Devereux — Complete by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (best free novels txt) 📖

“Au diable with your discretion!” said Hamilton, “‘tis a vulgar virtue. Vanity is a truly aristocratic quality, and every way fitted to a gentleman. Should I ever have been renowned for my exquisite lace and web-like cambric, if I had not been vain? Never, mon cher! I should have gone into a convent and worn sackcloth, and from Count Antoine I should have thickened into Saint Anthony.”

“Nay,” cried Lord Bolingbroke, “there is as much scope for vanity in sackcloth as there is in cambric; for vanity is like the Irish ogling master in the ‘Spectator,’ and if it teaches the play-house to ogle by candle-light, it also teaches the church to ogle by day! But, pardon me, Monsieur Chaulieu, how well you look! I see that the myrtle sheds its verdure, not only over your poetry, but the poet. And it is right that, to the modern Anacreon, who has bequeathed to Time a treasure it will never forego, Time itself should be gentle in return.”

“Milord,” answered Chaulieu, an old man who, though considerably past seventy, was animated, in appearance and manner, with a vivacity and life that would have done honour to a youth,—“Milord, it was beautifully said by the Emperor Julian that Justice retained the Graces in her vestibule. I see, now, that he should have substituted the word Wisdom for that of Justice.”

“Come,” cried Anthony Hamilton, “this will never do: compliments are the dullest things imaginable. For Heaven’s sake, let us leave panegyric to blockheads, and say something bitter to one another, or we shall die of ennui.”

“Right,” said Boulainvilliers; “let us pick out some poor devil to begin with. Absent or present?—Decide which.”

“Oh, absent,” cried Chaulieu, “‘tis a thousand times more piquant to slander than to rally! Let us commence with his Majesty: Count Devereux, have you seen Madame Maintenon and her devout infant since your arrival?”

“No! the priest must be petitioned before the miracle is made public.”

“What!” cried Chaulieu, “would you insinuate that his Majesty’s piety is really nothing less than a miracle?”

“Impossible!” said Boulainvilliers, gravely,—“piety is as natural to kings as flattery to their courtiers: are we not told that they are made in God’s own image?”

“If that were true,” said Count Hamilton, somewhat profanely,—“if that were true, I should no longer deny the impossibility of Atheism!”

“Fie, Count Hamilton,” said an old gentleman, in whom I recognized the great Huet, “fie: wit should beware how it uses wings; its province is earth, not Heaven.”

“Nobody can better tell what wit is not than the learned Abbe Huet!” answered Hamilton, with a mock air of respect.

“Pshaw!” cried Chaulieu, “I thought when we once gave the rein to satire it would carry us pele-mele against one another. But, in order to sweeten that drop of lemon-juice for you, my dear Huet, let me turn to Milord Bolingbroke, and ask him whether England can produce a scholar equal to Peter Huet, who in twenty years wrote notes to sixty-two volumes of Classics,* for the sake of a prince who never read a line in one of them?”

* The Delphin Classics.

“We have some scholars,” answered Bolingbroke; “but we certainly have no Huet. It is strange enough, but learning seems to me like a circle: it grows weaker the more it spreads. We now see many people capable of reading commentaries, but very few indeed capable of writing them.”

“True,” answered Huet; and in his reply he introduced the celebrated illustration which is at this day mentioned among his most felicitous bons mots. “Scholarship, formerly the most difficult and unaided enterprise of Genius, has now been made, by the very toils of the first mariners, but an easy and commonplace voyage of leisure. But who would compare the great men, whose very difficulties not only proved their ardour, but brought them the patience and the courage which alone are the parents of a genuine triumph, to the indolent loiterers of the present day, who, having little of difficulty to conquer, have nothing of glory to attain? For my part, there seems to me the same difference between a scholar of our days and one of the past as there is between Christopher Columbus and the master of a packet-boat from Calais to Dover!”

“But,” cried Anthony Hamilton, taking a pinch of snuff with the air of a man about to utter a witty thing, “but what have we—we spirits of the world, not imps of the closet,” and he glanced at Huet—“to do with scholarship? All the waters of Castaly, which we want to pour into our brain, are such as will flow the readiest to our tongue.”

“In short, then,” said I, “you would assert that all a friend cares for in one’s head is the quantity of talk in it?”

“Precisely, my dear Count,” said Hamilton, seriously; “and to that maxim I will add another applicable to the opposite sex. All that a mistress cares for in one’s heart is the quantity of love in it.”

“What! are generosity, courage, honour, to go for nothing with our mistress, then?” cried Chaulieu.

“No: for she will believe, if you are a passionate lover, that you have all those virtues; and if not, she will never believe that you have one.”

“Ah! it was a pretty court of love in which the friend and biographer of Count Grammont learned the art!” said Bolingbroke.

“We believed so at the time, my Lord; but there are as many changes in the fashion of making love as there are in that of making dresses. Honour me, Count Devereux, by using my snuff-box and then looking at the lid.”

“It is the picture of Charles the Second which adorns it; is it not?”

“No, Count Devereux, it is the diamonds which adorn it. His Majesty’s face I thought very beautiful while he was living; but now, on my conscience, I consider it the ugliest phiz I ever beheld. But I directed your notice to the picture because we were talking of love; and Old Rowley believed that he could make it better than any one else. All his courtiers had the same opinion of themselves; and I dare say the beaux garcons of Queen Anne’s reign would say that not one of King Charley’s gang knew what love was. Oh! ‘tis a strange circle of revolutions, that love! Like the earth, it always changes, and yet always has the same materials.”

“L’amour, l’amour, toujours l’amour, with Count Anthony Hamilton!” said Boulainvilliers. “He is always on that subject; and, sacre bleu! when he was younger, I am told he was like Cacus, the son of Vulcan, and breathed nothing but flames.”

“You flatter me,” said Hamilton. “Solve me now a knotty riddle, my Lord Bolingbroke. Why does a young man think it the greatest compliment to be thought wise, while an old man thinks it the greatest compliment to be told he has been foolish?”

“Is love foolish then?” said Lord Bolingbroke.

“Can you doubt it?” answered Hamilton; “it makes a man think more of another than himself! I know not a greater proof of folly!”

“Ah! mon