Pelham Part 7

"'Stult.i.tiam patiuntur, opes,'

is her hope; and

"'Ut tu fortunam, sic nos te, Celse, feremus,'

is her motto."

"Madame Laurent!" repeated I, "why, surely that is the name of Mons.

Margot's landlady."

"I hope not," cried Vincent, "for the sake of our dinner; he reflects no credit on her good cheer--

"'Who eats fat dinners, should himself be fat.'"

"At all events," said I, "we can try the good lady for once. I am very anxious to see a countrywoman of ours, probably the very one you speak of, whom Mons. Margot eulogizes in glowing colours, and who has, moreover, taken a violent fancy for my solemn preceptor. What think you of that, Vincent?"

"Nothing extraordinary," replied Vincent; "the lady only exclaims with the moralist--

"'Love, virtue, valour, yea, all human charms, Are shrunk and centred in that heap of bones. Oh! there are wondrous beauties in the grave!'"

I made some punning rejoinder, and we sallied out to earn an appet.i.te in the Tuilleries for Madame Laurent's dinner.

At the hour of half-past five we repaired to our engagement. Madame Laurent received us with the most evident satisfaction, and introduced us forthwith to our countrywoman. She was a pretty, fair, shrewd looking person, with an eye and lip which, unless it greatly belied her, showed her much more inclined, as an amante, to be merry and wise, than honest and true.

Presently Monsieur Margot made his appearance. Though very much surprised at seeing me, he did not appear the least jealous of my attentions to his inamorata. Indeed, the good gentleman was far too much pleased with himself to be susceptible of the suspicions common to less fortunate lovers. At dinner I sat next to the pretty Englishwoman, whose name was Green.

"Monsieur Margot," said I, "has often spoken to me of you before I had the happiness of being personally convinced how true and unexaggerated were his sentiments."

"Oh!" cried Mrs. Green, with an arch laugh, "you are acquainted with Monsieur Margot, then?"

"I have that honour," said I. "I receive from him every morning lessons both in love and languages. He is perfect master of both."

Mrs. Green burst out into one of those peals so peculiarly British.

"Ah, le pauvre Professeur!" cried she. "He is too absurd!"

"He tells me," said I, gravely, "that he is quite accable with his bonnes fortunes--possibly he flatters himself that even you are not perfectly inaccessible to his addresses."

"Tell me, Mr. Pelham," said the fair Mrs. Green, "can you pa.s.s by this street about half past twelve to-night?"

"I will make a point of doing so," replied I, not a little surprised by the remark.

"Do," said she, "and now let us talk of old England."

When we went away I told Vincent of my appointment. "What!" said he, "eclipse Monsieur Margot! Impossible!"

"You are right," replied I, "nor is it my hope; there is some trick afloat of which we may as well be spectators."

"De tout mon coeur!" answered Vincent; "let us go till then to the d.u.c.h.esse de G----."

I a.s.sented, and we drove to the Rue de--.

The d.u.c.h.esse de G--was a fine relict of the ancien regime--tall and stately, with her own grey hair crepe, and surmounted by a high cap of the most dazzling blonde. She had been one of the earliest emigrants, and had stayed for many months with my mother, whom she professed to rank amongst her dearest friends. The d.u.c.h.esse possessed to perfection that singular melange of ostentation and ignorance which was so peculiar to the ante-revolutionists. She would talk of the last tragedy with the emphatic tone of a connoisseur, in the same breath that she would ask, with Marie Antoinette, why the poor people were so clamorous for bread when they might buy such nice cakes for two-pence a-piece? "To give you an idea of the Irish," said she one day to an inquisitive marquess, "know that they prefer potatoes to mutton!"

Her soirees were among the most agreeable at Paris--she united all the rank and talent to be found in the ultra party, for she professed to be quite a female Maecenas; and whether it was a mathematician or a romance-writer, a naturalist or a poet, she held open house for all, and conversed with each with equal fluency and self-satisfaction.

A new play had just been acted, and the conversation, after a few preliminary hoverings, settled upon it.

"You see," said the d.u.c.h.esse, "that we have actors, you authors; of what avail is it that you boast of a Shakspeare, since your Liseton, great as he is, cannot be compared with our Talma?"

"And yet," said I, preserving my gravity with a pertinacity, which nearly made Vincent and the rest of our compatriots a.s.sembled lose their's "Madame must allow, that there is a striking resemblance in their persons, and the sublimity of their acting?"

"Pour ca, j'en conviens," replied this 'critique de l'Ecole des Femmes.'

"Mais cependant Liseton n'a pas la Nature! l'ame! la grandeur de Talma!"

"And will you then allow us no actors of merit?" asked Vincent.

"Mais oui!--dans le genre comique, par exemple, votre buffo Kean met dix fois plus d'esprit et de drollerie dans ses roles que La Porte."

"The impartial and profound judgment of Madame admits of no further discussion on this point," said I. "What does she think of the present state of our dramatic literature?"

"Why," replied Madame, "you have many great poets, but when they write for the stage they lose themselves entirely; your Valter Scote's play of Robe Roi is very inferior to his novel of the same name."

"It is a great pity," said I, "that Byron did not turn his Childe Harold into a tragedy--it has so much energy--action--variety!"

"Very true," said Madame, with a sigh; "but the tragedy is, after all, only suited to our nation--we alone carry it to perfection."

"Yet," said I, "Goldoni wrote a few fine tragedies."

"Eh bien!" said Madame, "one rose does not const.i.tute a garden!"

And satisfied with this remark, la femme savante turned to a celebrated traveller to discuss with him the chance of discovering the North Pole.

There were one or two clever Englishmen present; Vincent and I joined them.

"Have you met the Persian prince yet?" said Sir George Lynton to me; "he is a man of much talent, and great desire of knowledge. He intends to publish his observations on Paris, and I suppose we shall have an admirable supplement to Montesquieu's Lettres Persannes!"

"I wish we had," said Vincent: "there are few better satires on a civilized country than the observations of visitors less polished; while on the contrary the civilized traveller, in describing the manners of the American barbarian, instead of conveying ridicule upon the visited, points the sarcasm on the visitor; and Tacitus could not have thought of a finer or n.o.bler satire on the Roman luxuries than that insinuated by his treatise on the German simplicity."

"What," said Monsieur D'E--(an intelligent ci-devant emigre), "what political writer is generally esteemed as your best?"

"It is difficult to say," replied Vincent, "since with so many parties we have many idols; but I think I might venture to name Bolingbroke as among the most popular. Perhaps, indeed, it would be difficult to select a name more frequently quoted and discussed than his; and yet his political works are the least valuable part of his remains; and though they contain many lofty sentiments, and many beautiful yet scattered truths, they were written when legislation, most debated, was least understood, and ought to be admired rather as excellent for the day than estimable in themselves. The life of Bolingbroke would convey a juster moral than all his writings: and the author who gives us a full and impartial memoir of that extraordinary man, will have afforded both to the philosophical and political literature of England one of its greatest desideratums."

"It seems to me," said Monsieur D'E--, "that your national literature is peculiarly deficient in biography--am I right in my opinion?"

"Indubitably!" said Vincent; "we have not a single work that can be considered a model in biography, (excepting, perhaps, Middleton's Life of Cicero.) This brings on a remark I have often made in distinguis.h.i.+ng your philosophy from ours. It seems to me that you who excel so admirably in biography, memoirs, comedy, satirical observation on peculiar cla.s.ses, and pointed aphorisms, are fonder of considering man in his relation to society and the active commerce of the world, than in the more abstracted and metaphysical operations of the mind.

Our writers, on the contrary, love to indulge rather in abstruse speculations on their species--to regard man in an abstract and isolated point of view, and to see him think alone in his chamber, while you prefer beholding him act with the mult.i.tude in the world."