Burlesques
by
William Makepeace Thackeray
Part 1 out of 9
This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, charlie@idirect.com.
BURLESQUES
by William Makepeace Thackeray
CONTENTS
NOTES BY EMINENT HANDS.
George de Barnwell. By Sir E. L. B. L., Bart.
Codlingsby. By D. Shrewsberry, Esq.
Phil Fogarty. A Tale of the Fighting Onety-Oneth. By Harry
Rollicker
Barbazure. By G. P. R. Jeames, Esq., etc.
Lords and Liveries. By the Authoress of "Dukes and Dejeuners,"
"Hearts and Diamonds," "Marchionesses and Milliners," etc., etc.
Crinoline. By Je-mes Pl-sh, Esq.
The Stars and Stripes. By the Author of "The Last of the
Mulligans," "Pilot," etc.
A Plan for a Prize Novel
THE DIARY OF C. JEAMES DE LA PLUCHE, ESQ., WITH HIS LETTERS.
A Lucky Speculator
The Diary
Jeames on Time Bargings
Jeames on the Gauge Question
Mr. Jeames Again
THE TREMENDOUS ADVENTURES OF MAJOR GAHAGAN.
I. "Truth is Strange, Stranger than Fiction"
II. Allyghur and Laswaree
III. A Peep into Spain.--Account of the Origin and Services of the
Ahmednuggar Irregulars
IV. The Indian Camp--the Sortie from the Fort
V. The Issue of my Interview with my Wife
VI. Famine in the Garrison
VII. The Escape
VIII. The Captive
IX. Surprise of Futtyghur
A LEGEND OF THE RHINE.
I. Sir Ludwig of Hombourg
II. The Godesbergers
III. The Festival
IV. The Flight
V. The Traitor's Doom
VI. The Confession
VII. The Sentence
VIII. The Childe of Godesberg
IX. The Lady of Windeck
X. The Battle of the Bowmen
XI. The Martyr of Love
XII. The Champion
XIII. The Marriage
REBECCA AND ROWENA; A ROMANCE UPON ROMANCE.
CHAPTER
I. The Overture--Commencement of the Business
II. The Last Days of the Lion
III. St. George for England
IV. Ivanhoe Redivivus
V. Ivanhoe to the Rescue
VI. Ivanhoe the Widower
VII. The End of the Performance
THE HISTORY OF THE NEXT FRENCH REVOLUTION.
I. --
II. Henry V. and Napoleon III
III. The Advance of the Pretenders--Historical Review
IV. The Battle of Rheims
V. The Battle of Tours
VI. The English under Jenkins
VII. The Leaguer of Paris
VIII. The Battle of the Forts
IX. Louis XVII
COX'S DIARY.
The Announcement
First Rout
A Day with the Surrey Hounds
The Finishing Touch
A New Drop-Scene at the Opera
Striking a Balance
Down at Beulah
A Tournament
Over-Boarded and Under-Lodged
Notice to Quit
Law Life Assurance
Family Bustle
NOVELS BY EMINENT HANDS.
GEORGE DE BARNWELL
BY SIR E. L. B. L., BART.
VOL I.
In the Morning of Life the Truthful wooed the Beautiful, and their
offspring was Love. Like his Divine parents, He is eternal. He
has his Mother's ravishing smile; his Father's steadfast eyes. He
rises every day, fresh and glorious as the untired Sun-God. He is
Eros, the ever young. Dark, dark were this world of ours had
either Divinity left it--dark without the day-beams of the Latonian
Charioteer, darker yet without the daedal Smile of the God of the
Other Bow! Dost know him, reader?
Old is he, Eros, the ever young. He and Time were children
together. Chronos shall die, too; but Love is imperishable.
Brightest of the Divinities, where hast thou not been sung? Other
worships pass away; the idols for whom pyramids were raised lie in
the desert crumbling and almost nameless; the Olympians are fled,
their fanes no longer rise among the quivering olive-groves of
Ilissus, or crown the emerald-islets of the amethyst Aegean! These
are gone, but thou remainest. There is still a garland for thy
temple, a heifer for thy stone. A heifer? Ah, many a darker
sacrifice. Other blood is shed at thy altars, Remorseless One, and
the Poet Priest who ministers at thy Shrine draws his auguries from
the bleeding hearts of men!
While Love hath no end, Can the Bard ever cease singing? In Kingly
and Heroic ages, 'twas of Kings and Heroes that the Poet spake.
But in these, our times, the Artisan hath his voice as well as the
Monarch. The people To-Day is King, and we chronicle his woes, as
They of old did the sacrifice of the princely Iphigenia, or the
fate of the crowned Agamemnon.
Is Odysseus less august in his rags than in his purple? Fate,
Passion, Mystery, the Victim, the Avenger, the Hate that harms, the
Furies that tear, the Love that bleeds, are not these with us
Still? are not these still the weapons of the Artist? the colors of
his palette? the chords of his lyre? Listen! I tell thee a tale--
not of Kings--but of Men--not of Thrones, but of Love, and Grief,
and Crime. Listen, and but once more. 'Tis for the last time
(probably) these fingers shall sweep the strings.
E. L. B. L.
NOONDAY IN CHEPE.
'Twas noonday in Chepe. High Tide in the mighty River City!--its
banks wellnigh overflowing with the myriad-waved Stream of Man!
The toppling wains, bearing the produce of a thousand marts; the
gilded equipage of the Millionary; the humbler, but yet larger
vehicle from the green metropolitan suburbs (the Hanging Gardens of
our Babylon), in which every traveller might, for a modest
remuneration, take a republican seat; the mercenary caroche, with
its private freight; the brisk curricle of the letter-carrier,
robed in royal scarlet: these and a thousand others were laboring
and pressing onward, and locked and bound and hustling together in
the narrow channel of Chepe. The imprecations of the charioteers
were terrible. From the noble's broidered hammer-cloth, or the
driving-seat of the common coach, each driver assailed the other
with floods of ribald satire. The pavid matron within the one
vehicle (speeding to the Bank for her semestrial pittance) shrieked
and trembled; the angry Dives hastening to his office (to add
another thousand to his heap,) thrust his head over the blazoned
panels, and displayed an eloquence of objurgation which his very
Menials could not equal; the dauntless street urchins, as they
gayly threaded the Labyrinth of Life, enjoyed the perplexities and
quarrels of the scene, and exacerbated the already furious
combatants by their poignant infantile satire. And the
Philosopher, as he regarded the hot strife and struggle of these
Candidates in the race for Gold, thought with a sigh of the
Truthful and the Beautiful, and walked on, melancholy and serene.
'Twas noon in Chepe. The ware-rooms were thronged. The flaunting
windows of the mercers attracted many a purchaser: the glittering
panes behind which Birmingham had glazed its simulated silver,
induced rustics to pause: although only noon, the savory odors of
the Cook Shops tempted the over hungry citizen to the bun of Bath,
or to the fragrant potage that mocks the turtle's flavor--the
turtle! O dapibus suprimi grata testudo Jovis! I am an Alderman
when I think of thee! Well: it was noon in Chepe.
But were all battling for gain there? Among the many brilliant
shops whose casements shone upon Chepe, there stood one a century
back (about which period our tale opens) devoted to the sale of
Colonial produce. A rudely carved image of a negro, with a
fantastic plume and apron of variegated feathers, decorated the
lintel. The East and West had sent their contributions to
replenish the window.
The poor slave had toiled, died perhaps, to produce yon pyramid of
swarthy sugar marked "ONLY 6 1/2d."--That catty box, on which was
the epigraph "STRONG FAMILY CONGO ONLY 3s. 9d," was from the
country of Confutzee--that heap of dark produce bore the legend
"TRY OUR REAL NUT"--'Twas Cocoa--and that nut the Cocoa-nut, whose
milk has refreshed the traveller and perplexed the natural
philosopher. The shop in question was, in a word, a Grocer's.
In the midst of the shop and its gorgeous contents sat one who, to
judge from his appearance (though 'twas a difficult task, as, in
sooth, his back was turned), had just reached that happy period of
life when the Boy is expanding into the Man. O Youth, Youth!
Happy and Beautiful! O fresh and roseate dawn of life; when the
dew yet lies on the flowers, ere they have been scorched and
withered by Passion's fiery Sun! Immersed in thought or study, and
indifferent to the din around him, sat the boy. A careless
guardian was he of the treasures confided to him. The crowd passed
in Chepe; he never marked it. The sun shone on Chepe; he only
asked that it should illumine the page he read. The knave might
filch his treasures; he was heedless of the knave. The customer
might enter; but his book was all in all to him.
And indeed a customer WAS there; a little hand was tapping on the
counter with a pretty impatience; a pair of arch eyes were gazing
at the boy, admiring, perhaps, his manly proportions through the
homely and tightened garments he wore.
"Ahem! sir! I say, young man!" the customer exclaimed.
"Ton d'apameibomenos prosephe," read on the student, his voice
choked with emotion. "What language!" he said; "how rich, how
noble, how sonorous! prosephe podas--"
The customer burst out into a fit of laughter so shrill and cheery,
that the young Student could not but turn round, and blushing, for
the first time remarked her. "A pretty grocer's boy you are," she
cried, "with your applepiebomenos and your French and lingo. Am I
to be kept waiting for hever?"
"Pardon, fair Maiden," said he, with high-bred courtesy: "'twas not
French I read, 'twas the Godlike language of the blind old bard.
In what can I be serviceable to ye, lady?" and to spring from his
desk, to smooth his apron, to stand before her the obedient Shop
Boy, the Poet no more, was the work of a moment.
"I might have prigged this box of figs," the damsel said good-
naturedly, "and you'd never have turned round."
"They came from the country of Hector," the boy said. "Would you
have currants, lady? These once bloomed in the island gardens of
the blue Aegean. They are uncommon fine ones, and the figure is
low; they're fourpence-halfpenny a pound. Would ye mayhap make
trial of our teas? We do not advertise, as some folks do: but sell
as low as any other house."
"You're precious young to have all these good things," the girl
exclaimed, not unwilling, seemingly, to prolong the conversation.
"If I was you, and stood behind the counter, I should be eating
figs the whole day long."
"Time was," answered the lad, "and not long since I thought so too.
I thought I never should be tired of figs. But my old uncle bade
me take my fill, and now in sooth I am aweary of them."
"I think you gentlemen are always so," the coquette said.
"Nay, say not so, fair stranger!" the youth replied, his face
kindling as he spoke, and his eagle eyes flashing fire. "Figs
pall; but oh! the Beautiful never does. Figs rot; but oh! the
Truthful is eternal. I was born, lady, to grapple with the Lofty
and the Ideal. My soul yearns for the Visionary. I stand behind
the counter, it is true; but I ponder here upon the deeds of
heroes, and muse over the thoughts of sages. What is grocery for
one who has ambition? What sweetness hath Muscovada to him who
hath tasted of Poesy? The Ideal, lady, I often think, is the true
Real, and the Actual, but a visionary hallucination. But pardon
me; with what may I serve thee?"
"I came only for sixpenn'orth of tea-dust," the girl said, with a
faltering voice; "but oh, I should like to hear you speak on for
ever!"
Only for sixpenn'orth of tea-dust? Girl, thou camest for other
things! Thou lovedst his voice? Siren! what was the witchery of
thine own? He deftly made up the packet, and placed it in the
little hand. She paid for her small purchase, and with a farewell
glance of her lustrous eyes, she left him. She passed slowly
through the portal, and in a moment was lost in the crowd. It was
noon in Chepe. And George de Barnwell was alone.
Vol. II.
We have selected the following episodical chapter in preference to
anything relating to the mere story of George Barnwell, with which
most readers are familiar.
Up to this passage (extracted from the beginning of Vol. II.) the
tale is briefly thus:
The rogue of a Millwood has come back every day to the grocer's
shop in Chepe, wanting some sugar, or some nutmeg, or some figs,
half a dozen times in the week.
She and George de Barnwell have vowed to each other an eternal
attachment.
This flame acts violently upon George. His bosom swells with
ambition. His genius breaks out prodigiously. He talks about the
Good, the Beautiful, the Ideal, &c., in and out of all season, and
is virtuous and eloquent almost beyond belief--in fact like
Devereux, or P. Clifford, or E. Aram, Esquires.
Inspired by Millwood and love, George robs the till, and mingles in
the world which he is destined to ornament. He outdoes all the
dandies, all the wits, all the scholars, and all the voluptuaries
of the age--an indefinite period of time between Queen Anne and
George II.--dines with Curll at St. John's Gate, pinks Colonel
Charteris in a duel behind Montague House, is initiated into the
intrigues of the Chevalier St. George, whom he entertains at his
sumptuous pavilion at Hampstead, and likewise in disguise at the
shop in Cheapside.
His uncle, the owner of the shop, a surly curmudgeon with very
little taste for the True and Beautiful, has retired from business
to the pastoral village in Cambridgeshire from which the noble
Barnwells came. George's cousin Annabel is, of course, consumed
with a secret passion for him.
Some trifling inaccuracies may be remarked in the ensuing brilliant
little chapter; but it must be remembered that the author wished to
present an age at a glance: and the dialogue is quite as fine and
correct as that in the "Last of the Barons," or in "Eugene Aram,"
or other works of our author, in which Sentiment and History, or
the True and Beautiful, are united.
CHAPTER XXIV.
BUTTON'S IN PALL MALL.
Those who frequent the dismal and enormous Mansions of Silence
which society has raised to Ennui in that Omphalos of town, Pall
Mall, and which, because they knock you down with their dulness,
are called Clubs no doubt; those who yawn from a bay-window in St.
James's Street, at a half-score of other dandies gaping from
another bay-window over the way; those who consult a dreary evening
paper for news, or satisfy themselves with the jokes of the
miserable Punch by way of wit; the men about town of the present
day, in a word, can have but little idea of London some six or
eight score years back. Thou pudding-sided old dandy of St.
James's Street, with thy lacquered boots, thy dyed whiskers, and
thy suffocating waistband, what art thou to thy brilliant
predecessor in the same quarter? The Brougham from which thou
descendest at the portal of the "Carlton" or the "Travellers'," is
like everybody else's; thy black coat has no more plaits, nor
buttons, nor fancy in it than thy neighbor's; thy hat was made on
the very block on which Lord Addlepate's was cast, who has just
entered the Club before thee. You and he yawn together out of the
same omnibus-box every night; you fancy yourselves men of pleasure;
you fancy yourselves men of fashion; you fancy yourselves men of
taste; in fancy, in taste, in opinion, in philosophy, the newspaper
legislates for you; it is there you get your jokes and your
thoughts, and your facts and your wisdom--poor Pall Mall dullards.
Stupid slaves of the press, on that ground which you at present
occupy, there were men of wit and pleasure and fashion, some five-
and-twenty lustres ago.
We are at Button's--the well-known sign of the "Turk's Head." The
crowd of periwigged heads at the windows--the swearing chairmen
round the steps (the blazoned and coronalled panels of whose
vehicles denote the lofty rank of their owners),--the throng of
embroidered beaux entering or departing, and rendering the air
fragrant with the odors of pulvillio and pomander, proclaim the
celebrated resort of London's Wit and Fashion. It is the corner of
Regent Street. Carlton House has not yet been taken down.
A stately gentleman in crimson velvet and gold is sipping chocolate
at one of the tables, in earnest converse with a friend whose suit
is likewise embroidered, but stained by time, or wine mayhap, or
wear. A little deformed gentleman in iron-gray is reading the
Morning Chronicle newspaper by the fire, while a divine, with a
broad brogue and a shovel hat and cassock, is talking freely with a
gentleman, whose star and ribbon, as well as the unmistakable
beauty of his Phidian countenance, proclaims him to be a member of
Britain's aristocracy.
Two ragged youths, the one tall, gaunt, clumsy and scrofulous, the
other with a wild, careless, beautiful look, evidently indicating
Race, are gazing in at the window, not merely at the crowd in the
celebrated Club, but at Timothy the waiter, who is removing a plate
of that exquisite dish, the muffin (then newly invented), at the
desire of some of the revellers within.
"I would, Sam," said the wild youth to his companion, "that I had
some of my mother Macclesfield's gold, to enable us to eat of those
cates and mingle with yon springalds and beaux."
"To vaunt a knowledge of the stoical philosophy," said the youth
addressed as Sam, "might elicit a smile of incredulity upon the
cheek of the parasite of pleasure; but there are moments in life
when History fortifies endurance: and past study renders present
deprivation more bearable. If our pecuniary resources be exiguous,
let our resolution, Dick, supply the deficiencies of Fortune. The
muffin we desire to-day would little benefit us to-morrow. Poor
and hungry as we are, are we less happy, Dick, than yon listless
voluptuary who banquets on the food which you covet?"
And the two lads turned away up Waterloo Place, and past the
"Parthenon" Club-house, and disappeared to take a meal of cow-heel
at a neighboring cook's shop. Their names were Samuel Johnson and
Richard Savage.
Meanwhile the conversation at Button's was fast and brilliant. "By
Wood's thirteens, and the divvle go wid 'em," cried the Church
dignitary in the cassock, "is it in blue and goold ye are this
morning, Sir Richard, when you ought to be in seebles?"
"Who's dead, Dean?" said the nobleman, the dean's companion.
"Faix, mee Lard Bolingbroke, as sure as mee name's Jonathan Swift--
and I'm not so sure of that neither, for who knows his father's
name?--there's been a mighty cruel murther committed entirely. A
child of Dick Steele's has been barbarously slain, dthrawn, and
quarthered, and it's Joe Addison yondther has done it. Ye should
have killed one of your own, Joe, ye thief of the world."
"I!" said the amazed and Right Honorable Joseph Addison; "I kill
Dick's child! I was godfather to the last."
"And promised a cup and never sent it," Dick ejaculated. Joseph
looked grave.
"The child I mean is Sir Roger de Coverley, Knight and Baronet.
What made ye kill him, ye savage Mohock? The whole town is in
tears about the good knight; all the ladies at Church this
afternoon were in mourning; all the booksellers are wild; and
Lintot says not a third of the copies of the Spectator are sold
since the death of the brave old gentleman." And the Dean of St.
Patrick's pulled out the Spectator newspaper, containing the well-
known passage regarding Sir Roger's death. "I bought it but now in
'Wellington Street,'" he said; "the newsboys were howling all down
the Strand."
"What a miracle is Genius--Genius, the Divine and Beautiful," said
a gentleman leaning against the same fireplace with the deformed
cavalier in iron-gray, and addressing that individual, who was in
fact Mr. Alexander Pope. "What a marvellous gift is this, and
royal privilege of Art! To make the Ideal more credible than the
Actual: to enchain our hearts, to command our hopes, our regrets,
our tears, for a mere brain-born Emanation: to invest with life the
Incorporeal, and to glamour the cloudy into substance,--these are
the lofty privileges of the Poet, if I have read poesy aright; and
I am as familiar with the sounds that rang from Homer's lyre, as
with the strains which celebrate the loss of Belinda's lovely
locks"--(Mr. Pope blushed and bowed, highly delighted)--"these, I
say, sir, are the privileges of the Poet--the Poietes--the Maker--
he moves the world, and asks no lever; if he cannot charm death
into life, as Orpheus feigned to do, he can create Beauty out of
Nought, and defy Death by rendering Thought Eternal. Ho! Jemmy,
another flask of Nantz."
And the boy--for he who addressed the most brilliant company of
wits in Europe was little more--emptied the contents of the brandy-
flask into a silver flagon, and quaffed it gayly to the health of
the company assembled. 'Twas the third he had taken during the
sitting. Presently, and with a graceful salute to the Society, he
quitted the coffee-house, and was seen cantering on a magnificent
Arab past the National Gallery.
"Who is yon spark in blue and silver? He beats Joe Addison
himself, in drinking,, and pious Joe is the greatest toper in the
three kingdoms," Dick Steele said, good-naturedly.
"His paper in the Spectator beats thy best, Dick, thou sluggard,"
the Right Honorable Mr. Addison exclaimed. "He is the author of
that famous No. 996, for which you have all been giving me the
credit."
"The rascal foiled me at capping verses," Dean Swift said, "and won
a tenpenny piece of me, plague take him!"
"He has suggested an emendation in my 'Homer,' which proves him a
delicate scholar," Mr. Pope exclaimed.
"He knows more of the French king than any man I have met with; and
we must have an eye upon him," said Lord Bolingbroke, then
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and beckoning a suspicious-
looking person who was drinking at a side-table, whispered to him
something.
Meantime who was he? where was he, this youth who had struck all
the wits of London with admiration? His galloping charger had
returned to the City; his splendid court-suit was doffed for the
citizen's gabardine and grocer's humble apron.
George de Barnwell was in Chepe--in Chepe, at the feet of Martha
Millwood.
VOL III.
THE CONDEMNED CELL.
"Quid me mollibus implicas lacertis, my Elinor? Nay," George
added, a faint smile illumining his wan but noble features, "why
speak to thee in the accents of the Roman poet, which thou
comprehendest not? Bright One, there be other things in Life, in
Nature, in this Inscrutable Labyrinth, this Heart on which thou
leanest, which are equally unintelligible to thee! Yes, my pretty
one, what is the Unintelligible but the Ideal? what is the Ideal
but the Beautiful? what the Beautiful but the Eternal? And the
Spirit of Man that would commune with these is like Him who wanders
by the thina poluphloisboio thalasses, and shrinks awe-struck
before that Azure Mystery."
Emily's eyes filled with fresh-gushing dew. "Speak on, speak ever
thus, my George," she exclaimed. Barnwell's chains rattled as the
confiding girl clung to him. Even Snoggin, the turnkey appointed
to sit with the Prisoner, was affected by his noble and appropriate
language, and also burst into tears.
"You weep, my Snoggin," the Boy said; "and why? Hath Life been so
charming to me that I should wish to retain it? hath Pleasure no
after-Weariness? Ambition no Deception; Wealth no Care; and Glory
no Mockery? Psha! I am sick of Success, palled of Pleasure, weary
of Wine and Wit, and--nay, start not, my Adelaide--and Woman. I
fling away all these things as the Toys of Boyhood. Life is the
Soul's Nursery. I am a Man, and pine for the Illimitable! Mark
you me! Has the Morrow any terrors for me, think ye? Did Socrates
falter at his poison? Did Seneca blench in his bath? Did Brutus
shirk the sword when his great stake was lost? Did even weak
Cleopatra shrink from the Serpent's fatal nip? And why should I?
My great Hazard hath been played, and I pay my forfeit. Lie
sheathed in my heart, thou flashing Blade! Welcome to my Bosom,
thou faithful Serpent; I hug thee, peace-bearing Image of the
Eternal! Ha, the hemlock cup! Fill high, boy, for my soul is
thirsty for the Infinite! Get ready the bath, friends; prepare me
for the feast To-morrow--bathe my limbs in odors, and put ointment
in my hair."
"Has for a bath," Snoggin interposed, "they're not to be 'ad in
this ward of the prison; but I dussay Hemmy will git you a little
hoil for your 'air."
The Prisoned One laughed loud and merrily. "My guardian understands
me not, pretty one--and thou? what sayest thou? From those dear
lips methinks--plura sunt oscula quam sententiae--I kiss away thy
tears, dove!--they will flow apace when I am gone, then they will
dry, and presently these fair eyes will shine on another, as they
have beamed on poor George Barnwell. Yet wilt thou not all forget
him, sweet one. He was an honest fellow, and had a kindly heart for
all the world said--"
"That, that he had," cried the gaoler and the girl in voices
gurgling with emotion. And you who read! you unconvicted Convict--
you murderer, though haply you have slain no one--you Felon in
posse if not in esse--deal gently with one who has used the
Opportunity that has failed thee--and believe that the Truthful and
the Beautiful bloom sometimes in the dock and the convict's tawny
Gabardine!
. . . . . . . .
In the matter for which he suffered, George could never be brought
to acknowledge that he was at all in the wrong. "It may be an
error of judgment," he said to the Venerable Chaplain of the gaol,
"but it is no crime. Were it Crime, I should feel Remorse. Where
there is no remorse, Crime cannot exist. I am not sorry:
therefore, I am innocent. Is the proposition a fair one?"
The excellent Doctor admitted that it was not to be contested.
"And wherefore, sir, should I have sorrow," the Boy resumed, "for
ridding the world of a sordid worm;* of a man whose very soul was
dross, and who never had a feeling for the Truthful and the
Beautiful? When I stood before my uncle in the moonlight, in the
gardens of the ancestral halls of the De Barnwells, I felt that it
was the Nemesis come to overthrow him. 'Dog,' I said to the
trembling slave, 'tell me where thy Gold is. THOU hast no use for
it. I can spend it in relieving the Poverty on which thou
tramplest; in aiding Science, which thou knowest not; in uplifting
Art, to which thou art blind. Give Gold, and thou art free.' But
he spake not, and I slew him."
"I would not have this doctrine vulgarly promulgated," said the
admirable chaplain, "for its general practice might chance to do
harm. Thou, my son, the Refined, the Gentle, the Loving and
Beloved, the Poet and Sage, urged by what I cannot but think a
grievous error, hast appeared as Avenger. Think what would be the
world's condition, were men without any Yearning after the Ideal to
attempt to reorganize Society, to redistribute Property, to avenge
Wrong."
"A rabble of pigmies scaling Heaven," said the noble though
misguided young Prisoner. "Prometheus was a Giant, and he fell."
"Yes, indeed, my brave youth!" the benevolent Dr. Fuzwig exclaimed,
clasping the Prisoner's marble and manacled hand; "and the Tragedy
of To-morrow will teach the World that Homicide is not to be
permitted even to the most amiable Genius, and that the lover of
the Ideal and the Beautiful, as thou art, my son, must respect the
Real likewise."
"Look! here is supper!" cried Barnwell gayly. "This is the Real,
Doctor; let us respect it and fall to." He partook of the meal as
joyously as if it had been one of his early festals; but the worthy
chaplain could scarcely eat it for tears.
* This is a gross plagiarism: the above sentiment is expressed much
more eloquently in the ingenious romance of Eugene Aram:--"The
burning desires I have known--the resplendent visions I have
nursed--the sublime aspirings that have lifted me so often from
sense and clay: these tell me, that whether for good or ill, I am
the thing of an immortality and the creature of a God. . . . I
have destroyed a man noxious to the world! with the wealth by which
he afflicted society, I have been the means of blessing many."
CODLINGSBY.
BY D. SHREWSBERRY, ESQ.
I.
"The whole world is bound by one chain. In every city in the globe
there is one quarter that certain travellers know and recognize
from its likeness to its brother district in all other places where
are congregated the habitations of men. In Tehran, or Pekin, or
Stamboul, or New York, or Timbuctoo, or London, there is a certain
district where a certain man is not a stranger. Where the idols
are fed with incense by the streams of Ching-wang-foo; where the
minarets soar sparkling above the cypresses, their reflections
quivering in the lucid waters of the Golden Horn; where the yellow
Tiber flows under broken bridges and over imperial glories; where
the huts are squatted by the Niger, under the palm-trees; where the
Northern Babel lies, with its warehouses, and its bridges, its
graceful factory-chimneys, and its clumsy fanes--hidden in fog and
smoke by the dirtiest river in the world--in all the cities of
mankind there is One Home whither men of one family may resort.
Over the entire world spreads a vast brotherhood, suffering,
silent, scattered, sympathizing, WAITING--an immense Free-Masonry.
Once this world-spread band was an Arabian clan--a little nation
alone and outlying amongst the mighty monarchies of ancient time,
the Megatheria of history. The sails of their rare ships might be
seen in the Egyptian waters; the camels of their caravans might
thread the sands of Baalbec, or wind through the date-groves of
Damascus; their flag was raised, not ingloriously, in many wars,
against mighty odds; but 'twas a small people, and on one dark
night the Lion of Judah went down before Vespasian's Eagles, and in
flame, and death, and struggle, Jerusalem agonized and died. . . .
Yes, the Jewish city is lost to Jewish men; but have they not taken
the world in exchange?"
Mused thus Godfrey de Bouillon, Marquis of Codlingsby, as he
debouched from Wych Street into the Strand. He had been to take a
box for Armida at Madame Vestris's theatre. That little Armida was
folle of Madame Vestris's theatre; and her little brougham, and her
little self, and her enormous eyes, and her prodigious opera-glass,
and her miraculous bouquet, which cost Lord Codlingsby twenty
guineas every evening at Nathan's in Covent Garden (the children of
the gardeners of Sharon have still no rival for flowers), might be
seen, three nights in the week at least, in the narrow, charming,
comfortable little theatre. Godfrey had the box. He was
strolling, listlessly, eastward; and the above thoughts passed
through the young noble's mind as he came in sight of Holywell
Street.
The occupants of the London Ghetto sat at their porches basking in
the evening sunshine. Children were playing on the steps. Fathers
were smoking at the lintel. Smiling faces looked out from the
various and darkling draperies with which the warehouses were hung.
Ringlets glossy, and curly, and jetty--eyes black as night--
midsummer night--when it lightens; haughty noses bending like beaks
of eagles--eager quivering nostrils--lips curved like the bow of
Love--every man or maiden, every babe or matron in that English
Jewry bore in his countenance one or more of these characteristics
of his peerless Arab race.
"How beautiful they are!" mused Codlingsby, as he surveyed these
placid groups calmly taking their pleasure in the sunset.
"D'you vant to look at a nishe coat?" a voice said, which made him
start; and then some one behind him began handling a masterpiece of
Stultz's with a familiarity which would have made the baron
tremble.
"Rafael Mendoza!" exclaimed Godfrey.
"The same, Lord Codlingsby," the individual so apostrophized
replied. "I told you we should meet again where you would little
expect me. Will it please you to enter? this is Friday, and we
close at sunset. It rejoices my heart to welcome you home." So
saying Rafael laid his hand on his breast, and bowed, an oriental
reverence. All traces of the accent with which he first addressed
Lord Codlingsby had vanished: it was disguise; half the Hebrew's
life is a disguise. He shields himself in craft, since the Norman
boors persecuted him.
They passed under an awning of old clothes, tawdry fripperies,
greasy spangles, and battered masks, into a shop as black and
hideous as the entrance was foul. "THIS your home, Rafael?" said
Lord Codlingsby.
"Why not?" Rafael answered. "I am tired of Schloss Schinkenstein;
the Rhine bores me after a while. It is too hot for Florence;
besides they have not completed the picture-gallery, and my place
smells of putty. You wouldn't have a man, mon cher, bury himself
in his chateau in Normandy, out of the hunting season? The
Rugantino Palace stupefies me. Those Titians are so gloomy, I
shall have my Hobbimas and Tenierses, I think, from my house at the
Hague hung over them."
"How many castles, palaces, houses, warehouses, shops, have you,
Rafael?" Lord Codlingsby asked, laughing.
"This is one," Rafael answered. "Come in."
II.
The noise in the old town was terrific; Great Tom was booming
sullenly over the uproar; the bell of Saint Mary's was clanging
with alarm; St. Giles's tocsin chimed furiously; howls, curses,
flights of brickbats, stones shivering windows, groans of wounded
men, cries of frightened females, cheers of either contending party
as it charged the enemy from Carfax to Trumpington Street,
proclaimed that the battle was at its height.
In Berlin they would have said it was a revolution, and the
cuirassiers would have been charging, sabre in hand, amidst that
infuriate mob. In France they would have brought down artillery,
and played on it with twenty-four pounders. In Cambridge nobody
heeded the disturbance--it was a Town and Gown row.
The row arose at a boat-race. The Town boat (manned by eight stout
Bargees, with the redoubted Rullock for stroke) had bumped the
Brazenose light oar, usually at the head of the river. High words
arose regarding the dispute. After returning from Granchester,
when the boats pulled back to Christchurch meadows, the disturbance
between the Townsmen and the University youths--their invariable
opponents--grew louder and more violent, until it broke out in open
battle. Sparring and skirmishing took place along the pleasant
fields that lead from the University gate down to the broad and
shining waters of the Cam, and under the walls of Balliol and
Sidney Sussex. The Duke of Bellamont (then a dashing young sizar
at Exeter) had a couple of rounds with Billy Butt, the bow-oar of
the Bargee boat. Vavasour of Brazenose was engaged with a powerful
butcher, a well-known champion of the Town party, when, the great
University bells ringing to dinner, truce was called between the
combatants, and they retired to their several colleges for refection.
During the boat-race, a gentleman pulling in a canoe, and smoking a
narghilly, had attracted no ordinary attention. He rowed about a
hundred yards ahead of the boats in the race, so that he could have
a good view of that curious pastime. If the eight-oars neared him,
with a few rapid strokes of his flashing paddles his boat shot a
furlong ahead; then he would wait, surveying the race, and sending
up volumes of odor from his cool narghilly.
"Who is he?" asked the crowds who panted along the shore,
encouraging, according to Cambridge wont, the efforts of the
oarsmen in the race. Town and Gown alike asked who it was, who,
with an ease so provoking, in a barque so singular, with a form
seemingly so slight, but a skill so prodigious, beat their best
men. No answer could be given to the query, save that a gentleman
in a dark travelling-chariot, preceded by six fourgons and a
courier, had arrived the day before at the "Hoop Inn," opposite
Brazenose, and that the stranger of the canoe seemed to be the
individual in question.
No wonder the boat, that all admired so, could compete with any
that ever was wrought by Cambridge artificer or Putney workman.
That boat--slim, shining, and shooting through the water like a
pike after a small fish--was a caique from Tophana; it had
distanced the Sultan's oarsmen and the best crews of the Capitan
Pasha in the Bosphorus; it was the workmanship of Togrul-Beg,
Caikjee Bashee of his Highness. The Bashee had refused fifty
thousand tomauns from Count Boutenieff, the Russian Ambassador, for
that little marvel. When his head was taken off, the Father of
Believers presented the boat to Rafael Mendoza.
It was Rafael Mendoza that saved the Turkish monarchy after the
battle of Nezeeb. By sending three millions of piastres to the
Seraskier; by bribing Colonel de St. Cornichon, the French envoy in
the camp of the victorious Ibrahim, the march of the Egyptian army
was stopped--the menaced empire of the Ottomans was saved from
ruin; the Marchioness of Stokepogis, our ambassador's lady,
appeared in a suite of diamonds which outblazed even the Romanoff
jewels, and Rafael Mendoza obtained the little caique. He never
travelled without it. It was scarcely heavier than an arm-chair.
Baroni, the courier, had carried it down to the Cam that morning,
and Rafael had seen the singular sport which we have mentioned.
The dinner over, the young men rushed from their colleges, flushed,
full-fed, and eager for battle. If the Gown was angry, the Town,
too, was on the alert. From Iffly and Barnwell, from factory and
mill, from wharf and warehouse, the Town poured out to meet the
enemy, and their battle was soon general. From the Addenbrook's
hospital to the Blenheim turnpike, all Cambridge was in an uproar--
the college gates closed--the shops barricaded--the shop-boys away
in support of their brother townsmen--the battle raged, and the
Gown had the worst of the fight.
A luncheon of many courses had been provided for Rafael Mendoza at
his inn; but he smiled at the clumsy efforts of the university
cooks to entertain him, and a couple of dates and a glass of water
formed his meal. In vain the discomfited landlord pressed him to
partake of the slighted banquet. "A breakfast! psha!" said he.
"My good man, I have nineteen cooks, at salaries rising from four
hundred a year. I can have a dinner at any hour; but a Town and
Gown row" (a brickbat here flying through the window crashed the
caraffe of water in Mendoza's hand)--"a Town and Gown row is a
novelty to me. The Town has the best of it, clearly, though: the
men outnumber the lads. Ha, a good blow! How that tall townsman
went down before yonder slim young fellow in the scarlet trencher
cap."
"That is the Lord Codlingsby," the landlord said.
"A light weight, but a pretty fighter," Mendoza remarked. "Well
hit with your left, Lord Codlingsby; well parried, Lord Codlingsby;
claret drawn, by Jupiter!"
"Ours is werry fine," the landlord said. "Will your Highness have
Chateau Margaux or Lafitte?"
"He never can be going to match himself against that bargeman!"
Rafael exclaimed, as an enormous boatman--no other than Rullock--
indeed, the most famous bruiser of Cambridge, and before whose
fists the Gownsmen went down like ninepins--fought his way up to
the spot where, with admirable spirit and resolution, Lord
Codlingsby and one or two of his friends were making head against a
number of the town.
The young noble faced the huge champion with the gallantry of his
race, but was no match for the enemy's strength and weight and
sinew, and went down at every round. The brutal fellow had no
mercy on the lad. His savage treatment chafed Mendoza as he viewed
the unequal combat from the inn-window. "Hold your hand!" he cried
to this Goliath; "don't you see he's but a boy?"
"Down he goes again!" the bargeman cried, not heeding the
interruption. "Down he goes again: I likes wapping a lord!"
"Coward!" shouted Mendoza; and to fling open the window amidst a
shower of brickbats, to vault over the balcony, to slide down one
of the pillars to the ground, was an instant's work.
At the next he stood before the enormous bargeman.
. . . . . . . .
After the coroner's inquest, Mendoza gave ten thousand pounds to
each of the bargeman's ten children, and it was thus his first
acquaintance was formed with Lord Codlingsby.
But we are lingering on the threshold of the house in Holywell
Street. Let us go in.
III.
Godfrey and Rafael passed from the street into the outer shop of
the old mansion in Holywell Street. It was a masquerade warehouse
to all appearance. A dark-eyed damsel of the nation was standing
at the dark and grimy counter, strewed with old feathers, old
yellow hoots, old stage mantles, painted masks, blind and yet
gazing at you with a look of sad death-like intelligence from the
vacancy behind their sockets.
A medical student was trying one of the doublets of orange-tawny
and silver, slashed with dirty light blue. He was going to a
masquerade that night. He thought Polly Pattens would admire him
in the dress--Polly Pattens, the fairest of maids-of-all-work--the
Borough Venus, adored by half the youth of Guy's.
"You look like a prince in it, Mr. Lint," pretty Rachel said,
coaxing him with her beady black eyes.
"It IS the cheese," replied Mr. Lint; "it ain't the dress that
don't suit, my rose of Sharon; it's the FIGURE. Hullo, Rafael, is
that you, my lad of sealing-wax? Come and intercede for me with
this wild gazelle; she says I can't have it under fifteen bob for
the night. And it's too much: cuss me if it's not too much, unless
you'll take my little bill at two months, Rafael."
"There's a sweet pretty brigand's dress you may have for half de
monish," Rafael replied; "there's a splendid clown for eight bob;
but for dat Spanish dress, selp ma Moshesh, Mistraer Lint, ve'd ask
a guinea of any but you. Here's a gentlemansh just come to look at
it. Look 'ear, Mr. Brownsh, did you ever shee a nisher ting dan
dat?" So saying, Rafael turned to Lord Codlingsby with the utmost
gravity, and displayed to him the garment about which the young
medicus was haggling.
"Cheap at the money," Codlingsby replied; "if you won't make up
your mind, sir, I should like to engage it myself." But the
thought that another should appear before Polly Pattens in that
costume was too much for Mr. Lint; he agreed to pay the fifteen
shillings for the garment. And Rafael, pocketing the money with
perfect simplicity, said, "Dis vay, Mr. Brownsh: dere's someting
vill shoot you in the next shop."
Lord Codlingsby followed him, wondering.
"You are surprised at our system," said Rafael, marking the evident
bewilderment of his friend. "Confess you would call it meanness--
my huckstering with yonder young fool. I call it simplicity. Why
throw away a shilling without need? Our race never did. A
shilling is four men's bread: shall I disdain to defile my fingers
by holding them out relief in their necessity? It is you who are
mean--you Normans--not we of the ancient race. You have your
vulgar measurement for great things and small. You call a thousand
pounds respectable, and a shekel despicable. Psha, my Codlingsby!
One is as the other. I trade in pennies and in millions. I am
above or below neither."
They were passing through a second shop, smelling strongly of
cedar, and, in fact, piled up with bales of those pencils which the
young Hebrews are in the habit of vending through the streets. "I
have sold bundles and bundles of these," said Rafael. "My little
brother is now out with oranges in Piccadilly. I am bringing him
up to be head of our house at Amsterdam. We all do it. I had
myself to see Rothschild in Eaton Place this morning, about the
Irish loan, of which I have taken three millions: and as I wanted
to walk, I carried the bag.
"You should have seen the astonishment of Lauda Latymer, the
Archbishop of Croydon's daughter, as she was passing St. Bennet's,
Knightsbridge, and as she fancied she recognized in the man who was
crying old clothes the gentleman with whom she had talked at the
Count de St. Aulair's the night before." Something like a blush
flushed over the pale features of Mendoza as he mentioned the Lady
Lauda's name. "Come on," said he. They passed through various
warehouses--the orange room, the sealing-wax room, the six-bladed
knife department, and finally came to an old baize door. Rafael
opened the baize door by some secret contrivance, and they were in
a black passage, with a curtain at the end.
He clapped his hands; the curtain at the end of the passage drew
back, and a flood of golden light streamed on the Hebrew and his
visitor.
CHAPTER XXIV.
They entered a moderate-sized apartment--indeed, Holywell Street is
not above a hundred yards long, and this chamber was not more than
half that length--it was fitted up with the simple taste of its
owner.
The carpet was of white velvet--(laid over several webs of Aubusson,
Ispahan, and Axminster, so that your foot gave no more sound as it
trod upon the yielding plain than the shadow did which followed
you)--of white velvet, painted with flowers, arabesques, and classic
figures, by Sir William Ross, J. M. W. Turner, R. A., Mrs. Mee, and
Paul Delaroche. The edges were wrought with seed-pearls, and
fringed with Valenciennes lace and bullion. The walls were hung
with cloth of silver, embroidered with gold figures, over which were
worked pomegranates, polyanthuses, and passion-flowers, in ruby,
amethyst, and smaragd. The drops of dew which the artificer had
sprinkled on the flowers were diamonds. The hangings were overhung
by pictures yet more costly. Giorgione the gorgeous, Titian the
golden, Rubens the ruddy and pulpy (the Pan of Painting), some of
Murillo's beatified shepherdesses, who smile on you out of darkness
like a star, a few score first-class Leonardos, and fifty of the
master-pieces of the patron of Julius and Leo, the Imperial genius
of Urbino, covered the walls of the little chamber. Divans of carved
amber covered with ermine went round the room, and in the midst was
a fountain, pattering and babbling with jets of double-distilled
otto of roses.
"Pipes, Goliath!" Rafael said gayly to a little negro with a silver
collar (he spoke to him in his native tongue of Dongola); and
welcome to our snuggery, my Codlingsby. We are quieter here than
in the front of the house, and I wanted to show you a picture. I'm
proud of my pictures. That Leonardo came from Genoa, and was a
gift to our father from my cousin, Marshal Manasseh: that Murillo
was pawned to my uncle by Marie Antoinette before the flight to
Varennes--the poor lady could not redeem the pledge, you know, and
the picture remains with us. As for the Rafael, I suppose you are
aware that he was one of our people. But what are you gazing at?
Oh! my sister--I forgot. Miriam! this is the Lord Codlingsby."
She had been seated at an ivory pianoforte on a mother-of-pearl
music-stool, trying a sonata of Herz. She rose when thus
apostrophized. Miriam de Mendoza rose and greeted the stranger.
The Talmud relates that Adam had two wives--Zillah the dark beauty;
Eva the fair one. The ringlets of Zillah were black; those of Eva
were golden. The eyes of Zillah were night; those of Eva were
morning. Codlingsby was fair--of the fair Saxon race of Hengist
and Horsa--they called him Miss Codlingsby at school; but how much
fairer was Miriam the Hebrew!
Her hair had that deep glowing tinge in it which has been the
delight of all painters, and which, therefore, the vulgar sneer at.
It was of burning auburn. Meandering over her fairest shoulders in
twenty thousand minute ringlets, it hung to her waist and below it.
A light blue velvet fillet clasped with a diamond aigrette (valued
at two hundred thousand tomauns, and bought from Lieutenant
Vicovich, who had received it from Dost Mahomed), with a simple bird
of paradise, formed her head-gear. A sea-green cymar with short
sleeves, displayed her exquisitely moulded arms to perfection, and
was fastened by a girdle of emeralds over a yellow satin frock.
Pink gauze trousers spangled with silver, and slippers of the same
color as the band which clasped her ringlets (but so covered with
pearls that the original hue of the charming little papoosh
disappeared entirely) completed her costume. She had three
necklaces on, each of which would have dowered a Princess--her
fingers glistened with rings to their rosy tips, and priceless
bracelets, bangles, and armlets wound round an arm that was whiter
than the ivory grand piano on which it leaned.
As Miriam de Mendoza greeted the stranger, turning upon him the
solemn welcome of her eyes, Codlingsby swooned almost in the
brightness of her beauty. It was well she spoke; the sweet kind
voice restored him to consciousness. Muttering a few words of
incoherent recognition, he sank upon a sandalwood settee, as
Goliath, the little slave, brought aromatic coffee in cups of opal,
and alabaster spittoons, and pipes of the fragrant Gibelly.
"My lord's pipe is out," said Miriam with a smile, remarking the
bewilderment of her guest--who in truth forgot to smoke--and taking
up a thousand pound note from a bundle on the piano, she lighted it
at the taper and proceeded to re-illumine the extinguished chibouk
of Lord Codlingsby.
IV.
When Miriam, returning to the mother-of-pearl music-stool, at a
signal from her brother, touched the silver and enamelled keys of
the ivory piano, and began to sing, Lord Codlingsby felt as if he
were listening at the gates of Paradise, or were hearing Jenny
Lind.
"Lind is the name of the Hebrew race; so is Mendelssohn, the son of
Almonds; so is Rosenthal, the Valley of the Roses: so is Lowe or
Lewis or Lyons or Lion. The beautiful and the brave alike give
cognizances to the ancient people: you Saxons call yourselves
Brown, or Smith, or Rodgers," Rafael observed to his friend; and,
drawing the instrument from his pocket, he accompanied his sister,
in the most ravishing manner, on a little gold and jewelled harp,
of the kind peculiar to his nation.
All the airs which the Hebrew maid selected were written by
composers of her race; it was either a hymn by Rossini, a polacca
by Braham, a delicious romance by Sloman, or a melody by Weber,
that, thrilling on the strings of the instrument, wakened a harmony
on the fibres of the heart; but she sang no other than the songs of
her nation.
"Beautiful one! sing ever, sing always," Codlingsby thought. "I
could sit at thy feet as under a green palm-tree, and fancy that
Paradise-birds were singing in the boughs."
Rafael read his thoughts. "We have Saxon blood too in our veins,"
he said. "You smile! but it is even so. An ancestress of ours
made a mesalliance in the reign of your King John. Her name was
Rebecca, daughter of Isaac of York, and she married in Spain,
whither she had fled to the Court of King Boabdil, Sir Wilfred of
Ivanhoe; then a widower by the demise of his first lady, Rowena.
The match was deemed a cruel insult amongst our people but Wilfred
conformed, and was a Rabbi of some note at the synagogue of
Cordova. We are descended from him lineally. It is the only blot
upon the escutcheon of the Mendozas."
As they sat talking together, the music finished, and Miriam having
retired (though her song and her beauty were still present to the
soul of the stranger) at a signal from Mendoza, various messengers
from the outer apartments came in to transact business with him.
First it was Mr. Aminadab, who kissed his foot, and brought papers
to sign. "How is the house in Grosvenor Square, Aminadab; and is
your son tired of his yacht yet?" Mendoza asked. "That is my
twenty-fourth cashier," said Rafael to Codlingsby, when the
obsequious clerk went away. "He is fond of display, and all my
people may have what money they like."
Entered presently the Lord Bareacres, on the affair of his
mortgage. The Lord Bareacres, strutting into the apartment with a
haughty air, shrank back, nevertheless, with surprise on beholding
the magnificence around him. "Little Mordecai," said Rafael to a
little orange-boy, who came in at the heels of the noble, "take
this gentleman out and let him have ten thousand pounds. I can't
do more for you, my lord, than this--I'm busy. Good-by!" And
Rafael waved his hand to the peer, and fell to smoking his
narghilly.
A man with a square face, cat-like eyes, and a yellow moustache,
came next. He had an hour-glass of a waist, and walked uneasily
upon his high-heeled boots. "Tell your master that he shall have
two millions more, but not another shilling," Rafael said. That
story about the five-and-twenty millions of ready money at
Cronstadt is all bosh. They won't believe it in Europe. You
understand me, Count Grogomoffski?"
"But his Imperial Majesty said four millions, and I shall get the
knout unless--"
"Go and speak to Mr. Shadrach, in room Z 94, the fourth court,"
said Mendoza good-naturedly. "Leave me at peace, Count: don't you
see it is Friday, and almost sunset?" The Calmuck envoy retired
cringing, and left an odor of musk and candle-grease behind him.
An orange-man; an emissary from Lola Montes; a dealer in piping
bullfinches; and a Cardinal in disguise, with a proposal for a new
loan for the Pope, were heard by turns; and each, after a rapid
colloquy in his own language, was dismissed by Rafael.
"The queen must come back from Aranjuez, or that king must be
disposed of," Rafael exclaimed, as a yellow-faced amabassador from
Spain, General the Duke of Olla Podrida, left him. "Which shall it
be, my Codlingsby?" Codlingsby was about laughingly to answer--for
indeed he was amazed to find all the affairs of the world
represented here, and Holywell Street the centre of Europe--when
three knocks of a peculiar nature were heard, and Mendoza starting
up, said, "Ha! there are only four men in the world who know that
signal." At once, and with a reverence quite distinct from his
former nonchalant manner, he advanced towards the new-comer.
He was an old man--an old man evidently, too, of the Hebrew race--
the light of his eyes was unfathomable--about his mouth there
played an inscrutable smile. He had a cotton umbrella, and old
trousers, and old boots, and an old wig, curling at the top like a
rotten old pear.
He sat down, as if tired, in the first seat at hand, as Rafael made
him the lowest reverence.
"I am tired," says he; "I have come in fifteen hours. I am ill at
Neuilly," he added with a grin. "Get me some eau sucree, and tell
me the news, Prince de Mendoza. These bread rows; this unpopularity
of Guizot; this odious Spanish conspiracy against my darling
Montpensier and daughter; this ferocity of Palmerston against
Coletti, makes me quite ill. Give me your opinion, my dear duke.
But ha! whom have we here?"
The august individual who had spoken, had used the Hebrew language
to address Mendoza, and the Lord Codlingsby might easily have
pleaded ignorance of that tongue. But he had been at Cambridge,
where all the youth acquire it perfectly.
"SIRE," said he, "I will not disguise from you that I know the
ancient tongue in which you speak. There are probably secrets
between Mendoza and your Maj--"
"Hush!" said Rafael, leading him from the room. "Au revoir, dear
Codlingsby. His Majesty is one of US," he whispered at the door;
"so is the Pope of Rome; so is . . ."--a whisper concealed the
rest.
"Gracious powers! is it so?" said Codlingsby, musing. He entered
into Holywell Street. The sun was sinking.
"It is time," said he, "to go and fetch Armida to the Olympic."
PHIL FOGARTY.
A TALE OF THE FIGHTING ONETY-ONETH.
BY HARRY ROLLICKER.
I.
The gabion was ours. After two hours' fighting we were in
possession of the first embrasure, and made ourselves as comfortable
as circumstances would admit. Jack Delamere, Tom Delancy, Jerry
Blake, the Doctor, and myself, sat down under a pontoon, and our
servants laid out a hasty supper on a tumbrel. Though Cambaceres had
escaped me so provokingly after I cut him down, his spoils were
mine; a cold fowl and a Bologna sausage were found in the Marshal's
holsters; and in the haversack of a French private who lay a corpse
on the glacis, we found a loaf of bread, his three days' ration.
Instead of salt, we had gunpowder; and you may be sure, wherever
the Doctor was, a flask of good brandy was behind him in his
instrument-case. We sat down and made a soldier's supper. The
Doctor pulled a few of the delicious fruit from the lemon-trees
growing near (and round which the Carabineers and the 24th Leger had
made a desperate rally), and punch was brewed in Jack Delamere's
helmet.
"'Faith, it never had so much wit in it before," said the Doctor,
as he ladled out the drink. We all roared with laughing, except
the guardsman, who was as savage as a Turk at a christening.
"Buvez-en," said old Sawbones to our French prisoner; "ca vous fera
du bien, mon vieux coq!" and the Colonel, whose wound had been just
dressed, eagerly grasped at the proffered cup, and drained it with
a health to the donors.
How strange are the chances of war! But half an hour before he and
I were engaged in mortal combat, and our prisoner was all but my
conqueror. Grappling with Cambaceres, whom I knocked from his
horse, and was about to despatch, I felt a lunge behind, which
luckily was parried by my sabretache; a herculean grasp was at the
next instant at my throat--I was on the ground--my prisoner had
escaped, and a gigantic warrior in the uniform of a colonel of the
regiment of Artois glaring over me with pointed sword.
"Rends-toi, coquin!" said he.
"Allez an Diable!" said I: "a Fogarty never surrenders."
I thought of my poor mother and my sisters, at the old house in
Killaloo--I felt the tip of his blade between my teeth--I breathed
a prayer, and shut my eyes--when the tables were turned--the butt-
end of Lanty Clancy's musket knocked the sword up and broke the arm
that held it.
"Thonamoundiaoul nabochlish," said the French officer, with a curse
in the purest Irish. It was lucky I stopped laughing time enough
to bid Lanty hold his hand, for the honest fellow would else have
brained my gallant adversary. We were the better friends for our
combat, as what gallant hearts are not?
The breach was to be stormed at sunset, and like true soldiers we
sat down to make the most of our time. The rogue of a Doctor took
the liver-wing for his share--we gave the other to our guest, a
prisoner; those scoundrels Jack Delamere and Tom Delaney took the
legs--and, 'faith, poor I was put off with the Pope's nose and a
bit of the back.
"How d'ye like his Holiness's FAYTURE?" said Jerry Blake.
"Anyhow you'll have a MERRY THOUGHT," cried the incorrigible
Doctor, and all the party shrieked at the witticism.
"De mortuis nil nisi bonum," said Jack, holding up the drumstick
clean.
"'Faith, there's not enough of it to make us CHICKEN-HEARTED,
anyhow," said I; "come, boys, let's have a song."
"Here goes," said Tom Delaney, and sung the following lyric, of his
own composition--
"Dear Jack, this white mug that with Guinness I fill,
And drink to the health of sweet Nan of the hill,
Was once Tommy Tosspot's, as jovial a sot,
As e'er drew a spigot, or drain'd a full pot--
In drinking all round 'twas his joy to surpass,
And with all merry tipplers he swigg'd off his glass.
"One morning in summer, while seated so snug,
In the porch of his garden, discussing his jug,
Stern Death, on a sudden, to Tom did appear,
And said, 'Honest Thomas, come take your last bier;'
We kneaded his clay in the shape of this can,
From which let us drink to the health of my Nan."
"Psha!" said the Doctor, "I've heard that song before; here's a new
one for you, boys!" and Sawbones began, in a rich Corkagian voice--
"You've all heard of Larry O'Toole,
Of the beautiful town of Drumgoole;
He had but one eye,
To ogle ye by--
Oh, murther, but that was a jew'l!
A fool
He made of de girls, dis O'Toole.
"'Twas he was the boy didn't fail,
That tuck down pataties and mail;
He never would shrink
From any sthrong dthrink,
Was it whisky or Drogheda ale;
I'm bail
This Larry would swallow a pail.
"Oh, many a night at the bowl,
With Larry I've sot cheek by jowl;
He's gone to his rest,
Where there's dthrink of the best,
And so let us give his old sowl
A howl,
For twas he made the noggin to rowl."
I observed the French Colonel's eye glistened as he heard these
well-known accents of his country but we were too well-bred to
pretend to remark his emotion.
The sun was setting behind the mountains as our songs were
finished, and each began to look out with some anxiety for the
preconcerted signal, the rocket from Sir Hussey Vivian's quarters,
which was to announce the recommencement of hostilities. It came
just as the moon rose in her silver splendor, and ere the rocket-
stick fell quivering to the earth at the feet of General Picton
and Sir Lowry Cole, who were at their posts at the head of the
storming-parties, nine hundred and ninety nine guns in position
opened their fire from our batteries, which were answered by a
tremendous canonnade from the fort.
"Who's going to dance?" said the Doctor: "the ball's begun. Ha!
there goes poor Jack Delamere's head off! The ball chose a soft
one, anyhow. Come here, Tim, till I mend your leg. Your wife has
need only knit half as many stockings next year, Doolan my boy.
Faix! there goes a big one had wellnigh stopped my talking: bedad!
it has snuffed the feather off my cocked hat!"
In this way, with eighty-four-pounders roaring over us like hail,
the undaunted little Doctor pursued his jokes and his duty. That
he had a feeling heart, all who served with him knew, and none more
so than Philip Fogarty, the humble writer of this tale of war.
Our embrasure was luckily bomb-proof, and the detachment of the
Onety-oneth under my orders suffered comparatively little. "Be
cool, boys," I said; "it will be hot enough work for you ere long."
The honest fellows answered with an Irish cheer. I saw that it
affected our prisoner.
"Countryman," said I, "I know you; but an Irishman was never a
traitor."
"Taisez-vous!" said he, putting his finger to his lip. "C'est la
fortune de la guerre: if ever you come to Paris, ask for the
Marquis d' O'Mahony, and I may render you the hospitality which
your tyrannous laws prevent me from exercising in the ancestral
halls of my own race."
I shook him warmly by the hand as a tear bedimmed his eye. It was,
then, the celebrated colonel of the Irish Brigade, created a
Marquis by Napoleon on the field of Austerlitz!
"Marquis," said I, "the country which disowns you is proud of you;
but--ha! here, if I mistake not, comes our signal to advance." And
in fact, Captain Vandeleur, riding up through the shower of shot,
asked for the commander of the detachment, and bade me hold myself
in readiness to move as soon as the flank companies of the Ninety-
ninth, and Sixty-sixth, and the Grenadier Brigade of the German
Legion began to advance up the echelon. The devoted band soon
arrived; Jack Bowser heading the Ninety-ninth (when was he away and
a storming-party to the fore?), and the gallant Potztausend, with
his Hanoverian veterans.
The second rocket flew up.
"Forward, Onety-oneth!" cried I, in a voice of thunder. "Killaloo
boys, follow your captain!" and with a shrill hurray, that sounded
above the tremendous fire from the fort, we sprung upon the steep;
Bowser with the brave Ninety-ninth, and the bold Potztausend,
keeping well up with us. We passed the demilune, we passed the
culverin, bayoneting the artillerymen at their guns; we advanced
across the two tremendous demilunes which flank the counterscarp,
and prepared for the final spring upon the citadel. Soult I could
see quite pale on the wall; and the scoundrel Cambaceres, who had
been so nearly my prisoner that day, trembled as he cheered his
men. "On, boys, on!" I hoarsely exclaimed. "Hurroo!" said the
fighting Onety-oneth.
But there was a movement among the enemy. An officer, glittering
with orders, and another in a gray coat and a cocked hat, came to
the wall, and I recognized the Emperor Napoleon and the famous
Joachim Murat.
"We are hardly pressed, methinks," Napoleon said sternly. "I must
exercise my old trade as an artilleryman;" and Murat loaded, and
the Emperor pointed the only hundred-and-twenty-four-pounder that
had not been silenced by our fire.
"Hurray, Killaloo boys!" shouted I. The next moment a sensation of
numbness and death seized me, and I lay like a corpse upon the
rampart.
II.
"Hush!" said a voice, which I recognized to be that of the Marquis
d' O'Mahony. "Heaven be praised, reason has returned to you. For
six weeks those are the only sane words I have heard from you."
"Faix, and 'tis thrue for you, Colonel dear," cried another voice,
with which I was even more familiar; 'twas that of my honest and
gallant Lanty Clancy, who was blubbering at my bedside overjoyed at
his master's recovery.
"O musha, Masther Phil agrah! but this will be the great day
intirely, when I send off the news, which I would, barrin' I can't
write, to the lady your mother and your sisters at Castle Fogarty;
and 'tis his Riv'rence Father Luke will jump for joy thin, when he
reads the letther! Six weeks ravin' and roarin' as bould as a
lion, and as mad as Mick Malony's pig, that mistuck Mick's wig for
a cabbage, and died of atin' it!"
"And have I then lost my senses?" I exclaimed feebly.
"Sure, didn't ye call me your beautiful Donna Anna only yesterday,
and catch hould of me whiskers as if they were the Signora's jet-
black ringlets?" Lanty cried.
At this moment, and blushing deeply, the most beautiful young
creature I ever set my eyes upon, rose from a chair at the foot of
the bed, and sailed out of the room.
"Confusion, you blundering rogue," I cried; "who is that lovely
lady whom you frightened away by your impertinence? Donna Anna?
Where am I?"
"You are in good hands, Philip," said the Colonel; "you are at my
house in the Place Vendome, at Paris, of which I am the military
Governor. You and Lanty were knocked down by the wind of the
cannon-ball at Burgos. Do not be ashamed: 'twas the Emperor
pointed the gun;" and the Colonel took off his hat as he mentioned
the name darling to France. "When our troops returned from the
sally in which your gallant storming party was driven back, you
were found on the glacis, and I had you brought into the City.
Your reason had left you, however, when you returned to life; but,
unwilling to desert the son of my old friend, Philip Fogarty, who
saved my life in '98, I brought you in my carriage to Paris."
"And many's the time you tried to jump out of the windy, Masther
Phil," said Clancy.
"Brought you to Paris," resumed the Colonel, smiling; "where, by
the soins of my friends Broussais, Esquirol, and Baron Larrey, you
have been restored to health, thank heaven!"
"And that lovely angel who quitted the apartment?" I cried.
"That lovely angel is the Lady Blanche Sarsfield, my ward, a
descendant of the gallant Lucan, and who may be, when she chooses,
Madame la Marechale de Cambaceres, Duchess of Illyria."
"Why did you deliver the ruffian when he was in my grasp?" I cried.
"Why did Lanty deliver you when in mine?" the Colonel replied.
"C'est la fortune de la guerre, mon garcon; but calm yourself, and
take this potion which Blanche has prepared for you."
I drank the tisane eagerly when I heard whose fair hands had
compounded it, and its effects were speedily beneficial to me, for
I sank into a cool and refreshing slumber.
From that day I began to mend rapidly, with all the elasticity of
youth's happy time. Blanche--the enchanting Blanche--ministered
henceforth to me, for I would take no medicine but from her lily
hand. And what were the effects? 'Faith, ere a month was past,
the patient was over head and ears in love with the doctor; and as
for Baron Larrey, and Broussais, and Esquirol, they were sent to
the right-about. In a short time I was in a situation to do
justice to the gigot aux navets, the boeuf aux cornichons, and the
other delicious entremets of the Marquis's board, with an appetite
that astonished some of the Frenchmen who frequented it.
"Wait till he's quite well, Miss," said Lanty, who waited always
behind me. "'Faith! when he's in health, I'd back him to ate a
cow, barrin' the horns and teel." I sent a decanter at the rogue's
head, by way of answer to his impertinence.
Although the disgusting Cambaceres did his best to have my parole
withdrawn from me, and to cause me to be sent to the English depot
of prisoners at Verdun, the Marquis's interest with the Emperor
prevailed, and I was allowed to remain at Paris, the happiest of
prisoners, at the Colonel's hotel at the Place Vendome. I here had
the opportunity (an opportunity not lost, I flatter myself, on a
young fellow with the accomplishments of Philip Fogarty, Esq.) of
mixing with the elite of French society, and meeting with many of
the great, the beautiful, and the brave. Talleyrand was a frequent
guest of the Marquis's. His bon-mots used to keep the table in a
roar. Ney frequently took his chop with us; Murat, when in town,
constantly dropt in for a cup of tea and friendly round game.
Alas! who would have thought those two gallant heads would be so
soon laid low? My wife has a pair of earrings which the latter,
who always wore them, presented to her--but we are advancing
matters. Anybody could see, "avec un demioeil," as the Prince of
Benevento remarked, how affairs went between me and Blanche; but
though she loathed him for his cruelties and the odiousness of his
person, the brutal Cambaceres still pursued his designs upon her.
I recollect it was on St. Patrick's Day. My lovely friend had
procured, from the gardens of the Empress Josephine, at Malmaison
(whom we loved a thousand times more than her Austrian successor, a
sandy-haired woman, between ourselves, with an odious squint), a
quantity of shamrock wherewith to garnish the hotel, and all the
Irish in Paris were invited to the national festival.
I and Prince Talleyrand danced a double hornpipe with Pauline
Bonaparte and Madame de Stael; Marshal Soult went down a couple of
sets with Madame Recamier; and Robespierre's widow--an excellent,
gentle creature, quite unlike her husband--stood up with the
Austrian ambassador. Besides, the famous artists Baron Gros, David
and Nicholas Poussin, and Canova, who was in town making a statue
of the Emperor for Leo X., and, in a word, all the celebrities of
Paris--as my gifted countrywoman, the wild Irish girl, calls them--
were assembled in the Marquis's elegant receiving-rooms.
At last a great outcry was raised for La Gigue Irlandaise! La
Gigue Irlandaise! a dance which had made a fureur amongst the
Parisians ever since the lovely Blanche Sarsfield had danced it.
She stepped forward and took me for a partner, and amidst the
bravoes of the crowd, in which stood Ney, Murat, Lannes, the Prince
of Wagram, and the Austrian ambassador, we showed to the beau monde
of the French capital, I flatter myself, a not unfavorable specimen
of the dance of our country.
As I was cutting the double-shuffle, and toe-and-heeling it in the
"rail" style, Blanche danced up to me, smiling, and said, "Be on
your guard; I see Cambaceres talking to Fouche, the Duke of
Otranto, about us; and when Otranto turns his eyes upon a man, they
bode him no good."
"Cambaceres is jealous," said I. "I have it," says she; "I'll make
him dance a turn with me." So, presently, as the music was going
like mad all this time, I pretended fatigue from my late wounds,
and sat down. The lovely Blanche went up smiling, and brought out
Cambaceres as a second partner.
The Marshal is a lusty man, who makes desperate efforts to give
himself a waist, and the effect of the exercise upon him was
speedily visible. He puffed and snorted like a walrus, drops
trickled down his purple face, while my lovely mischief of a
Blanche went on dancing at treble quick, till she fairly danced him
down.
"Who'll take the flure with me?" said the charming girl, animated
by the sport.
"Faix, den, 'tis I, Lanty Clancy!" cried my rascal, who had been
mad with excitement at the scene; and, stepping in with a whoop and
a hurroo, he began to dance with such rapidity as made all present
stare.
As the couple were footing it, there was a noise as of a rapid
cavalcade traversing the Place Vendome, and stopping at the
Marquis's door. A crowd appeared to mount the stair; the great
doors of the reception-room were flung open, and two pages
announced their Majesties the Emperor and the Empress. So engaged
were Lanty and Blanche, that they never heard the tumult occasioned
by the august approach.
It was indeed the Emperor, who, returning from the Theatre
Francais, and seeing the Marquis's windows lighted up, proposed to
the Empress to drop in on the party. He made signs to the
musicians to continue: and the conqueror of Marengo and Friedland
watched with interest the simple evolutions of two happy Irish
people. Even the Empress smiled and, seeing this, all the
courtiers, including Naples and Talleyrand, were delighted.
"Is not this a great day for Ireland?" said the Marquis, with a
tear trickling down his noble face. "O Ireland! O my country!
But no more of that. Go up, Phil, you divvle, and offer her
Majesty the choice of punch or negus."
Among the young fellows with whom I was most intimate in Paris was
Eugene Beauharnais, the son of the ill-used and unhappy Josephine
by her former marriage with a French gentleman of good family.
Having a smack of the old blood in him, Eugene's manners were much
more refined than those of the new-fangled dignitaries of the
Emperor's Court, where (for my knife and fork were regularly laid
at the Tuileries) I have seen my poor friend Murat repeatedly
mistake a fork for a toothpick, and the gallant Massena devour
pease by means of his knife, in a way more innocent than graceful.
Talleyrand, Eugene, and I used often to laugh at these eccentricities
of our brave friends; who certainly did not shine in the
drawing-room, however brilliant they were in the field of battle.
The Emperor always asked me to take wine with him, and was full of
kindness and attention.
"I like Eugene," he would say, pinching my ear confidentially, as
his way was--"I like Eugene to keep company with such young fellows
as you; you have manners; you have principles; my rogues from the
camp have none. And I like you, Philip my boy," he added, "for
being so attentive to my poor wife--the Empress Josephine, I mean."
All these honors made my friends at the Marquis's very proud, and
my enemies at Court crever with envy. Among these, the atrocious
Cambaceres was not the least active and envenomed.
The cause of the many attentions which were paid to me, and which,
like a vain coxcomb, I had chosen to attribute to my own personal
amiability, soon was apparent. Having formed a good opinion of my
gallantry from my conduct in various actions and forlorn hopes
during the war, the Emperor was most anxious to attach me to his
service. The Grand Cross of St. Louis, the title of Count, the
command of a crack cavalry regiment, the l4me Chevaux Marins, were
the bribes that were actually offered to me; and must I say it?
Blanche, the lovely, the perfidious Blanche, was one of the agents
employed to tempt me to commit this act of treason.
"Object to enter a foreign service!" she said, in reply to my
refusal. "It is you, Philip, who are in a foreign service. The
Irish nation is in exile, and in the territories of its French
allies. Irish traitors are not here; they march alone under the
accursed flag of the Saxon, whom the great Napoleon would have
swept from the face of the earth, but for the fatal valor of Irish
mercenaries! Accept this offer, and my heart, my hand, my all are
yours. Refuse it, Philip, and we part."
"To wed the abominable Cambaceres!" I cried, stung with rage. "To
wear a duchess's coronet, Blanche! Ha, ha! Mushrooms, instead of
strawberry-leaves, should decorate the brows of the upstart French
nobility. I shall withdraw my parole. I demand to be sent to
prison--to be exchanged--to die--anything rather than be a traitor,
and the tool of a traitress!" Taking up my hat, I left the room in
a fury; and flinging open the door tumbled over Cambaceres, who was
listening at the key-hole, and must have overheard every word of
our conversation.
We tumbled over each other, as Blanche was shrieking with laughter
at our mutual discomfiture. Her scorn only made me more mad; and,
having spurs on, I began digging them into Cambaceres' fat sides as
we rolled on the carpet, until the Marshal howled with rage and
anger.
"This insult must be avenged with blood!" roared the Duke of
Illyria.
"I have already drawn it," says I, "with my spurs."
"Malheur et malediction!" roared the Marshal.
"Hadn't you better settle your wig?" says I, offering it to him on
the tip of my cane, "and we'll arrange time and place when you have
put your jasey in order." I shall never forget the look of revenge
which he cast at me, as I was thus turning him into ridicule before
his mistress.
"Lady Blanche," I continued bitterly, "as you look to share the
Duke's coronet, hadn't you better see to his wig?" and so saying, I
cocked my hat, and walked out of the Marquis's place, whistling
"Garryowen."
I knew my man would not be long in following me, and waited for him
in the Place Vendome, where I luckily met Eugene too, who was
looking at the picture-shop in the corner. I explained to him my
affair in a twinkling. He at once agreed to go with me to the
ground, and commended me, rather than otherwise, for refusing the
offer which had been made to me. "I knew it would be so," he said,
kindly; "I told my father you wouldn't. A man with the blood of
the Fogarties, Phil my boy, doesn't wheel about like those fellows
of yesterday." So, when Cambaceres came out, which he did
presently, with a more furious air than before, I handed him at
once over to Eugene, who begged him to name a friend, and an early
hour for the meeting to take place.
"Can you make it before eleven, Phil?" said Beauharnais. "The
Emperor reviews the troops in the Bois de Boulogne at that hour,
and we might fight there handy before the review."
"Done!" said I. "I want of all things to see the newly-arrived
Saxon cavalry manoeuvre:" on which Cambaceres, giving me a look, as
much as to say, "See sights! Watch cavalry manoeuvres! Make your
soul, and take measure for a coffin, my boy!" walked away, naming
our mutual acquaintance, Marshal Ney, to Eugene, as his second in
the business.
I had purchased from Murat a very fine Irish horse, Bugaboo, out of
Smithereens, by Fadladeen, which ran into the French ranks at
Salamanca, with poor Jack Clonakilty, of the 13th, dead, on the top
of him. Bugaboo was too much and too ugly an animal for the King
of Naples, who, though a showy horseman, was a bad rider across
country; and I got the horse for a song. A wickeder and uglier
brute never wore pig-skin; and I never put my leg over such a
timber-jumper in my life. I rode the horse down to the Bois de
Boulogne on the morning that the affair with Cambaceres was to come
off, and Lanty held him as I went in, "sure to win," as they say in
the ring.
Cambaceres was known to be the best shot in the French army; but I,
who am a pretty good hand at a snipe, thought a man was bigger, and
that I could wing him if I had a mind. As soon as Ney gave the
word, we both fired: I felt a whiz past my left ear, and putting up
my hand there, found a large piece of my whiskers gone; whereas at
the same moment, and shrieking a horrible malediction, my adversary
reeled and fell.
"Mon Dieu, il est mort!" cried Ney.
"Pas de tout," said Beauharnais. "Ecoute; il jure toujours."
And such, indeed, was the fact: the supposed dead man lay on the
ground cursing most frightfully. We went up to him: he was blind
with the loss of blood, and my ball had carried off the bridge of
his nose. He recovered; but he was always called the Prince of
Ponterotto in the French army, afterwards. The surgeon in
attendance having taken charge of this unfortunate warrior, we rode
off to the review where Ney and Eugene were on duty at the head of
their respective divisions; and where, by the way, Cambaceres, as
the French say, "se faisait desirer."
It was arranged that Cambaceres' division of six battalions and
nine-and-twenty squadrons should execute a ricochet movement,
supported by artillery in the intervals, and converging by
different epaulements on the light infantry, that formed, as usual,
the centre of the line. It was by this famous manoeuvre that at
Arcola, at Montenotte, at Friedland, and subsequently at Mazagran,
Suwaroff, Prince Charles, and General Castanos were defeated with
such victorious slaughter: but it is a movement which, I need not
tell every military man, requires the greatest delicacy of
execution, and which, if it fails, plunges an army into confusion.
"Where is the Duke of Illyria?" Napoleon asked. "At the head of
his division, no doubt," said Murat: at which Eugene, giving me an
arch look, put his hand to his nose, and caused me almost to fall
off my horse with laughter. Napoleon looked sternly at me; but at
this moment the troops getting in motion, the celebrated manoeuvre
began, and his Majesty's attention was taken off from my impudence.
Milhaud's Dragoons, their bands playing "Vive Henri Quatre," their
cuirasses gleaming in the sunshine, moved upon their own centre
from the left flank in the most brilliant order, while the
Carbineers of Foy, and the Grenadiers of the Guard under Drouet
d'Erlon, executed a carambolade on the right, with the precision
which became those veteran troops; but the Chasseurs of the young
guard, marching by twos instead of threes, bore consequently upon
the Bavarian Uhlans (an ill-disciplined and ill-affected body), and
then, falling back in disorder, became entangled with the artillery
and the left centre of the line, and in one instant thirty thousand
men were in inextricable confusion.
"Clubbed, by Jabers!" roared out Lanty Clancy. "I wish we could
show 'em the Fighting Onety-oneth, Captain darling."
"Silence, fellow!" I exclaimed. I never saw the face of man
express passion so vividly as now did the livid countenance of
Napoleon. He tore off General Milhaud's epaulettes, which he flung
into Foy's face. He glared about him wildly, like a demon, and
shouted hoarsely for the Duke of Illyria. "He is wounded, Sire,"
said General Foy, wiping a tear from his eye, which was blackened
by the force of the blow; "he was wounded an hour since in a duel,
Sire, by a young English prisoner, Monsieur de Fogarty."
"Wounded! a marshal of France wounded! Where is the Englishman?
Bring him out, and let a file of grenadiers--"
"Sire!" interposed Eugene.
"Let him be shot!" shrieked the Emperor, shaking his spyglass at me
with the fury of a fiend.
This was too much. "Here goes!" said I, and rode slap at him.
There was a shriek of terror from the whole of the French army, and
I should think at least forty thousand guns were levelled at me in
an instant. But as the muskets were not loaded, and the cannon had
only wadding in them, these facts, I presume, saved the life of
Phil Fogarty from this discharge.
Knowing my horse, I put him at the Emperor's head, and Bugaboo went
at it like a shot. He was riding his famous white Arab, and turned
quite pale as I came up and went over the horse and the Emperor,
scarcely brushing the cockade which he wore.
"Bravo!" said Murat, bursting into enthusiasm at the leap.
"Cut him down!" said Sieyes, once an Abbe, but now a gigantic
Cuirassier; and he made a pass at me with his sword. But he little
knew an Irishman on an Irish horse. Bugaboo cleared Sieyes, and
fetched the monster a slap with his near hind hoof which sent him
reeling from his saddle,--and away I went, with an army of a hundred
and seventy-three thousand eight hundred men at my heels. * * * *
BARBAZURE.
BY G. P. R. JEAMES, ESQ., ETC.
I.
It was upon one of those balmy evenings of November, which are only
known in the valleys of Languedoc and among the mountains of
Alsace, that two cavaliers might have been perceived by the naked
eye threading one of the rocky and romantic gorges that skirt the
mountain-land between the Marne and the Garonne. The rosy tints of
the declining luminary were gilding the peaks and crags which lined
the path, through which the horsemen wound slowly; and as these
eternal battlements with which Nature had hemmed in the ravine
which our travellers trod, blushed with the last tints of the
fading sunlight, the valley below was gray and darkling, and the
hard and devious course was sombre in twilight. A few goats,
hardly visible among the peaks, were cropping the scanty herbage
here and there. The pipes of shepherds, calling in their flocks
as they trooped homewards to their mountain villages, sent up
plaintive echoes which moaned through those rocky and lonely
steeps; the stars began to glimmer in the purple heavens spread
serenely overhead and the faint crescent of the moon, which had
peered for some time scarce visible in the azure, gleamed out more
brilliantly at every moment, until it blazed as if in triumph at
the sun's retreat. 'Tis a fair land that of France, a gentle, a
green, and a beautiful; the home of arts and arms, of chivalry and
romance, and (however sadly stained by the excesses of modern
times) 'twas the unbought grace of nations once, and the seat of
ancient renown and disciplined valor.
And of all that fair land of France, whose beauty is so bright and
bravery is so famous, there is no spot greener or fairer than that
one over which our travellers wended, and which stretches between
the good towns of Vendemiaire and Nivose. 'Tis common now to a
hundred thousand voyagers: the English tourist, with his chariot
and his Harvey's Sauce, and his imperials; the bustling commis-
voyageur on the roof of the rumbling diligence; the rapid malle-
poste thundering over the chaussee at twelve miles an hour--pass
the ground hourly and daily now: 'twas lonely and unfrequented at
the end of that seventeenth century with which our story commences.
Along the darkening mountain-paths the two gentlemen (for such
their outward bearing proclaimed them) caracoled together. The
one, seemingly the younger of the twain, wore a flaunting feather
in his barret-cap, and managed a prancing Andalusian palfrey that
bounded and curveted gayly. A surcoat of peach-colored samite and
a purfled doublet of vair bespoke him noble, as did his brilliant
eye, his exquisitely chiselled nose, and his curling chestnut
ringlets.
Youth was on his brow; his eyes were dark and dewy, like spring-
violets; and spring-roses bloomed upon his cheek--roses, alas! that
bloom and die with life's spring! Now bounding over a rock, now
playfully whisking off with his riding rod a floweret in his path,
Philibert de Coquelicot rode by his darker companion.
His comrade was mounted upon a destriere of the true Norman breed,
that had first champed grass on the green pastures of Aquitaine.
Thence through Berry, Picardy, and the Limousin, halting at many a
city and commune, holding joust and tourney in many a castle and
manor of Navarre, Poitou, and St. Germain l'Auxerrois, the warrior
and his charger reached the lonely spot where now we find them.
The warrior who bestrode the noble beast was in sooth worthy of the
steed which bore him. Both were caparisoned in the fullest
trappings of feudal war. The arblast, the mangonel, the
demiculverin, and the cuissart of the period, glittered upon the
neck and chest of the war-steed; while the rider, with chamfron and
catapult, with ban and arriere-ban, morion and tumbrel, battle-axe
and rifflard, and the other appurtenances of ancient chivalry, rode
stately on his steel-clad charger, himself a tower of steel. This
mighty horseman was carried by his steed as lightly as the young
springald by his Andalusian hackney.
"'Twas well done of thee, Philibert," said he of the proof-armor,
"to ride forth so far to welcome thy cousin and companion in arms."
"Companion in battledore and shuttlecock, Romane de Clos-Vougeot!"
replied the younger Cavalier. "When I was yet a page, thou wert a
belted knight; and thou wert away to the Crusades ere ever my beard
grew."
"I stood by Richard of England at the gates of Ascalon, and drew
the spear from sainted King Louis in the tents of Damietta," the
individual addressed as Romane replied. "Well-a-day! since thy
beard grew, boy, (and marry 'tis yet a thin one,) I have broken a
lance with Solyman at Rhodes, and smoked a chibouque with Saladin
at Acre. But enough of this. Tell me of home--of our native
valley--of my hearth, and my lady-mother, and my good chaplain--
tell me of HER, Philibert," said the knight, executing a demivolt,
in order to hide his emotion.
Philibert seemed uneasy, and to strive as though he would parry the
question. "The castle stands on the rock," he said, "and the
swallows still build in the battlements. The good chaplain still
chants his vespers at morn, and snuffles his matins at even-song.
The lady-mother still distributeth tracts, and knitteth Berlin
linsey-woolsey. The tenants pay no better, and the lawyers dun as
sorely, kinsman mine," he added with an arch look.
"But Fatima, Fatima, how fares she?" Romane continued. "Since
Lammas was a twelvemonth, I hear nought of her; my letters are
unanswered. The postman hath traversed our camp every day, and
never brought me a billet. How is Fatima, Philibert de Coquelicot?"
"She is--well," Philibert replied; "her sister Anne is the fairest
of the twain, though."
"Her sister Anne was a baby when I embarked for Egypt. A plague on
sister Anne! Speak of Fatima, Philibert--my blue-eyed Fatima!"
"I say she is--well," answered his comrade gloomily.
"Is she dead? Is she ill? Hath she the measles? Nay, hath she
had the small-pox, and lost her beauty? Speak; speak, boy!" cried
the knight, wrought to agony.
"Her cheek is as red as her mother's, though the old Countess
paints hers every day. Her foot is as light as a sparrow's, and
her voice as sweet as a minstrel's dulcimer; but give me nathless
the Lady Anne," cried Philibert; "give me the peerless Lady Anne!
As soon as ever I have won spurs, I will ride all Christendom
through, and proclaim her the Queen of Beauty. Ho, Lady Anne!
Lady Anne!" and so saying--but evidently wishing to disguise some
emotion, or conceal some tale his friend could ill brook to hear--
the reckless damoiseau galloped wildly forward.
But swift as was his courser's pace, that of his companion's
enormous charger was swifter. "Boy," said the elder, "thou hast
ill tidings. I know it by thy glance. Speak: shall he who hath
bearded grim Death in a thousand fields shame to face truth from a
friend? Speak, in the name of heaven and good Saint Botibol.
Romane de Clos-Vougeot will bear your tidings like a man!"
"Fatima is well," answered Philibert once again; "she hath had no
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