Pelham — Complete. Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон
of my individual self.
“When do you go?” she said, eagerly.
“In two days: my departure will be softened, if I can execute any commissions in England for Madame.”
“None,” said she; and then in a low tone (that none of the idlers, who were always found at her morning levees, should hear), she added, “you will receive a note from me this evening.”
I bowed, changed the conversation, and withdrew. I dined in my own rooms, and spent the evening in looking over the various billets-doux, received during my sejour at Paris.
“Where shall I put all these locks of hair?” asked Bedos, opening a drawer full.
“Into my scrap-book.”
“And all these letters?”
“Into the fire.”
I was just getting into bed when the Duchesse de Perpignan’s note arrived—it was as follows:—
“My dear Friend,
“For that word, so doubtful in our language, I may at least call you in your own. I am unwilling that you should leave this country with those sentiments you now entertain of me, unaltered, yet I cannot imagine any form of words of sufficient magic to change them. Oh! if you knew how much I am to be pitied; if you could look for one moment into this lonely and blighted heart; if you could trace, step by step, the progress I have made in folly and sin, you would see how much of what you now condemn and despise, I have owed to circumstances, rather than to the vice of my disposition. I was born a beauty, educated a beauty, owed fame, rank, power to beauty; and it is to the advantages I have derived from person that I owe the ruin of my mind. You have seen how much I now derive from art I loathe myself as I write that sentence; but no matter: from that moment you loathed me too. You did not take into consideration, that I had been living on excitement all my youth, and that in my maturer years I could not relinquish it. I had reigned by my attractions, and I thought every art preferable to resigning my empire: but in feeding my vanity, I had not been able to stifle the dictates of my heart. Love is so natural to a woman, that she is scarcely a woman who resists it: but in me it has been a sentiment, not a passion.
“Sentiment, then, and vanity, have been my seducers. I said, that I owed my errors to circumstances, not to nature. You will say, that in confessing love and vanity to be my seducers, I contradict this assertion—you are mistaken. I mean, that though vanity and sentiment were in me, yet the scenes in which I have been placed, and the events which I have witnessed, gave to those latent currents of action a wrong and a dangerous direction. I was formed to love; for one whom I did love I could have made every sacrifice. I married a man I hated, and I only learnt the depths of my heart when it was too late.
“Enough of this; you will leave this country; we shall never meet again—never! You may return to Paris, but I shall then be no more; n’importe—I shall be unchanged to the last. Je mourrai en reine.
“As a latest pledge of what I have felt for you, I send you the enclosed chain and ring; as a latest favour, I request you to wear them for six months, and, above all, for two hours in the Tuileries tomorrow. You will laugh at this request: it seems idle and romantic—perhaps it is so. Love has many exaggerations in sentiment, which reason would despise. What wonder, then, that mine, above that of all others, should conceive them? You will not, I know, deny this request. Farewell!—in this world we shall never meet again, and I believe not in the existence of another. Farewell!
“E. P.”
“A most sensible effusion,” said I to myself, when I had read this billet; “and yet, after all, it shows more feeling and more character than I could have supposed she possessed.” I took up the chain: it was of Maltese workmanship; not very handsome, nor, indeed, in any way remarkable, except for a plain hair ring which was attached to it, and which I found myself unable to take off, without breaking. “It is a very singular request,” thought I, “but then it comes from a very singular person; and as it rather partakes of adventure and intrigue, I shall at all events appear in the Tuileries, tomorrow, chained and ringed.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
Thy incivility shall not make me fail to do what becomes me; and since thou hast more valour than courtesy, I for thee will hazard that life which thou wouldst take from me.
About the usual hour for the promenade in the Tuileries, I conveyed myself thither. I set the chain and ring in full display, rendered still more conspicuous by the dark coloured dress which I always wore. I had not been in the gardens ten minutes, before I perceived a young Frenchman, scarcely twenty years of age, look with a very peculiar air at my new decorations. He passed and repassed me, much oftener than the alternations of the walk warranted; and at last, taking off his hat, said in a low tone, that he wished much for the honour of exchanging a few words with me in private. I saw, at the first glance, that he was a gentleman, and accordingly withdrew with him among the trees, in the more retired part of the garden.
“Permit me,” said he, “to inquire how that ring and chain came into your possession?”
“Monsieur,” I replied, “you will understand me, when I say, that the honour of another person is implicated in my concealment of that secret.”
“Sir,” said the Frenchman, colouring violently, “I have seen them before—in a word, they belong to me!”
I smiled—my young hero fired at this. “Oui, Monsieur,” said he, speaking very loud, and very quick, “they belong to me, and I insist upon your immediately restoring them, or vindicating your claim to them by arms.”
“You leave me but one answer, Monsieur,” said I; “I will find a friend to wait upon you immediately. Allow me to inquire your address?” The Frenchman, who was greatly agitated, produced a card. We bowed and separated.
I was glancing over the address I held in my hand, which was—C. D’Azimart, Rue de Bourbon Numero—, when my ears were saluted with—
“‘Now do you know me?—thou shouldst be Alonzo.’”
I did not require the faculty of sight to recognize Lord Vincent. “My dear fellow,” said I, “I am rejoiced to see you!” and thereupon I poured into his ear the particulars of my morning adventure. Lord Vincent listened to me with much apparent interest, and spoke very unaffectedly of his readiness to serve me, and his regret at the occasion.
“Pooh.” said I, “a duel in France, is not like one in England; the former is a matter of course; a trifle of common occurrence; one makes an engagement to fight, in the same breath as an engagement to dine; but the latter is a thing of state and solemnity—long faces—early rising—and willmaking. But do get this business over as soon as you can, that we may dine at the Rocher afterwards.”
“Well, my dear Pelham,” said Vincent, “I cannot refuse you my services; and as I suppose Monsieur D’Azimart will choose swords, I venture to augur everything from your skill in that species of weapon. It is the first time I have ever interfered in affairs of this nature, but I hope to get well through the present,
“‘Nobilis ornatur lauro collega secundo,’
as Juvenal says: au revoir,” and away went Lord Vincent, half forgetting all his late anxiety for my life, in his paternal pleasure for the delivery of his quotation.
Vincent is the only punster I ever knew with a good heart. No action to that race in general is so serious an occupation as the play upon words; and the remorseless habit of murdering a phrase, renders them perfectly obdurate to the simple death of a friend. I walked through every variety the straight paths of the Tuileries could afford, and was beginning to get exceedingly tired, when Lord Vincent returned. He looked very grave, and I saw at once that he was come to particularize the circumstances of the last extreme.