Show me not thy painted beauties, These impostures I defy.--George
Withers.
The cave of Falri smelt not more delicately--on every side appeared
the marks of drunkenness and gluttony. At the upper end of the cave the
sorcerer lay extended, etc.--Mirglip the Persian, in the “Tales of the
Genii.”
I woke the next morning with an aching head and feverish frame. Ah,
those midnight carousals, how glorious they would be if there was no
next morning! I took my sauterne and sodawater in my dressing-room; and,
as indisposition always makes me meditative, I thought over all I had
done since my arrival at Paris. I had become (that, God knows, I soon
manage to do) rather a talked of and noted character. It is true that I
was every where abused--one found fault with my neckcloth--another with
my mind--the lank Mr. Aberton declared that I put my hair in papers, and
the stuffed Sir Henry Millington said I was a thread-paper myself. One
blamed my riding--a second my dancing--a third wondered how any woman
could like me, and a fourth said that no woman ever could.
On one point, however, all--friends and foes--were alike agreed; viz.
that I was a consummate puppy, and excessively well satisfied with
myself. A la verite, they were not much mistaken there. Why is it,
by the by, that to be pleased with one’s-self is the surest way of
offending every body else? If any one, male or female, an evident
admirer of his or her own perfections, enter a room, how perturbed,
restless, and unhappy every individual of the offender’s sex instantly
becomes: for them not only enjoyment but tranquillity is over, and if
they could annihilate the unconscious victim of their spleen, I fully
believe no Christian toleration would come in the way of that last
extreme of animosity. For a coxcomb there is no mercy--for a coquet no
pardon. They are, as it were, the dissenters of society--no crime is
too bad to be imputed to them; they do not believe the religion of
others--they set up a deity of their own vanity--all the orthodox
vanities of others are offended. Then comes the bigotry--the stake--the
auto-da-fe of scandal. What, alas! is so implacable as the rage of
vanity? What so restless as its persecution? Take from a man his
fortune, his house, his reputation, but flatter his vanity in each, and
he will forgive you. Heap upon him benefits, fill him with blessings:
but irritate his self-love, and you have made the very best man an
ingrat. He will sting you if he can: you cannot blame him; you yourself
have instilled the venom. This is one reason why you must not always
reckon upon gratitude in conferring an obligation. It is a very high
mind to which gratitude is not a painful sensation. If you wish to
please, you will find it wiser to receive--solicit even--favours, than
accord them; for the vanity of the obliger is always flattered--that of
the obligee rarely.
Well, this is an unforeseen digression: let me return! I had mixed,
of late, very little with the English. My mother’s introductions
had procured me the entree of the best French houses; and to them,
therefore, my evenings were usually devoted. Alas! that was a happy
time, when my carriage used to await me at the door of the Rocher de
Cancale, and then whirl me to a succession of visits, varying in their
degree and nature as the whim prompted: now to the brilliant soirees of
Madame De--, or to the appartemens au troisieme of some less celebrated
daughter of dissipation and ecarte;--now to the literary conversaziones
of the Duchesse de D--s, or the Vicomte d’A--, and then to the feverish
excitement of the gambling house. Passing from each with the appetite
for amusement kept alive by variety; finding in none a disappointment,
and in every one a welcome; full of the health which supports, and
the youth which colours all excess or excitation, I drained, with an
unsparing lip, whatever that enchanting metropolis could afford.
I have hitherto said but little of the Duchesse de Perpignan; I think
it necessary now to give some account of that personage. Ever since
the evening I had met her at the ambassador’s, I had paid her the most
unceasing attentions. I soon discovered that she had a curious sort of
liaison with one of the attaches--a short, ill-made gentleman, with high
shoulders, and a pale face, who wore a blue coat and buff waistcoat,
wrote bad verses, and thought himself handsome. All Paris said she was
excessively enamoured of this youth. As for me, I had not known her four
days before I discovered that she could not be excessively enamoured of
any thing but an oyster pete and Lord Byron’s Corsair. Her mind was the
most marvellous melange of sentiment and its opposite. In her amours she
was Lucretia herself; in her epicurism, Apicius would have yielded to
her. She was pleased with sighs, but she adored suppers. She would
leave every thing for her lover, except her dinner. The attache soon
quarrelled with her, and I was installed into the platonic honours of
his office.
At first, I own that I was flattered by her choice, and though she
was terribly exigeante of my petits soins, I managed to keep up her
affection, and, what is still more wonderful, my own, for the better
part of a month. What then cooled me was the following occurrence:
I was in her boudoir one evening, when her femme de chambre came to tell
us that the duc was in the passage. Notwithstanding the innocence of our
attachment, the duchesse was in a violent fright; a small door was at
the left of the ottoman, on which we were sitting. “Oh, no, no, not
there,” cried the lady; but I, who saw no other refuge, entered it
forthwith, and before she could ferret me out, the duc was in the room.
In the meanwhile, I amused myself by examining the wonders of the new
world into which I had so abruptly immerged: on a small table before
me, was deposited a remarkably constructed night-cap; I examined it as
a curiosity: on each side was placed une petite cotelette de veau
cru, sewed on with green-coloured silk (I remember even the smallest
minutiae), a beautiful golden wig (the duchesse never liked me to play
with her hair) was on a block close by, and on another table was a set
of teeth, d’une blancheur eblouissante. In this manufactory of a beauty
I remained for a quarter of an hour; at the end of that time, the
abigail (the duchesse had the grace to disappear) released me, and I
flew down stairs like a spirit from purgatory.
From that moment the duchesse honoured me with her most deadly
abhorrence. Equally silly and wicked, her schemes of revenge were as
ludicrous in their execution as remorseless in their design: at one
time I narrowly escaped poison in a cup of coffee--at another, she
endeavoured to stab me to the heart with a paper cutter.
Notwithstanding my preservation from these attacks, this new Messalina
had resolved on my destruction, and another means of attempting it still
remained, which the reader will yet have the pleasure of learning.
Mr. Thornton had called upon me twice, and twice I had returned
the visit, but neither of us had been at home to benefit by these
reciprocities of politesse. His acquaintance with my mysterious hero of
the gambling house and the Jardin des Plantes, and the keen interest
I took, in spite of myself, in that unaccountable person, whom I was
persuaded I had seen before in some very different scene, and under very
different circumstances, made me desirous to increase a connoissance,
which, from Vincent’s detail, I should otherwise have been anxious to
avoid. I therefore resolved to make another attempt to find him at home;
and my headache being somewhat better, I took my way to his apartments
in the Faubourg St. Germain.
I love that quartier--if ever I went to Paris again I should reside
there. It is quite a different world from the streets usually known to,
and tenanted by the English--there, indeed, you are among the French,
the fossilized remains of the old regime--the very houses have an air of
desolate, yet venerable grandeur--you never pass by the white and modern
mansion of a nouveau riche; all, even to the ruggedness of the pave,
breathes a haughty disdain of innovation--you cross one of the
numerous bridges, and you enter into another time--you are inhaling
the atmosphere of a past century; no flaunting boutique, French in its
trumpery, English in its prices, stares you in the face; no stiff coats
and unnatural gaits are seen anglicising up the melancholy streets. Vast
hotels, with their gloomy frontals, and magnificent contempt of comfort;
shops, such as shops might have been in the aristocratic days of Louis
Quatorze, ere British vulgarities made them insolent and dear;
public edifices, still redolent of the superb charities of le grand
monarque--carriages with their huge bodies and ample decorations;
horses, with their Norman dimensions and undocked honours; men, on whose
more high though not less courteous demeanour, the revolution seems to
have wrought no democratic plebeianism--all strike on the mind with a
vague and nameless impression of antiquity; a something solemn even in
gaiety, and faded in pomp, appear to linger over all you behold; there
are the Great French people unadulterated by change, unsullied with the
commerce of the vagrant and various tribes that throng their mighty mart
of enjoyments.
The strangers who fill the quartiers on this side the Seine pass not
there; between them and the Faubourg there is a gulf; the very skies
seem different--your own feelings, thoughts--nature itself--alter,
when you have passed that Styx which divides the wanderers from the
habitants; your spirits are not so much damped, as tinged, refined,
ennobled by a certain inexpressible awe--you are girt with the
stateliness of Eld, and you tread the gloomy streets with the dignity of
a man, who is recalling the splendours of an ancient court where he once
did homage.
I arrived at Thornton’s chambers in the Rue St. Dominique. “Monsieur,
est-il chez lui?” said I to the ancient porteress, who was reading one
of Crebillon’s novels.
“Oui, Monsieur, au quatrieme,” was the answer. I turned to the dark and
unclean staircase, and, after incredible exertion and fatigue, arrived,
at last, at the elevated abode of Mr. Thornton.
“Entrez,” cried a voice, in answer to my rap. I obeyed the signal, and
found myself in a room of tolerable dimensions and multiplied utilities.
A decayed silk curtain of a dingy blue, drawn across a recess, separated
the chambre a coucher from the salon. It was at present only half drawn,
and did not, therefore, conceal the mysteries of the den within; the bed
was still unmade, and apparently of no very inviting cleanliness; a red
handkerchief, that served as a nightcap, hung pendant from the foot of
the bed; at a little distance from it, more towards the pillow, were a
shawl, a parasol, and an old slipper. On a table, which stood between
the two dull, filmy windows, were placed a cracked bowl, still reeking
with the lees of gin-punch, two bottles half full, a mouldy cheese, and
a salad dish; on the ground beneath it lay two huge books, and a woman’s
bonnet.
Thornton himself sat by a small consumptive fire, in an easy chair;
another table, still spread with the appliances of breakfast, viz. a
coffee-pot, a milk-jug, two cups, a broken loaf, and an empty dish,
mingled with a pack of cards, one dice, and an open book de mauvais
gout, stood immediately before him.
Every thing around bore some testimony of the spirit of low debauchery;
and the man himself, with his flushed and sensual countenance, his
unwashed hands, and the slovenly rakishness of his whole appearance,
made no unfitting representation of the Genius Loci.
All that I have described, together with a flitting shadow of feminine
appearance, escaping through another door, my quick eye discovered in
the same instant that I made my salutation.
Thornton rose, with an air half careless and half abashed, and
expressed, in more appropriate terms than his appearance warranted,
his pleasurable surprise at seeing me at last. There was, however, a
singularity in his conversation, which gave it an air both of shrewdness
and vulgarity. This was, as may before have been noted, a profuse
intermixture of proverbs, some stale, some new, some sensible enough,
and all savouring of a vocabulary carefully eschewed by every man of
ordinary refinement in conversation.
“I have but a small tenement,” said he, smiling; “but, thank Heaven, at
Paris a man is not made by his lodgings. Small house, small care. Few
garcons have indeed a more sumptuous apartment than myself.”
“True,” said I; “and if I may judge by the bottles on the opposite
table, and the bonnet beneath it, you find that no abode is too humble
or too exalted for the solace of the senses.”
“‘Fore Gad, you are in the right, Mr. Pelham,” replied Thornton, with
a loud, coarse, chuckling laugh, which, more than a year’s conversation
could have done, let me into the secrets of his character. “I care not
a rush for the decorations of the table, so that the cheer be good; nor
for the gew-gaws of the head-dress, as long as the face is pretty--‘the
taste of the kitchen is better than the smell.’ Do you go much to Madame
B--‘s in the Rue Gretry--eh, Mr. Pelham?--ah, I’ll be bound you do.”
“No,” said I, with a loud laugh, but internal shiver; “but you know
where to find le bon vin et les jolies filles. As for me, I am still a
stranger in Paris, and amuse myself but very indifferently.”
Thornton’s face brightened. “I tell you what my good fell--I beg
pardon--I mean Mr. Pelham--I can shew you the best sport in the world,
if you can only spare me a little of your time--this very evening,
perhaps?”
“I fear,” said I, “I am engaged all the present week; but I long for
nothing more than to cultivate an acquaintance, seemingly so exactly to
my own taste.”
Thornton’s grey eyes twinkled. “Will you breakfast with me on Sunday?”
said he.
“I shall be too happy,” I replied
There was now a short pause. I took advantage of it. “I think,” said
I, “I have seen you once or twice with a tall, handsome man, in a loose
great coat of very singular colour. Pray, if not impertinent, who is he?
I am sure I have seen him before in England.”
I looked full upon Thornton as I said this; he changed colour, and
answered my gaze with a quick glance from his small, glittering eye,
before he replied. “I scarcely know who you mean, my acquaintance is so
large and miscellaneous at Paris. It might have been Johnson, or Smith,
or Howard, or any body, in short.”
“It is a man nearly six feet high,” said I, “thin, and remarkably well
made, of a pale complexion, light eyes, and very black hair, mustachios
and whiskers. I saw him with you once in the Bois de Boulogne, and once
in a hell in the Palais Royal. Surely, now you will recollect who he
is?”
Thornton was evidently disconcerted. “Oh!” said he, after a short pause,
and another of his peculiarly quick, sly glances--“Oh, that man; I have
known him a very short time. What is his name? let me see!” and
Mr. Thornton affected to look down in a complete reverie of dim
remembrances.
I saw, however, that, from time to time, his eye glanced up to me, with
a restless, inquisitive expression, and as instantly retired.
“Ah,” said I, carelessly, “I think I know who he is!”
“Who!” cried Thornton, eagerly, and utterly off his guard.
“And yet,” I pursued, without noticing the interruption, “it scarcely
can be--the colour of the hair is so very different.”
Thornton again appeared to relapse into his recollections.
“War--Warbur--ah, I have it now!” cried he, “Warburton--that’s
it--that’s the name--is it the one you supposed, Mr. Pelham?”
“No,” said I, apparently perfectly satisfied. “I was quite mistaken.
Good morning, I did not think it was so late. On Sunday, then, Mr.
Thornton--au plaisir!”
“A d--d cunning dog!” said I to myself, as I left the apartments.
“However, on peut-etre trop fin. I shall have him yet.”
The surest way to make a dupe is to let your victim suppose you are his.