“‘You are under arrest, sir,’ said the sergeant, as with a party of soldiers he stood prepared to accompany me to the quarters. “‘Under arrest! By whose orders?’
“‘The colonel’s orders,’ said the man briefly, and in a voice that showed I was to expect little compassion from one of a class who had long regarded me as an upstart, giving himself airs unbecoming his condition.
“My imprisonment, of which I dared not ask the reason, gave me time to meditate on my fortunes, and think over the vicisicitudes of my life,—to reflect on the errors which had rendered abortive every chance of success in whatever career I adopted; but, more than all, to consider how poor were all my hopes of happiness in the road I had chosen, while I dedicated to the amusement of others, the qualities which, if cultivated for myself, might be made sources of contentment and pleasure. If I seem prolix in all this—if I dwell on these memories, it is, first, because few men may not reap a lesson from considering them; and again, because on them hinged my whole future life.
“There, do you see that little drawing yonder? it is a sketch, a mere sketch I made from recollection, of the room I was confined in. That’s the St. Lawrence flowing beneath the window, and there, far in the distance, you see the tall cedars of the opposite bank. On that little table I laid my head the whole night long; I slept too, and soundly, and when I awoke the next day I was a changed man.
“‘You are relieved from arrest,’ said the same sergeant who conducted me to prison, ‘and the colonel desires to see you on parade.’
“As I entered the square, the regiment was formed in line, and the officers, as usual, stood in a group chatting together in the centre. A half smile, quickly subdued as I came near, ran along the party.
“‘O’Kelly,’ said the colonel, ‘I have sent for you to hear a reprimand which it is fitting you should receive at the head of the regiment, and which, from my knowledge of you, I have supposed would be the most effectual punishment I could inflict for your late disrespectful conduct to Captain Hubbart.’
“‘May I ask, colonel, have you heard of the provocation which induced my offence?’
“‘I hope, sir,’ replied he, with a look of stern dignity, ‘you are aware of the difference of your relative rank and station, and that, in condescending to associate with you, Captain Hubbart conferred an honour which doubly compensated for any liberty he was pleased to take. Read the general order, Lieutenant Wood.’
“A confused murmur of something, from which I could collect nothing, reached me; a vague feeling of weight seemed to press my head, and a giddiness that made me reel, was on me; and I only knew the ceremony was over, as I heard the order to march given, and saw the troops begin to move off the ground.
“‘A moment, colonel,’ said, I, in a voice that made him start and drew on me the look of all the others. ‘I have too much respect for you, and I hope also for myself, to attempt any explanation of a mere jest, where the consequences have taken a serious turn; besides, I feel conscious of one fault, far too grave a one, to venture on an excuse for any other I have been guilty of. I wish to resign my post. I here leave the badge of the only servitude I ever did, or ever intend to submit to; and now, as a free man once more, and a gentleman, too, if you’ll permit me, I beg to wish you adieu: and as for you, captain, I have only to add, that whenever you feel disposed for a practical joke, or any other interchange of politeness, Con O’Kelly will be always delighted to meet your views—the more so as he feels, though you may not believe it, something still in your debt.’
“With that I turned on my heel, and left the barrack-yard, not a word being spoken by any of the others, nor any evidence of their being so much amused as they seemed to expect from my exposure.
“Did it never strike you as a strange thing, that while none but the very poorest and humblest people can bear to confess to present poverty, very few men decline to speak of the narrow circumstances they have struggled through—nay, rather take a kind of pleasure in relating what difficulties once beset their path—what obstacles were opposed to their success? The reason perhaps is, there is a reflective merit in thus surmounting opposition.
“The acknowledgment implies a sense of triumph. It seams to say—‘Here am I, such as you see me now, and yet time was, when I was houseless and friendless—when the clouds darkened around my path, and I saw not even the faintest glimmer of hope to light up the future; yet with a stout heart and strong courage, with the will came the way; and I conquered.’ I do confess, I could dwell, and with great pleasure too, on those portions of my life when I was poorest and most forsaken, in preference to the days of my prosperity, and the hours of my greatest wealth: like the traveller who, after a long journey through some dark winter’s day, finds himself at the approach of night, seated by the corner of a cheery fire in his inn; every rushing gust of wind that shakes the building, every plash of the beating rain against the glass, but adds to this sense of comfort, and makes him hug himself with satisfaction to think how he is no longer exposed to such a storm—that his journey is accomplished—his goal is reached—and as he draws his chair closer to the blaze, it is the remembrance of the past, gives all the enjoyment to the present. In the same way, the pleasantest memories of old age are of those periods in youth when we have been successful over difficulty, and have won our way through every opposing obstacle. ‘Joy’s memory is indeed no longer joy.’ Few can look back on happy hours without thinking of those with whom they spent them, and then comes the sad question, Where are they now? What man reaches even the middle term of life with a tithe of the friends he started with in youth; and as they drop off, one by one around him, comes the sad reflection, that the period is passed when such ties can be formed anew—The book of the heart once closed, opens no more. But why these reflections? I must close them, and with them my story at once.
“The few pounds I possessed in the world enabled me to reach Quebec, and take my passage in a timber vessel bound for Cork. Why I returned to Ireland, and with what intentions, I should be sorely puzzled, were you to ask of me. Some vague, indistinct feeling of home, connected with my birthplace had, perhaps, its influence over me. So it was—I did so.
[Editor’s Note: Another edition of this book (Downey andCo., 1897) was scannned for the middle part of this etext aslarge portions of the original 1845 edition were defective.The reader will note that the two editions initiate a quotedpassages in different ways: the 1845 edition with a doublequote and the 1897 edition with a single quotation mark.]
‘After a good voyage of some five weeks, we anchored in Cove, where I landed, and proceeded on foot to Tralee. It was night when I arrived. A few faint glimmering lights could be seen here and there from an upper window; but all the rest was in darkness. Instinctively I wandered on, till I came to the little street where my aunt had lived. I knew every stone in it. There was not a house I passed but I was familiar with all its history. There was Mark Cassidy’s provision store, as he proudly called a long dark room, the ceiling thickly studded with hams and bacon, coils of rope, candles, flakes of glue, and loaves of sugar; while a narrow pathway was eked out below between a sugar-hogshead, some sacks of flour and potatoes, hemp-seed, tar, and treacle, interspersed with scythe-blades, reaping-hooks, and sweeping-brushes—a great coffee-roaster adorning the wall, and forming a conspicuous object for the wonderment of the country-people, who never could satisfy themselves whether it was a new-fashioned clock or a weather-glass, or a little thrashing-machine or a money-box. Next door was Maurice Fitzgerald’s, the apothecary, a cosy little cell of eight feet by six, where there was just space left for a long-practised individual to grind with a pestle without putting his right elbow through a blue-glass bottle that figured in the front window, or his left into active intercourse with a regiment of tinctures that stood up, brown and muddy and fetid, on a shelf hard by. Then came Joe M’Evoy’s, “licensed for spirits and enthertainment,” where I had often stood as a boy to listen to the pleasant sounds of Larry Branaghan’s pipes, or to the agreeable ditties of “Adieu, ye shinin’ daisies, I loved you well and long,” as sung by him, with an accompaniment. Then there was Misther Moriarty’s, the attorney, a great man in the petty sessions, a bitter pill for all the country gentlemen; he was always raking up knotty cases of their decisions, and reporting them to theLimerick Vindicatorunder the cognomen of “Brutus” or “Coriolanus.” I could just see by the faint light that his house had been raised a storey higher, and little iron balconies, like railings, stuck to the drawing-room windows.
‘Next came my aunt’s. There it was: my foot was on the door where I stood as a child, my little heart wavering between fears of the unknown world without and hopes of doing something—Heaven knows what!—which would make me a name hereafter. And there I was now, after years of toil and peril of every kind, enough to have won me distinction, success enough to have made me rich, had either been but well directed; and yet I was poor and humble, as the very hour I quitted that home. I sat down on the steps, my heart heavy and sad, my limbs tired, and before many minutes fell fast asleep, and never awoke till the bright sun was shining gaily on one side of the little street, and already the preparations for the coming day were going on about me. I started up, afraid and ashamed of being seen, and turned into the little ale-house close by, to get my breakfast. Joe himself was not forthcoming; but a fat, pleasant-looking, yellow-haired fellow, his very image, only some dozen years younger, was there, bustling about among some pewter quarts and tin measures, arranging tobacco-pipes, and making up little pennyworths of tobacco.
‘“Is your name M’Evoy?” said I.
‘“The same, at your service,” said he, scarce raising his eyes from his occupation.
‘“Not Joe M’Evoy?”
‘“No, sir, Ned M’Evoy; the old man’s name was Joe.”
‘“He ‘s dead, then, I suppose?”
‘“Ay, sir; these eight years come Micklemass. Is it a pint or a naggin of sperits?”
‘“Neither; it’s some breakfast, a rasher and a few potatoes, I want most. I’ll take it here, or in the little room.”
‘“Faix, ye seem to know the ways of the place,” said he, smiling, as he saw me deliberately push open a small door, and enter a little parlour once reserved for favourite visitors.
‘“It’s many years since I was here before,” said I to the host, as he stood opposite to me, watching the progress I was making with my breakfast—“so many that I can scarce remember more than the names of the people I knew very-well. Is there a Miss O’Kelly living in the town? It was somewhere near this, her house.”
‘“Yes, above Mr. Moriarty’s, that’s where she lived; but sure she’s dead and gone, many a day ago. I mind Father Donnellan, the priest that was here before Mr. Nolan, saying Masses for her sowl, when I was a slip of a boy.”
‘“Dead and gone,” repeated I to myself sadly—for, though I scarcely expected to meet my poor old relative again, I cherished a kind of half hope that she might still be living. “And the priest, Father Donnellan, is he dead too?”
‘“Yes, sir; he died of the fever, that was so bad four years ago.”
‘“And Mrs. Brown that kept the post-office?”
‘“She went away to Ennis when her daughter was married there; I never heard tell of her since.”
‘“So that, in fact, there are none of the old inhabitants of the town remaining. All have died off?”
“Every one, except the ould captain; he’s the only one left”
‘“Who is he?”
‘“Captain Dwyer; maybe you knew him?”
‘“Yes, I knew him well; and he’s alive? He must be very old by this time.”
‘“He ‘s something about eighty-six or seven; but he doesn’t let on to more nor sixty, I believe; but, sure, talk of——- God preserve us, here he is!”
‘As he spoke, a thin, withered-looking old man, bent double with age, and walking with great difficulty, came to the door, and, in a cracked voice, called out—
‘“Ned M’Evoy; here’s the paper for you; plenty of news in it, too, about Mister O’Connell and the meetings in Dublin. If Cavanagh takes any fish, buy a sole or a whiting for me, and send me the paper back.”
‘“There’s a gentleman, inside here, was just asking for you, sir,” said the host.
‘“Who is he? Is it Mr. Creagh? At your service, sir,” said the old man, sitting down on a chair near me, and looking at me from under the shadow of his hand spread over his brow. “You ‘re Mr. Studdart, I ‘m thinking?”
‘“No, sir; I do not suspect you know me; and, indeed, I merely mentioned your name as one I had heard of many years ago when I was here, but not as being personally known to you.”
‘“Oh, troth, and so you might, for I ‘m well known in these parts—eh, Ned?” said he, with a chuckling cackle, that sounded very like hopeless dotage. “I was in the army—in the ‘Buffs’; maybe you knew one Clancy who was in them?”
‘“No, sir; I have not many military acquaintances. I came here this morning on my way to Dublin, and thought I would just ask a few questions about some people I knew a little about. Miss O’Kelly——”
‘“Ah, dear! Poor Miss Judy—she’s gone these two or three years.”
‘“Ay, these fifteen,” interposed Ned.
‘“No, it isn’t though,” said the captain crossly, “it isn’t more than three at most—cut off in her prime too. She was the last of an old stock—I knew them all well. There was Dick—blazing Dick O’Kelly, as they called him—that threw the sheriff into the mill-race at Kilmacud, and had to go to France afterwards; and there was Peter—Peter got the property, but he was shot in a duel. Peter had a son—a nice devil he was too; he was drowned at sea; and except the little girl that has the school up there, Sally O’Kelly—she is one of them—there’s none to the fore.”
‘“And who was she, sir?”
‘“Sally was—what’s this? Ay, Sally is daughter to a son Dick left in France. He died in the war in Germany, and left this creature; and Miss Judy heard of her, and got her over here, just the week she departed herself. She’s the last of them now—the best family in Kerry—and keeping a child’s school! Ay, ay, so it is; and there’s property too coming to her, if they could only prove that chap’s death, Con O’Kelly. But sure no one knows anything where it happened. Sam Fitzsimon advertised him in all the papers, but to no use.”
‘I did not wait for more of the old captain’s reminiscences, but snatching up my hat I hurried down the street, and in less than an hour was closeted with Mr. Samuel Fitzsimon, attorney-at-law, and gravely discussing the steps necessary to be taken for the assumption of my right to a small property, the remains of my Aunt Judy’s—a few hundred pounds, renewal fines of lands, that had dropped since my father’s death. My next visit was to the little school, which was held in the parlour where poor Aunt Judy used to have her little card parties. The old stuffed macaw—now from dirt and smoke he might have passed for a raven—was still over the fireplace, and there was the old miniature of my father, and on the other side was one which I had not seen before, of Father Donnellan in full robes. All the little old conchologies were there too; and except the black plethoric-looking cat that sat staring fixedly at the fire as if she was grieving over the price of coals, I missed nothing. Miss Sally was a nice modest-looking woman, with an air of better class about her than her humble occupation would seem to imply. I made known my relationship in a few words, and having told her that I had made all arrangements for settling whatever property I possessed upon her, and informed her that Mr. Fitzsimon would act as her guardian, I wished her good-bye and departed. I saw that my life must be passed in occupation of one kind or other—idleness would never do; and with the only fifty I reserved to myself of my little fortune, I started for Paris. What I was to do I had no idea whatever; but I well knew that you have only to lay the bridle on Fortune’s neck, and you ‘ll seldom be disappointed in adventures.
‘For some weeks I strolled about Paris, enjoying myself as thoughtlessly as though I had no need of any effort to replenish my failing exchequer. The mere human tide that flowed along the Boulevards and through the gay gardens of the Tuileries would have been amusement enough for me. Then there were theatres and cafés and restaurants of every class—from the costly style of the “Rocher” down to the dinner beside the fountain Des Innocents, where you feast for four sous, and where the lowest and poorest class of the capital resorted. Well, well, I might tell you some strange scenes of those days, but I must hurry on.
‘In my rambles through Paris, visiting strange and out-of-the-way places, dining here and supping there, watching life under every aspect I could behold it, I strolled one evening across the Pont Neuf into the Ile St. Louis, that quaint old quarter, with its narrow straggling streets, and its tall gloomy houses, barricaded like fortresses. The oldportes cochèresstudded with nails and barred with iron, and having each a small window to peer through at the stranger without, spoke of days when outrage and attack were rife, and it behoved every man to fortify his stronghold as best he could. There were now to be found the most abandoned and desperate of the whole Parisian world; the assassin, the murderer, the housebreaker, the coiner, found a refuge in this confused wilderness of gloomy alleys and dark dismal passages. When night falls, no lantern throws a friendly gleam along the streets; all is left in perfect darkness, save when the red light of some cabaret lamp streams across the pavement. In one of these dismal streets I found myself when night set in, and although I walked on and on, somehow I never could extricate myself, but continually kept moving in some narrow circle—so I guessed at least, for I never wandered far from the deep-toned bell of Notre Dame, that went on chanting its melancholy peal through the stillness of the night air. I often stopped to listen. Now it seemed before, now behind me; the rich solemn sound floating through those cavernous streets had something awfully impressive. The voice that called to prayer, heard in that gloomy haunt of crime, was indeed a strange and appalling thing. At last it ceased, and all was still. For some time I was uncertain how to act. I feared to knock at a door and ask my way; the very confession of my loneliness would have been an invitation to outrage, if not murder. No one passed me; the streets seemed actually deserted.
‘Fatigued with walking, I sat down on a door-sill and began to consider what was best to be done, when I heard the sound of heavy feet moving along towards me, the clattering of sabots on the rough pavement, and shortly after a man came up, who, I could just distinguish, seemed to be a labourer. I suffered him to pass me a few paces, and then called out—
‘“Halloa, friend! can you tell me the shortest way to the Pont Neuf?”
‘He replied by some words in a patois so strange I could make nothing of it. I repeated my question, and endeavoured by signs to express my wish. By this time he was standing close beside me, and I could mark was evidently paying full attention to all I said. He looked about him once or twice, as if in search of some one, and then turning to me said, in a thick guttural voice—
‘“Halte-là, I’ll come”; and with that he moved down in the direction he originally came from, and I could hear the clatter of his heavy shoes till the sounds were lost in the winding alleys.
‘A sudden thought struck me that I had done wrong. The fellow had evidently some dark intention by his going back, and I repented bitterly having allowed him to leave me. But then, what were easier for him than to lead me where he pleased, had I retained him! and so I reflected, when the noise of many voices speaking in a half-subdued accent came up the street. I heard the sound, too, of a great many feet. My heart sickened as the idea of murder, so associated with the place, flashed across me; and I had just time to squeeze myself within the shelter of the doorway, when the party came up.
‘“Somewhere hereabouts, you said, wasn’t it?” said one in a good accent and a deep clear voice.
‘“Oui-da!” said the man I had spoken to, while he felt with his hands upon the walls and doorway of the opposite house. “Halloa there!” he shouted.
‘“Be still, you fool! don’t you think that he suspects something by this time? Did the others go down the Rue des Loups?”
‘“Yes, yes,” said a voice close to where I stood.
‘“Then all’s safe; he can’t escape that way. Strike a light, Pierre.”
‘A tall figure, wrapped up in a cloak, produced a tinder-box, and began to clink deliberately with a steel and flint. Every flash showed me some savage-looking face, where crime and famine struggled for mastery; while I could mark that many had large clubs of wood, and one or two were armed with swords. I drew my breath with short efforts, and was preparing myself for the struggle, in which, though I saw death before me, I resolved to sell life dearly, when a hand was passed across the pillar of the door, and rested on my leg. For a second it never stirred; then slowly moved up to my knee, where it stopped again. My heart seemed to cease its beating; I felt like one around whose body some snake is coiling, fold after fold, his slimy grasp. The hand was gently withdrawn, and before I could recover from my surprise I was seized by the throat and hurled out into the street. A savage laugh rang through the crowd, and a lantern, just lighted, was held up to my face, while he who spoke first called out—
‘“You didn’t dream of escaping us,bête, did you?” ‘At the same moment hands were thrust into my various pockets; the few silver pieces I possessed were taken, my watch torn off, my hat examined, and the lining of my coat ripped open—and all so speedily, that I saw at once I had fallen into experienced hands.
‘“Where do you live in Paris?” said the first speaker, still holding the light to my face, and staring fixedly at me.
‘“I am a stranger and alone,” said I, for the thought struck me that in such a circumstance frankness was as good policy as any other. “I came here to-night to see the cathedral, and lost my way in returning.”
‘“But where do you live—in what quarter of Paris?” ‘“The Rue d’Alger; No. 12; the second storey.” ‘“What effects have you there in money?” ‘“One English bank-note for five pounds; nothing more.”
‘“Any jewels, or valuables of any kind?”
‘“None; I am as poor as any man in Paris.”
‘“Does the porter know your name, in the house?”
‘“No; I am only known as the Englishman of No. 12.”
‘“What are your hours—irregular, are they not?”
‘“Yes, I often come home very late.”
‘“That’s all right. You speak French well. Can you write it?”
‘“Yes, sufficiently so for any common purpose.”
‘“Here, then,” said he, opening a large pocket-book, “write an order, which I’ll tell you, to theconciergeof the house. Take this pen.”
‘With a trembling hand I took the pen, and waited for his direction.
‘“Is it a woman keeps the door of your hotel?”
‘“Yes,” said I.
‘“Well, then, begin:—”
‘“Madame La Concierge, let the bearer of this note have the key of my apartment——”
‘As I followed with my hand the words, I could mark that one of the party was whispering in the ear of the speaker, and then moved slowly round to my back.
‘“Hush! what’s that?” cried the chief speaker. “Be still there!” and as we listened, the chorus of a number of voices singing in parts was heard at some little distance off.
‘“That infernal nest of fellows must be rooted out of this, one day or other,” said the chief; “and if I end my days on the Place de Grève, I’ll try and do it. Hush there! be still! they’re passing on.”
‘True enough, the sound began to wax fainter, and my heart sank heavily, as I thought the last hope was leaving me. Suddenly a thought dashed through my mind—“Death in one shape is as bad as another. I’ll do it!” I stooped down as if to continue my writing, and then collecting my strength for the effort, and taking a deep breath, I struck the man in front a blow with all my might that felled him to the ground, and clearing him with a spring, I bounded down the street. My old Indian teaching had done me good service here; few white men could have caught me in an open plain, with space and sight to guide me, and I gained at every stride. But, alas! I dared not stop to listen whence the sounds proceeded, and could only dash straight forward, not knowing where it might lead me. Down a steep, rugged street, that grew narrower as I went, I plunged, when—horror of horrors!—I heard the Seine plashing at the end; the rapid current of the river surged against the heavy timbers that defended the banks, with a sound like a death-wail. A solitary, trembling light lay afar off in the river from some barge that was at anchor there; I fixed my eye upon it, and was preparing for a plunge, when, with a half-suppressed cry, my pursuers sprang up from a low wharf I had not seen, below the quay, and stood in front of me. In an instant they were upon me; a shower of blows fell upon my head and shoulders, and one, armed with desperate resolution, struck me on the forehead and felled me on the spot.
‘“Be quick now, be quick!” said a voice I well knew; “into the river with him—the filets de St. Cloud will catch him by daybreak—into the river with him!”
‘They tore off my coat and shoes, and dragged me along towards the wharf. My senses were clear, though the blow had deprived me of all the power to resist, and I could calculate the little chance still left me when once I had reached the river, when a loud yell and a whistle was heard afar off—another, louder, followed; the fellows around me sprang to their legs, and with a muttered curse and a cry of terror darted off in different directions. I could hear now several pistol-shots following quickly on one another, and the noise of a scuffle with swords; in an instant it was over, and a cheer burst forth like a cry of triumph.
‘“Any one wounded there?” shouted a deep manly voice, from the end of the street. I endeavoured to call out, but my voice failed me. “Halloa, there! any one wounded?” said the voice again, when a window was opened over my head, and a man held a candle out, and looked into the street.
‘“This way, this way!” said he, as he caught sight of my shadow where I lay.
‘“Ay, I guessed they went down here,” said the same voice I heard first, as he came along, followed by several others. “Well, friend, are you much hurt? any blood lost?”
‘“No, only stunned,” said I, “and almost well already.”
‘“Have you any friends here? Were you quite alone?”
‘“Yes; quite alone.”
‘“Of course you were; why should I ask? That murderous gang never dared to face two men yet. Come, are you able to walk? Oh, you’re a stout fellow, I see; come along with us. Come, Ludwig, put a hand under him, and we ‘ll soon bring him up.”
‘When they lifted me up, the sudden motion caused a weakness so complete that I fainted, and knew little more of their proceedings till I found myself lying on a sofa in a large room, where some forty persons were seated at a long table, most of them smoking from huge pipes of regular German proportions.
‘“Where am I?” was my question, as I looked about, and perceived that the party wore a kind of blue uniform, with fur on the collar and cuffs, and a greyhound worked in gold on the arm.
‘“Why, you’re safe, my good friend,” said a friendly voice beside me; “that’s quite enough to know at present, isn’t it?”
‘“I begin to agree with you,” said I coolly; and so, turning round on my side, I closed my eyes, and fell into as pleasant a sleep as ever I remember in my life.
‘They were, indeed, a very singular class of restoratives which my kind friends thought proper to administer to me; nor am I quite sure that abavaroiseof chocolate dashed with rum, and friction over the face with hot Eau de Cologne are sufficiently appreciated by the “faculty”; but this I do know, that I felt very much revived by the application without and within; and with a face somewhat the colour of a copper preserving-pan, and far too hot to put anything on, I sat up and looked about me. A merrier set of gentlemen not even my experience had ever beheld. They were mostly middle-aged, grizzly-looking fellows, with very profuse beards and moustaches; their conversation was partly French, partly German, while here and there a stray Italian diminutive crept in; and to season the whole, like cayenne in a ragoût, there was an odd curse in English. Their strange dress, their free-and-easy manner, their intimacy with one another, and, above all, thelocalethey had chosen for their festivities, made me, I own, a little suspicious about their spotless morality, and I began conjecturing to what possible calling they might belong—now guessing them smugglers, now police of some kind or other, now highwaymen outright, but without ever being able to come to any conclusion that even approached satisfaction. The more I listened, the more did my puzzle grow on me. That they were either the most distinguished and exalted individuals or the most confounded story-tellers was certain. Here was a fat, greasy little fellow, with a beard like an Armenian, who was talking of a trip he made to Greece with the Duke of Saxe-Weimar; apparently they were on the best of terms together, and had a most jolly time of it. There was a large handsome man, with a short black moustache, describing a night attack made by wolves on the caravan he was in, during a journey to Siberia. I listened with intense interest to his narrative; the scenery, the danger, the preparation for defence, had all those little traits that bespeak truth, when, confound him! he destroyed the whole as he said, “At that moment the Archduke Nicholas said tome——” The Archduke Nicholas, indeed! very good that! he’s just as great a liar as the other.
‘“Come,” thought I, “there’s a respectable-looking old fellow with a bald head—let us hear him; there’s no boasting of the great people he ever met with from that one, I’m sure.”
‘“We were now coming near to Vienna,” continued he, “the night was dark as pitch, when a vedette came up to say that a party of brigands, well known thereabouts, were seen hovering about the post station the entire evening. We were well armed, but still by no means numerous, and it became a grave question what we were to do. I got down immediately, and examined the loading and priming of the carbines; they were all right, nothing had been stirred. ‘What’s the matter?’ said the duke.” (“Oh,” thought I, “then there’s a duke here also!”) “‘What’s the matter?’ said the Duke of Wellington.”
‘“Oh, by Jove! that beats all!” cried I, jumping up on the sofa, and opening both my hands with astonishment. “I ‘d have wagered a trifle on that little fellow, and hang me if he isn’t the worst of the whole set!”
‘“What ‘s the matter; what’s happened?” said they all, turning round in amazement at my sudden exclamation. “Is the man mad?”
‘“It’s hard to say,” replied I; “but if I ‘m not, you must be—unless I have the honour, which is perfectly possible, to be at this moment in company with the Holy Alliance; for, so help me, since I’ve sat here and listened to you, there is not a crowned head in Europe, not a queen, not an archduke, ambassador, and general-in-chief, whom some of you have not been intimate with; and the small man with a red beard has just let slip something about the Shah of Persia.”
‘The torrent of laughter that shook the table never ceased for a full quarter of an hour. Old and young, smooth and grizzly, they laughed till their faces were seamed with rivulets like a mountain in winter; and when they would endeavour to address me, they’d burst out again, as fresh as ever.
‘“Come over and join us, worthy friend,” said he who sat at the head of the board—“you seem well equal to it; and perhaps our character as men of truth may improve on acquaintance.”
‘“What, in Heaven’s name, are you?” said I.
‘Another burst of merriment was the only reply they made me. I never found much difficulty in making my way in certain classes of society where the tone was a familiar one. Where abon motwas good currency and a joke passed well, there I was at home, and to assume the features of the party was with me a kind of instinct which I could not avoid; it cost me neither effort nor strain; I caught up the spirit as a child catches up an accent, and went the pace as pleasantly as though I had been bred among them. I was therefore but a short time at table when by way of matriculation I deemed it necessary to relate a story; and certainly if they had astounded me by the circumstances of their high and mighty acquaintances, I did not spare them in my narrative—in which the Emperor of Japan figured as a very commonplace individual, and the King of Candia came in, just incidentally, as a rather dubious acquaintance might do. For a time they listened, like people who are well accustomed to give and take these kinds of miracle; but when I mentioned something about a game of leap-frog on the wall of China with the Celestial himself, a perfect shout of incredulous laughter interrupted me.
‘“Well,” said I, “don’t believe me, if you don’t like; but here have I been the whole evening listening to you, and if I ‘ve not bolted as much as that, my name’s not Con O’Kelly.”
‘But it is not necessary to tell you how, step by step, they led me to credit all they were saying, but actually to tell my own real story to them—which I did from beginning to end, down to the very moment I sat down there, with a large glass of hot claret before me, as happy as might be.
‘“And you really are so low in purse?” said one. ‘“And have no prospect of any occupation, nor any idea of a livelihood?” cried another.
‘“Just as much as I expect promotion from my friend the Emperor of China,” said I.
‘“You speak French and German well enough, though?” ‘“And a smattering of Italian,” said I. ‘“Come, you ‘ll do admirably; be one of us.” ‘“Might I make bold enough to ask what trade that is?” ‘“You don’t know—you can’t guess even?” ‘“Not even guess,” said I, “except you report for the papers, and come here to make up the news.”
‘“Something better than that, I hope,” said the man at the head of the table. “What think you of a life that leads a man about the world from Norway to Jerusalem; that shows him every land the sun shines on, and every nation of the globe, travelling with every luxury that can make a journey easy and a road pleasant; that enables him to visit whatever is remarkable in every city of the universe—to hear Pasta at St. Petersburg in the winter, and before the year’s end to see an Indian war-dance among the red men of the Rocky Mountains; to sit beneath the shadow of the Pyramids as it were to-day, and ere two months be over to stand in the spray of Trolhattan, and join a wolf-chase through the pine-forests of the north. And not only this, but to have opportunities of seeing life on terms the most intimate, so that society should be unveiled to an extent that few men of any station can pretend to; to converse with the greatest and the wisest, the most distinguished in rank—ay! and better than all, with the most beautiful women of every land in Europe, who depend on your word, rely on your information, and permit a degree of intimacy which in their own rank is unattainable; to improve your mind by knowledge of languages, acquaintance with works of art, scenery, and more still by habits of intelligence which travelling bestows.”
‘“And to do this,” said I, burning with impatience at a picture that realised all I wished for, “to do this——”
‘“Be a courier!” said thirty voices in a cheer. “Vive la Grande Route!” and with the word each man drained his glass to the bottom.
‘“Vive la Grande Route!” exclaimed I, louder than the rest; “and here I join you.”
‘From that hour I entered on a career that each day I follow is becoming dearer to me. It is true that I sit in the rumble of the carriage, whilemonseigneur, or my lord, reclines within; but would I exchange his ennui and depression for my own light-heartedness and jollity? Would I give up the happy independence of all the intrigue and plotting of the world I enjoy, for all his rank and station? Does not Mont Blanc look as grand in his hoary panoply to me as to him; are not the Danube and the Rhine as fair? If I wander through the gallery of Dresden, have I not the sweet smile of the great Raphael’s Madonna bent on me, as blandly as it is on him? Is not mine host, with less of ceremony, far more cordial to me than to him? Is not mine a rank known and acknowledged in every town, in every village? Have I not a greeting wherever I pass? Should sickness overtake me, where have I not a home? Where am I among strangers? Then, what care I for the bill—mine is a royal route where I never pay. And, lastly, how often is thesoubretteof the rumble as agreeable a companion as the pale and care-worn lady within?
‘Such is my life. Many would scoff, and call it menial. Let them, if they will. I neverfeltit so; and once more I say, “Vive la Grande Route!”’
‘But your friends of the “Fischer’s Haus”?’
‘A jolly set of smugglers, with whom for a month or two in summer I take a cruise, less for profit than pleasure. The blue water is a necessary of life to the man that has been some years at sea. My little collection has been made in my wanderings; and if ever you come to Naples, you must visit a cottage I have at Castella Mare, where you ‘ll see something better worth your looking at. And now, though it does not seem very hospitable, I must say adieu.’
With these words Mr. O’Kelly opened a drawer, and drew forth a blue jacket lined with rich dark fur and slashed with black braiding; a greyhound was embroidered in gold twist on the arm, and a similar decoration ornamented the front of his blue-cloth cap. I start for Genoa in half an hour. We’ll meet again, and often, I hope.’
‘Good-bye,’ said I, ‘and a hundred thanks for a pleasant evening, and one of the strangest stories I ever heard. I half wish I were a younger man, and I think I ‘d mount the blue jacket too.’
‘It would show you some strange scenes,’ said Mr. O’Kelly, while he continued to equip himself for the road. ‘All I have told is little compared to what I might tell, were I only to give a few leaves of my lifeen courier; but, as I said before, we ‘ll live to meet again. Do you know who my party is this morning?’
‘I can’t guess.’
‘My old flame, Miss Blundell; she’s married now and has a daughter, so like what I remember herself once. Well, well, it’s a strange world! Good-bye.’
With that we shook hands for the last time, and parted; and I wandered back to Antwerp when the sun was rising, to get into a bed and sleep for the next eight hours.
Morgan O’Dogherty was wrong—and, sooth to say, he was not often so—when he pronounced a Mess to be ‘the perfection of dinner society.’ In the first place, there can be no perfection anywhere or in anything, it is evident, where ladies are not. Secondly, a number of persons so purely professional, and therefore so very much alike in their habits, tone of thinking, and expression, can scarcely be expected to make up that complex amalgam so indispensable to pleasant society. Lastly, the very fact of meeting the same people each day, looking the very same way too, is a sad damper to that flow of spirits which for their free current demand all the chances and vicissitudes of a fresh audience. In a word, in the one case a man becomes like a Dutch canal, standing stagnant and slow between its trim banks; in the other, he is a bounding rivulet, careering pleasantly through grassy meadows and smiling fields—now basking in the gay sunshine, now lingering in the cool shade; at one moment hurrying along between rocks and moss-grown pebbles, brawling, breaking, and foaming; at the next, expanding into some little lake, calm and deep and mirrorlike.
It is the very chances and changes of conversation, its ups and downs, its lights and shadows—so like those of life itself—that make its great charm; and for this, generally, a mixed party gives the only security. Now, a Mess has very little indeed of this requisite; on the contrary, its great stronghold is the fact that it offers an easy tableland for all capacities. It has its little, dry, stale jokes, as flat and as dull as the orderly book—the regular quiz about Jones’s whiskers, or Tobin’s horse; the hackneyed stories about Simpson of Ours, or Nokes of Yours—of which the major is never tired, and the newly-joined sub is enraptured. Bless their honest hearts! very little fun goes far in the army; like the regimental allowance of wine, it will never intoxicate, and no man is expected to call for a fresh supply.
I have dined at more Messes than any red-coat of them all, at home and abroad—cavalry, artillery, and infantry, ‘horse, foot, and dragoons,’ as Grattan has it. In gala parties, with a general and his staff for guests; after sweltering field-days, where all the claret could not clear your throat of pipe-clay and contract-powder; in the colonies, where flannel-jackets were substituted for regulation coats, and land-crabs and pepper-pot for saddles and sirloins; in Connemara, Calcutta, or Corfu—it was all the same:caelum non animum, etc. Not but that they had all their little peculiarities among themselves— so much so, indeed, that I offer a fifty, that, if you set me down blindfolded at any Mess in the service, I will tell you what corps they belong to before the cheese appears; and before the bottle goes half around, I’ll engage to distinguish the hussars from the heavies, the fusiliers from the light-bobs; and when the president is ringing for more claret, it will go hard with me if I don’t make a shrewd guess at the number of the regiment.
The great charm of the Mess is to those young, ardent spirits fresh from Sandhurst or Eton, sick of mathematics and bored with false quantities. To them the change is indeed a glorious one, and I’d ask nothing better than to be sixteen, and enjoy it all; but for the old stagers, it is slow work indeed. A man curls his whiskers at forty with far less satisfaction than he surveys their growth and development at eighteen; he tightens his waist, too, at that period, with a very different sense of enjoyment. His first trip to Jamaica is little more than a ‘lark’; his fourth or fifth, with a wife and four brats, is scarcely a party of pleasure—and all these things react on the Mess. Besides, it is against human nature itself to like the people who rival us; and who could enjoy the jokes of a man who stands between him and a majority?
Yet, taking them all in all, the military ‘cut up’ better than any other professionals. The doctors might be agreeable; they know a vast deal of life, and in a way too that other people never see it; but meet themen masse, they are little better than body-snatchers. There is not a malady too dreadful, nor an operation too bloody, to tell you over your soup; every slice of the turkey suggests an amputation, and they sever a wing with the anatomical precision they would extirpate a thigh bone. Life to them has no interest except where it verges on death; and from habit and hardening, they forget that human suffering has any other phase than a source of wealth to the medical profession.
The lawyers are even worse. To listen to them, you would suppose that the highest order of intellect was a skill in chicanery; that trick and stratagem were the foremost walks of talent; that to browbeat a poor man and to confound a simple one were great triumphs of genius; and that the fairest gift of the human mind was that which enabled a man to feign every emotion of charity, benevolence, pity, anger, grief, and joy, for the sum of twenty pounds sterling, wrung from abject poverty and briefed by an ‘honest attorney.’
As to the parsons, I must acquit them honestly of any portion of this charge. It has been my fortune to ‘assist’ at more than one visitation dinner, and I can safely aver that never by any accident did the conversation become professional, nor did I hear a word of piety during the entertainment.
Country gentlemen are scarcely professional, however the similarity of their tastes and occupations might seem to warrant the classification—fox-hunting, grouse-shooting, game-preserving, road-jobbing, rent-extracting, land-tilling, being propensities in common. They are the slowest of all; and the odds are long against any one keeping awake after the conversation has taken its steady turn into shorthorns, Swedish turnips, subsoiling, and southdowns.
Artists are occasionally well enough, if only for their vanity and self-conceit.
Authors are better still, for ditto and ditto.
Actors are most amusing from the innocent delusion they labour under that all that goes on in life is unreal, except what takes place in Covent Garden or Drury Lane.
In a word, professional cliques are usually detestable, the individuals who compose them being frequently admirable ingredients, but intolerable when unmixed; and society, like amacédoine, is never so good as when its details are a little incongruous.
For my own part, I knew few things better than a table d’hôte, that pleasant reunion of all nations, from Stockholm to Stamboul; of every rank, from the grand-duke to the bagman; men and women, or, if you like the phrase better, ladies and gentlemen—some travelling for pleasure, some for profit; some on wedding tours, some in the grief of widowhood; some rattling along the road of life in all the freshness of youth, health, and well-stored purses, others creeping by the wayside cautiously and quietly; sedate and sententious English, lively Italians, plodding Germans, witty Frenchmen, wily Russians, and stupid Belgians— all pell-mell, seated side by side, and actually shuffled into momentary intimacy by soup, fish, fowl, and entremets. The very fact that you areen routegives a frankness and a freedom to all you say. Your passport is signed, your carriage packed; to-morrow you will be a hundred miles away. What matter, then, if the old baron with the white moustache has smiled at your German, or if the thin-faced lady in the Dunstable bonnet has frowned at your morality?—you ‘ll never, in all likelihood, meet either again. You do your best to be agreeable—it is the only distinction recognised; here are no places of honour, no favoured guests—each starts fair in the race, and a pleasant course I have always deemed it.
Now, let no one, while condemning the vulgarity of this taste of mine—for such I anticipate as the ready objection, though the dissentient should be a tailor from Bond Street or a schoolmistress from Brighton—for a moment suppose that I mean to include all tables d’hôte in this sweeping laudation; far, very far from it. I, Arthur O’Leary, have travelled some hundreds of thousands of miles in every quarter and region of the globe, and yet would have considerable difficulty in enumerating even six such as fairly to warrant the praise I have pronounced.
In the first place, the table d’hôte, to possess all the requisites I desire, should not have itslocalein any first-rate city, like Paris, London, or St. Petersburg; no, it should rather be in Brussels, Dresden, Munich, Berne, or Florence. Again, it should not be in the great overgrown mammoth-hotel of the town, with three hundred daily devourers, and a steam-engine to slice thebouilli. It should, and will usually, be found in some retired and quiet spot—frequently within a small court, with orange-trees round the walls, and a tiny modestjet d’eauin the middle; a glass-door entering from a flight of low steps into a neat ante-chamber, where an attentive but unobtrusive waiter is ready to take your hat and cane, and, instinctively divining your dinner intentions, ushers you respectfully into the salon, and leans down your chair beside the place you select.
The few guests already arrived have the air ofhabitués; they are chatting together when you enter, but they conceive it necessary to do the honours of the place to the stranger, and at once include you in the conversation; a word or two suffices, and you see that they are not chance folk, whom hunger has overtaken at the door, but daily visitors, who know the house and appreciate it. The table itself is far from large—at most sixteen persons could sit down at it; the usual number is about twelve or fourteen. There is, if it be summer, a delicious bouquet in the midst; and the snowy whiteness of the cloth and the clear lustre of the water strike you instantly. The covers are as bright as when they left the hands of the silversmith, and the temperature of the room at once shows that nothing has been neglected that can contribute to the comfort of the guests. The very plash of the fountain is a grateful sound, and the long necks of the hock-bottles, reposing in the little basin, have an air of luxury far from unpleasing. While the champagne indulges its more southern character in the ice-pails in the shade, a sweet, faint odour of pineapples and nectarines is diffused about; nor am I disposed to quarrel with the chance view I catch, between the orange-trees, of a window where asparagus, game, oranges, and melons are grouped confusedly together, yet with a harmony of colour and effect Schneider would have gloried in. There is a noiseless activity about, a certain air of preparation—not such as by bustle can interfere with the placid enjoyment you feel, but something which denotes care and skill. You feel, in fact, that impatience on your part would only militate against your own interest, and that when the moment arrives for serving, the potage has then received the last finishing touch of the artist. By this time the company are assembled; the majority are men, but there are four or five ladies. They areen chapeautoo; but it is a toilette that shows taste and elegance, and the freshness—that delightful characteristic of foreign dress—of their light muslin dresses is in keeping with all about. Then follows that little pleasant bustle of meeting; the interchange of a number of small courtesies, which cost little but are very delightful; the news of the theatre for the night; some soiree, well known, or some promenade, forms the whole—and we are at table.
The destiny that made me a traveller has blessed me with either the contentment of the most simple or the perfect enjoyment of the most cultivated cuisine; and if I have eatentripe de rocherwith Parry at the Pole, I have never lost thereby the acme of my relish for truffles at the ‘Frères.’ Therefore, trust me that in my mention of a table d’hôte I have not forgotten the most essential of its features—for this, the smallness and consequent selectness of the party is always a guarantee.
Thus, then, you are at table; your napkin is spread, but you see no soup. The reason is at once evident, and you accept with gratefulness the little plate of Ostend oysters, each somewhat smaller than a five-franc piece, that are before you. Who would seek for pearls without when such treasures are to be found within the shell—cool and juicy and succulent; suggestive of delights to come, and so suited to the limpid glass of Chablis. What preparatives for the potage, which already I perceive to be aprintanière.
But why dwell on all this? These memoranda of mine were intended rather to form a humble companion to some of John Murray’s inestimable treatises on the road; some stray recollection of what in my rambles had struck me as worth mention; something that might serve to lighten a half-hour here or an evening there; some hint for the wanderer of a hotel or a church or a view or an actor or a poet, a picture or apâte, for which his halting-place is remarkable, but of whose existence he knew not. And to come back once more, such a picture as I have presented is but a weak and imperfect sketch of the Hôtel de France in Brussels—at least, of what I once remember it.
Poor Biennais, he was anartiste!He commenced his career under Chicaud, and rose to the dignity ofrôtisseurunder Napoleon. With what enthusiasm he used to speak of his successes during the Empire, when Bonaparte gave him carte-blanche to compose a dinner for a ‘party of kings!’ Napoleon himself was but an inferior gastronome. With him, the great requisite was to serve anywhere and at any moment; and though the bill of fare was a modest one, it was sometimes a matter of difficulty to prepare it in the depths of the Black Forest or on the sandy plains of Prussia, amid the mud-covered fields of Poland or the snows of Muscovy. A poulet, a cutlet, and a cup of coffee was the whole affair; but it should be ready as if by magic. Among his followers were several distinguished gourmets. Cambacérès was well known; Murat also, and Decrès, the Minister of Marine, kept admirable tables. Of these, Biennais spoke with ecstasy; he remembered their various tastes, and would ever remark, when placing some masterpiece of skill before you, how the King of Naples loved or the arch-chancellor praised it. To him the overthrow of the empire was but the downfall of the cuisine; and he saw nothing more affecting in the last days of Fontainebleau than that the Emperor had left untouched afonduehe had always eaten of with delight. ‘After that,’ said Biennais, ‘I saw the game was up.’ With the Hundred Days he was ‘restored,’ like his master; but, alas! the empire of casseroles was departed; the thunder of the cannon foundries, and the roar of the shot furnaces were more congenial sounds than the simmering of sauces and the gentle murmur of a stew-pan. No wonder, thought he, there should come a Waterloo, when the spirit of the nation had thus degenerated. Napoleon spent his last days in exile; Biennais took his departure for Belgium. The park was his Longwood; and, indeed, he himself saw invariable points of resemblance in the two destinies. Happily for those who frequented the Hôtel de France, he did not occupy his remaining years in dictating his memoirs to some Las Casas of the kitchen, but persevered to the last in the practice of his great art, and died, so to speak, ladle in hand.
To me the Hôtel de France has many charms. I remember it, I shall not say how many years—its cool, delightful salon, looking out upon that beautiful little park whose shady alleys are such a resource in the evenings of summer; its lime-trees, beneath which you may sit and sip your coffee, as you watch the groups that pass and repass before you, weaving stories to yourself which become thicker and thicker as the shade deepens, and the flitting shapes are barely seen as they glide along the silent alleys, while a distant sound of music—some air of the Fatherland—is all that breaks the stillness, and you forget in the dreamy silence that you are in the midst of a great city.
The Hôtel de France has other memories than these, too. I ‘m not sure that I shall not make a confession, yet somehow I half shrink from it. You might call it a love adventure, and I should not like that; besides, there is scarcely a moral in it—though who knows?