Kitabı oku: «Pelham — Volume 02», sayfa 6

There was yet another reason which reconciled me more than any other to my departure. I had, in my residence at Paris, among half wits and whole roues, contracted a certain—not exactly grossierete—but want of refinement—a certain coarseness of expression and idea which, though slight, and easily thrown off, took in some degree from my approach to that character which I wished to become. I know nothing which would so polish the manners as continental intercourse, were it not for the English debauches with which that intercourse connects one. English profligacy is always coarse, and in profligacy nothing is more contagious than its tone. One never keeps a restraint on the manner when one unbridles the passions, and one takes from the associates with whom the latter are indulged, the air and the method of the indulgence.

I was, the reader well knows, too solicitous for improvement, not to be anxious to escape from such chances of deterioration, and I therefore consoled myself with considerable facility for the pleasures and the associates I was about to forego. My mind being thus relieved from all regret at my departure, I now suffered it to look forward to the advantages of my return to England. My love of excitement and variety made an election, in which I was to have both the importance of the contest and the certainty of the success, a very agreeable object of anticipation.

I was also by this time wearied with my attendance upon women, and eager to exchange it for the ordinary objects of ambition to men; and my vanity whispered that my success in the one was no unfavourable omen of my prosperity in the other. On my return to England, with a new scene and a new motive for conduct, I resolved that I would commence a different character to that I had hitherto assumed. How far I kept this resolution the various events hereafter to be shown, will testify. For myself, I felt that I was now about to enter a more crowded scene upon a more elevated ascent; and my previous experience of human nature was sufficient to convince me that my safety required a more continual circumspection, and my success a more dignified bearing.

CHAPTER XXVII

             Je noterai cela, Madame, dans mon livre.

                          —Moliere.

I am not one of those persons who are many days in deciding what may be effected in one. "On the third day from this," said I to Bedos, "at half past nine in the morning, I shall leave Paris for England."

"Oh, my poor wife!" said the valet, "she will break her heart if I leave her."

"Then stay," said I. Bedos shrugged his shoulders.

"I prefer being with Monsieur to all things."

"What, even to your wife?" The courteous rascal placed his hand to his heart and bowed. "You shall not suffer by your fidelity—you shall take your wife with you."

The conjugal valet's countenance fell. "No," he said, "no; he could not take advantage of Monsieur's generosity."

"I insist upon it—not another word."

"I beg a thousand pardons of Monsieur; but—but my wife is very ill, and unable to travel."

"Then, in that case, so excellent a husband cannot think of leaving a sick and destitute wife."

"Poverty has no law; if I consulted my heart and stayed, I should starve, et il faut vivre."

"Je n'en vois pas la necessite," replied I, as I got into my carriage. That repartee, by the way, I cannot claim as my own; it is the very unanswerable answer of a judge to an expostulating thief.

I made the round of reciprocal regrets, according to the orthodox formula. The Duchesse de Perpignan was the last—(Madame D'Anville I reserved for another day)—that virtuous and wise personage was in the boudoir of reception. I glanced at the fatal door as I entered. I have a great aversion, after any thing has once happened and fairly subsided, to make any allusion to its former existence. I never, therefore, talked to the Duchess about our ancient egaremens. I spoke, this morning, of the marriage of one person, the death of another, and lastly, the departure of my individual self.

"When do you go?" she said, eagerly.

"In two days: my departure will be softened, if I can execute any commissions in England for Madame."

"None," said she; and then in a low tone (that none of the idlers, who were always found at her morning levees, should hear), she added, "you will receive a note from me this evening."

I bowed, changed the conversation, and withdrew. I dined in my own rooms, and spent the evening in looking over the various billets-doux, received during my sejour at Paris.

"Where shall I put all these locks of hair?" asked Bedos, opening a drawer full.

"Into my scrap-book."

"And all these letters?"

"Into the fire."

I was just getting into bed when the Duchesse de Perpignan's note arrived—it was as follows:—

"My dear Friend,

"For that word, so doubtful in our language, I may at least call you in your own. I am unwilling that you should leave this country with those sentiments you now entertain of me, unaltered, yet I cannot imagine any form of words of sufficient magic to change them. Oh! if you knew how much I am to be pitied; if you could look for one moment into this lonely and blighted heart; if you could trace, step by step, the progress I have made in folly and sin, you would see how much of what you now condemn and despise, I have owed to circumstances, rather than to the vice of my disposition. I was born a beauty, educated a beauty, owed fame, rank, power to beauty; and it is to the advantages I have derived from person that I owe the ruin of my mind. You have seen how much I now derive from art I loathe myself as I write that sentence; but no matter: from that moment you loathed me too. You did not take into consideration, that I had been living on excitement all my youth, and that in my maturer years I could not relinquish it. I had reigned by my attractions, and I thought every art preferable to resigning my empire: but in feeding my vanity, I had not been able to stifle the dictates of my heart. Love is so natural to a woman, that she is scarcely a woman who resists it: but in me it has been a sentiment, not a passion.

"Sentiment, then, and vanity, have been my seducers. I said, that I owed my errors to circumstances, not to nature. You will say, that in confessing love and vanity to be my seducers, I contradict this assertion—you are mistaken. I mean, that though vanity and sentiment were in me, yet the scenes in which I have been placed, and the events which I have witnessed, gave to those latent currents of action a wrong and a dangerous direction. I was formed to love; for one whom I did love I could have made every sacrifice. I married a man I hated, and I only learnt the depths of my heart when it was too late.

"Enough of this; you will leave this country; we shall never meet again— never! You may return to Paris, but I shall then be no more; n'importe—I shall be unchanged to the last. Je mourrai en reine.

"As a latest pledge of what I have felt for you, I send you the enclosed chain and ring; as a latest favour, I request you to wear them for six months, and, above all, for two hours in the Tuileries tomorrow. You will laugh at this request: it seems idle and romantic—perhaps it is so. Love has many exaggerations in sentiment, which reason would despise. What wonder, then, that mine, above that of all others, should conceive them? You will not, I know, deny this request. Farewell!—in this world we shall never meet again, and I believe not in the existence of another. Farewell!

"E. P."

"A most sensible effusion," said I to myself, when I had read this billet; "and yet, after all, it shows more feeling and more character than I could have supposed she possessed." I took up the chain: it was of Maltese workmanship; not very handsome, nor, indeed, in any way remarkable, except for a plain hair ring which was attached to it, and which I found myself unable to take off, without breaking. "It is a very singular request," thought I, "but then it comes from a very singular person; and as it rather partakes of adventure and intrigue, I shall at all events appear in the Tuileries, tomorrow, chained and ringed."

CHAPTER XXVIII

Thy incivility shall not make me fail to do what becomes me; and since thou hast more valour than courtesy, I for thee will hazard that life which thou wouldst take from me.

—Cassandra, "elegantly done into English by Sir Charles Cotterell."

About the usual hour for the promenade in the Tuileries, I conveyed myself thither. I set the chain and ring in full display, rendered still more conspicuous by the dark coloured dress which I always wore. I had not been in the gardens ten minutes, before I perceived a young Frenchman, scarcely twenty years of age, look with a very peculiar air at my new decorations. He passed and repassed me, much oftener than the alternations of the walk warranted; and at last, taking off his hat, said in a low tone, that he wished much for the honour of exchanging a few words with me in private. I saw, at the first glance, that he was a gentleman, and accordingly withdrew with him among the trees, in the more retired part of the garden.

"Permit me," said he, "to inquire how that ring and chain came into your possession?"

"Monsieur," I replied, "you will understand me, when I say, that the honour of another person is implicated in my concealment of that secret."

"Sir," said the Frenchman, colouring violently, "I have seen them before —in a word, they belong to me!"

I smiled—my young hero fired at this. "Oui, Monsieur," said he, speaking very loud, and very quick, "they belong to me, and I insist upon your immediately restoring them, or vindicating your claim to them by arms."

"You leave me but one answer, Monsieur," said I; "I will find a friend to wait upon you immediately. Allow me to inquire your address?" The Frenchman, who was greatly agitated, produced a card. We bowed and separated.

I was glancing over the address I held in my hand, which was—C.

D'Azimart, Rue de Bourbon Numero—, when my ears were saluted with—

"'Now do you know me?—thou shouldst be Alonzo.'"

I did not require the faculty of sight to recognize Lord Vincent. "My dear fellow," said I, "I am rejoiced to see you!" and thereupon I poured into his ear the particulars of my morning adventure. Lord Vincent listened to me with much apparent interest, and spoke very unaffectedly of his readiness to serve me, and his regret at the occasion.

"Pooh." said I, "a duel in France, is not like one in England; the former is a matter of course; a trifle of common occurrence; one makes an engagement to fight, in the same breath as an engagement to dine; but the latter is a thing of state and solemnity—long faces—early rising—and willmaking. But do get this business over as soon as you can, that we may dine at the Rocher afterwards."

"Well, my dear Pelham," said Vincent, "I cannot refuse you my services; and as I suppose Monsieur D'Azimart will choose swords, I venture to augur every thing from your skill in that species of weapon. It is the first time I have ever interfered in affairs of this nature, but I hope to get well through the present.

"'Nobilis ornatur lauro collega secundo,'

as Juvenal says: au revoir," and away went Lord Vincent, half forgetting all his late anxiety for my life, in his paternal pleasure for the delivery of his quotation.

Vincent is the only punster I ever knew with a good heart. No action to that race in general is so serious an occupation as the play upon words; and the remorseless habit of murdering a phrase, renders them perfectly obdurate to the simple death of a friend. I walked through every variety the straight paths of the Tuileries could afford, and was beginning to get exceedingly tired, when Lord Vincent returned. He looked very grave, and I saw at once that he was come to particularize the circumstances of the last extreme. "The Bois de Boulogne—pistols—in one hour," were the three leading features of his detail.

"Pistols!" said I; "well, be it so. I would rather have had swords, for the young man's sake as much as my own: but thirteen paces and a steady aim will settle the business as soon. We will try a bottle of the chambertin to-day, Vincent." The punster smiled faintly, and for once in his life made no reply. We walked gravely and soberly to my lodgings for the pistols, and then proceeded to the engagement as silently as Christians should do.

The Frenchman and his second were on the ground first. I saw that the former was pale and agitated, not, I think, from fear, but passion. When we took our ground, Vincent came to me, and said, in a low tone, "For God's sake, suffer me to accommodate this, if possible?"

"It is not in our power," said I, receiving the pistol. I looked steadily at D'Azimart, and took my aim. His pistol, owing, I suppose, to the trembling of his hand, went off a moment sooner than he had anticipated— the ball grazed my hat. My aim was more successful—I struck him in the shoulder—the exact place I had intended. He staggered a few paces, but did not fall.

We hastened towards him—his cheek assumed a still more livid hue as I approached; he muttered some half-formed curses between his teeth, and turned from me to his second.

"You will inquire whether Monsieur D'Azimart is satisfied," said I to Vincent, and retired to a short distance.

"His second," said Vincent, (after a brief conference with that person,) "replies to my question, that Monsieur D'Azimart's wound has left him, for the present, no alternative." Upon this answer I took Vincent's arm, and we returned forthwith to my carriage.

"I congratulate you most sincerely on the event of this duel," said Vincent. "Monsieur de M—(D'Azimart's second) informed me, when I waited on him, that your antagonist was one of the most celebrated pistol shots in Paris, and that a lady with whom he had been long in love, made the death of the chain-bearer the price of her favours. Devilish lucky for you, my good fellow, that his hand trembled so; but I did not know you were so good a shot."

"Why," I answered, "I am not what is vulgarly termed 'a crack shot'—I cannot split a bullet on a penknife; but I am sure of a target somewhat smaller than a man: and my hand is as certain in the field as it is in the practice-yard."

"Le sentiment de nos forces les augmente," replied Vincent. "Shall I tell the coachman to drive to the Rocher?"