the next day none of them returned; and on the day after, the family heard that Lord Kew had met with rather a dangerous accident; but all the town knew he had been shot by M. de Castillonnes on one of the islands on the Rhine, opposite Kehl, where he was now lying.



CHAPTER XXXV. Across the Alps

Our discursive muse must now take her place in the little britzska in which Clive Newcome and his companions are travelling, and cross the Alps in that vehicle, beholding the snows on St. Gothard, and the beautiful region through which the Ticino rushes on its way to the Lombard lakes, and the corn-covered great plains of the Milanese; and that royal city, with the cathedral for its glittering crown, only less magnificent than the imperial dome of Rome. I have some long letters from Mr. Clive, written during this youthful tour, every step of which, from the departure at Baden, to the gate of Milan, he describes as beautiful; and doubtless, the delightful scenes through which the young man went, had their effect in soothing any private annoyances with which his journey commenced. The aspect of nature, in that fortunate route which he took, is so noble and cheering, that our private affairs and troubles shrink away abashed before that serene splendour. O sweet peaceful scene of azure lake, and snow-crowned mountain, so wonderfully lovely is your aspect, that it seems like heaven almost, and as if grief and care could not enter it! What young Clive's private cares were I knew not as yet in those days; and he kept them out of his letters; it was only in the intimacy of future life that some of these pains were revealed to me.

Some three months after taking leave of Miss Ethel, our young gentleman found himself at Rome, with his friend Ridley still for a companion. Many of us, young or middle-aged, have felt that delightful shock which the first sight of the great city inspires. There is one other place of which the view strikes one with an emotion even greater than that with which we look at Rome, where Augustus was reigning when He saw the day, whose birthplace is separated but by a hill or two from the awful gates of Jerusalem. Who that has beheld both can forget that first aspect of either? At the end of years the emotion occasioned by the sight still thrills in your memory, and it smites you as at the moment when you first viewed it.

The business of the present novel, however, lies neither with priest nor pagan, but with Mr. Clive Newcome, and his affairs and his companions at this period of his life. Nor, if the gracious reader expects to hear of cardinals in scarlet, and noble Roman princes and princesses, will he find such in this history. The only noble Roman into whose mansion our friend got admission was the Prince Polonia, whose footmen wear the liveries of the English royal family, who gives gentlemen and even painters cash upon good letters of credit; and, once or twice in a season, opens his transtiberine palace and treats his customers to a ball. Our friend Clive used jocularly to say, he believed there were no Romans. There were priests in portentous hats; there were friars with shaven crowns; there were the sham peasantry, who dressed themselves out in masquerade costumes, with bagpipe and goatskin, with crossed leggings and scarlet petticoats, who let themselves out to artists at so many pauls per sitting; but he never passed a Roman's door except to buy a cigar or to purchase a handkerchief. Thither, as elsewhere, we carry our insular habits with us. We have a little England at Paris, a little England at Munich, Dresden, everywhere. Our friend is an Englishman, and did at Rome as the English do.

There was the polite English society, the society that flocks to see the Colosseum lighted up with blue fire, that flocks to the Vatican to behold the statues by torchlight, that hustles into the churches on public festivals in black veils and deputy-lieutenants' uniforms, and stares, and talks, and uses opera-glasses while the pontiffs of the Roman Church are performing its ancient rites, and the crowds of faithful are kneeling round the altars; the society which gives its balls and dinners, has its scandal and bickerings, its aristocrats, parvenus, toadies imported from Belgravia; has its club, its hunt, and its Hyde Park on the Pincio: and there is the other little English world, the broad-hatted, long-bearded, velvet-jacketed, jovial colony of the artists, who have their own feasts, haunts, and amusements by the side of their aristocratic compatriots, with whom but few of them have the honour to mingle.

J. J. and Clive engaged pleasant lofty apartments in the Via Gregoriana. Generations of painters had occupied these chambers and gone their way. The windows of their painting-room looked into a quaint old garden, where there were ancient statues of the Imperial time, a babbling fountain and noble orange-trees with broad clustering leaves and golden balls of fruit, glorious to look upon. Their walks abroad were endlessly pleasant and delightful. In every street there were scores of pictures of the graceful characteristic Italian life, which our painters seem one and all to reject, preferring to depict their quack brigands, contadini, pifferari, and the like, because Thompson painted them before Jones, and Jones before Thompson, and so on, backwards into time. There were the children at play, the women huddled round the steps of the open doorways, in the kindly Roman winter; grim, portentous old hags, such as Michael Angelo painted, draped in majestic raggery; mothers and swarming bambins; slouching countrymen, dark of beard and noble of countenance, posed in superb attitudes, lazy, tattered, and majestic. There came the red troops, the black troops, the blue troops of the army of priests; the snuffy regiments of Capuchins, grave and grotesque; the trim French abbes; my lord the bishop, with his footman (those wonderful footmen); my lord the cardinal, in his ramshackle coach and his two, nay three, footmen behind him;—flunkeys, that look as if they had been dressed by the costumier of a British pantomime; coach with prodigious emblazonments of hats and coats-of-arms, that seems as if it came out of the pantomime too, and was about to turn into something else. So it is, that what is grand to some persons' eyes appears grotesque to others; and for certain sceptical persons, that step, which we have heard of, between the sublime and the ridiculous, is not visible.

"I wish it were not so," writes Clive, in one of the letters wherein he used to pour his full heart out in those days. "I see these people at their devotions, and envy them their rapture. A friend, who belongs to the old religion, took me, last week, into a church where the Virgin lately appeared in person to a Jewish gentleman, flashed down upon him from heaven in light and splendour celestial, and, of course, straightway converted him. My friend bade me look at the picture, and, kneeling down beside me, I know prayed with all his honest heart that the truth might shine down upon me too; but I saw no glimpse of heaven at all. I saw but a poor picture, an altar with blinking candles, a church hung with tawdry strips of red and white calico. The good, kind W—— went away, humbly saying 'that such might have happened again if heaven so willed it.' I could not but feel a kindness and admiration for the good man. I know his works are made to square with his faith, that he dines on a crust, lives as chaste as a hermit, and gives his all to the poor.

"Our friend J. J., very different to myself in so many respects, so superior in all, is immensely touched by these ceremonies. They seem to answer to some spiritual want of his nature, and he comes away satisfied as from a feast, where I have only found vacancy. Of course our first pilgrimage was to St. Peter's. What a walk! Under what noble shadows does one pass; how great and liberal the houses are, with generous casements and courts, and great grey portals which giants might get through and keep their turbans on. Why, the houses are twice as tall as Lamb Court itself; and over them hangs a noble dinge, a venerable mouldy splendour. Over the solemn portals are ancient mystic escutcheons—vast shields of princes and cardinals, such as Ariosto's knights might take down; and every figure about them is a picture by himself. At every turn there is a temple: in every court a brawling fountain. Besides the people of the streets and houses, and the army of priests black and brown, there's a great silent population of marble. There are battered gods tumbled out of Olympus and broken in the fall, and set up under niches and over fountains; there are senators namelessly, noselessly, noiselessly seated under archways, or lurking in courts and gardens. And then, besides these defunct ones, of whom these old figures may be said to be the corpses, there is the reigning family, a countless carved hierarchy of angels, saints, confessors of the latter dynasty which has conquered the court of Jove. I say, Pen, I wish Warrington would write the history of the Last of the Pagans. Did you never have a sympathy for them as the monks came rushing into their temples, kicking down their poor altars, smashing the fair calm faces of their gods, and sending their vestals a-flying? They are always preaching here about the persecution of the Christians. Are not the churches full of martyrs with choppers in their meek heads; virgins on gridirons; riddled St. Sebastians, and the like? But have they never persecuted in their turn? O me! You and I know better, who were bred up near to the pens of Smithfield, where Protestants and Catholics have taken their turn to be roasted.

"You pass through an avenue of angels and saints on the bridge across Tiber, all in action; their great wings seem clanking, their marble garments clapping; St. Michael, descending upon the Fiend, has been caught and bronzified just as he lighted on the Castle of St. Angelo: his enemy doubtless fell crushing through the roof and so downwards. He is as natural as blank verse—that bronze angel-set, rhythmic, grandiose. You'll see, some day or other, he's a great sonnet, sir, I'm sure of that. Milton wrote in bronze; I am sure Virgil polished off his Georgics in marble—sweet calm shapes! exquisite harmonies of line! As for the Aeneid; that, sir, I consider to be so many bas-reliefs, mural ornaments which affect me not much.

"I think I have lost sight of St. Peter's, haven't I? Yet it is big enough. How it makes your heart beat when you first see it! Ours did as we came in at night from Civita Vecchia, and saw a great ghostly darkling dome rising solemnly up into the grey night, and keeping us company ever so long as we drove, as if it had been an orb fallen out of heaven with its light put out. As you look at it from the Pincio, and the sun sets behind it, surely that aspect of earth and sky is one of the grandest in the world. I don't like to say that the facade of the church is ugly and obtrusive. As long as the dome overawes, that facade is supportable. You advance towards it—through, oh, such a noble court! with fountains flashing up to meet the sunbeams; and right and left of you two sweeping half-crescents of great columns; but you pass by the courtiers and up to the steps of the throne, and the dome seems to disappear behind it. It is as if the throne was upset, and the king had toppled over.

"There must be moments, in Rome especially, when every man of friendly heart, who writes himself English and Protestant, must feel a pang at thinking that he and his countrymen are insulated from European Christendom. An ocean separates us. From one shore or the other one can see the neighbour cliffs on clear days: one must wish sometimes that there were no stormy gulf between us; and from Canterbury to Rome a pilgrim could pass, and not drown beyond Dover. Of the beautiful parts of the great Mother Church I believe among us many people have no idea; we think of lazy friars, of pining cloistered virgins, of ignorant peasants worshipping wood and stones, bought and sold indulgences, absolutions, and the like commonplaces of Protestant satire. Lo! yonder inscription, which blazes round the dome of the temple, so great and glorious it looks like heaven almost, and as if the words were written in stars, it proclaims to all the world, this is that Peter, and on this rock the Church shall be built, against which Hell shall not prevail. Under the bronze canopy his throne is lit with lights that have been burning before it for ages. Round this stupendous chamber are ranged the grandees of his court. Faith seems to be realised in their marble figures. Some of them were alive but yesterday; others, to be as blessed as they, walk the world even now doubtless; and the commissioners of heaven, here holding their court a hundred years hence, shall authoritatively announce their beatification. The signs of their power shall not be wanting. They heal the sick, open the eyes of the blind, cause the lame to walk to-day as they did eighteen centuries ago. Are there not crowds ready to bear witness to their wonders? Isn't there a tribunal appointed to try their claims; advocates to plead for and against; prelates and clergy and multitudes of faithful to back and believe them? Thus you shall kiss the hand of a priest to-day, who has given his to a friar whose bones are already beginning to work miracles, who has been the disciple of another whom the Church has just proclaimed a saint,—hand in hand they hold by one another till the line is lost up in heaven. Come, friend, let us acknowledge this, and go and kiss the toe of St. Peter. Alas! there's the Channel always between us; and we no more believe in the miracles of St. Thomas of Canterbury, than that the bones of His Grace John Bird, who sits in St. Thomas's chair presently, will work wondrous cures in the year 2000: that his statue will speak, or his portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence will wink.

"So, you see, at those grand ceremonies which the Roman Church exhibits at Christmas, I looked on as a Protestant. Holy Father on his throne or in his palanquin, cardinals with their tails and their train-bearers, mitred bishops and abbots, regiments of friars and clergy, relics exposed for adoration, columns draped, altars illuminated, incense smoking, organs pealing, and boxes of piping soprani, Swiss guards with slashed breeches and fringed halberts;—between us and all this splendour of old-world ceremony, there's an ocean flowing: and yonder old statue of Peter might have been Jupiter again, surrounded by a procession of flamens and augurs, and Augustus as Pontifex Maximus, to inspect the sacrifices,—and my feelings at the spectacle had been, doubtless, pretty much the same.

"Shall I utter any more heresies? I am an unbeliever in Raphael's 'Transfiguration'—the scream of that devil-possessed boy, in the lower part of the figure of eight (a stolen boy too), jars the whole music of the composition. On Michael Angelo's great wall, the grotesque and terrible are not out of place. What an awful achievement! Fancy the state of mind of the man who worked it—as alone, day after day, he devised and drew those dreadful figures! Suppose in the days of the Olympian dynasty, the subdued Titan rebels had been set to ornament a palace for Jove, they would have brought in some such tremendous work: or suppose that Michael descended to the Shades, and brought up this picture out of the halls of Limbo. I like a thousand and a thousand times better to think of Raphael's loving spirit. As he looked at women and children, his beautiful face must have shone like sunshine: his kind hand must have caressed the sweet figures as he formed them. If I protest against the 'Transfiguration,' and refuse to worship at that altar before which so many generations have knelt, there are hundreds of others which I salute thankfully. It is not so much in the set harangues (to take another metaphor), as in the daily tones and talk that his voice is so delicious. Sweet poetry, and music, and tender hymns drop from him: he lifts his pencil, and something gracious falls from it on the paper. How noble his mind must have been! it seems but to receive, and his eye seems only to rest on, what is great, and generous, and lovely. You walk through crowded galleries, where are pictures ever so large and pretentious; and come upon a grey paper, or a little fresco, bearing his mark-and over all the brawl and the throng recognise his sweet presence. 'I would like to have you been Giulio Romano,' J. J. says (who does not care for Giulio's pictures), 'because then I would have been Raphael's favourite pupil.' We agreed that we would rather have seen him and William Shakspeare, than all the men we ever read of. Fancy poisoning a fellow out of envy—as Spagnoletto did! There are some men whose admiration takes that bilious shape. There's a fellow in our mess at the Lepre, a clever enough fellow too—and not a bad fellow to the poor. He was a Gandishite. He is a genre and portrait painter, by the name of Haggard. He hates J. J. because Lord Fareham, who is here, has given J. J. an order; and he hates me, because I wear a clean shirt, and ride a cock-horse.

"I wish you could come to our mess at the Lepre. It's such a dinner: such a tablecloth: such a waiter: such a company! Every man has a beard and a sombrero: and you would fancy we were a band of brigands. We are regaled with woodcocks, snipes, wild swans, ducks, robins, and owls and oionoisi te pasi for dinner; and with three pauls' worth of wines and victuals the hungriest has enough, even Claypole the sculptor. Did you ever know him? He used to come to the Haunt. He looks like the Saracen's head with his beard now. There is a French table still more hairy than ours, a German table, an American table. After dinner we go and have coffee and mezzo-caldo at the Cafe Greco over the way. Mezzo-caldo is not a bad drink—a little rum—a slice of fresh citron—lots of pounded sugar, and boiling water for the rest. Here in various parts of the cavern (it is a vaulted low place) the various nations have their assigned quarters, and we drink our coffee and strong waters, and abuse Guido, or Rubens, or Bernini selon les gouts, and blow such a cloud of smoke as would make Warrington's lungs dilate with pleasure. We get very good cigars for a bajoccho and half—that is very good for us, cheap tobaccanalians; and capital when you have got no others. M'Collop is here: he made a great figure at a cardinal's reception in the tartan of the M'Collop. He is splendid at the tomb of the Stuarts, and wanted to cleave Haggard down to the chine with his claymore for saying that Charles Edward was often drunk.

"Some of us have our breakfasts at the Cafe Greco at dawn. The birds are very early birds here; and you'll see the great sculptors—the old Dons, you know, who look down on us young fellows—at their coffee here when it is yet twilight. As I am a swell, and have a servant, J. J. and I breakfast at our lodgings. I wish you could see Terribile our attendant, and Ottavia our old woman! You will see both of them on the canvas one day. When he hasn't blacked our boots and has got our breakfast, Terribile the valet-de-chambre becomes Terribile the model. He has figured on a hundred canvases ere this, and almost ever since he was born. All his family were models. His mother having been a Venus, is now a Witch of Endor. His father is in the patriarchal line: he has himself done the cherubs, the shepherd-boys, and now is a grown man, and ready as a warrior, a pifferaro, a capuchin, or what you will.

"After the coffee and the Cafe Greco we all go to the Life Academy. After the Life Academy, those who belong to the world dress and go out to tea-parties just as if we were in London. Those who are not in society have plenty of fun of their own—and better fun than the tea-party fun too. Jack Screwby has a night once a week, sardines and ham for supper, and a cask of Marsala in the corner. Your humble servant entertains on Thursdays: which is Lady Fitch's night too; and I flatter myself some of the London dandies who are passing the winter here, prefer the cigars and humble liquors which we dispense, to tea and Miss Fitch's performance on the pianoforte.

"What is that I read in Galignani about Lord K— and an affair of honour at Baden? Is it my dear kind jolly Kew with whom some one has quarrelled? I know those who will be even more grieved than I am, should anything happen to the best of good fellows. A great friend of Lord Kew's, Jack Belsize commonly called, came with us from Baden through Switzerland, and we left him at Milan. I see by the paper that his elder brother is dead and so poor Jack will be a great man some day. I wish the chance had happened sooner if it was to befall at all. So my amiable cousin, Barnes Newcome Newcome, Esq., has married my Lady Clara Pulleyn; I wish her joy of her bridegroom. All I have heard of that family is from the newspaper. If you meet them, tell me anything about them.—We had a very pleasant time altogether at Baden. I suppose the accident to Kew will put off his marriage with Miss Newcome. They have been engaged, you know, ever so long.—And—do, do write to me and tell me something about London. It's best I should—should stay here and work this winter and the next. J. J. has done a famous picture, and if I send a couple home, you'll give them a notice in the Pall Mall Gazette—won't you?—for the sake of old times and yours affectionately, Clive Newcome."



CHAPTER XXXVI. In which M. de Florac is promoted

However much Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry was disposed to admire and praise her own conduct in the affair which ended so unfortunately for poor Lord Kew, between whom and the Gascon her grace vowed that she had done everything in her power to prevent a battle, the old Duke, her lord, was, it appeared, by no means delighted with his wife's behaviour, nay, visited her with his very sternest displeasure. Miss O'Grady, the Duchesse's companion, and her little girl's instructress, at this time resigned her functions in the Ivry family; it is possible that in the recriminations consequent upon the governess's dismissal, the Miss Irlandaise, in whom the family had put so much confidence, divulged stories unfavourable to her patroness, and caused the indignation of the Duke, her husband. Between Florac and the Duchesse there was also open war and rupture. He had been one of Kew's seconds in the latter's affair with the Vicomte's countryman. He had even cried out for fresh pistols, and proposed to engage Castillonnes, when his gallant principal fell; and though a second duel was luckily averted as murderous and needless, M. de Florac never hesitated afterwards, and in all companies, to denounce with the utmost virulence the instigator and the champion of the odious original quarrel. He vowed that the Duchesse had shot le petit Kiou as effectually as if she had herself fired the pistol at his breast. Murderer, poisoner, Brinvilliers, a hundred more such epithets he used against his kinswoman, regretting that the good old times were past—that there was no Chambre Ardente to try her, and no rack and wheel to give her her due.

The biographer of the Newcomes has no need (although he possesses the fullest information) to touch upon the Duchesse's doings, further than as they relate to that most respectable English family. When the Duke took his wife into the country, Florac never hesitated to say that to live with her was dangerous for the old man, and to cry out to his friends of the Boulevards or the Jockey Club, "Ma parole d'honneur, cette femme le tuera!"

Do you know, O gentle and unsuspicious readers, or have you ever reckoned as you have made your calculation of society, how many most respectable husbands help to kill their wives—how many respectable wives aid in sending their husbands to Hades? The wife of a chimney-sweep or a journeyman butcher comes shuddering before a police magistrate—her head bound up—her body scarred and bleeding with wounds, which the drunken ruffian, her lord, has administered: a poor shopkeeper or mechanic is driven out of his home by the furious ill-temper of the shrill virago his wife—takes to the public-house—to evil courses—to neglecting his business—to the gin-bottle—to delirium tremens—to perdition. Bow Street, and policemen, and the newspaper reporters, have cognisance and a certain jurisdiction over these vulgar matrimonial crimes; but in politer company how many murderous assaults are there by husband or wife—where the woman is not felled by the actual fist, though she staggers and sinks under blows quite as cruel and effectual; where, with old wounds yet unhealed, which she strives to hide under a smiling face from the world, she has to bear up and to be stricken down and to rise to her feet again, under fresh daily strokes of torture; where the husband, fond and faithful, has to suffer slights, coldness, insult, desertion, his children sneered away from their love for him, his friends driven from his door by jealousy, his happiness strangled, his whole life embittered, poisoned, destroyed! If you were acquainted with the history of every family in your street, don't you know that in two or three of the houses there such tragedies have been playing? Is not the young mistress of Number 20 already pining at her husband's desertion? The kind master of Number 30 racking his fevered brains and toiling through sleepless nights to pay for the jewels on his wife's neck, and the carriage out of which she ogles Lothario in the Park? The fate under which man or woman falls, blow of brutal tyranny, heartless desertion, weight of domestic care too heavy to bear—are not blows such as these constantly striking people down? In this long parenthesis we are wandering ever so far away from M. le Duc and Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry, and from the vivacious Florac's statement regarding his kinsman, that that woman will kill him.

There is this at least to be said, that if the Duc d'Ivry did die he was a very old gentleman, and had been a great viveur for at least threescore years of his life. As Prince de Moncontour in his father's time before the Revolution, during the Emigration, even after the Restoration, M. le Duc had vecu with an extraordinary vitality. He had gone through good and bad fortune: extreme poverty, display and splendour, affairs of love—affairs of honour,—and of one disease or another a man must die at the end. After the Baden business—and he had dragged off his wife to Champagne—the Duke became greatly broken; he brought his little daughter to a convent at Paris, putting the child under the special guardianship of Madame de Florac, with whom and with whose family in these latter days the old chief of the house effected a complete reconciliation. The Duke was now for ever coming to Madame de Florac; he poured all his wrongs and griefs into her ear with garrulous senile eagerness. "That little Duchesse is a monstre, a femme d'Eugene Sue," the Vicomte used to say; "the poor old Duke he cry—ma parole d'honneur, he cry and I cry too when he comes to recount to my poor mother, whose sainted heart is the asile of all griefs, a real Hotel Dieu, my word the most sacred, with beds for all the afflicted, with sweet words, like Sisters of Charity, to minister to them:—I cry, mon bon Pendennis, when this vieillard tells his stories about his wife and tears his white hairs to the feet of my mother."

When the little Antoinette was separated by her father from her mother, the Duchesse d'Ivry, it might have been expected that that poetess would have dashed off a few more cris de l'ame, shrieking according to her wont, and baring and beating that shrivelled maternal bosom of hers, from which her child had been just torn. The child skipped and laughed to go away to the convent. It was only when she left Madame de Florac that she used to cry; and when urged by that good lady to exhibit a little decorous sentiment in writing to her mamma, Antoinette would ask, in her artless way, "Pourquoi? Mamma used never to speak to me except sometimes before the world, before ladies, that understands itself. When her gentleman came, she put me to the door; then she gave me tapes, o oui, she gave me tapes! I cry no more; she has so much made to cry M. le Duc, that it is quite enough of one in a family." So Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry did not weep, even in print, for the loss of her pretty little Antoinette; besides, she was engaged, at that time, by other sentimental occupations. A young grazier of their neighbouring town, of an aspiring mind and remarkable poetic talents, engrossed the Duchesse's platonic affections at this juncture. When he had sold his beasts at market, he would ride over and read Rousseau and Schiller with Madame la Duchesse, who formed him. His pretty young wife was rendered miserable by all these readings, but what could the poor little ignorant countrywoman know of Platonism? Faugh! there is more than one woman we see in society smiling about from house to house, pleasant and sentimental and formosa superne enough; but I fancy a fish's tail is flapping under her fine flounces, and a forked fin at the end of it!

Finer flounces, finer bonnets, more lovely wreaths, more beautiful lace, smarter carriages, bigger white bows, larger footmen, were not seen, during all the season of 18—, than appeared round about St. George's, Hanover Square, in the beautiful month of June succeeding that September when so many of our friends the Newcomes were assembled at Baden. Those flaunting carriages, powdered and favoured footmen, were in attendance upon members of the Newcome family and their connexions, who were celebrating what is called a marriage in high life in the temple within. Shall we set down a catalogue of the dukes, marquises, earls, who were present; cousins of the lovely bride? Are they not already in the Morning Herald and Court Journal, as well as in the Newcome Chronicle and Independent, and the Dorking Intelligencer and Chanticleer Weekly Gazette? There they are, all printed at full length sure enough; the name of the bride, Lady Clara Pulleyn, the lovely and accomplished daughter of the Earl and Countess of Dorking; of the beautiful bridesmaids, the Ladies Henrietta, Belinda, Adelaide Pulleyn, Miss Newcome, Miss Alice Newcome, Miss Maude Newcome, Miss Anna Maria (Hobson) Newcome; and all the other persons engaged in the ceremony. It was performed by the Right Honourable Viscount Gallowglass, Bishop of Ballyshannon, brother-in-law to the bride, assisted by the Honourable and Reverend Hercules O'Grady, his lordship's chaplain, and the Reverend John Bulders, Rector of St. Mary's, Newcome. Then follow the names of all the nobility who were present, and of the noble and distinguished personages who signed the book. Then comes an account of the principal dresses, chefs-d'oeuvre of Madame Crinoline; of the bride's coronal of brilliants, supplied by Messrs. Morr and Stortimer;—of the veil of priceless Chantilly lace, the gift of the Dowager Countess of Kew. Then there is a description of the wedding-breakfast at the house of the bride's noble parents, and of the cake, decorated by Messrs. Gunter with the most delicious taste and the sweetest hymeneal allusions.

No mention was made by the fashionable chronicler of a slight disturbance which occurred at St. George's, and which was indeed out of the province of such a genteel purveyor of news. Before the marriage service began, a woman of vulgar appearance and disorderly aspect, accompanied by two scared children who took no part in the disorder occasioned by their mother's proceeding, except by their tears and outcries to augment the disquiet, made her appearance in one of the pews of the church, was noted there by persons in the vestry, was requested to retire by a beadle, and was finally induced to quit the sacred precincts of the building by the very strongest persuasion of a couple of policemen; X and Y laughed at one another, and nodded their heads knowingly as the poor wretch with her whimpering boys was led away. They understood very well who the personage was who had come to disturb the matrimonial ceremony; it did not commence until Mrs. De Lacy (as this lady chose to be called) had quitted this temple of Hymen. She slunk through the throng of emblazoned carriages, and the press of footmen arrayed as splendidly as Solomon in his glory. John jeered at Thomas, William turned his powdered head, and signalled Jeames, who answered with a corresponding grin, as the woman with sobs, and wild imprecations, and frantic appeals, made her way through the splendid crowd escorted by her aides-de-camp in blue. I dare say her little history was discussed at many a dinner-table that day in the basement story of several fashionable houses. I know that at clubs in St. James's the facetious little anecdote was narrated. A young fellow came to Bays's after the marriage breakfast and mentioned the circumstance with funny comments; although the Morning Post, in describing this affair in high life, naturally omitted all mention of such low people as Mrs. De Lacy and her children.

Those people who knew the noble families whose union had been celebrated by such a profusion of grandees, fine equipages, and footmen, brass bands, brilliant toilets, and wedding favours, asked how it was that Lord Kew did not assist at Barnes Newcome's marriage; other persons in society inquired waggishly why Jack Belsize was not present to give Lady Clara away.

As for Jack Belsize, his clubs had not been ornamented by his presence for a year past. It was said he had broken the bank at Hombourg last autumn; had been heard of during the winter at Milan, Venice, and Vienna; and when, a few months after the marriage of Barnes Newcome and Lady Clara, Jack's elder brother died, and he himself became the next in succession to the title and estates of Highgate, many folks said it was a pity little Barney's marriage had taken place so soon. Lord Kew was not present, because Kew was still abroad; he had had a gambling duel with a Frenchman, and a narrow squeak for his life. He had turned Roman Catholic, some men said; others vowed that he had joined the Methodist persuasion. At all events Kew had given up his wild courses, broken with the turf, and sold his stud off; he was delicate yet, and his mother was taking care of him; between whom and the old dowager of Kew, who had made up Barney's marriage, as everybody knew, there was no love lost.

Then who was the Prince de Moncontour, who, with his princess, figured at this noble marriage? There was a Moncontour, the Duc d'Ivry's son, but he died at Paris before the revolution of '30: one or two of the oldsters at Bays's, Major Pendennis, General Tufto, old Cackleby—the old fogies, in a word—remembered the Duke of Ivry when he was here during the Emigration, and when he was called Prince de Moncontour, the title of the eldest son of the family. Ivry was dead, having buried his son before him, and having left only a daughter by that young woman whom he married, and who led him such a life. Who was this present Moncontour?

He was a gentleman to whom the reader has already been presented, though when we lately saw him at Baden he did not enjoy so magnificent a title. Early in the year of Barnes Newcome's marriage, there came to England, and to our modest apartment in the Temple, a gentleman bringing a letter of recommendation from our dear young Clive, who said that the bearer, the Vicomte de Florac, was a great friend of his, and of the Colonel's, who had known his family from boyhood. A friend of our Clive and our Colonel was sure of a welcome in Lamb Court; we gave him the hand of hospitality, the best cigar in the box, the easy-chair with only one broken leg; the dinner in chambers and at the club, the banquet at Greenwich (where, ma foi, the little whites baits elicited his profound satisfaction); in a word, did our best to honour that bill which our young Clive had drawn upon us. We considered the young one in the light of a nephew of our own; we took a pride in him, and were fond of him; and as for the Colonel, did we not love and honour him; would we not do our utmost in behalf of any stranger who came recommended to us by Thomas Newcome's good word? So Florac was straightway admitted to our companionship. We showed him the town, and some of the modest pleasures thereof; we introduced him to the Haunt, and astonished him by the company which he met there. Between Brent's "Deserter" and Mark Wilder's "Garryowen," Florac sang—

Tiens voici ma pipe, voila mon bri—quet; Et quand la Tulipe fait le noir tra—jet Que tu sois la seule dans le regi—ment Avec la brule-gueule de ton cher z'a—mant;

to the delight of Tom Sarjent, who, though he only partially comprehended the words of the song, pronounced the singer to be a rare gentleman, full of most excellent differences. We took our Florac to the Derby; we presented him in Fitzroy Square, whither we still occasionally went, for Clive's and our dear Colonel's sake.

The Vicomte pronounced himself strongly in favour of the blanche misse little Rosey Mackenzie, of whom we have lost sight for some few chapters. Mrs. Mac he considered, my faith, to be a woman superb. He used to kiss the tips of his own fingers, in token of his admiration for the lovely widow; he pronounced her again more pretty than her daughter; and paid her a thousand compliments, which she received with exceeding good-humour. If the Vicomte gave us to understand presently that Rosey and her mother were both in love with him, but that for all the world he would not meddle with the happiness of his dear little Clive, nothing unfavourable to the character or constancy of the before-mentioned ladies must be inferred from M. de Florac's speech; his firm conviction being, that no woman could pass many hours in his society without danger to her subsequent peace of mind.

For some little time we had no reason to suspect that our French friend was not particularly well furnished with the current coin of the realm. Without making any show of wealth, he would, at first, cheerfully engage in our little parties: his lodgings in the neighbourhood of Leicester Square, though dingy, were such as many noble foreign exiles have inhabited. It was not until he refused to join some pleasure-trip which we of Lamb Court proposed, honestly confessing his poverty, that we were made aware of the Vicomte's little temporary calamity; and, as we became more intimate with him, he acquainted us, with great openness, with the history of all his fortunes. He described energetically that splendid run of luck which had set in at Baden with Clive's loan: his winnings, at that fortunate period, had carried him through the winter with considerable brilliancy, but bouillotte and Mademoiselle Atala, of the Varietes (une ogresse, mon cher, who devours thirty of our young men every year in her cavern, in the Rue de Breda), had declared against him, and the poor Vicomte's pockets were almost empty when he came to London.

He was amiably communicative regarding himself, and told us his virtues and his faults (if indeed a passion for play and for women could be considered as faults in a gay young fellow of two or three and forty), with a like engaging frankness. He would weep in describing his angel mother: he would fly off again into tirades respecting the wickedness, the wit, the extravagance, the charms of the young lady of the Varietes. He would then (in conversation) introduce us to Madame de Florac, nee Higg, of Manchesterre. His prattle was incessant, and to my friend Mr. Warrington especially he was an object of endless delight and amusement and wonder. He would roll and smoke countless paper cigars, talking unrestrainedly when we were not busy, silent when we were engaged; he would only rarely partake of our meals, and altogether refused all offers of pecuniary aid. He disappeared at dinner-time into the mysterious purlieus of Leicester Square, and dark ordinaries only frequented by Frenchmen. As we walked with him in the Regent Street precincts, he would exchange marks of recognition with many dusky personages, smoking bravos; and whiskered refugees of his nation.

"That gentleman," he would say, "who has done me the honour to salute me, is a coiffeur of the most celebrated; he forms the deuces of our table-d'hote. 'Bon jour, mon cher monsieur!' We are friends, though not of the same opinion. Monsieur is a republican of the most distinguished; conspirator of profession, and at this time engaged in constructing an infernal machine to the address of His Majesty, Louis Philippe, King of the French." "Who is my friend with the scarlet beard and the white paletot? My good Warrington! you do not move in the world; you make yourself a hermit, my dear! Not know monsieur!—monsieur is secretary to Mademoiselle Caracoline, the lovely rider at the circus of Astley; I shall be charmed to introduce you to this amiable society some day at our table-d'hote."

Warrington vowed that the company of Florac's friends would be infinitely more amusing than the noblest society ever chronicled in the Morning Post; but we were neither sufficiently familiar with the French language to make conversation in that tongue as pleasant to us as talking in our own; and so were content with Florac's description of his compatriots, which the Vicomte delivered in that charming French-English of which he was a master.

However threadbare in his garments, poor in purse, and eccentric in morals our friend was, his manners were always perfectly gentlemanlike, and he draped himself in his poverty with the grace of a Spanish grandee. It must be confessed, that the grandee loved the estaminet where he could play billiards with the first comer; that he had a passion for the gambling-house; that he was a loose and disorderly nobleman: but, in whatever company he found himself, a certain kindness, simplicity, and politeness distinguished him always. He bowed to the damsel who sold him a penny cigar, as graciously as to a duchess; he crushed a manant's impertinence or familiarity as haughtily as his noble ancestors ever did at the Louvre, at Marli, or Versailles. He declined to obtemperer to his landlady's request to pay his rent, but he refused with a dignity which struck the woman with awe; and King Alfred, over the celebrated muffin (on which Gandish and other painters have exercised their genius), could not have looked more noble than Florac in a robe-de-chambre, once gorgeous, but shady now as became its owner's clouded fortunes; toasting his bit of bacon at his lodgings, when the fare even of his table-d'hote had grown too dear for him.

As we know from Gandish's work, that better times were in store for the wandering monarch, and that the officers came acquainting him that his people demanded his presence a grands cris, when of course King Alfred laid down the toast and resumed the sceptre; so in the case of Florac, two humble gentlemen, inhabitants of Lamb Court, and members of the Upper temple, had the good luck to be the heralds as it were, nay indeed, the occasion, of the rising fortunes of the Prince de Moncontour. Florac had informed us of the death of his cousin the Duc d'Ivry, by whose demise the Vicomte's father, the old Count de Florac, became the representative of the house of Ivry, and possessor, through his relative's bequest, of an old chateau still more gloomy and spacious than the count's own house in the Faubourg St. Germain—a chateau, of which the woods, domains, and appurtenances had been lopped off by the Revolution. "Monsieur le Comte," Florac says, "has not wished to change his name at his age; he has shrugged his old shoulder, and said it was not the trouble to make to engrave a new card; and for me," the philosophical Vicomte added, "of what good shall be a title of prince in the position where I find myself?" It is wonderful for us who inhabit a country where rank is worshipped with so admirable a reverence, to think that there are many gentlemen in France who actually have authentic titles and do not choose to bear them.

Mr. George Warrington was hugely amused with this notion of Florac's ranks and dignities. The idea of the Prince purchasing penny cigars; of the Prince mildly expostulating with his landlady regarding the rent; of his punting for half-crowns at a neighbouring hall in Air Street, whither the poor gentleman desperately ran when he had money in his pocket, tickled George's sense of humour. It was Warrington who gravely saluted the Vicomte, and compared him to King Alfred, on that afternoon when we happened to call upon him and found him engaged in cooking his modest dinner.

We were bent upon an excursion to Greenwich, and on having our friend's company on that voyage, and we induced the Vicomte to forgo his bacon, and be our guest for once. George Warrington chose to indulge in a great deal of ironical pleasantry in the course of the afternoon's excursion. As we went down the river, he pointed out to Florac the very window in the Tower where the captive Duke of Orleans used to sit when he was an inhabitant of that fortress. At Greenwich, which palace Florac informed us was built by Queen Elizabeth, George showed the very spot where Raleigh laid his cloak down to enable Her Majesty to step over a puddle. In a word, he mystified M. de Florac; such was Mr. Warrington's reprehensible spirit.

It happened that Mr. Barnes Newcome came to dine at Greenwich on the same day when our little party took place. He had come down to meet Rooster and one or two other noble friends whose names he took care to give us, cursing them at the same time for having thrown him over. Having missed his own company, Mr. Barnes condescended to join ours, Warrington gravely thanking him for the great honour which he conferred upon us by volunteering to take a place at our table. Barnes drank freely, and was good enough to resume his acquaintance with Monsieur de Florac, whom he perfectly well recollected at Baden, but had thought proper to forget on the one or two occasions when they had met in public since the Vicomte's arrival in this country. There are few men who can drop and resume an acquaintance with such admirable self-possession as Barnes Newcome. When, over our dessert, by which time all tongues were unloosed and each man talked gaily, George Warrington feelingly thanked Barnes in a little mock speech, for his great kindness in noticing us, presenting him at the same time to Florac as the ornament of the City, the greatest banker of his age, the beloved kinsman of their friend Clive, who was always writing about him; Barnes said, with one of his accustomed curses, he did not know whether Mr. Warrington was "chaffing" him or not, and indeed could never make him out. Warrington replied that he never could make himself out: and if ever Mr. Barnes could, George would thank him for information on that subject.

Florac, like most Frenchmen very sober in his potations, left us for a while over ours, which were conducted after the more liberal English manner, and retired to smoke his cigar on the terrace. Barnes then freely uttered his sentiments regarding him, which were not more favourable than those which the young gentleman generally emitted respecting gentlemen whose backs were turned. He had known a little of Florac the year before at Baden: he had been mixed up with Kew in that confounded row in which Kew was hit; he was an adventurer, a pauper, a blackleg, a regular Greek; he had heard Florac was of old family, that was true; but what of that? He was only one of those d—— French counts; everybody was a count in France confound 'em! The claret was beastly—not fit for a gentleman to drink!—He swigged off a great bumper as he was making the remark: for Barnes Newcome abuses the men and things which he uses, and perhaps is better served than more grateful persons.

"Count!" cries Warrington, "what do you mean by talking about beggarly counts? Florac's family is one of the noblest and most ancient in Europe. It is more ancient than your illustrious friend, the barber-surgeon; it was illustrious before the house, ay, or the pagoda of Kew was in existence." And he went on to describe how Florac by the demise of his kinsman, was now actually Prince de Moncontour, though he did not choose to assume that title. Very likely the noble Gascon drink in which George had been indulging, imparted a certain warmth and eloquence to his descriptions of Florac's good qualities, high birth, and considerable patrimony; Barnes looked quite amazed and scared at these announcements, then laughed and declared once more that Warrington was chaffing him.

"As sure as the Black Prince was lord of Acquitaine—as sure as the English were masters of Bordeaux—and why did we ever lose the country?" cries George, filling himself a bumper,—"every word I have said about Florac is true;" and Florac coming in at this juncture havin just finished his cigar, George turned round and made him a fine speech in the French language, in which he lauded his constancy and good-humour under evil fortune, paid him two or three more cordial compliments, and finished by drinking another great bumper to his good health.

Florac took a little wine, replied "with effusion" to the toast which his excellent, his noble friend had just carried. We rapped our glasses at the end of the speech. The landlord himself seemed deeply touched by it as he stood by with a fresh bottle. "It is good wine—it is honest wine—it is capital wine" says George, "and honni soit qui mal y pence! What business have you, you little beggar, to abuse it? My ancestor drank the wine and wore the motto round his leg long before a Newcome ever showed his pale face in Lombard Street." George Warrington never bragged about his pedigree except under certain influences. I am inclined to think that on this occasion he really did find the claret very good.

"You don't mean to say," says Barnes, addressing Florac in French, on which he piqued himself, "que vous avez un tel manche a votre nom, et que vous ne l'usez pas?"

Florac shrugged his shoulders; he at first did not understand that familiar figure of English speech, or what was meant by "having a handle to your name." "Moncontour cannot dine better than Florac," he said. "Florac has two louis in his pocket, and Moncontour exactly forty shillings. Florac's proprietor will ask Moncontour to-morrow for five weeks' rent; and as for Florac's friends, my dear, they will burst out laughing to Moncontour's nose!" "How droll you English are!" this acute French observer afterwards said, laughing, and recalling the incident. Did you not see how that little Barnes, as soon as he knew my title of Prince, changed his manner and became all respect towards me? This, indeed, Monsieur de Florac's two friends remarked with no little amusement. Barnes began quite well to remember their pleasant days at Baden, and talked of their acquaintance there: Barnes offered the Prince the vacant seat in his brougham, and was ready to set him down anywhere that he wished in town.

"Bah!" says Florac; "we came by the steamer, and I prefer the peniboat." But the hospitable Barnes, nevertheless, called upon Florac the next day. And now having partially explained how the Prince de Moncontour was present at Mr. Barnes Newcome's wedding, let us show how it was that Barnes's first-cousin, the Earl of Kew, did not attend that ceremony.



CHAPTER XXXVII. Return to Lord Kew

We do not propose to describe at length or with precision the circumstances of the duel which ended so unfortunately for young Lord Kew. The meeting was inevitable: after the public acts and insult of the morning, the maddened Frenchman went to it convinced that his antagonist had wilfully outraged him, eager to show his bravery upon the body of an Englishman, and as proud as if he had been going into actual war. That commandment, the sixth in our decalogue, which forbids the doing of murder, and the injunction which directly follows on the same table, have been repealed by a very great number of Frenchmen for many years past; and to take the neighbour's wife, and his life subsequently, has not been an uncommon practice with the politest people in the world. Castillonnes had no idea but that he was going to the field of honour; stood with an undaunted scowl before his enemy's pistol; and discharged his own and brought down his opponent with a grim satisfaction, and a comfortable conviction afterwards that he had acted en galant homme. "It was well for this milor that he fell at the first shot, my dear," the exemplary young Frenchman remarked; "a second might have been yet more fatal to him; ordinarily I am sure of my coup, and you conceive that in an affair so grave it was absolutely necessary that one or other should remain on the ground." Nay, should M. de Kew recover from his wound, it was M. de Castillonnes' intention to propose a second encounter between himself and that nobleman. It had been Lord Kew's determination never to fire upon his opponent, a confession which he made not to his second, poor scared Lord Rooster, who bore the young Earl to Kehl, but to some of his nearest relatives, who happened fortunately to be not far from him when he received his wound, and who came with all the eagerness of love to watch by his bedside.

We have said that Lord Kew's mother, Lady Walham, and her second son were staying at Hombourg, when the Earl's disaster occurred. They had proposed to come to Baden to see Kew's new bride, and to welcome her; but the presence of her mother-in-law deterred Lady Walham, who gave up her heart's wish in bitterness of spirit, knowing very well that a meeting between the old Countess and herself could only produce the wrath, pain, and humiliation which their coming together always occasioned. It was Lord Kew who bade Rooster send for his mother, and not for Lady Kew; and as soon as she received those sad tidings, you may be sure the poor lady hastened to the bed where her wounded boy lay.

The fever had declared itself, and the young man had been delirious more than once. His wan face lighted up with joy when he saw his mother; he put his little feverish hand out of the bed to her—"I knew you would come, dear," he said, "and you know I never would have fired upon the poor Frenchman." The fond mother allowed no sign of terror or grief to appear upon her face, so as to disturb her first-born and darling; but no doubt she prayed by his side as such loving hearts know how to pray, for the forgiveness of his trespass, who had forgiven those who sinned against him. "I knew I should be hit, George," said Kew to his brother when they were alone; "I always expected some such end as this. My life has been very wild and reckless; and you, George, have always been faithful to our mother. You will make a better Lord Kew than I have been, George. God bless you." George flung himself down with sobs by his brother's bedside, and swore Frank had always been the best fellow, the best brother, the kindest heart, the warmest friend in the world. Love—prayer—repentance, thus met over the young man's bed. Anxious and humble hearts, his own the least anxious and the most humble, awaited the dread award of life or death; and the world, and its ambition and vanities, were shut out from the darkened chamber where the awful issue was being tried.

Our history has had little to do with characters resembling this lady. It is of the world, and things pertaining to it. Things beyond it, as the writer imagines, scarcely belong to the novelist's province. Who is he, that he should assume the divine's office; or turn his desk into a preacher's pulpit? In that career of pleasure, of idleness, of crime we might call it (but that the chronicler of worldly matters had best be chary of applying hard names to acts which young men are doing in the world every day), the gentle widowed lady, mother of Lord Kew, could but keep aloof, deploring the course upon which her dear young prodigal had entered; and praying with that saintly love, those pure supplications, with which good mothers follow their children, for her boy's repentance and return. Very likely her mind was narrow; very likely the precautions which she had used in the lad's early days, the tutors and directors she had set about him, the religious studies and practices to which she would have subjected him, had served only to vex and weary the young pupil, and to drive his high spirit into revolt. It is hard to convince a woman perfectly pure in her life and intentions, ready to die if need were for her own faith, having absolute confidence in the instruction of her teachers, that she and they (with all their sermons) may be doing harm. When the young catechist yawns over his reverence's discourse, who knows but it is the doctor's vanity which is enraged, and not Heaven which is offended? It may have been, in the differences which took place between her son and her, the good Lady Walham never could comprehend the lad's side of the argument; or how his Protestantism against her doctrines should exhibit itself on the turf, the gaming-table, or the stage of the opera-house; and thus but for the misfortune under which poor Kew now lay bleeding, these two loving hearts might have remained through life asunder. But by the boy's bedside; in the paroxysms of his fever; in the wild talk of his delirium; in the sweet patience and kindness with which he received his dear nurse's attentions; the gratefulness with which he thanked the servants who waited on him; the fortitude with which he suffered the surgeon's dealings with his wounds;—the widowed woman had an opportunity to admire with an exquisite thankfulness the generous goodness of her son; and in those hours, those sacred hours passed in her own chamber, of prayers, fears, hopes, recollections, and passionate maternal love, wrestling with fate for her darling's life;—no doubt the humbled creature came to acknowledge that her own course regarding him had been wrong; and, even more for herself than for him, implored forgiveness.

For some time George Barnes had to send but doubtful and melancholy bulletins to Lady Kew and the Newcome family at Baden, who were all greatly moved and affected by the accident which had befallen poor Kew. Lady Kew broke out in wrath, and indignation. We may be sure the Duchesse d'Ivry offered to condole with her upon Kew's mishap the day after the news arrived at Baden; and, indeed, came to visit her. The old lady had just received other disquieting intelligence. She was just going out, but she bade her servant to inform the Duchess that she was never more at home to the Duchesse d'Ivry. The message was not delivered properly, or the person for whom it was intended did not choose to understand it, for presently, as the Countess was hobbling across the walk on her way to her daughter's residence, she met the Duchesse d'Ivry, who saluted her with a demure curtsey and a commonplace expression of condolence. The Queen of Scots was surrounded by the chief part of her court, saving of course MM. Castillonnes and Punter absent on service. "We were speaking of this deplorable affair," said Madame d'Ivry (which indeed was the truth, although she said it). "How we pity you, madame!" Blackball and Loder, Cruchecassee and Schlangenbad, assumed sympathetic countenances.

Trembling on her cane, the old Countess glared out upon Madame d'Ivry. "I pray you, madame," she said in French, "never again to address me the word. If I had, like you, assassins in my pay, I would have you killed; do you hear me?" and she hobbled on her way. The household to which she went was in terrible agitation; the kind Lady Anne frightened beyond measure, poor Ethel full of dread, and feeling guilty almost as if she had been the cause, as indeed she was the occasion, of Kew's misfortune. And the family had further cause of alarm from the shock which the news had given to Sir Brian. It has been said that he had had illnesses of late which caused his friends much anxiety. He had passed two months at Aix-la-Chapelle, his physicians dreading a paralytic attack; and Madame d'Ivry's party still sauntering on the walk, the men smoking their cigars, the women breathing their scandal, now beheld Dr. Finck issuing from Lady Anne's apartments, and wearing such a face of anxiety, that the Duchesse asked with some emotion, "Had there been a fresh bulletin from Kehl?"

"No, there had been no fresh bulletin from Kehl; but two hours since Sir Brian Newcome had had a paralytic seizure."

"Is he very bad?"

"No," says Dr. Finck, "he is not very bad."

"How inconsolable M. Barnes will be!" said the Duchesse, shrugging her haggard shoulders. Whereas the fact was that Mr. Barnes retained perfect presence of mind under both of the misfortunes which had befallen his family. Two days afterwards the Duchesse's husband arrived himself, when we may presume that exemplary woman was too much engaged with her own affairs to be able to be interested about the doings of other people. With the Duke's arrival the court of Mary Queen of Scots was broken up. Her Majesty was conducted to Lochleven, where her tyrant soon dismissed her very last lady-in-waiting, the confidential Irish secretary, whose performance had produced such a fine effect amongst the Newcomes.

Had poor Sir Brian Newcome's seizure occurred at an earlier period of the autumn, his illness no doubt would have kept him for some months confined at Baden; but as he was pretty nearly the last of Dr. Von Finck's bath patients, and that eminent physician longed to be off to the Residenz, he was pronounced in a fit condition for easy travelling in rather a brief period after his attack, and it was determined to transport him to Mannheim, and thence by water to London and Newcome.

During all this period of their father's misfortune no sister of charity could have been more tender, active, cheerful, and watchful than Miss Ethel. She had to wear a kind face, and exhibit no anxiety when occasionally the feeble invalid made inquiries regarding poor Kew at Baden; to catch the phrases as they came from him; to acquiesce, or not to deny, when Sir Brian talked of the marriages—both marriages—taking place at Christmas. Sir Brian was especially eager for his daughter's, and repeatedly, with his broken words, and smiles, and caresses, which were now quite senile, declared that his Ethel would make the prettiest countess in England. There came a letter or two from Clive, no doubt, to the young nurse in her sick-room. Manly and generous, full of tenderness and affection, as those letters surely were, they could give but little pleasure to the young lady—indeed, only add to her doubts and pain.

She had told none of her friends as yet of those last words of Kew's, which she interpreted as a farewell on the young nobleman's part. Had she told them they were likely would not have understood Kew's meaning as she did, and persisted in thinking that the two were reconciled. At any rate, whilst he and her father were still lying stricken by the blows which had prostrated them both, all questions of love and marriage had been put aside. Did she love him? She felt such a kind pity for his misfortune, such an admiration for his generous gallantry, such a remorse for her own wayward conduct and cruel behaviour towards this most honest, and kindly, and affectionate gentleman, that the sum of regard which she could bestow upon him might surely be said to amount to love. For such a union as that contemplated between them, perhaps for any marriage, no greater degree of attachment was necessary as the common cement. Warm friendship and thorough esteem and confidence (I do not say that our young lady calculated in this matter-of-fact way) are safe properties invested in the prudent marriage stock, multiplying and bearing an increasing value with every year. Many a young couple of spendthrifts get through their capital of passion in the first twelve months, and have no love left for the daily demands of after life. O me! for the day when the bank account is closed, and the cupboard is empty, and the firm of Damon and Phyllis insolvent!

Miss Newcome, we say, without doubt, did not make her calculations in this debtor and creditor fashion; it was only the gentlemen of that family who went to Lombard Street. But suppose she thought that regard, and esteem, and, affection being sufficient, she could joyfully, and with almost all her heart bring such a portion to Lord Kew; that her harshness towards him as contrasted with his own generosity, and above all with his present pain, infinitely touched her; and suppose she fancied that there was another person in the world to whom, did fates permit, she could offer not esteem, affection, pity only, but something ten thousand times more precious? We are not in the young lady's secrets, but if she has some as she sits by her father's chair and bed, who day or night will have no other attendant; and, as she busies herself to interpret his wants, silently moves on his errands, administers his potions, and watches his sleep, thinks of Clive absent and unhappy, of Kew wounded and in danger, she must have subject enough of thought and pain. Little wonder that her cheeks are pale and her eyes look red; she has her cares to endure now in the world, and her burden to bear in it, and somehow she feels she is alone, since that day when poor Clive's carriage drove away.

In a mood of more than ordinary depression and weakness Lady Kew must have found her granddaughter, upon one of the few occasions after the double mishap when Ethel and her elder were together. Sir Brian's illness, as it may be imagined, affected a lady very slightly, who was of an age when these calamities occasion but small disquiet, and who, having survived her own father, her husband, her son, and witnessed their lordships' respective demises with perfect composure, could not reasonably be called upon to feel any particular dismay at the probable departure from this life of a Lombard Street banker, who happened to be her daughter's husband. In fact, not Barnes Newcome himself could await that event more philosophically. So, finding Ethel in this melancholy mood, Lady Kew thought a drive in the fresh air would be of service to her, and Sir Brian happening to be asleep, carried the young girl away in her barouche.

They talked about Lord Kew, of whom the accounts were encouraging, and who is mending in spite of his silly mother and her medicines, "and as soon as he is able to move we must go and fetch him, my dear," Lady Kew graciously said, "before that foolish woman has made a methodist of him. He is always led by the woman who is nearest him, and I know one who will make of him just the best little husband in England." Before they had come to this delicate point the lady and her grandchild had talked Kew's character over, the girl, you may be sure, having spoken feelingly and eloquently about his kindness and courage, and many admirable qualities. She kindled when she heard the report of his behaviour at the commencement of the fracas with M. de Castillonnes, his great forbearance and good-nature, and his resolution and magnanimity when the moment of collision came.

But when Lady Kew arrived at that period of her discourse in which she stated that Kew would make the best little husband in England, poor Ethel's eyes filled with tears; we must remember that her high spirit was worn down by watching and much varied anxiety, and then she confessed that there had been no reconciliation, as all the family fancied, between Frank and herself—on the contrary, a parting, which she understood to be final; and she owned that her conduct towards her cousin had been most captious and cruel, and that she could not expect they should ever again come together. Lady Kew, who hated sick-beds and surgeons except for herself, who hated her daughter-in-law above all, was greatly annoyed at the news which Ethel gave her; made light of if, however, and was quite confident that a very few words from her would place matters on their old footing, and determined on forthwith setting out for Kehl. She would have carried Ethel with her, but that the poor Baronet with cries and moans insisted on retaining his nurse, and Ethel's grandmother was left to undertake this mission by herself, the girl remaining behind acquiescent, not unwilling, owning openly a great regard and esteem for Kew, and the wrong which she had done him, feeling secretly a sentiment which she had best smother. She had received a letter from that other person, and answered it with her mother's cognisance, but about this little affair neither Lady Anne nor her daughter happened to say a word to the manager of the whole family.



CHAPTER XXXVIII. In which Lady Kew leaves his Lordship quite convalescent

Immediately after Lord Kew's wound, and as it was necessary to apprise the Newcome family of the accident which had occurred, the good-natured young Kew had himself written a brief note to acquaint his relatives with his mishap, and had even taken the precaution to antedate a couple of billets to be despatched on future days; kindly forgeries, which told the Newcome family and the Countess of Kew, that Lord Kew was progressing very favourably, and that his hurt was trifling. The fever had set in, and the young patient was lying in great danger, as most of the laggards at Baden knew, when his friends there were set at ease by this fallacious bulletin. On the third day after the accident, Lady Walham arrived with her younger son, to find Lord Kew in the fever which ensued after the wound. As the terrible anxiety during the illness had been Lady Walham's, so was hers the delight of the recovery. The commander-in-chief of the family, the old lady at Baden, showed her sympathy by sending couriers, and repeatedly issuing orders to have news of Kew. Sick-beds scared her away invariably. When illness befell a member of her family she hastily retreated from before the sufferer, showing her agitation of mind, however, by excessive ill-humour to all the others within her reach.

A fortnight passed, a ball had been found and extracted, the fever was over, the wound was progressing favourably, the patient advancing towards convalescence, and the mother, with her child once more under her wing, happier than she had been for seven years past, during which her young prodigal had been running the thoughtless career of which he himself was weary, and which had occasioned the fond lady such anguish. Those doubts which perplex many a thinking man, and, when formed and uttered, give many a fond and faithful woman pain so exquisite, had most fortunately never crossed Kew's mind. His early impressions were such as his mother had left them, and he came back to her, as she would have him, as a little child; owning his faults with a hearty humble repentance, and with a thousand simple confessions, lamenting the errors of his past days. We have seen him tired and ashamed of the pleasures which he was pursuing, of the companions who surrounded him, of the brawls and dissipations which amused him no more; in those hours of danger and doubt, when he had lain, with death perhaps before him, making up his account of the vain life which probably he would be called upon to surrender, no wonder this simple, kindly, modest, and courageous soul thought seriously of the past and of the future; and prayed, and resolved, if a future were awarded to him, it should make amends for the days gone by; and surely as the mother and son read together the beloved assurance of the divine forgiveness, and of that joy which angels feel in heaven for a sinner repentant, we may fancy in the happy mother's breast a feeling somewhat akin to that angelic felicity, a gratitude and joy of all others the loftiest, the purest, the keenest. Lady Walham might shrink with terror at the Frenchman's name, but her son could forgive him, with all his heart, and kiss his mother's hand, and thank him as the best friend of his life.

During all the days of his illness, Kew had never once mentioned Ethel's name, and once or twice as his recovery progressed, when with doubt and tremor his mother alluded to it, he turned from the subject as one that was disagreeable and painful. Had she thought seriously on certain things? Lady Walham asked. Kew thought not, "but those who are bred up as you would have them, mother, are often none the better," the humble young fellow said. "I believe she is a very good girl. She is very clever, she is exceedingly handsome, she is very good to her parents and her brothers and sisters; but—" he did not finish the sentence. Perhaps he thought, as he told Ethel afterwards, that she would have agreed with Lady Walham even worse than with her imperious old grandmother.

Lady Walham then fell to deplore Sir Brian's condition, accounts of whose seizure of course had been despatched to the Kehl party, and to lament that a worldly man as he was should have such an affliction, so near the grave and so little prepared for it. Here honest Kew, however, held out. "Every man for himself, mother," says he. "Sir Brian was bred up very strictly, perhaps too strictly as a young man. Don't you know that that good Colonel, his elder brother, who seems to me about the most honest and good old gentleman I ever met in my life, was driven into rebellion and all sorts of wild courses by old Mrs. Newcome's tyranny over him? As for Sir Brian, he goes to church every Sunday: has prayers in the family every day: I'm sure has led a hundred times better life than I have, poor old Sir Brian. I often have thought, mother, that though our side was wrong, you could not be altogether right, because I remember how my tutor, and Mr. Bonner, and Dr. Laud, when they used to come down to us at Kewbury, used to make themselves so unhappy about other people." So the widow withdrew her unhappiness about Sir Brian; she was quite glad to hope for the best regarding that invalid.

With some fears yet regarding her son,—for many of the books with which the good lady travelled could not be got to interest him; at some he would laugh outright,—with fear mixed with the maternal joy that he was returned to her, and had quitted his old ways; with keen feminine triumph, perhaps, that she had won him back, and happiness at his daily mending health, all Lady Walham's hours were passed in thankful and delighted occupation. George Barnes kept the Newcomes acquainted with the state of his brother's health. The skilful surgeon from Strasbourg reported daily better and better of him, and the little family were living in great peace and contentment, with one subject of dread, however, hanging over the mother of the two young men, the arrival of Lady Kew, as she was foreboding, the fierce old mother-in-law who had worsted Lady Walham in many a previous battle.

It was what they call the summer of St. Martin, and the weather was luckily very fine; Kew could presently be wheeled into the garden of the hotel, whence he could see the broad turbid current of the swollen Rhine: the French bank fringed with alders, the vast yellow fields behind them, the great avenue of poplars stretching away to the Alsatian city, and its purple minster yonder. Good Lady Walham was for improving the shining hour by reading amusing extracts from her favourite volumes, gentle anecdotes of Chinese and Hottentot converts, and incidents from missionary travel. George Barnes, a wily young diplomatist, insinuated Galignani, and hinted that Kew might like a novel; and a profane work called Oliver Twist having appeared about this time, which George read out to his family with admirable emphasis, it is a fact that Lady Walham became so interested in the parish boy's progress, that she took his history into her bedroom (where it was discovered, under Blatherwick's Voice from Mesopotamia, by her ladyship's maid), and that Kew laughed so immensely at Mr. Bumble, the Beadle, as to endanger the reopening of his wound.

While, one day, they were so harmlessly and pleasantly occupied, a great whacking of whips, blowing of horns, and whirring of wheels was heard in the street without. The wheels stopped at their hotel gate; Lady Walham started up; ran through the garden door, closing it behind her; and divined justly who had arrived. The landlord was bowing; the courier pushing about; waiters in attendance; one of them, coming up to pale-faced Lady Walham; said, "Her Excellency the Frau Graefinn von Kew is even now absteiging."

"Will you be good enough to walk into our salon, Lady Kew?" said the daughter-in-law, stepping forward and opening the door of that apartment. The Countess, leaning on her staff, entered that darkened chamber. She ran up towards an easy-chair, where she supposed Lord Kew was. "My dear Frank!" cries the old lady; "my dear boy, what a pretty fright you have given us all! They don't keep you in this horrid noisy room facing that——Ho—what is this?" cries the Countess, closing her sentence abruptly.