Diary And Notes Of Horace Templeton, Esq. Volume I. Lever Charles James
“would that I could add, other feelings were as easily forgotten.”
Not at once catching my meaning, she turned her full and lustrous eyes upon me, and then suddenly aware of my words, or reading the explanation in my own looks, she blushed deeply, and after a pause said,
“And what are your plans now? do you remain here some time?”
“No, I am trying to reach Italy. It has become as classic to die there nowadays, as once it was to live in that fair land.”
“Italy!” interrupted she, blushing still deeper. “Favancourt is now asking for a mission there – Naples is vacant.”
This time I succeeded in catching her eyes, but she hastily withdrew them, and we were both silent.
“Have you been to the Opera yet?” said she, with a voice full of all its habitual softness.
“You forget,” said I, smiling, “that I am an invalid: besides, I only arrived here last night.”
“Oh, I am sure that much will not fatigue you. The Duc de Blancard has given us his box while we stay here, and we shall always have a place for you; and I pray you to come; if not for the music, for my sake,” she added hastily: “for I own nothing can be possibly more stupid than our nightly visitors. I hear of nothing but ministerial intrigue, the tactics of the centre droit and the opposition, with a little very tiresome gossip of the Tuileries; and Favancourt thinks himself political, when he is only prosy. Now, I long for a little real chit-chat about London and our own people. Apropos, what became of Lady Frances Gunnington? did she really marry the young cornet of dragoons and sail for India?”
“The saddest is to be told: he was killed in the Punjaub, and she is now coming home a widow.”
“How very sad! – was she as pretty as they said? – handsomer than Lucy Fox I have heard!”
“I almost think so.”
“That is great praise from you, if there be any truth in on dits. Had not you a kind of tenderness in that quarter?”
“Me!”
“Nay, don’t affect surprise: we heard the story at Florence, and a very funny story it was: that Lucy insisted upon it, if you didn’t propose for her, that she would for you, since she was determined to be mistress of a certain black Arabian that you had; and that you, fearing consequences, sent her the horse, and so compromised the affair.”
“How very absurd!”
“But is it not true? Can you deny having made a present of the steed?”
“She did me the honour to accept of a pony, but the attenuating circumstances are all purely imaginary.”
“Si non vero e ben trovato. – It was exactly what she would do!”
“An unfair inference, which I feel bound to enter a protest against. If we were only to charge our acquaintances with what we deem them capable of – ”
“Well, finish, I pray you.”
“I was only about to add, what would become of ourselves?”
“Meaning you and me, for instance?”
I bowed an assent.
“‘Qui s’excuse, s’accuse,’ says the adage,” rejoined she gaily: “I neither do one nor the other. At the same time, let me confess to one thing of which I am capable, which is, of detesting any one who in this age of the world affects to give a tone of moralizing to a conversation. Now I presume you don’t wish this. I will even take it for granted, that you would rather we were good friends, as we used to be long ago. – Oh dear, don’t sigh that way!”
“It was you that sighed!”
“Well, I am very sorry for it. It was wrong of me, and very wrong of you to tell me of it. But dear me! is it so late? can it really be three o’clock?”
“I am a quarter past; but I think we must both be fast. You are going out?”
“A mere drive in the Champs Elysées, where I shall pay a few visits and be back to dinner. Will you dine with us?”
“I pray you to excuse me – don’t forget I am a sick man.”
“Well, then, we shall see you at the Opera?”
“I fear not. If I might ask a favour, it would be to take the volume of Balzac away with me.”
“Oh, to be sure! But we have some others, much newer. You know ‘Le Recherche de l’Absolu’, already?”
“Yes; but I like ‘Eugénie’ still better. It was an old taste of mine, and as you quoted a proverb a few moments ago, let me give you another as trite and as true, —
‘On revient toujours.’”
“‘A ses premières amours,’”
said she, finishing; while with a smile, half playful, half sad, she turned toward the window, and I retired noiselessly, and without an adieu.
Heigho! how nervous and irritable I feel! The very sight of that handsome barouche that has driven from the hôtel, with its beautiful occupant lying listlessly back among the cushions, has set my heart a-beating far far too hurriedly. How is it that the laws that govern material nature are so inoperative in ours, and that a heart that never felt can make another feel? Heaven knows! It is not love; even my first passion, perhaps, little merited the name: but now, reading her as worldliness as taught roe to do-seeing how little relation exists between attractions and fascinations of the very highest order and any real sentiment, any true feeling – knowing how “Life” is her idol, how in that one idea is comprised all that vanity, self-love, false pride, and passion can form, – how is it that she, whom I recognise thus, that she can move me? There is nothing so like a battle as a sham fight in a review.
CHAPTER II
I must leave Paris at once. The weather is intolerably hot; the leaves that were green ten days ago already are shewing symptoms of the sear and yellow. Is it in compliment to the august inhabitant of the palace that the garden is so empressé to turn its coat? Shame on my ingratitude to say so! for I find that his Majesty has sent me a card of invitation to dine on Friday next. Another reason for a hurried departure! Of all moderate endurances, I know of none to compare with a dinner at the Tuileries. “Stay! – halt!” cries Memory; “I’ll tell you of one worse again – a dinner at Neuilly!”
The former is sure to include a certain number of distinguished and remarkable men, who, even under the chill and restraint of a royal entertainment, venture now and then on some few words that supply the void where conversation should be. At Neuilly it is strictly a family party, where, whatever ease may be felt by the illustrious hosts, the guests have none of it. Juvenal quaintly asks, If that can be a battle where you strike and I am beaten? so one is tempted to inquire, If that can be called society where a royal personage talks rapidly for hours, and the listener must not even look dissent? The King of the French is unquestionably a great man, but not greater in any thing than in the complete mystification in which he has succeeded in enveloping his real character, mingling up together elements so strange, so incongruous, and seemingly inconsistent, that the actual direction or object of any political move he has ever made, will always bear a double appreciation. The haughty monarch is the citizen king; the wily and secret politician, the most free-spoken and candid of men: the most cautious in an intrigue, the very rashest in action. How is it possible to divine the meaning, or guess the wishes, of one whose nature seems so Protean?
His foreign policy is, however, the master-stroke of his genius, – the cunning game by which he has conciliated the party of popular institutions and beguiled the friends of absolutism, delighting Tom Buncombe and winning praise from Nicholas. Like all clever men who are vain of their cleverness, he has always been fond of employing agents of inferior capacity, but of unquestionable devotion to his interests. What small intelligences – to use a phrase more French than English – were the greater number of the French ministers and secretaries I have met accredited to foreign courts! I remember