CHAPTER II.
A FAMILY CONSULTATION.--A PRIEST, AND AN ERA IN LIFE.
"YOU are ruining the children, my dear Sir William," said my gentlemother, one day when I had been particularly witty; "and the AbbeMontreuil declares it absolutely necessary that they should go toschool."
"To school!" said my uncle, who was caressing his right leg, as it layover his left knee,--"to school, Madam! you are joking. What for, pray?"
"Instruction, my dear Sir William," replied my mother.
"Ah, ah; I forgot that; true, true!" said my uncle, despondingly, andthere was a pause. My mother counted her rosary; my uncle sank intoa revery; my twin brother pinched my leg under the table, to whichI replied by a silent kick; and my youngest fixed his large, dark,speaking eyes upon a picture of the Holy Family, which hung opposite tohim.
My uncle broke the silence; he did it with a start.
"Od's fish, Madam,"--(my uncle dressed his oaths, like himself, a littleafter the example of Charles II.)--"od's fish, Madam, I have thought ofa better plan than that; they shall have instruction without going toschool for it."
"And how, Sir William?"
"I will instruct them myself, Madam," and William slapped the calf ofthe leg he was caressing.
My mother smiled.
"Ay, Madam, you may smile; but I and my Lord Dorset were the bestscholars of the age; you shall read my play."
"Do, Mother," said I, "read the play. Shall I tell her some of the jestsin it, Uncle?"
My mother shook her head in anticipative horror, and raised her fingerreprovingly. My uncle said nothing, but winked at me; I understoodthe signal, and was about to begin, when the door opened, and the AbbeMontreuil entered. My uncle released his right leg, and my jest wascut off. Nobody ever inspired a more dim, religious awe than theAbbe Montreuil. The priest entered with a smile. My mother hailed theentrance of an ally.
"Father," said she, rising, "I have just represented to my goodbrother the necessity of sending my sons to school; he has proposed analternative which I will leave you to discuss with him."
"And what is it?" said Montreuil, sliding into a chair, and pattingGerald's head with a benignant air.
"To educate them himself," answered my mother, with a sort of satiricalgravity. My uncle moved uneasily in his seat, as if, for the first time,he saw something ridiculous in the proposal.
The smile, immediately fading from the thin lips of the priest, gave wayto an expression of respectful approbation. "An admirable plan," saidhe slowly, "but liable to some little exceptions, which Sir William willallow me to point out."
My mother called to us, and we left the room with her. The next time wesaw my uncle, the priest's reasonings had prevailed. The following weekwe all three went to school. My father had been a Catholic, my motherwas of the same creed, and consequently we were brought up in thatunpopular faith. But my uncle, whose religion had been sadly underminedat court, was a terrible caviller at the holy mysteries of Catholicism;and while his friends termed him a Protestant, his enemies hinted,falsely enough, that he was a sceptic. When Montreuil first followed usto Devereux Court, many and bitter were the little jests my worthyuncle had provided for his reception; and he would shake his head witha notable archness whenever he heard our reverential description of theexpected guest. But, somehow or other, no sooner had he seen the priestthan all his proposed railleries deserted him. Not a single witticismcame to his assistance, and the calm, smooth face of the ecclesiasticseemed to operate upon the fierce resolves of the facetious knight inthe same manner as the human eye is supposed to awe into impotencethe malignant intentions of the ignobler animals. Yet nothing could beblander than the demeanour of the Abbe Montreuil; nothing more worldly,in their urbanity, than his manner and address. His garb was as littleclerical as possible, his conversation rather familiar than formal, andhe invariably listened to every syllable the good knight uttered with acountenance and mien of the most attentive respect.
What then was the charm by which the singular man never failed to obtainan ascendency, in some measure allied with fear, over all in whosecompany he was thrown? This was a secret my uncle never could solve, andwhich only in later life I myself was able to discover. It was partly bythe magic of an extraordinary and powerful mind, partly by an expressionof manner, if I may use such a phrase, that seemed to sneer most, whenmost it affected to respect; and partly by an air like that of a mannever exactly at ease; not that he was shy, or ungraceful, or eventaciturn,--no! it was an indescribable embarrassment, resembling that ofone playing a part, familiar to him, indeed, but somewhat distasteful.This embarrassment, however, was sufficient to be contagious, and toconfuse that dignity in others, which, strangely enough, never forsookhimself.
He was of low origin, but his address and appearance did not betrayhis birth. Pride suited his mien better than familiarity; and hiscountenance, rigid, thoughtful, and cold, even through smiles, inexpression was strikingly commanding. In person he was slightlyabove the middle standard; and had not the texture of his framebeen remarkably hard, wiry, and muscular, the total absence of allsuperfluous flesh would have given the lean gauntness of his figure anappearance of almost spectral emaciation. In reality, his age did notexceed twenty-eight years; but his high broad forehead was already somarked with line and furrow, his air was so staid and quiet, hisfigure so destitute of the roundness and elasticity of youth, that hisappearance always impressed the beholder with the involuntary idea of aman considerably more advanced in life. Abstemious to habitualpenance, and regular to mechanical exactness in his frequent and severedevotions, he was as little inwardly addicted to the pleasures andpursuits of youth, as he was externally possessed of its freshness andits bloom.
Nor was gravity with him that unmeaning veil to imbecility whichRochefoucauld has so happily called "the mystery of the body." Thevariety and depth of his learning fully sustained the respect which hisdemeanour insensibly created. To say nothing of his lore in the deadtongues, he possessed a knowledge of the principal European languagesbesides his own, namely, English, Italian, German, and Spanish, not lessaccurate and little less fluent than that of a native; and he had notonly gained the key to these various coffers of intellectual wealth, buthe had also possessed himself of their treasures. He had beeneducated at St. Omer: and, young as he was, he had already acquired noinconsiderable reputation among his brethren of that illustrious andcelebrated Order of Jesus which has produced some of the worst and someof the best men that the Christian world has ever known,--which has, inits successful zeal for knowledge, and the circulation of mental light,bequeathed a vast debt of gratitude to posterity; but which, unhappilyencouraging certain scholastic doctrines, that by a mind at once subtleand vicious can be easily perverted into the sanction of the mostdangerous and systematized immorality, has already drawn upon itsprofessors an almost universal odium.
So highly established was the good name of Montreuil that when, threeyears prior to the time of which I now speak, he had been elected to theoffice he held in our family, it was scarcely deemed a less fortunateoccurrence for us to gain so learned and so pious a preceptor, than itwas for him to acquire a situation of such trust and confidence in thehousehold of a Marshal of France and the especial favourite of LouisXIV.
It was pleasant enough to mark the gradual ascendency he gained over myuncle; and the timorous dislike which the good knight entertained forhim, yet struggled to conceal. Perhaps that was the only time in hislife in which Sir William Devereux was a hypocrite.
Enough of the priest at present; I return to his charge. To school wewent: our parting with our uncle was quite pathetic; mine in especial."Hark ye, Sir Count," whispered he (I bore my father's title), "harkye, don't mind what the old priest tells you; your real man of wit neverwants the musty lessons of schools in order to make a figure in theworld. Don't cramp your genius, my boy; read over my play, and honestGeorge Etherege's 'Man of Mode;' they'll keep your spirits alive, afterdozing over those old pages which Homer (good soul!) dozed over befo
re.God bless you, my child; write to me; no one, not even your mother,shall see your letters; and--and be sure, my fine fellow, that you don'tfag too hard. The glass of life is the best book, and one's natural witthe only diamond that can write legibly on it."
Such were my uncle's parting admonitions; it must be confessed that,coupled with the dramatic gifts alluded to, they were likely to be ofinfinite service to the _debutant_ for academical honours. In fact,Sir William Devereux was deeply impregnated with the notion of histime,--that ability and inspiration were the same thing, and that,unless you were thoroughly idle, you could not be thoroughly a genius.I verily believe that he thought wisdom got its gems, as Abu Zeid alHassan* declares some Chinese philosophers thought oysters got theirpearls, namely, _by gaping_!
* In his Commentary on the account of China by two Travellers.