“Oh!”
--_Milton._
“Ah!”
--_Pope._
One evening, the Baroness de Violenci, having sprained her left leg
in the composition of an ecstatic ode, resolved not to go to Lady
Penthesilea Rouge’s rout. While she was sitting alone at a plate of
prawns, the footman entered with a basket, which had just been left
for her. “Lay it down, John,” said she, touching his forehead with her
fork. The gay-hearted young fellow did as he was desired and capered
out of the room. Judge of her astonishment when she found, on opening
it, a little cherub of a baby sleeping within. An oaken cross, with
“Hysterica” inscribed in chalk, was appended at its neck, and a mark,
like a bruised gooseberry, added interest to its elbow. As she and
her lord had never had children, she determined, _sur le champ_,
on adopting the pretty Hysterica. Fifteen years did this worthy woman
dedicate to the progress of her little charge; and in that time taught
her every mortal accomplishment. Her sigh, particularly, was esteemed
the softest in Europe.
But the stroke of death is inevitable; come it must at last, and
neither virtue nor wisdom can avoid it. In a word, the good old
Baroness died, and our heroine fell senseless on her body.
“O what a fall was there, my countrymen!”
But it is now time to describe our heroine. As Milton tells us that Eve
was “more lovely than Pandora” (an imaginary lady who never existed but
in the brains of poets), so do we declare, and are ready to stake our
lives, that our heroine excelled in her form the Timinitilidi, whom no
man ever saw; and in her voice, the music of the spheres, which no man
ever heard. Perhaps her face was not perfect; but it was more--it was
interesting--it was oval. Her eyes were of the real, original old blue;
and her lashes of the best silk. You forgot the thickness of her lips
in the casket of pearls which they enshrined; and the roses of York
and Lancaster were united in her cheek. A nose of the Grecian order
surmounted the whole. Such was Hysterica.
But, alas! misfortunes are often gregarious, like sheep. For one night,
when our heroine had repaired to the chapel, intending to drop her
customary tear on the tomb of her sainted benefactress, she heard on a
sudden,
“Oh, horrid horrible, and horridest horror!”
the distant organ peal a solemn voluntary. While she was preparing, in
much terror and astonishment, to accompany it with her voice, four men
in masks rushed from among some tombs and bore her to a carriage, which
instantly drove off with the whole party. In vain she sought to soften
them by swoons, tears, and a simple little ballad; they sat counting
murders and not minding her. As the blinds of the carriage were closed
the whole way, we waive a description of the country which they
traversed. Besides, the prospect within the carriage will occupy the
reader enough; for in one of the villains Hysterica discovered--Count
Stilletto! She fainted. On the second day the carriage stopped at an
old castle, and she was conveyed into a tapestried apartment--in which
rusty daggers, mouldering bones, and ragged palls lay scattered in all
the profusion of feudal plenty--where the delicate creature fell ill of
an inverted eyelash, caused by continual weeping....