Pelham — Volume 02

CHAPTER XIX

 
Alea sequa vorax species certissima furti
Non contenta bonis, animum quoque perfida mergit;—
Furca, furax—infamis, iners, furiosa, ruina.
 

Petrarch: Dial.

I dined the next day at the Freres Provencaux; an excellent restaurateur's, by-the-by, where one gets irreproachable gibier, and meets no English. After dinner, I strolled into the various gambling houses, with which the Palais Royal abounds.

In one of these, the crowd and heat were so great, that I should immediately have retired if I had not been struck with the extreme and intense expression of interest in the countenance of one of the spectators at the rouge et noir table. He was a man about forty years of age; his complexion was dark and sallow; the features prominent, and what are generally called handsome; but there was a certain sinister expression in his eyes and mouth, which rendered the effect of his physiognomy rather disagreeable than prepossessing. At a small distance from him, and playing, with an air which, in its carelessness and nonchalance, formed a remarkable contrast to the painful anxiety of the man I have just described, sate Mr. Thornton.

At first sight, these two appeared to be the only Englishmen present besides myself; I was more struck by seeing the former in that scene, than I was at meeting Thornton there; for there was something distingue in the mien of the stranger, which suited far worse with the appearance of the place, than the bourgeois air and dress of my ci-devant second.

"What! another Englishman?" thought I, as I turned round and perceived a thick, rough great coat, which could possibly belong to no continental shoulders. The wearer was standing directly opposite the seat of the swarthy stranger; his hat was slouched over his face; I moved in order to get a clearer view of his countenance. It was the same person I had seen with Thornton that morning. Never to this moment have I forgotten the stern and ferocious expression with which he was gazing upon the keen and agitated features of the gambler opposite. In the eye and lip there was neither pleasure, hatred, nor scorn, in their simple and unalloyed elements; but each seemed blent and mingled into one deadly concentration of evil passions.

This man neither played, nor spoke, nor moved. He appeared utterly insensible of every feeling in common with those around. There he stood, wrapt in his own dark and inscrutable thoughts, never, for one instant, taking his looks from the varying countenance which did not observe their gaze, nor altering the withering character of their almost demoniacal expression. I could not tear myself from the spot. I felt chained by some mysterious and undefinable interest; my attention was first diverted into a new channel, by a loud exclamation from the dark visaged gambler at the table; it was the first he had uttered, notwithstanding his anxiety; and, from the deep, thrilling tone in which it was expressed, it conveyed a keen sympathy with the overcharged feelings which it burst from.

With a trembling hand, he took from an old purse the few Napoleons that were still left there. He set them all at one hazard, on the rouge. He hung over the table with a dropping lip; his hands were tightly clasped in each other; his nerves seemed strained into the last agony of excitation. I ventured to raise my eyes upon the gaze, which I felt must still be upon the gambler—there it was fixed, and stern as before; but it now conveyed a deeper expression of joy than of the other passions which were there met. Yet a joy so malignant and fiendish, that no look of mere anger or hatred could have so chilled my heart. I dropped my eyes. I redoubled my attention to the cards—the last two were to be turned up. A moment more!—the fortune was to the noir. The stranger had lost! He did not utter a single word. He looked with a vacant eye on the long mace, with which the marker had swept away his last hopes, with his last coin, and then, rising, left the room, and disappeared.

The other Englishman was not long in following him. He uttered a short, low, laugh, unobserved, perhaps, by any one but myself; and, pushing through the atmosphere of sacres and mille tonnerres, which filled that pandaemonium, strode quickly to the door. I felt as if a load had been taken from my bosom, when he was gone.

CHAPTER XX

Reddere person ae scit convenientia cuique.

—Horace: Ars Poetica.

I was loitering over my breakfast the next morning, and thinking of the last night's scene, when Lord Vincent was announced.

"How fares the gallant Pelham?" said he, as he entered the room.

"Why, to say the truth," I replied, "I am rather under the influence of blue devils this morning, and your visit is like a sun-beam in November."

"A bright thought," said Vincent, "and I shall make you a very pretty little poet soon; publish you in a neat octavo, and dedicate you to Lady D—e. Pray, by the by, have you ever read her plays? You know they were only privately printed?"

"No," said I, (for in good truth, had his lordship interrogated me touching any other literary production, I should have esteemed it a part of my present character to return the same answer.)

"No!" repeated Vincent; "permit me to tell you, that you must never seem ignorant of any work not published. To be recherche, one must always know what other people don't—and then one has full liberty to sneer at the value of what other people do know. Renounce the threshold of knowledge. There every new proselyte can meet you. Boast of your acquaintance with the sanctum, and not one in ten thousand can dispute it with you. Have you read Monsieur de C—'s pamphlet?"

"Really," said I, "I have been so busy."

"Ah, mon ami!" cried Vincent, "the greatest sign of an idle man is to complain of being busy. But you have had a loss: the pamphlet is good. C- -, by the way, has an extraordinary, though not an expanded mind; it is like a citizen's garden near London: a pretty parterre here, and a Chinese pagoda there; an oak tree in one corner, and a mushroom bed in the other. You may traverse the whole in a stride; it is the four quarters of the globe in a mole-hill. Yet every thing is good in its kind; and is neither without elegance nor design in its arrangement."

"What do you think," said I, "of the Baron de—, the minister of—?"

"Of him!" replied Vincent—

 
           "'His soul
           Still sits at squat, and peeps not from its hole.'"
 

"It is dark and bewildered—full of dim visions of the ancient regime;—it is a bat hovering about the chambers of an old ruin. Poor, antique little soul! but I will say nothing more about it,—

 
                   "'For who would be satirical
                   Upon a thing so very small'"
                   as the soul of the Baron de—?"
 

Finding Lord Vincent so disposed to the biting mood, I immediately directed his rabies towards Mr. Aberton, for whom I had a most inexpressible contempt.

"Aberton," said Vincent, in answer to my question, if he knew that aimable attache—"Yes! a sort of man who, speaking of the English embassy, says we—who sticks his best cards on his chimney-piece, and writes himself billets-doux from duchesses. A duodecimo of 'precious conceits,' bound in calf-skin—I know the man well; does he not dress decently, Pelham?"

"His clothes are well made," said I; "but no man can dress well with those hands and feet!" "Ah!" said Vincent, "I should think he went to the best tailor, and said, 'give me a collar like Lord So and So's,'; one who would not dare to have a new waistcoat till it had been authoritatively patronized, and who took his fashions, like his follies, from the best proficients. Such fellows are always too ashamed of themselves not to be proud of their clothes—like the Chinese mariners, they burn incense before the needle!"

"And Mr. Howard de Howard," said I, laughing, "what do you think of him?"

"What! the thin secretary?" cried Vincent.

"He is the mathematical definition of a straight line—length without breadth. His inseparable friend, Mr. Aberton, was running up the Rue St. Honore yesterday in order to catch him."

"Running!" cried I, "just like common people—when were you or I ever seen running?"

"True," continued Vincent; "but when I saw him chasing that meagre apparition, I said to Bennington, 'I have found out the real Peter Schlemil!' 'Who?'(asked his grave lordship, with serious naivete) 'Mr. Aberton,'said I; 'don't you see him running after his shadow?' But the pride of the lean thing is so amusing! He is fifteenth cousin to the duke, and so his favourite exordium is, 'Whenever I succeed to the titles of my ancestors.'It was but the other day, that he heard two or three silly young men discussing church and state, and they began by talking irreligion—(Mr. Howard de Howard is too unsubstantial not to be spiritually inclined)—however he only fidgeted in his chair. They then proceeded to be exceedingly disloyal. Mr. Howard de Howard fidgeted again;—they then passed to vituperations on the aristocracy—this the attenuated pomposity (magni nominis umbra) could brook no longer. He rose up, cast a severe look on the abashed youths, and thus addressed them— 'Gentlemen, I have sate by in silence, and heard my King derided, and my God blasphemed; but now in attacking the aristocracy, I can no longer refrain from noticing so obviously intentional an insult. You have become personal.' But did you know, Pelham, that he is going to be married?"

"No," said I. "I can't say that I thought such an event likely. Who is the intended?"

"A Miss—, a girl with some fortune. 'I can bring her none,' said he to the father, 'but I can make her Mrs. Howard de Howard.'"

"Alas, poor girl!" said I, "I fear that her happiness will hang upon a slender thread. But suppose we change the conversation: first, because the subject is so meagre, that we might easily wear it out, and secondly, because such jests may come home. I am not very corpulent myself."

"Bah!" said Vincent, "but at least you have bones and muscles. If you were to pound the poor secretary in a mortar, you might take him all up in a pinch of snuff."

"Pray, Vincent," said I, after a short pause, "did you ever meet with a Mr. Thornton, at Paris?"

"Thornton, Thornton," said Vincent, musingly; "what, Tom Thornton?"

"I should think, very likely," I replied; "just the sort of man who would be Tom Thornton—has a broad face, with a colour, and wears a spotted neckcloth; Tom—what could his name be but Tom?"

"Is he about five-and-thirty?" asked Vincent, "rather short, and with reddish coloured hair and whiskers?"

"Precisely," said I; "are not all Toms alike?"

"Ah," said Vincent, "I know him well: he is a clever, shrewd fellow, but a most unmitigated rascal. He is the son of a steward in Lancashire, and received an attorney's education; but being a humorous, noisy fellow, he became a great favourite with his father's employer, who was a sort of Mecaenas to cudgel players, boxers, and horse jockies. At his house, Thornton met many persons of rank, but of a taste similar to their host's: and they, mistaking his vulgar coarseness for honesty, and his quaint proverbs for wit, admitted him into their society. It was with one of them that I have seen him. I believe of late, that his character has been of a very indifferent odour: and whatever has brought him among the English at Paris—those white-washed abominations—those 'innocent blacknesses,' as Charles Lamb calls chimney sweepers, it does not argue well for his professional occupations. I should think, however, that he manages to live here; for wherever there are English fools, there are fine pickings for an English rogue."

"Ay," said I, "but are there enough fools here, to feed the rogues?"

"Yes, because rogues are like spiders, and eat each other, when there is nothing else to catch; and Tom Thornton is safe, as long as the ordinary law of nature lasts, that the greater knave preys on the lesser, for there cannot possibly be a greater knave than he is. If you have made his acquaintance, my dear Pelham, I advise you most soberly to look to yourself, for if he doth not steal, beg, or borrow of you, Mr. Howard de Howard will grow fat, and even Mr. Aberton cease to be a fool. And now, most noble Pelham, farewell. Il est plus aise d'etre sage pour les autres que de l'etre pour soi-meme."