“I _am_ in danger. O, Gogo! for God’s sake tell me what I am to do!”
Then the great human love of the creature went down before me. He
fondled me, with tears and broken exclamations; he swore himself once
more, through all eternity, through sin and sorrow, my bondman.
Presently, without extenuation, I had confessed all to him; and he had
forgiven me; had admitted, even, that I had had the reason of a better
regard on my side. But as to what had happened to himself during the
long interval, he would tell me nothing as yet.
“I am the ex-hind legs of a dragon,” he said, “that was conquered by
the Chevalière Primrose, and turned into two-thirds of a prince. I
date myself from the translation. The curtain’s down on all that was
before.”
Now, when we came to discussing the ways and means for my escape from
a desperate situation, my dear resourceful monster was ready with a
suggestion at once.
“The Hamilton,” said he, “sails from England in a day or two. She is
disposed, by the tokens, to make a pet of you. Why not go to her;
relate everything; throw yourself upon her charity, and ask to be
conveyed abroad in her suite?”
“Gogo! When?” I cried. It was an inspiration.
“No moment like the present.”
“I will go. But you must come too, to protect me.”
“Of course.”
“And Patty?”
“All three of us together. Pack your box, pay your bill, and be ready
while I wait. At the worst, ’tis something gained to shift your
quarters and cover your trail.”
I demurred only at the bill; for, indeed, we needed every penny of our
ready money. But he settled the matter by paying it himself.
“I have become of a saving disposition,” he said; “and whatever trifle
there be, you are its heir. This is only drawing on your
reversion”--and, indeed, he valued money at nothing at all. If he
could have picked a living from the earth, he would never have been to
the trouble of putting a penny in his pocket.
In a little, all being prepared, we took a coach and drove to the
Ambassador’s hotel. My lady was fortunately at her toilette, and sent
down a surprised message, that, whatever the deuce I wanted, I was to
be shown up. I found her, tumbled a little abroad, in the hands of her
_perruquier_, whom she dismissed while she talked to me.
“Why, child,” she said, “what a face! ’Tis as white, I vow, as the
wings of your butterfly. Out with your trouble now.”
I threw myself at her feet. I made a clean breast of my story--of the
inhuman cruelty of which I was the destined victim; and I ended by
imploring her to let me and my friends enjoy the bounty of her
protection. She fired magnificently, as I had hoped she would, over
the recital. She embraced my cause impulsively and without a thought
for possible consequences to herself.
“The infamous old fox!” she cried of my lord; “I was flattered by his
attentions, hang him! until I found they was of the worst consequence
to me as a lady of position. To think of the old beast wanting to
murder you because of a lampoon--pasquinades we call ’em in Italy! La,
child! if _I_ answered so to every dig that’s made at me, I’d better
turn public executioner at once. Let’s keep our own characters clean
against the light being turned on ’em, say I; and, if we don’t,
there’s only ourselves to thank. It’s too late to talk of bein’ a lady
when the crowner comes to sit on our dirty stockin’s.”
She made me repeat my little song to her, and cried over it again.
“Trot up your friends,” she said, wiping her eyes. “There’s room for
you all here till we start for France--or Naples, if you will. Let me
see the old devil dare to follow you into this sancshery! We’ll be
even with him, gnashin’ his yellow teeth left behind. Go and fetch
’em. I want to see what they’re like.”
And she gave me a tempest of a kiss, and pushed me out at the door.
_It is here we encounter that considerable lacuna in the Reminiscences
to which reference was made in the “Introductory.” An examination of
the MS. shows that the large section--of more than a hundred
pages--which related to Mrs. Please’s experiences during the terrific
period of the Revolution, and afterwards so far as the year_ ’98,
_when the narrative is resumed, was at some time bodily removed,
whether with a view to separate publication_ (_of which, however, no
proof can be found_), _or through one of those intermittent panics of
conscience to which the lady was subject, there is no evidence to
show. While this breach is to be regretted--from her editor’s point of
view, at least--it must be said that innumerable contemporary
references to Madame “Se-Plaire” enable us in some measure not only to
follow the career of that redoubtable adventuress_ (_pace M. le Comte
de C----_), _but to supply to ourselves at least one presumptive
reason for her shyness, on reflection, of perpetuating certain of its
incidents. However, not to confuse matters, we will take our
stepping-stones in the order of their placing._
_It appears, then, that Mrs. Please and her friends were conveyed
safely in the Ambassador’s entourage, to Paris, where Madame the
Ambassador’s wife received, during the few days of her stay in the
French capital on her way to Italy, some salve to her hurt vanity in
the reception accorded her at the Tuileries by the queen, who took the
opportunity to intrust her with a letter to her sister of Naples.
Whether elated, indirectly, by the royal condescension, or electrified
by the state of the national atmosphere, or for whatever reason,
Diana, it appears, decided to remain where she was. She even, there is
some reason for believing, sought, in the character of a very loyal
little_ moucharde, _to ingratiate herself with the queen, going so far
as to imply that Lady Hamilton had taken this delicate means of
placing in Her Majesty’s hands a counter-buff to Mr. Pitt, whom Miss
Diana had often seen in my lord of Herring’s house in Berkeley Square,
and whose sinister designs against France she was quite ready to
quote--or invent._
_However this may be, it seems certain that Her Majesty was
inexplicably so far from being prepossessed by her fair visitor’s fair
protégée, that_ (_assuming even that she gave her her countenance at
the first_) _she did not hesitate long in turning upon her the coldest
of cold shoulders. We know at least that within a month of her arrival
in Paris, Diana_ (_which always equals, be it understood, Diana_ plus
_her two inseparables_) _had established herself, far from the
precincts of the court, in very good rooms in a house in the Rue St.
Jacques; where with characteristic suddenness and thoroughness she
announced her complete conversion to the principles of
ultra-republicanism. It must have been about this time, moreover, that
she found interest to return to the stage; for in addition to the
inclusion of her name in the bill of that stirring melodrama_, Les
Victimes Cloîtrées, _which set all fermenting Paris overflowing,
there exists that reference to her in the rather spiteful
Reminiscences of Adrienne Lavasse, which, I think, is worth
transcribing. “Mademoiselle Please,” says the actress, “was for a
little our_ ingénue _at the Français. She was imported from England;
but, it must be confessed, had a pretty gift_ [une belle facilité]
_for our tongue. One night, after a_ mêlée _in the green-room, she
lifts her voice in a furious outcry about her having been ravished of
a neckerchief which had been given her by a fellow_-comédienne _in
London, and which, she declares, she would not have parted with for a
louis-d’or. But I never observed”_ (_adds the little spitfire_) _“that
she took the trouble to replace it with another; from which it is
evident that it was not her modesty that she valued at so high a
figure.”_
_How long Mrs. Please continued on the stage at this time_ (_she
returned to it again later_) _is not certain. Probably her engagement
was terminated by that famous split in the company, when democratic
Talma and Vestris migrated to the Rue de Richelieu, bequeathing the
remnant honours of the old house in the Faubourg St. Germain to the
royalist Fleury, Dazincourt, and Company. What we_ do _know is that
about this critical period a lucky_ coup _in a State lottery
established our heroine on her feet, and that thenceforth she
flourished. She kept a little salon in those same historic rooms,
through which a regular progression of nationalists passed and
vanished. There, in their time, were to be seen Brissot, Guadet,
Gensonné, the Roman Roland, the handsome Barbaroux, Pétion,
Vergniaud, the sweet and indolent, in his ragged coat, Desmoulins,
Barrére, Billaud-Varennes, Barras. The order is significant of our
lady’s political, or politic, evolution. The life of the State, she
came to think, was only to be saved by ruthless amputation; and,
unfortunately, the disease was in the head. As the atmosphere
thickens, our glimpses of her become rarer and more lurid. She appears
once as the proprietress of a sort of_ Mont de piété, _very private
and exclusive, in which she amassed good quantity of property, pledged
by the proscribed, who never returned to redeem it. Among these,
curiously, seems to have been her father, whom, as characteristically
as possible, she forgave and attempted to shelter, though without
avail, for he was guillotined. It was probably to propitiate the
Government for this filial dereliction that she reappeared on the
boards, in_ ’93, _in that grotesque monument to the dulness of the
Sovereign People_, The Last Judgment of Kings; _and there, so far as
we can trace, ended her connection with the stage._
_During all this period, it is only fair to her to say, she seems to
have played the inflexible duenna to her little friend and adoratrice,
Miss Patty Grant, protecting the child from outside evil and her own
kind pliability, and, when she was called away from her side,
committing her to the care of that faithful and incorruptible monster,
the cripple._
_Towards the end of_ ’93 _she appears to have been so far in favour
with the powers that she was despatched on a secret propagandist
mission to the Neapolitan States--a portentous departure. She was not
back in Paris again until the spring of_ ’95, _when she returned to
find the Terror overthrown, its “tail” in process of being docked by
Sanson, and the_ jeunesse dorée _patrolling the streets._
_Not much record of this journey remains, beyond the single weighty
fact that it brought her acquainted with the young revolutionary
enthusiast, Nicola Pissani, who accompanied her home by way of Tuscany
and Piedmont, propagating their gospel of Liberty on the road._
_We may perhaps be pardoned for thinking it probable that Mrs. Please,
on her return to Paris, would have recanted her extremist views, had
it not been for this romantic_ exalté, _to whom, no doubt, she at the
time was sincerely attached. It is possible, indeed, that she did
persuade him of the necessity of an_ open _recantation, in order that
she might consort with him the more safely in those measures which he,
and for his sake she, had at heart--the violent establishment of a
republic at Naples, to wit. For, for the moment, sanscullotism was out
of fashion, and propagandists at a discount. It made no difference to
her, apparently, that her former patroness and saviour was heart and
soul with the court of Ferdinand. She was of the Roman mettle, and
would have sacrificed her own child to Liberty--with Pissani. I swear
my heart bleeds for her; for_ (_the truth has to be uttered_) _that
passionate young zealot was no sooner made free of the house in the
Rue St. Jacques, than he fell hopelessly entangled in the unconscious
meshes of poor blameless, lovable little Patty Grant. And, worse: Miss
Grant, without a thought of disloyalty to her friend and sister--who,
indeed, persistently, and perhaps justifiably, posed for no more than
the Neapolitan’s pious fellow-missionary--yielded her whole sweet soul
to him!_
_Nothing was declared, or came of this at the time. Pissani went back
to Naples; the two--he and Diana: not he and another, you may be sure,
unless by stealth--corresponded regularly; the march of events
proceeded; our heroine managed, no doubt, to console herself,
provisionally, for the separation. Perhaps she may have been conscious
of an alteration in her friend; a hint of some sad preoccupation; the
bright eyes dulling, the white face growing ever a little more white
and drawn. If she did, she chose, while biding her time of
enlightenment, to attach any but the right reason to the change. She
seems to confess, indeed, that she had the suspicion. Like enough, in
that case, she indulged it for a perpetual stimulant to her romance,
which might have withered without. She was not one to bear tamely her
supplanting by another--least of all by the little humble slave of her
passions and caprices, of her kisses and disdains. And, in the
meantime, the years went over them, while she was studying to
ingratiate herself with the Directory, so that presently her house
knew again its succession of ministers and deputies--men who came to
lighten their leisure with a little interlude of love or wit. And so
we reach the crisis._
_Naples, about the middle of_ ’98, _was in a last state of ferment.
Jacobinism threatened it within and without, the former but awaiting
the advance of the French under Championnet to arise and hand over the
city to its sympathisers. In September Nelson came sweeping to its
sea-gates in his_ Vanguard; _in October General Mack posted from
Vienna to take command of its rabble army of resistance; in November
its king led another army to Rome, nominally to restore the Pope his
kingdom, and, having done some ineffective mischief, returned
ingloriously, to find his capital in a state of anarchy. Finally, in
December, the whole royal family sneaked on board the_ Vanguard, _and
transferred itself_ pro tempore _to Palermo, where it remained until
the danger was laid, when it returned to exact a bloody vengeance._
_Therewithin lies the whole tragedy of Pissani and a little English
maid. Early in the February of that year the man had written, hurried
and agitated, to Mrs. Please, to announce that the moment was ripe,
the tree of despotism tottering to its fall, to be replaced by the
more fruitful one of Liberty; and to urge her to come at once, if she
would see consummated the glorious work for which they had both
laboured so long and so self-sacrificially. No doubt that he believed
in her single-heartedness, as she, in another way, in his. He assured
her that she might be, if she would, a second Pucelle. He fired her
vanity: he rekindled her passion. With characteristic impetuosity, she
broke up her household, and_ (_here figures either her blindness or
her imperious self-confidence_) _prepared to transport it, stock and
block, to the scene of her anticipated triumphs. She had no difficulty
in procuring passports. Indeed, there is reason to suppose that she
was intrusted with despatches for General Berthier, then occupying
Rome. At any rate she, in company with Mademoiselle Grant and her
inseparable Gogo, embarked at Marseilles for Civita Vecchia; were in
the Eternal City before the end of the month; and had thence,
travelling again by sea, reached Naples without accident by the middle
of March. Here, by preconcerted arrangement_ (_as regarded only
herself and the Neapolitan, however_) _they were met by Pissani, who
conducted them in the first instance to a little cabaret in the dark
quarters near the Arsenal. And here, from the glooms of that dingy
rendezvous, Mrs. Please is pleased to enter again upon her own story._
_B. C._
[_Note_.--To the curious in matters of personal appearance, the
following extract from the _Roper Correspondence_ (Hicks & Beach,
London, 1832) may be of interest. The passage occurs in a
letter--dated Paris, January 1798--from the Hon. Robert Roper to his
cousin Lord Carillon, and runs as follows:--
“I have renewed my acquaintance with the Please, who is twenty-seven,
and nothing if not the ripe fruit of her promise. Dost remember, Dick,
how she was your ‘Long-legged Hebe’? I tell you, sir, she is by Jove
out of Leda, a very Helen. She moults her years, like the swan her
father its feathers, and is always ready with a virgin bosom of down
for the next quilt. The same sprightly insolence; the same _perfect
irregularity_ of feature--and conduct; the same zeal in making the
interests of others her own--and the profits thereof. Her face retains
its pretty _moue_; her hair has only ripened a little, like corn. She
is still slender, as we remember her--in everything now but the
essentials; still as pale, with the flawless eyebrows and bob-cherry
lips. I would be sentimental; but, alack! she tells me our past is put
away in a little bag like lavender. ‘Would you wish the gift of it,
sir,’ she says, ‘to lay among your bed-linen? ’Tis grown too scentless
for my use. _Il n’y a si bonne compagnie qu’on ne quitte._’ O, Dick,
to be rebuked for one’s years, and by an immortal! O, Dick, for the
time ‘when wheat is green and hawthorn buds appear’! Why may not our
feet continue to dance with our hearts? I have a _débutante_ always
within my breast, and because _I_ am forty, _she_ must be a wallflower
forsooth!
“She has realised at last _la grande passion_, she tells me. She is
perfectly frank. _He_ is gone elsewhere, and she only waits for his
whistle to follow. _This_ to me! She has her little salon, as pretty
as a bonbon box, and a dozen of powdered ministers at her feet. The
morning after our meeting I breakfasted with her and her friend. You
recall the little soft brunette, with the motherly eyes and the
caressing bashfulness? She is still with her, the foil, as of old, to
her ladyship, and virgin soil to this day, I believe.... Madam took
her tea laced with a little _eau de vie_. There was a curious legless
monster in waiting: something between a dumb-waiter and a Covent
Garden porter. She defers to him in everything; and he growls.”]
XXV.
I DECLARE FOR THE KING
We were landed upon the Mole, not far from the Castel Nuovo, a vast,
sullen pile like the Bastille, on whose ruins I had danced. It was a
dark and rainy night. Pissani, who had been squatted amongst some
boats down by the water, rose, came forward in two or three swift
strides, and exclaimed, in an eager, agitated undertone, “Mother of
God! You are accompanied?”
I could not see his face, but my heart responded unerringly to the
dear remembered tones. I went quickly to him, and put up my hands to
his breast.
“Nicola _mio_--my brother, my comrade!” I whispered, “by all that,
next to you, I hold most dear.”
“What? Whom?” he asked, in a low voice of amazement. “Not--?”
“Yes,” I said, “by my servant and my sister. You called and I came,
Nicola, ‘bringing my sheaves with me.’”
He was breathing fast, but he did not answer.
“Are you not pleased,” I said, “that I give up everything for you and
to you; that I devote my best to the cause--our cause, Nicola; that at
the bidding of my brother I have moved my tent into the wilderness?
Are you not pleased with me?”
“There is danger in the wilderness,” he muttered. “No, I am not
pleased.”
I fell back with a little shiver. “No more for her than for me,” I
answered.
“It is not the same,” he said; “it is not the same thing at all.” In
an instant he had gripped my wrist. “Send her back into safety. She
shall not risk her life here--by God, she shall not!”
And then I think I understood. I was calm as death, and as cold. It
had needed but these few words to turn me into stone. My God! all my
fervour and self-sacrifice--and this for their reward! I laughed out
quite gaily--
“O, _mon chéri_! in the rain and the dark? Are you mad? Please to
convey us to some shelter.”
He hesitated a moment; then beckoned to Patty, who came running like a
dog to the whistle. Pissani turned his back as she approached.
“Tell your servant to await your orders here,” he muttered; “and, for
you, follow me.”
Patty stole by my side, dumb over her reception. The fool! the little
adorable traitress! How would she have chattered, teeth and heart, had
she seen my nails, hid under my cloak, dug into the soft palms they
were clinched on. Yet I had an admiration for her, even while I
crouched to spring. That she, self-obliterating, undemonstrative with
men, could all the time have been softly insinuating herself between
me and my love! I had not credited her with so much cleverness.
Our sombre patriot led us to a little _osteria_ in a sewer hard by,
where the rain beat on a lurid scrap of window, and a mutter of voices
from within seemed to mingle in a throaty discussion with a gurgling
water-pipe at our feet. There were two or three wine-drinkers revealed
as he pushed open the door--strangely respectable folk in these
incongruous surroundings. They but glanced up as we entered and passed
on by a stone passage to a little remote room, where were a bare table
and a single taper glimmering sickly on the wall.
Pissani shut the door and faced us. He was very pale and grim; grown
sterner than my memory of him, but still the melancholy, romantic
brigand of my heart. For a moment he seemed unable to speak; and in
that moment I could see my little sister’s hand shake on the table on
which she had leaned it for support. The truth was confessed amongst
us all in that silence. And I--I knew it suddenly, instantly, for what
I had long suspected but struggled to conceal from myself; knew it for
the real solution of this my conscious unconscious caprice in bringing
Patty with me. It had been to force it, to satisfy myself of the best
or the worst, that I had acted as I had done. That I recognised now.
And, after all, I was the first to speak.
“Well, M. Pissani,” I said, “it seems that one of us at least is _de
trop_.”
His mouth twitched with nervousness.
“She cannot help the cause,” he said. “She will only be in the way.
What is her use in this pass?”
“Patty,” I said, turning on the child, “M. Pissani does not want you.
You can go back.”
She looked at me, the helpless fool. Her lip trembled, and her eyes
filled with tears. But Pissani by that was smiling.
“I do not want you, child, _I_?” he said, in a sick voice, and held
out his hands fondly to her across the table. “Ah, but we know better
the truth of our hearts! When the battle is won, then, O gentle my
love, that betakest thyself to love as the lark to heaven, come to me,
as you promised! But not now--not now, when the storm is in the air,
and this so dear shrine of my hopes might be struck and violated. You
have not changed, you could not change: it is enough, I have seen you.
Come now with me, Pattia, and I will take you back to the boat, to my
friends, that they may see you secured in Rome until I can send to you
and say, ‘It is time, most dear wife, it is time. Return to me, and
give thyself to be the mother of patriots!’”
She moved, and gave a little sob. Her response was not to him but to
me--to the stunned questioning of my eyes. She had no wit but to utter
her whole self-condemnation in it.
“Diana! I did not know! I have not been untrue to you.”
I struck her on the mouth, and she staggered back, with that red lie
printed on it for the delectation of her paramour. She clutched at the
table, reeled, and sank down beside it moaning. It was too much. My
fury had flashed to an explosion in that wicked falsehood.
Pissani, with a sudden and terrible cry at the sight of his mistress’s
disgrace, drew a knife from his hip, and leapt like a goat across the
table. Stumbling as he alighted, she caught him frantic round the
knees, and held him raging and snarling while he stabbed at the air in
his frenzy. I stood fallen back a little, white and scornful, but with
not a thrill of fear at my heart; and, so standing, saw how, in the
thick blindness of his rage, he was yet tender of her in his struggles
to free himself. And then in a moment he had fallen upon his knees,
the blade yet in his hand, and was kissing and caressing her, moaning
inarticulate love into her ear. She tried feebly to repulse him; to
drag herself away and towards me. I had always known that she was of
the fools who caress the hands that scourge them. But I sprang back,
loathing her neighbourhood.
“Don’t come near me,” I cried.
He had kissed the blood from her mouth to his own. He struck the spot
there with a furious hand, as he turned on me.
“By this,” he said, “your death or mine!”