Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон
Pelham — Complete
“‘Fore Gad, you are in the right, Mr. Pelham,” replied Thornton, with a loud, coarse, chuckling laugh, which, more than a year’s conversation could have done, let me into the secrets of his character. “I care not a rush for the decorations of the table, so that the cheer be good; nor for the gew-gaws of the head-dress, as long as the face is pretty—‘the taste of the kitchen is better than the smell.’ Do you go much to Madame B—‘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 know where to find le bon vin et les jolies filles. As for me, I am still a stranger in Paris, and amuse myself but very indifferently.”
Thornton’s face brightened. “I tell you what my good fell—I beg pardon—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 for nothing more than to cultivate an acquaintance, seemingly so exactly to my 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,” said I, “I have seen you once or twice with a tall, handsome man, in a loose great 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, and answered my gaze with a quick glance from his small, glittering eye, before he replied. “I scarcely know who you mean, my acquaintance is so large 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 well made, of a pale complexion, light eyes, and very black hair, mustachios and whiskers. I saw him with you once in the Bois de Boulogne, and once in a hell in the Palais Royal. Surely, now you will recollect who he is?”
Thornton was evidently disconcerted. “Oh!” said he, after a short pause, and another of his peculiarly quick, sly glances—“Oh, that man; I have known him a very short time. What is his name? let me see!” and Mr. Thornton affected to look down in a complete reverie of dim remembrances.
I saw, however, that, from time to time, his eye glanced up to me, with a 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 scarcely can 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’s it—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
CHAPTER XXIV
Voila de l'erudition.
—Les Femmes Savantes.
I found, on my return, covered with blood, and foaming with passion, my inestimable valet—Bedos!
“What’s the matter?” said I.
“Matter!” repeated Bedos, in a tone almost inarticulate with rage; and then, rejoicing at the opportunity of unbosoming his wrath, he poured out a vast volley of ivrognes and carognes, against our Dame du Chateau, of monkey reminiscence. With great difficulty, I gathered, at last, from his vituperations, that the enraged landlady, determined to wreak her vengeance on some one, had sent for him into her appartment, accosted him with a smile, bade him sit down, regaled him with cold vol-au-vent, and a glass of Curacoa, and, while he was felicitating himself on his good fortune, slipped out of the room: presently, three tall fellows entered with sticks.
“We’ll teach you,” said the biggest of them—“we’ll teach you to lock up ladies, for the indulgence of your vulgar amusement;” and, without one other word, they fell upon Bedos, with incredible zeal and vigour. The valiant valet defended himself, tooth and nail, for some time, for which he only got the more soundly belaboured. In the meanwhile the landlady entered, and, with the same gentle smile as before, begged him to make no ceremony, to proceed with his present amusement, and when he was tired with the exercise, hoped he would refresh himself with another glass of Curacoa.
“It was this,” said Bedos, with a whimper, “which hurt me the most, to think she should serve me so cruelly, after I had eaten so plentifully of the vol-au-vent; envy and injustice I can bear, but treachery stabs me to the heart.”
When these threshers of men were tired, the lady satisfied, and Bedos half dead, they suffered the unhappy valet to withdraw; the mistress of the hotel giving him a note, which she desired, with great civility, that he would transmit to me on my return. This, I found, inclosed my bill, and informed me that my month being out on the morrow, she was unwilling to continue me any longer, and begged I would, therefore, have the bonte to choose another apartment.
“Carry my luggage forthwith,” said I, “to the Hotel de Mirabeau:” and that very evening I changed my abode.
I am happy in the opportunity this incident affords me of especially recommending the Hotel de Mirabeau, Rue de la Paix, to any of my countrymen who are really gentlemen, and will not disgrace my recommendation. It is certainly the best caravansera in the English quartier.
I was engaged that day to a literary dinner at the Marquis D’Al—; and as I knew I should meet Vincent, I felt some pleasure in repairing to my entertainer’s hotel. They were just going to dinner as I entered. A good many English were of the party. The good natured (in all senses of the word) Lady—, who always affected to pet me, cried aloud, “Pelham, mon joli petit mignon, I have not seen you for an age—do give me your arm.”
Madame D’Anville was just before me, and, as I looked at her, I saw that her eyes were full of tears; my heart smote me for my late inattention, and going up to her, I only nodded to Lady—, and said, in reply to her invitation, “Non, perfide, it is my turn to be cruel now. Remember your flirtation with Mr. Howard de Howard.”
“Pooh!” said Lady—, taking Lord Vincent’s arm, “your jealousy does indeed rest upon ‘a trifle light as air.’”
“Do you forgive me?” whispered I to Madame D’Anville, as I handed her to the salle a manger. “Does not love forgive every thing?” was her answer.
“At least,” thought I, “it never talks in those pretty phrases.”
The conversation soon turned upon books. As for me, I never at that time took a share in those discussions; indeed, I have long laid it down as a rule, that a man never gains by talking to more than one person at a time. If you don’t shine, you are a fool—if you do, you are a bore. You must become either ridiculous or unpopular—either hurt your own self-love by stupidity, or that of others by wit. I therefore sat in silence, looking exceedingly edified, and now and then muttering “good!” “true!” Thank heaven, however, the suspension of one faculty only increases the vivacity of the others; my eyes and ears always watch like sentinels over the repose of my lips. Careless and indifferent as I seem to all things, nothing ever escapes me: the minutest erreur in a dish or a domestic, the most trifling peculiarity in a criticism or a coat, my glance detects in an instant, and transmits for ever to my recollection.
“You have seen Jouy’s ‘Hermite de la Chaussee D’Antin?’” said our host to Lord Vincent.
“I have, and think meanly of it. There is a perpetual aim at something pointed, which as perpetually merges into something dull. He is like a bad swimmer, strikes out with great force, makes a confounded splash, and never gets a yard the further for it. It is a great effort not to sink. Indeed, Monsieur D’A—, your literature is at a very reduced ebb; bombastic in the drama—shallow in philosophy—mawkish in poetry, your writers of the present day seem to think, with Boileau—
“‘Souvent de tous nos maux la raison est le pire.’”
“Surely,” cried Madame D’Anville, “you will allow De la Martine’s poetry to be beautiful?”
“I allow it,” said he, “to be among the best you have; and I know very few lines in your language equal to the two first stanzas in his ‘Meditation on Napoleon,’ or to those exquisite verses called ‘Le Lac;’ but you will allow also that he wants originality and nerve. His thoughts are pathetic, but not deep; he whines, but sheds no tears. He has, in his imitation of Lord Byron, reversed the great miracle; instead of turning water into wine, he has turned wine into water. Besides, he is so unpardonably obscure. He thinks, with Bacchus—(you remember, D’A—, the line in Euripides, which I will not quote), that ‘there is something august in the shades;’ but he has applied this thought wrongly—in his obscurity there is nothing sublime—it is the back ground of a Dutch picture. It is only a red herring, or an old hat, which he has invested with such pomposity of shadow and darkness.”
“But his verses are so smooth,” said Lady—.
“Ah!” answered Vincent.
“‘Quand la rime enfin se trouve au bout des vers, Qu’importe que le reste y soit mis des travers.’”
“Helas” said the Viscount D’A—t, an author of no small celebrity himself; “I agree with you—we shall never again see a Voltaire or a Rousseau.”
“There is but little justice in those complaints, often as they are made,” replied Vincent. “You may not, it is true, see a Voltaire or a Rousseau, but you will see their equals. Genius can never be exhausted by one individual. In our country, the poets after Chaucer in the fifteenth century complained of the decay of their art—they did not anticipate Shakspeare. In Hayley’s time, who ever dreamt of the ascension of Byron? Yet Shakspeare and Byron came like the bridegroom ‘in the dead of night;’ and you have the same probability of producing—not, indeed, another Rousseau, but a writer to do equal honour to your literature.”
“I think,” said Lady—, “that Rousseau’s ‘Julie’ is over-rated. I had heard so much of ‘La Nouvelle Heloise’ when I was a girl, and been so often told that it was destruction to read it, that I bought the book the very day after I was married. I own to you that I could not get through it.”
“I am not surprised at it,” answered Vincent; “but Rousseau is not the less a genius for all that: there is no story to bear out the style, and he himself is right when he says ‘ce livre convient a tres peu de lecteurs.’ One letter would delight every one—four volumes of them are a surfeit—it is the toujours perdrix. But the chief beauty of that wonderful conception of an empassioned and meditative mind is to be found in the inimitable manner in which the thoughts are embodied, and in the tenderness, the truth, the profundity of the thoughts themselves: when Lord Edouard says, ‘c’est le chemin des passions qui m’a conduit a la philosophie,’ he inculcates, in one simple phrase, a profound and unanswerable truth. It is in these remarks that nature is chiefly found in the writings of Rousseau: too much engrossed in himself to be deeply skilled in the characters of others, that very self-study had yet given him a knowledge of the more hidden recesses of the heart. He could perceive at once the motive and the cause of actions, but he wanted the patience to trace the elaborate and winding progress of their effects. He saw the passions in their home, but he could not follow them abroad. He knew mankind in the general, but not men in the detail. Thus, when he makes an aphorism or reflection, it comes home at once to you as true; but when he would analyze that reflection, when he argues, reasons, and attempts to prove, you reject him as unnatural, or you refute him as false. It is then that he partakes of that manie commune which he imputes to other philosophers, ‘de nier ce qui est, et d’expliquer ce qui n’est pas.’”
There was a short pause. “I think,” said Madame D’Anville, “that it is in those pensees which you admire so much in Rousseau, that our authors in general excel.”
“You are right,” said Vincent, “and for this reason—with you les gens de letters are always les gens du monde. Hence their quick perceptions are devoted to men as well as to books. They make observations acutely, and embody them with grace; but it is worth remarking, that the same cause which produced the aphorism, frequently prevents its being profound. These literary gens du monde have the tact to observe, but not the patience, perhaps not the time, to investigate. They make the maxim, but they never explain to you the train of reasoning which led to it. Hence they are more brilliant than true. An English writer would not dare to make a maxim, involving, perhaps, in two lines, one of the most important of moral truths, without bringing pages to support his dictum. A French essayist leaves it wholly to itself. He tells you neither how he came by his reasons, nor their conclusion, ‘le plus fou souvent est le plus satisfait.’ Consequently, if less tedious than the English, your reasoners are more dangerous, and ought rather to be considered as models of terseness than of reflection. A man might learn to think sooner from your writers, but he will learn to think justly sooner from ours. Many observations of La Bruyere and Rochefoucault—the latter especially—have obtained credit for truth solely from their point. They possess exactly the same merit as the very sensible—permit me to add—very French line in Corneille:—
“‘Ma plus douce esperance est de perdre l’espoir.’”
The Maquis took advantage of the silence which followed Vincent’s criticism to rise from table. We all (except Vincent, who took leave) adjourned to the salon. “Qui est cet homme la?” said one, “comme il est epris de lui-meme.” “How silly he is,” cried another—“how ugly,” said a third. What a taste in literature—such a talker—such shallowness, and such assurance—not worth the answering—could not slip in a word—disagreeable, revolting, awkward, slovenly, were the most complimentary opinions bestowed upon the unfortunate Vincent. The women called him un horreur, and the men un bete. The old railed at his mauvais gout, and the young at his mauvais coeur, for the former always attribute whatever does not correspond with their sentiments, to a perversion of taste, and the latter whatever does not come up to their enthusiasm, to a depravity of heart.
As for me, I went home, enriched with two new observations; first, that one may not speak of any thing relative to a foreign country, as one would if one was a native. National censures become particular affronts.
Secondly, that those who know mankind in theory, seldom know it in practice; the very wisdom that conceives a rule, is accompanied with the abstraction, or the vanity, which destroys it. I mean that the philosopher of the cabinet is often too diffident to put into action his observations, or too eager for display to conceal their design. Lord Vincent values himself upon his science du monde. He has read much upon men, he has reflected more; he lays down aphorisms to govern or to please them. He goes into society; he is cheated by the one half, and the other half he offends. The sage in the cabinet is but a fool in the salon; and the most consummate men of the world are those who have considered the least on it.
CHAPTER XXV
Falstaff. What money is in my purse?
Page. Seven groats and two-pence.
—Second Part of Henry IV.
En iterum Crispinus.
The next day a note was brought me, which had been sent to my former lodgings in the Hotel de Paris: it was from Thornton.
“My dear Sir,” (it began)
“I am very sorry that particular business will prevent me the pleasure of seeing you at my rooms on Sunday. I hope to be more fortunate some other day. I should like much to introduce you, the first opportunity, to my friends in the Rue Gretry, for I like obliging my countrymen. I am sure, if you were to go there, you would cut and come again—one shoulder of mutton drives down another.
“I beg you to accept my repeated excuses, and remain,
“Dear Sir,
“Your very obedient servant,
“Thomas Thornton.
“Rue St. Dominique,
“Friday Morning.”
This letter produced in me many and manifold cogitations. What could possibly have induced Mr. Tom Thornton, rogue as he was, to postpone thus of his own accord, the plucking of a pigeon, which he had such good reason to believe he had entrapped? There was evidently no longer the same avidity to cultivate my acquaintance as before; in putting off our appointment with so little ceremony, he did not even fix a day for another. What had altered his original designs towards me? for if Vincent’s account was true, it was natural to suppose that he wished to profit by any acquaintance he might form with me, and therefore such an acquaintance his own interests would induce him to continue and confirm.
Either, then, he no longer had the same necessity for a dupe, or he no longer imagined I should become one. Yet neither of these suppositions was probable. It was not likely that he should grow suddenly honest, or suddenly rich: nor had I, on the other hand, given him any reason to suppose I was a jot more wary than any other individual he might have imposed upon. On the contrary, I had appeared to seek his acquaintance with an eagerness which said but little for my knowledge of the world. The more I reflected, the more I should have been puzzled, had I not connected his present backwardness with his acquaintance with the stranger, whom he termed Warburton. It is true, that I had no reason to suppose so: it was a conjecture wholly unsupported, and, indeed, against my better sense; yet, from some unanalysed associations, I could not divest myself of the supposition.
“I will soon see,” thought I; and wrapping myself in my cloak, for the day was bitterly cold, I bent my way to Thornton’s lodgings. I could not explain to myself the deep interest I took in whatever was connected with (the so-called) Warburton, or whatever promised to discover more clearly any particulars respecting him. His behaviour in the gambling house; his conversation with the woman in the Jardin des Plantes; and the singular circumstance, that a man of so very aristocratic an appearance, should be connected with Thornton, and only seen in such low scenes, and with such low society, would not have been sufficient so strongly to occupy my mind, had it not been for certain dim recollections, and undefinable associations, that his appearance when present, and my thoughts of him when absent, perpetually recalled.
As, engrossed with meditations of this nature, I was passing over the Pont Neuf, I perceived the man Warburton had so earnestly watched in the gambling house, and whom I identified with the “Tyrrell,” who had formed the subject of conversation in the Jardin des Plantes, pass slowly before me. There was an appearance of great exhaustion in his swarthy and strongly marked countenance. He walked carelessly on, neither looking to the right nor the left, with that air of thought and abstraction which I have remarked as common to all men in the habit of indulging any engrossing and exciting passion.
We were just on the other side of the Seine, when I perceived the woman of the Jardin des Plantes approach. Tyrrell (for that, I afterwards discovered, was really his name) started as she came near, and asked her, in a tone of some asperity, where she had been? As I was but a few paces behind, I had a clear, full view of the woman’s countenance. She was about twenty-eight or thirty years of age. Her features were decidedly handsome, though somewhat too sharp and aquiline for my individual taste. Her eyes were light and rather sunken; and her complexion bespoke somewhat of the paleness and languor of ill-health. On the whole, the expression of her face, though decided, was not unpleasing, and when she returned Tyrrell’s rather rude salutation, it was with a smile, which made her, for the moment, absolutely beautiful.
“Where have I been to?” she said, in answer to his interrogatory. “Why, I went to look at the New Church, which they told me was so superbe.”
“Methinks,” replied the man, “that ours are not precisely the circumstances in which such spectacles are amusing.”
“Nay, Tyrrell,” said the woman, as taking his arm they walked on together a few paces before me, “nay, we are quite rich now to what we have been; and, if you do play again, our two hundred pounds may swell into a fortune. Your losses have brought you skill, and you may now turn them into actual advantages.”
Tyrrell did not reply exactly to these remarks, but appeared as if debating with himself. “Two hundred pounds—twenty already gone!—in a few months all will have melted away. What is it then now but a respite from starvation?—but with luck it may become a competence.”
“And why not have luck? many a fortune has been made with a worse beginning,” said the woman.
“True, Margaret,” pursued the gambler, “and even without luck, our fate can only commence a month or two sooner—better a short doom than a lingering torture.”
“What think you of trying some new game where you have more experience, or where the chances are greater than in that of rouge et noir?” asked the woman. “Could you not make something out of that tall, handsome man, who Thornton says is so rich?”
“Ah, if one could!” sighed Tyrrell, wistfully. “Thornton tells me, that he has won thousands from him, and that they are mere drops in his income. Thornton is a good, easy, careless fellow, and might let me into a share of the booty: but then, in what games can I engage him?”
Here I passed this well-suited pair, and lost the remainder of their conversation. “Well,” thought I, “if this precious personage does starve at last, he will most richly deserve it, partly for his designs on the stranger, principally for his opinion of Thornton. If he was a knave only, one might pity him; but a knave and fool both, are a combination of evil, for which there is no intermediate purgatory of opinion—nothing short of utter damnation.”
I soon arrived at Mr. Thornton’s abode. The same old woman, poring over the same novel of Crebillon, made me the same reply as before; and accordingly again I ascended the obscure and rugged stairs, which seemed to indicate, that the road to vice is not so easy as one generally supposes. I knocked at the door, and receiving no answering acknowledgment, opened it at once. The first thing I saw was the dark, rough coat of Warburton—that person’s back was turned to me, and he was talking with some energy to Thornton (who lounged idly in his chair, with one ungartered leg thrown over the elbow.)
“Ah, Mr. Pelham,” exclaimed the latter, starting from his not very graceful position, “it gives me great pleasure to see you—Mr. Warburton, Mr. Pelham—Mr. Pelham, Mr. Warburton.” My new-made and mysterious acquaintance drew himself up to his full height, and bowed very slightly to my own acknowledgment of the introduction. A low person would have thought him rude. I only supposed him ignorant of the world. No real gentleman is uncivil. He turned round after this stiff condescension de sa part, and sunk down on the sofa, with his back towards me.
“I was mistaken,” thought I, “when I believed him to be above such associates as Thornton—they are well matched.”
“My dear Sir,” said Thornton, “I am very sorry I could not see you to breakfast—a particular engagement prevented me—verbum sap. Mr. Pelham, you take me, I suppose—black eyes white skin, and such an ancle;” and the fellow rubbed his great hands and chuckled.
“Well,” said I, “I cannot blame you, whatever may be my loss—a dark eye and a straight ancle are powerful excuses. What says Mr. Warburton to them?” and I turned to the object of my interrogatory.
“Really,” he answered drily, and without moving from his uncourteous position, “Mr. Thornton only can judge of the niceties of his peculiar tastes, or the justice of his general excuses.”
Mr. Warburton said this in a sarcastic, bitter tone. Thornton bit his lip, more, I should think, at the manner than the words, and his small grey eyes sparkled with a malignant and stern expression, which suited the character of his face far better than the careless levity and enjouement which his glances usually denoted.
“They are no such great friends after all,” thought I; “and now let me change my attack. Pray,” I asked, “among all your numerous acquaintances at Paris, did you ever meet with a Mr. Tyrrell?”
Warburton started from his chair, and as instantly re-seated himself. Thornton eyed me with one of those peculiar looks which so strongly reminded me of a dog, in deliberation whether to bite or run away.
“I do know a Mr. Tyrrell!” he said, after a short pause.
“What sort of a person is he?” I asked with an indifferent air—“a great gamester, is he not?”
“He does slap it down on the colours now and then,” replied Thornton. “I hope you don’t know him, Mr. Pelham!”
“Why?” said I, evading the question. “His character is not affected by a propensity so common, unless, indeed, you suppose him to be more a gambler than a gamester, viz. more acute than unlucky.”
“God forbid that I should say any such thing,” replied Thornton; “you won’t catch an old lawyer in such imprudence.”
“The greater the truth, the greater the libel,” said Warburton, with a sneer.
“No,” resumed Thornton, “I know nothing against Mr. Tyrrell—nothing! He may be a very good man, and I believe he is; but as a friend, Mr. Pelham, (and Mr. Thornton grew quite affectionate), I advise you to have as little as possible to do with that sort of people.”
“Truly,” said I, “you have now excited my curiosity. Nothing, you know, is half so inviting as mystery.”
Thornton looked as if he had expected a very different reply; and Warburton said, in an abrupt tone—“Whoever enters an unknown road in a fog may easily lose himself.”
“True,” said I; “but that very chance is more agreeable than a road where one knows every tree! Danger and novelty are more to my taste than safety and sameness. Besides, as I never gamble myself, I can lose nothing by an acquaintance with those who do.”
Another pause ensued—and, finding I had got all from Mr. Thornton and his uncourteous guest that I was likely to do, I took my hat and my departure.
“I do not know,” thought I, “whether I have profited much by this visit. Let me consider. In the first place, I have not ascertained why I was put off by Mr. Thornton—for as to his excuse, it could only have availed one day, and had he been anxious for my acquaintance, he would have named another. I have, however, discovered, first, that he does not wish me to form any connection with Tyrrell; secondly, from Warburton’s sarcasm, and his glance of reply, that there is but little friendship between those two, whatever be the intimacy; and, thirdly, that Warburton, from his dorsal positions, so studiously preserved, either wished to be uncivil or unnoticed.” The latter, after all, was the most probable; and, upon the whole, I felt more than ever convinced that he was the person I suspected him to be.
