CHAPTER XXIII.
Show me not thy painted beauties, These impostures I defy.--GeorgeWithers.
The cave of Falri smelt not more delicately--on every side appearedthe marks of drunkenness and gluttony. At the upper end of the cave thesorcerer lay extended, etc.--Mirglip the Persian, in the "Tales of theGenii."
I woke the next morning with an aching head and feverish frame. Ah,those midnight carousals, how glorious they would be if there was nonext morning! I took my sauterne and sodawater in my dressing-room; and,as indisposition always makes me meditative, I thought over all I haddone since my arrival at Paris. I had become (that, God knows, I soonmanage to do) rather a talked of and noted character. It is true that Iwas every where abused--one found fault with my neckcloth--another withmy mind--the lank Mr. Aberton declared that I put my hair in papers, andthe stuffed Sir Henry Millington said I was a thread-paper myself. Oneblamed my riding--a second my dancing--a third wondered how any womancould like me, and a fourth said that no woman ever could.
On one point, however, all--friends and foes--were alike agreed; viz.that I was a consummate puppy, and excessively well satisfied withmyself. A la verite, they were not much mistaken there. Why is it,by the by, that to be pleased with one's-self is the surest way ofoffending every body else? If any one, male or female, an evidentadmirer of his or her own perfections, enter a room, how perturbed,restless, and unhappy every individual of the offender's sex instantlybecomes: for them not only enjoyment but tranquillity is over, and ifthey could annihilate the unconscious victim of their spleen, I fullybelieve no Christian toleration would come in the way of that lastextreme of animosity. For a coxcomb there is no mercy--for a coquet nopardon. They are, as it were, the dissenters of society--no crime istoo bad to be imputed to them; they do not believe the religion ofothers--they set up a deity of their own vanity--all the orthodoxvanities of others are offended. Then comes the bigotry--the stake--theauto-da-fe of scandal. What, alas! is so implacable as the rage ofvanity? What so restless as its persecution? Take from a man hisfortune, his house, his reputation, but flatter his vanity in each, andhe will forgive you. Heap upon him benefits, fill him with blessings:but irritate his self-love, and you have made the very best man aningrat. He will sting you if he can: you cannot blame him; you yourselfhave instilled the venom. This is one reason why you must not alwaysreckon upon gratitude in conferring an obligation. It is a very highmind to which gratitude is not a painful sensation. If you wish toplease, you will find it wiser to receive--solicit even--favours, thanaccord them; for the vanity of the obliger is always flattered--that ofthe obligee rarely.
Well, this is an unforeseen digression: let me return! I had mixed,of late, very little with the English. My mother's introductionshad procured me the entree of the best French houses; and to them,therefore, my evenings were usually devoted. Alas! that was a happytime, when my carriage used to await me at the door of the Rocher deCancale, and then whirl me to a succession of visits, varying in theirdegree and nature as the whim prompted: now to the brilliant soirees ofMadame De--, or to the appartemens au troisieme of some less celebrateddaughter of dissipation and ecarte;--now to the literary conversazionesof the Duchesse de D--s, or the Vicomte d'A--, and then to the feverishexcitement of the gambling house. Passing from each with the appetitefor amusement kept alive by variety; finding in none a disappointment,and in every one a welcome; full of the health which supports, andthe youth which colours all excess or excitation, I drained, with anunsparing lip, whatever that enchanting metropolis could afford.
I have hitherto said but little of the Duchesse de Perpignan; I thinkit necessary now to give some account of that personage. Ever sincethe evening I had met her at the ambassador's, I had paid her the mostunceasing attentions. I soon discovered that she had a curious sort ofliaison with one of the attaches--a short, ill-made gentleman, with highshoulders, and a pale face, who wore a blue coat and buff waistcoat,wrote bad verses, and thought himself handsome. All Paris said she wasexcessively enamoured of this youth. As for me, I had not known her fourdays before I discovered that she could not be excessively enamoured ofany thing but an oyster pete and Lord Byron's Corsair. Her mind was themost marvellous melange of sentiment and its opposite. In her amours shewas Lucretia herself; in her epicurism, Apicius would have yielded toher. She was pleased with sighs, but she adored suppers. She wouldleave every thing for her lover, except her dinner. The attache soonquarrelled with her, and I was installed into the platonic honours ofhis office.
At first, I own that I was flattered by her choice, and though shewas terribly exigeante of my petits soins, I managed to keep up heraffection, and, what is still more wonderful, my own, for the betterpart of a month. What then cooled me was the following occurrence:
I was in her boudoir one evening, when her femme de chambre came to tellus that the duc was in the passage. Notwithstanding the innocence of ourattachment, the duchesse was in a violent fright; a small door was atthe left of the ottoman, on which we were sitting. "Oh, no, no, notthere," cried the lady; but I, who saw no other refuge, entered itforthwith, and before she could ferret me out, the duc was in the room.
In the meanwhile, I amused myself by examining the wonders of the newworld into which I had so abruptly immerged: on a small table beforeme, was deposited a remarkably constructed night-cap; I examined it asa curiosity: on each side was placed une petite cotelette de veaucru, sewed on with green-coloured silk (I remember even the smallestminutiae), a beautiful golden wig (the duchesse never liked me to playwith her hair) was on a block close by, and on another table was a setof teeth, d'une blancheur eblouissante. In this manufactory of a beautyI remained for a quarter of an hour; at the end of that time, theabigail (the duchesse had the grace to disappear) released me, and Iflew down stairs like a spirit from purgatory.
From that moment the duchesse honoured me with her most deadlyabhorrence. Equally silly and wicked, her schemes of revenge were asludicrous in their execution as remorseless in their design: at onetime I narrowly escaped poison in a cup of coffee--at another, sheendeavoured to stab me to the heart with a paper cutter.
Notwithstanding my preservation from these attacks, this new Messalinahad resolved on my destruction, and another means of attempting it stillremained, which the reader will yet have the pleasure of learning.
Mr. Thornton had called upon me twice, and twice I had returnedthe visit, but neither of us had been at home to benefit by thesereciprocities of politesse. His acquaintance with my mysterious hero ofthe gambling house and the Jardin des Plantes, and the keen interestI took, in spite of myself, in that unaccountable person, whom I waspersuaded I had seen before in some very different scene, and under verydifferent circumstances, made me desirous to increase a connoissance,which, from Vincent's detail, I should otherwise have been anxious toavoid. I therefore resolved to make another attempt to find him at home;and my headache being somewhat better, I took my way to his apartmentsin the Faubourg St. Germain.
I love that quartier--if ever I went to Paris again I should residethere. It is quite a different world from the streets usually known to,and tenanted by the English--there, indeed, you are among the French,the fossilized remains of the old regime--the very houses have an air ofdesolate, yet venerable grandeur--you never pass by the white and modernmansion of a nouveau riche; all, even to the ruggedness of the pave,breathes a haughty disdain of innovation--you cross one of thenumerous bridges, and you enter into another time--you are inhalingthe atmosphere of a past century; no flaunting boutique, French in itstrumpery, English in its prices, stares you in the face; no stiff coatsand unnatural gaits are seen anglicising up the melancholy streets. Vasthotels, with their gloomy frontals, and magnificent contempt of comfort;shops, such as shops might have been in the aristocratic days of LouisQuatorze, ere British vulgarities made them insolent and dear;public edifices, still redolent of the superb charities of le grandmonarque--carriages with their huge bodies and ample decorations;horses, with their Norman dimensions and undocke
d honours; men, on whosemore high though not less courteous demeanour, the revolution seems tohave wrought no democratic plebeianism--all strike on the mind with avague and nameless impression of antiquity; a something solemn even ingaiety, and faded in pomp, appear to linger over all you behold; thereare the Great French people unadulterated by change, unsullied with thecommerce of the vagrant and various tribes that throng their mighty martof enjoyments.
The strangers who fill the quartiers on this side the Seine pass notthere; between them and the Faubourg there is a gulf; the very skiesseem different--your own feelings, thoughts--nature itself--alter,when you have passed that Styx which divides the wanderers from thehabitants; your spirits are not so much damped, as tinged, refined,ennobled by a certain inexpressible awe--you are girt with thestateliness of Eld, and you tread the gloomy streets with the dignity ofa man, who is recalling the splendours of an ancient court where he oncedid homage.
I arrived at Thornton's chambers in the Rue St. Dominique. "Monsieur,est-il chez lui?" said I to the ancient porteress, who was reading oneof Crebillon's novels.
"Oui, Monsieur, au quatrieme," was the answer. I turned to the dark andunclean staircase, and, after incredible exertion and fatigue, arrived,at last, at the elevated abode of Mr. Thornton.
"Entrez," cried a voice, in answer to my rap. I obeyed the signal, andfound myself in a room of tolerable dimensions and multiplied utilities.A decayed silk curtain of a dingy blue, drawn across a recess, separatedthe chambre a coucher from the salon. It was at present only half drawn,and did not, therefore, conceal the mysteries of the den within; the bedwas still unmade, and apparently of no very inviting cleanliness; a redhandkerchief, that served as a nightcap, hung pendant from the foot ofthe bed; at a little distance from it, more towards the pillow, were ashawl, a parasol, and an old slipper. On a table, which stood betweenthe two dull, filmy windows, were placed a cracked bowl, still reekingwith the less of gin-punch, two bottles half full, a mouldy cheese, anda salad dish; on the ground beneath it lay two huge books, and a woman'sbonnet.
Thornton himself sat by a small consumptive fire, in an easy chair;another table, still spread with the appliances of breakfast, viz. acoffee-pot, a milk-jug, two cups, a broken loaf, and an empty dish,mingled with a pack of cards, one dice, and an open book de mauvaisgout, stood immediately before him.
Every thing around bore some testimony of the spirit of low debauchery;and the man himself, with his flushed and sensual countenance, hisunwashed hands, and the slovenly rakishness of his whole appearance,made no unfitting representation of the Genius Loci.
All that I have described, together with a flitting shadow of feminineappearance, escaping through another door, my quick eye discovered inthe same instant that I made my salutation.
Thornton rose, with an air half careless and half abashed, andexpressed, in more appropriate terms than his appearance warranted,his pleasurable surprise at seeing me at last. There was, however, asingularity in his conversation, which gave it an air both of shrewdnessand vulgarity. This was, as may before have been noted, a profuseintermixture of proverbs, some stale, some new, some sensible enough,and all savouring of a vocabulary carefully eschewed by every man ofordinary refinement in conversation.
"I have but a small tenement," said he, smiling; "but, thank Heaven, atParis a man is not made by his lodgings. Small house, small care. Fewgarcons have indeed a more sumptuous apartment than myself."
"True," said I; "and if I may judge by the bottles on the oppositetable, and the bonnet beneath it, you find that no abode is too humbleor too exalted for the solace of the senses."
"'Fore Gad, you are in the right, Mr. Pelham," replied Thornton, witha loud, coarse, chuckling laugh, which, more than a year's conversationcould have done, let me into the secrets of his character. "I care nota rush for the decorations of the table, so that the cheer be good; norfor the gew-gaws of the head-dress, as long as the face is pretty--'thetaste of the kitchen is better than the smell.' Do you go much to MadameB--'s ion the Rue Gretry--eh, Mr. Pelham?--ah, I'll be bound you do."
"No," said I, with a loud laugh, but internal shiver; "but you knowwhere to find le bon vin et les jolies filles. As for me, I am still astranger in Paris, and amuse myself but very indifferently."
Thornton's face brightened. "I tell you what my good fell--I begpardon--I mean Mr. Pelham--I can shew you the best sport in the world,if you can only spare me a little of your time--this very evening,perhaps?"
"I fear," said I, "I am engaged all the present week; but I long fornothing more than to cultivate an acquaintance, seemingly so exactly tomy own taste."
Thornton's grey eyes twinkled. "Will you breakfast with me on Sunday?"said he.
"I shall be too happy," I replied
There was now a short pause. I took advantage of it. "I think," saidI, "I have seen you once or twice with a tall, handsome man, in a loosegreat coat of very singular colour. Pray, if not impertinent, who is he?I am sure I have seen him before in England."
I looked full upon Thornton as I said this; he changed colour, andanswered my gaze with a quick glance from his small, glittering eye,before he replied. "I scarcely know who you mean, my acquaintance is solarge and miscellaneous at Paris. It might have been Johnson, or Smith,or Howard, or any body, in short."
"It is a man nearly six feet high," said I, "thin, and remarkably wellmade, of a pale complexion, light eyes, and very black hair, mustachiosand whiskers. I saw him with you once in the Bois de Boulogne, and oncein a hell in the Palais Royal. Surely, now you will recollect who heis?"
Thornton was evidently disconcerted. "Oh!" said he, after a short pause,and another of his peculiarly quick, sly glances--"Oh, that man; I haveknown him a very short time. What is his name? let me see!" andMr. Thornton affected to look down in a complete reverie of dimremembrances.
I saw, however, that, from time to time, his eye glanced up to me, witha restless, inquisitive expression, and as instantly retired.
"Ah," said I, carelessly, "I think I know who he is!"
"Who!" cried Thornton, eagerly, and utterly off his guard.
"And yet," I pursued, without noticing the interruption, "it scarcelycan be--the colour of the hair is so very different."
Thornton again appeared to relapse into his recollections."War--Warbur--ah, I have it now!" cried he, "Warburton--that'sit--that's the name--is it the one you supposed, Mr. Pelham?"
"No," said I, apparently perfectly satisfied. "I was quite mistaken.Good morning, I did not think it was so late. On Sunday, then, Mr.Thornton--au plaisir!"
"A d--d cunning dog!" said I to myself, as I left the apartments."However, on peut-etre trop fin. I shall have him yet."
The surest way to make a dupe is to let you victim suppose you are his