Stretched upon a large old-fashioned sofa, where a burgomaster might
have reclined with ‘ample room and verge enough,’ in all the easy
abandonment of dressing-gown and slippers; the cool breeze gently
wafting the window-blind to and fro, and tempering the lulling sounds
from wood and water; the buzzing of the summer insects and the far-off
carol of a peasant’s song--I fell into one of those delicious sleeps in
which dreams are so faintly marked as to leave us no disappointment on
waking: flitting shadowlike before the mind, they live only in a
pleasant memory of something vague and undefined, and impart no touch of
sorrow for expectations unfulfilled, for hopes that are not to be
realised. I would that my dreams might always take this shape. It is a
sad thing when they become tangible; when features and looks, eyes,
hands, words, and signs, live too strongly in our sleeping minds, and we
awake to the cold reality of our daily cares and crosses, tenfold less
endurable from very contrast. No! give me rather the faint and waving
outline, the shadowy perception of pleasure, than the vivid picture, to
end only in the conviction that I am but Christopher Sly after all; or
what comes pretty much to the same, nothing but--Arthur O’Leary.
Still, I would not have you deem me discontented with my lot; far from
it. I chose my path early in life, and never saw reason to regret the
choice. How many of you can say as much? I felt that while the tender
ties of home and family, the charities that grow up around the charmed
circle of a wife and children, are the great prizes of life, there are
also a thousand lesser ones in the wheel, in the kindly sympathies with
which the world abounds; that to him who bears no ill-will at his heart-
-nay, rather loving all things that are lovable, with warm attachments
to all who have been kind to him, with strong sources of happiness in
his own tranquil thoughts--the wandering life would offer many
pleasures.
Most men live, as it were, with one story of their lives, the traits of
childhood maturing into manly features; their history consists of the
development of early character in circumstances of good or evil fortune.
They fall in love, they marry, they grow old, and they die--each
incident of their existence bearing on that before and that after, like
link upon link of some great chain. He, however, who throws himself like
a plank upon the waters, to be washed hither and thither as wind or tide
may drive him, has a very different experience. To him life is a
succession of episodes, each perfect in itself; the world is but a
number of tableaux, changing with climate and country--his sorrows in
France having no connection with his joys in Italy; his delights in
Spain living apart from his griefs on the Rhine. The past throws no
shadow on the future; his philosophy is to make the most of the present;
and he never forgets La Bruyère’s maxim--‘Il faut rire avant d’être
heureux, _de peur de mourir sans avoir ri_.’
Now, if you don’t like my philosophy, set it down as a dream, and here I
am awake once more.
And certainly I claim no great merit on the score of my vigilance; for
the tantararara that awoke me would have aroused the Seven Sleepers
themselves. Words are weak to convey the most distant conception of the
noise; it seemed as though ten thousand peacocks had congregated beneath
my window, and with brazen throats were bent on giving me a hideous
concert; the fiend-chorus in _Robert le Diable_ was a psalm-tune
compared to it. I started up and rushed to the casement; and there, in
the lawn beneath, beheld some twenty persons costumed in hunting
fashion, their horses foaming and splashed, their coats stained with
marks of the forest. But the uproar was soon comprehensible, owing to
some half-dozen of the party who performed on that most diabolical of
all human inventions, the _cor de chasse_.
Imagine, if you can, and thank your stars that it is only a work of
imagination, some twenty feet of brass pipe, worn belt-fashion over one
shoulder and under the opposite arm, one end of the aforesaid tube being
a mouth-piece, and the other expanding itself into a huge trumpet-mouth;
then conceive a Fleming--one of Rubens’s cherubs, immensely magnified,
and decorated with a beard and moustaches--blowing into this with all
the force of his lungs, perfectly unmindful of the five other
performers, who at five several and distinct parts of the melody are
blasting away also--treble and bass, contralto and soprano, shake and
sostenuto, all blending into one crash of hideous discord, to which the
Scotch bagpipe in a pibroch is a soothing, melting melody. A deaf-and-
dumb institution ‘would capitulate in half an hour. Truly, the results
of a hunting expedition ought to be of the most satisfactory kind, to
make the ‘Retour de la Chasse’ (it was this they were blowing) at all
sufferable to those who were not engaged in the concert. As for the
performers, I can readily believe they never heard a note of the whole.
Even Dutch lungs grow tired at last. Having blown the establishment into
ecstasies, and myself into a furious headache, they gave in; and now an
awful bell announced the time to dress for dinner. While I made my
toilette, I endeavoured, as well as my throbbing temples would permit
me, to fancy the host’s personal appearance, and to conjecture the style
of the rest of the party. My preparations over, I took a parting look in
the glass, as if to guess the probable impression I should make below-
stairs, and sallied forth.
Cautiously stealing along over the well-waxed floors, slippery as ice
itself, I descended the broad oak stairs into a great hall, wainscoted
with dark walnut and decorated with antlers’ and stags’ heads, cross-
bows and arquebuses, and, to my shuddering horror, with various _cors de
chasse_, now happily, however, silent on the walls. I entered the
drawing-room, conning over to myself a little speech in French, and
preparing myself to bow for the next fifteen minutes; but, to my
surprise, no one had yet appeared. All were still occupied in dressing,
and probably taking some well-merited repose after their exertions on
the wind-instruments. I had now time for a survey of the apartment; and,
generally speaking, a drawing-room is no bad indication of the tastes
and temperament of the owners of the establishment.
The practised eye speedily detects in the character and arrangement of a
chamber something of its occupant. In some houses, the absence of all
decoration, the simple puritanism of the furniture, bespeaks the life of
quiet souls whose days are as devoid of luxury as their dwellings. You
read in the cold grey tints the formal stiffness and unrelieved
regularity around the Quaker-like flatness of their existence. In
others, there is an air of ill-done display, a straining after effect,
which shows itself in costly but ill-assorted details, a mingling of all
styles and eras without repose or keeping. The bad pretentious pictures,
the faulty bronzes, meagre casts of poor originals, the gaudy china, are
safe warranty for the vulgarity of their owners; while the humble
parlour of a village inn can be, as I have seen it, made to evidence the
cultivated tastes and polished habits of those who have made it the
halting-place of a day. We might go back and trace how much of our
knowledge of the earliest ages is derived from the study of the interior
of their dwellings; what a rich volume of information is conveyed in a
mosaic; what a treatise does not lie in a frescoed wall!
The room in which I now found myself was a long, and for its length a
narrow, apartment; a range of tall windows, deeply sunk in the thick
wall, occupied one side, opposite to which was a plain wall covered with
pictures from floor to cornice, save where, at a considerable distance
from one another, were two splendidly carved chimney-pieces of black
oak, one representing ‘The Adoration of the Shepherds,’ and the other
‘The Miraculous Draught of Fishes’--the latter done with a relief, a
vigour, and a movement I have never seen equalled. Above these were some
armorial trophies of an early date, in which, among the maces and
battle-axes, I could recognise some weapons of Eastern origin, which by
the family, I learned, were ascribed to the periods of the Crusades.
Between the windows were placed a succession of carved oak cabinets of
the seventeenth century--beautiful specimens of art, and for all their
quaintness far handsomer objects of furniture than our modern luxury has
introduced among us. Japan vases of dark blue-and-green were filled with
rare flowers; here and there small tables of costly buhl invited you to
the window recesses, where the downy ottomans, pillowed with Flemish
luxury, suggested rest if not sleep. The pictures, over which I could
but throw a passing glance, were all by Flemish painters, and of that
character which so essentially displays their chief merits of richness
of colour and tone--Gerard Dow and Ostade, Cuyp, Van der Meer, and
Terburg--those admirable groupings of domestic life, where the nation
is, as it were, miniatured before you; that perfection of domestic
quiet, which bespeaks an heirloom of tranquillity derived whole
centuries back. You see at once, in those dark-brown eyes and placid
features, the traits that have taken ages to bring to such perfection;
and you recognise the origin of those sturdy burgomasters and bold
burghers, who were at the same time the thriftiest merchants and the
haughtiest princes of Europe.
Suddenly, and when I was almost on my knees to examine a picture by
Memling, the door opened, and a small, sharp-looking man, dressed in the
last extravagance of Paris mode, resplendent in waistcoat and glistening
in jewellery, tripped lightly forward. ‘Ah, mi Lor O’Leary!’ said he,
advancing towards me with a bow and a slide.
It was no time to discuss pedigree; so gulping the promotion, I made my
acknowledgments as best I could; and by the time that we met, which on a
moderate calculation might have been two minutes after he entered, we
shook hands very cordially, and looked delighted to see each other. This
ceremony, I repeat, was only accomplished after his having bowed round
two tables, an ottoman, and an oak _armoire_, I having performed the
like ceremony behind a Chinese screen, and very nearly over a vase of
the original ‘green dragon,’ which actually seemed disposed to spring at
me for my awkwardness.
Before my astonishment--shall I add, disappointment?--had subsided, at
finding that the diminutive, overdressed figure before me was the
representative of those bold barons I had been musing over (for such he
was), the room began to fill. Portly ladies of undefined dates sailed in
and took their places, stiff, stately, and silent as their grandmothers
on the walls; heavy-looking gentlemen, with unpronounceable names, bowed
and wheeled and bowed again; while a buzz of _votre serviteur_, madame,
or monsieur, swelled and sank amid the murmur of the room, with the
scraping of feet on the glazed _parquet_, and the rustle of silk, whose
plenitude bespoke a day when silkworms were honest.
The host paraded me around the austere circle, where the very names
sounded like an incantation; and the old ladies shook their bugles and
agitated their fans in recognition of my acquaintance. The circumstances
of my adventure were the conversation of every group; and although, I
confess, I could not help feeling that even a small spice of malice
might have found food for laughter in the absurdity of my durance, yet
not one there could see anything in the whole affair save a grave case
of smuggled tobacco, and a most unwarrantable exercise of authority on
the part of the curé who liberated me. Indeed, this latter seemed to
gain ground so rapidly, that once or twice I began to fear they might
remand me and sentence me to another night in the air, ‘till justice
should be satisfied.’ I did the worthy Maire de Givet foul wrong, said I
to myself; these people here are not a whit better.
The company continued to arrive at every moment; and now I remarked that
it was the veteran battalion who led the march, the younger members of
the household only dropping in as the hour grew later. Among these was a
pleasant sprinkling of Frenchmen, as easily recognisable among Flemings
as is an officer of the Blues from one of the new police; a German
baron, a very portrait of his class, fat, heavy-browed, sulky-looking,
but in reality a good-hearted, fine-tempered fellow; two Americans; an
English colonel, with his daughters twain; and a Danish _chargé d’
affaires_--the minor characters being what, in dramatic phrase, are
called _premiers_ and _premieres_, meaning thereby young people of
either sex, dressed in the latest mode, and performing the part of
lovers; the ladies, with a moderate share of good looks, being perfect
in the freshness of their toilette and in a certain air of ease and
gracefulness almost universal abroad; the men, a strange mixture of
silliness and savagery (a bad cross), half hairdresser, half hero.
Before the dinner was announced, I had time to perceive that the company
was divided into two different and very opposite currents--one party
consisting of the old Dutch or Flemish race, quiet, plodding, peaceable
souls, pretending to nothing new, enjoying everything old, their
souvenirs referring to some event in the time of their grandfathers; the
other section being the younger portion, who, strongly imbued with
French notions on dress and English on sporting matters, attempted to
bring Newmarket and the Boulevards des Italiens into the heart of the
Ardennes.
Between the two, and connecting them with each other, was a species of
_pont du diable_, in the person of a little, dapper, olive-complexioned
man of about forty. His eyes were black as jet, but with an expression
soft and subdued, save at moments of excitement, when they flashed like
glow-worms; his plain suit of black with deep cambric ruffles, his silk
shorts and buckled shoes, had in them something of the ecclesiastic; and
so it was. He was the Abbé van Praet, the cadet of an ancient Belgian
family, a man of considerable ability, highly informed on most subjects;
a linguist, a musician, a painter of no small pretensions, who spent his
life in the _far niente_ of château existence--now devising a party of
pleasure, now inventing a madrigal, now giving directions to the chef
how to make an _omelette à la curé_, now stealing noiselessly along some
sheltered walk to hear some fair lady’s secret confidence; for he was
privy counsellor in all affairs of the heart, and, if the world did not
wrong him, occasionally pleaded his own cause when no other petitioner
offered. I was soon struck by this man, and by the tact with which,
while he preserved his ascendency over the minds of all, he never
admitted any undue familiarity, yet affected all the ease and
_insouciance_ of the veriest idler. I was flattered, also, by his notice
of me, and by the politeness of his invitation to sit next him at table.
The distinctions I have hinted at already, made the dinner conversation
a strange medley of Flemish history and sporting anecdotes; of
reminiscences of the times of Maria Theresa, and dissertations on
weights and ages; of the genealogies of Flemish families, and the
pedigrees of English racehorses. The young English ladies, both pretty
and delicate-looking girls, with an air of good-breeding and tone in
their manner, shocked me not a little by the intimate knowledge they
displayed on all matters of the turf and the stable--their acquaintance
with the details of hunting, racing, and steeplechasing, seeming to form
the most wonderful attraction to the moustached counts and whiskered
barons who listened to them. The colonel was a fine, mellow-looking old
gentleman, with a white head and a red nose, and with that species of
placid expression one sees in the people who perform those parts in
Vaudeville theatres called _pères nobles_. He seemed, indeed, as if he
had been daily in the habit of bestowing a lovely daughter on some
happy, enraptured lover, and invoking a blessing on their heads; there
was a rich unction in his voice, an almost imperceptible quaver, that
made it seem kind and affectionate; he finished his shake of the hand
with a little parting squeeze, a kind of ‘one cheer more,’ as they say
nowadays, when some misguided admirer calls upon a meeting for
enthusiasm they don’t feel. The Americans were (and one description will
serve for both, so like were they) sallow, high-boned, silent men, with
a species of quiet caution in their manner, as if they were learning,
but had not yet completed, a European education as to habits and
customs, and were studiously careful not to commit any solecisms which
might betray their country.
As dinner proceeded, the sporting characters carried the day. The
_ouverture de la chasse_, which was to take place the following morning,
was an all-engrossing topic, and I found myself established as judge on
a hundred points of English jockey etiquette, of which as my ignorance
was complete I suffered grievously in the estimation of the company,
and, when referred to, could neither apportion the weight to age, nor
even tell the number of yards in a ‘distance.’ It was, however, decreed
that I should ride the next day--the host had the ‘very horse to suit
me’; and, as the abbé whispered me to consent, I acceded at once to the
arrangement.
When we adjourned to the drawing-room, Colonel Muddleton came towards me
with an easy smile and an outstretched snuff-box, both in such perfect
keeping: the action was a finished thing.
‘Any relation, may I ask, of a very old friend and brother officer of
mine, General Mark O’Leary, who was killed in Canada?’ said he.
‘A very distant one only,’ replied I.
‘A capital fellow, brave as a lion, and pleasant. By Jove, I never met
the like of him! What became of his Irish property?--he was never
married, I think?’
‘No, he died a bachelor, and left his estates to my uncle; they had met
once by accident, and took a liking to each other.’
‘And so your uncle has them now?’
‘No; my uncle died since. They came into my possession some two or three
years ago.’
‘Eh--ah--upon my life!’ said he, with something of surprise in his
manner; and then, as if ashamed of his exclamation, and with a much more
cordial vein than at first, he resumed: ‘What a piece of unlooked-for
good fortune to be sure! Only think of my finding my old friend Mark’s
nephew!’
‘Not his nephew. I was only----’
‘Never mind, never mind; he was kind of an uncle, you know--any man
might be proud of him. What a glorious fellow!--full of fun, full of
spirit and animation. Ah, just like all your countrymen! I’ve a little
Irish blood in my veins myself; my mother was an O’Flaherty or an
O’Neil, or something of that sort; and there’s Laura--you don’t know my
daughter?’ ‘I have not the honour.’
‘Come along, and I’ll introduce you to her; a little reserved or so,’
said he, in a whisper, as if to give me the _carte du pays_--’ rather
cold, you know, to strangers; but when she hears you are the nephew of
my old friend Mark--Mark and I were like brothers.--Laura, my love,’
said he, tapping the young lady on her white shoulder as she stood with
her back towards us; ‘Laura, dear---the son of my oldest friend in the
world, General O’Leary.’
The young lady turned quickly round, and, as she drew herself up
somewhat haughtily, dropped me a low curtsy, and then resumed her
conversation with a very much whiskered gentleman near. The colonel
seemed, despite all his endeavours to overcome it, rather put out by his
daughter’s hauteur to the _son_ of his old friend; and what he would
have said or done I know not, but the abbé came suddenly up, and with a
card invited me to join a party at whist. The moment was so awkward for
all, that I would have accepted an invitation even to écarté to escape
from the difficulty, and I followed him into a small boudoir where two
ladies were awaiting us. I had just time to see that they were both
pleasing-looking, and of that time of life when women, without
forfeiting any of the attractions of youth, are much more disposed to
please by the attractions of manner and _esprit_ than by mere beauty,
when we sat down to our game. La Baronne de Meer, my partner, was the
younger and the prettier of the two; she was one of those Flemings into
whose families the race of Spain poured the warm current of southern
blood, and gave them the dark eye and the olive skin, the graceful
figure and the elastic step, so characteristic of their nation.
‘A la bonne heure,’ said she, smiling; ‘have we rescued one from the
enchantress?’
‘Yes,’ replied the abbé, with an affected gravity; ‘in another moment he
was lost.’
‘If you mean me,’ said I, laughing, ‘I assure you I ran no danger at
all; for whatever the young lady’s glances may portend, she seemed very
much indisposed to bestow a second on me.’
The game proceeded with its running fire of chitchat, from which I could
gather that Mademoiselle Laura was a most established man-killer, no one
ever escaping her fascinations save when by some strange fatality they
preferred her sister Julia, whose style was, to use the abbé’s phrase,
her sister’s ‘diluted.’ There was a tone of pique in the way the ladies
criticised the colonel’s daughters, which I have often remarked in those
who, accustomed to the attentions of men themselves, without any unusual
effort to please on their part, are doubly annoyed when they perceive a
rival making more than ordinary endeavours to attract admirers. They
feel as a capitalist would, when another millionaire offers money at a
lower rate of interest. It is, as it were, a breach of conventional
etiquette, and never escapes being severely criticised.
As for me, I had no personal feeling at stake, and looked on at the game
of all parties with much amusement.
‘Where is the Comte d’Espagne to-night?’ said the baronne to the abbé.
‘Has he been false?’
‘Not at all; he was singing with mademoiselle when I was in the salon.’
‘You’ll have a dreadful rival there, Monsieur O’Leary,’ said she
laughingly; ‘he is the most celebrated swordsman and the best shot in
Flanders.’
‘It is likely he may rust his weapons if he have no opportunity for
their exercise till I give it,’ said I.
‘Don’t you admire her, then?’ said she.
‘The lady is very pretty, indeed,’ said I.
‘The heart led,’ interrupted the abbé suddenly, as he touched my foot
beneath the table--‘play a heart.’
Close beside my chair, and leaning over my cards, stood Mademoiselle
Laura herself at the moment.
‘You have no heart,’ said she, in English, and with a singular
expression on the words, while her downcast eye shot a glance--one
glance--through me.
‘Yes, but I have though,’ said I, discovering a card that lay concealed
behind another; ‘it only requires a little looking for.’
‘Not worth the trouble, perhaps,’ said she, with a toss of her head, as
I threw the deuce upon the table; and before I could reply she was gone.
‘I think her much prettier when she looks saucy,’ said the baronne, as
if to imply that the air of pique assumed was a mere piece of acting got
up for effect.
I see it all, said I to myself. Foreign women can never forgive English
for being so much their superior in beauty and loveliness. Meanwhile our
game came to a close, and we gathered around the buffet.
There we found the old colonel, with a large silver tankard of mulled
wine, holding forth over some campaigning exploit, to which no one
listened for more than a second or two--and thus the whole room became
joint-stock hearers of his story. Laura stood eating her ice with the
Comte d’Espagne, the black-whiskered cavalier already mentioned, beside
her. The Americans were prosing away about Jefferson and Adams; the
Belgians talked agriculture and genealogy; and the French collecting
into a group of their own, in which nearly all the pretty women joined,
discoursed the ballet, the Chambre, the court, the coulisses, the last
mode, and the last murder, and all in the same mirthful and lively tone.
And truly, let people condemn as they will this superficial style of
conversation, there is none equal to it; it avoids the prosaic flatness
of German, and the monotonous pertinacity of English, which seems more
to partake of the nature of discussion than dialogue. French chit-chat
takes a wider range--anecdotic, illustrative, and discursive by turns;
it deems nothing too light, nothing too weighty for its subject; it is a
gay butterfly, now floating with gilded wings above you, now tremulously
perched upon a leaf below, now sparkling in the sunbeam, now loitering
in the shade; embodying not only thought, but expression, it charms by
its style as well as by its matter. The language, too, suggests shades
and nuances of colouring that exist not in other tongues; you can give
to your canvas the precise tint you wish, for when mystery would prove a
merit, the equivoque is there ready to your hand--meaning so much, yet
asserting so little. For my part I should make my will in English; but
I’d rather make love in French.
While thus digressing, I have forgotten to mention that people are
running back and forward with bedroom candles; there is a confused hum
of _bonsoir_ on every side; and, with many a hope of a fine day for the
morrow, we separate for the night.
I lay awake some hours thinking of Laura, and then of the baronne--they
were both arch ones; the abbé too crossed my thoughts, and once or twice
the old colonel’s roguish leer; but I slept soundly for all that, and
did not wake till eight o’clock the next morning. The silence of the
house struck me forcibly as I rubbed my eyes and looked about. Hang it,
thought I, have they gone off to the _chasse_ without me? I surely could
never have slept through the uproar of their trumpets. I drew aside the
window-curtains, and the mystery was solved: such rain never fell
before; the clouds, actually touching the tops of the beech-trees,
seemed to ooze and squash like squeezed sponges. The torrent came down
in that splashing stroke as if some force behind momentarily propelled
it stronger; and the long-parched ground seethed and smoked like a
heated caldron.
Pleasant this, was reflection number one, as I endeavoured to peer
through the mist, and beheld a haze of weeping foliage--pleasant to be
immured here during Heaven knows how many days, without the power to
escape. Lucky fellow, Arthur, was my second thought; capital quarters
you have fallen into. Better far the snug comforts of a Flemish chateau
than the chances of a wayside inn. Besides, here is a goodly company met
together; there will needs be pleasant people among them. I wish it may
rain these three weeks; château life is the very thing I ‘m curious
about. How do they get through the day? There’s no _Times_ in Flanders;
no one cares a farthing about who’s in and who’s out. There’s no Derby,
no trials for murder. What can they do? was the question I put to myself
a dozen times over. No matter; I have abundant occupation; my journal
has never been posted up since--since--alas, I can scarcely tell!
It might be from reflections like these, or perhaps because I was less
of a sportsman than my companions, but certainly, whatever the cause, I
bore up against the disappointment of the weather with far more
philosophy than they, and dispersed a sack of proverbs about patience,
hope, equanimity, and contentment which Sancho Panza himself might have
envied, until at length no one ventured a malediction on the day in my
presence, for fear of eliciting a hailstorm of moral reflections. The
company dropped down to breakfast by detachments, the elated looks and
flashing eyes of the night before saddened and overcast at the
unexpected change. Even the elders of the party seemed discontented; and
except myself and an old gentleman with the gout, who took an airing
about the hall and the drawing-room in a wheel-chair, all seemed
miserable.
Each window had its occupant posted against the glass, vainly
endeavouring to catch one bit of blue amid the dreary waste of cloud. A
little group, sulky and silent, were gathered around the weather-glass;
a literary inquirer sat down to con over the predictions of the almanac.
You might as well have looked for sociability among the inhabitants of a
private madhouse as here. The weather was cursed in every language from
Cherokee to Sanskrit; all agreed that no country had such an abominable
climate. The Yankee praised the summers of America, the Dane upheld his
own, and I took a patriotic turn, and vowed I had never seen such rain
in Ireland. The master of the house could scarcely show himself amid
this torrent of abusive criticism; and when he did by chance appear, he
looked as much ashamed as though he himself had pulled out the spigot,
and deluged the whole land with water.
Meanwhile, none of those I looked for appeared. Neither the colonel’s
daughter nor the baronne came down; the abbé too, did not descend to the
breakfast room, and I was considerably puzzled and put out by the
disappointment.
After then enduring a good hour’s boredom from the old colonel on the
subject of my late lamented parent, Mark O’Leary; after submitting to a
severe cross-examination from the Yankee gentleman as to the reason of
my coming abroad, what property and expectations I had, my age and
birthplace, what my mother died of, and whether I did not feel very
miserable from the abject slavery of submitting to an English
Government--I escaped into the library, a fine, comfortable old room,
which I rightly conjectured I should find unoccupied.
Selecting a quaint-looking quarto with some curious illuminated pages
for my companion, I drew a great deep leather chair into a recess of one
window, and hugged myself in my solitude. While I listlessly turned over
the leaves of my book, or sat lost in reflection, time crept along, and
I heard the great clock of the château strike three; at the same moment
a hand fell lightly on my shoulder; I turned about--it was the abbé.
‘I half suspected I should find you here,’ said he. ‘Do I disturb you,
or may I keep you company?’
‘But too happy,’ I replied, ‘if you ‘ll do me the favour.’
‘I thought,’ said he, as he drew a chair opposite to me,--‘I thought
you’d scarcely play dominoes all day, or discuss waistcoats.’
‘In truth I was scarcely better employed; this old volume here which I
took down for its plates----’
‘_Ma foi_, a most interesting one; it is Guchardi’s _History of Mary of
Burgundy_. Those quaint old processions, those venerable councils, are
admirably depicted. What rich stores for a romance writer lie in the
details of these old books! Their accuracy as to costume, the little
traits of everyday life, are so naïvely told; every little domestic
incident is so full of its characteristic era. I wonder, when the
springs are so accessible, men do not draw more frequently from them,
and more purely also.’
‘You forget Scott.’
‘No; far from it. He is the great exception; and from his intimate
acquaintance with this class of reading is he so immeasurably superior
to all other writers of his style. Not merely tinctured, but deeply
imbued with the habits of the feudal period, the traits by which others
attempt to paint the time with him were mere accessories in the picture;
costume and architecture he used to heighten, not to convey his
impressions; and while no one knew better every minute particular of
dress or arms that betokened a period or a class, none more sparingly
used such aid. He felt the same delicacy certain ancient artists did as
to the introduction of pure white into their pictures, deeming such an
unfair exercise of skill. But why venture to speak of your countryman to
you, save that genius is above nationality, and Scott’s novels at least
are European.’
After chatting for some time longer, and feeling struck with, the extent
and variety of the abbé’s attainments, I half dropped a hint expressive
of my surprise that one so cultivated as he was could apparently so
readily comply with the monotonous routine of a château life, and the
little prospect it afforded of his meeting congenial associates. Far
from feeling offended at the liberty of my remark, he replied at once
with a smile--
‘You are wrong there, and the error is a common one; but when you have
seen more of life, you will learn that a man’s own resources are the
only real gratifications he can count upon. Society, like a field-day,
may offer the occasion to display your troops and put them through their
manoeuvres; but, believe me, it is a rare and a lucky day when you go
back richer by one recruit, and the chance is that even he is a cripple,
and must be sent about his business. People, too, will tell you much of
the advantage to be derived from associating with men of distinguished
and gifted minds. I have seen something of such in my time, and give
little credit to the theory. You might as well hope to obtain credit for
a thousand pounds because you took off your hat to a banker.’
The abbé paused after this, and seemed to be occupied with his own
thoughts; then raising his head suddenly, he said--
‘As to happiness, believe me, it lives only in the extremes of perfect
vacuity or true genius. Your clever fellow, with a vivid fancy and
glowing imagination, strong feeling and strong power of expression, has
no chance of it. The excitement he lives in is alone a bar to the
tranquil character of thought necessary to happiness; and however cold a
man may feel, he should never warm himself through a burning-glass.’
There seemed through all he said something like a retrospective tone, as
though he were rather giving the fruit of past personal experiences than
merely speculating on the future; and I could not help throwing out a
hint to this purport.
‘Perhaps you are right,’ said he; then, after a long silence, he added:
‘It is a fortunate thing after all when the faults of a man’s
temperament are the source of some disappointment in early life, because
then they rarely endanger his subsequent career. Let him only escape the
just punishment, whatever it be, and the chances are that they embitter
every hour of his after-life. His whole care and study being not
correction, but concealment, he lives a life of daily duplicity; the
fear of detection is over him at every step he takes; and he plays a
part so constantly that he loses all real character at last in the
frequency of dissimulation. Shall I tell you a little incident with
which I became acquainted in early life. If you have nothing better to
do, it may while away the hours before dinner.’