"And your cousin would give her eyes to become the tenth," the mother replied.
"My cousin give her eyes!" Fatima exclaimed. "It's not much, I'm sure, for she squints abominably." And thus the ladies prattled, as they rode home at night after the great ball at the house of the Baron of Barbazure.
The gentle reader, who has overheard their talk, will understand the doubts which pervaded the mind of the lovely Fatima, and the well-nurtured English maiden will participate in the divided feelings which rent her bosom. 'Tis true, that on his departure for the holy wars, Romane and Fatima were plighted to each other; but the folly of long engagements is proverbial; and though for many months the faithful and affectionate girl had looked in vain for news from him, her admirable parents had long spoken with repugnance of a match which must bring inevitable poverty to both parties. They had suffered, 'tis true, the engagement to subside, hostile as they ever were to it; but when on the death of the ninth lady of Barbazure, the noble baron remarked Fatima at the funeral, and rode home with her after the ceremony, her prudent parents saw how much wiser, better, happier for their child it would be to have for life a partner like the baron, than to wait the doubtful return of the penniless wanderer to whom she was plighted.
Ah! how beautiful and pure a being! how regardless of self! how true to duty! how obedient to parental command, is that earthly angel, a well-bred woman of genteel family! Instead of indulging in splenetic refusals or vain regrets for her absent lover, the exemplary Fatima at once signified to her excellent parents her willingness to obey their orders; though she had sorrows (and she declared them to be tremendous), the admirable being disguised them so well, that none knew they oppressed her. She said she would try to forget former ties, and (so strong in her mind was DUTY above every other feeling!—so strong may it be in every British maiden!) the lovely girl kept her promise. "My former engagements," she said, packing up Romane's letters and presents, (which, as the good knight was mortal poor, were in sooth of no great price)—"my former engagements I look upon as childish follies;—my affections are fixed where my dear parents graft them—on the noble, the princely, the polite Barbazure. 'Tis true he is not comely in feature, but the chaste and well-bred female knows how to despise the fleeting charms of form. 'Tis true he is old; but can woman be better employed than in tending her aged and sickly companion? That he has been married is likewise certain—but ah, my mother! who knows not that he must be a good and tender husband, who, nine times wedded, owns that, he cannot be happy without another partner?"
It was with these admirable sentiments the lovely Fatima proposed obedience to her parents' will, and consented to receive the magnificent marriage-gift presented to her by her gallant bridegroom.
III.
The old Countess of Chacabacque had made a score of vain attempts to see her hapless daughter. Ever, when she came, the porters grinned at her savagely through the grating of the portcullis of the vast embattled gate of the Castle of Barbazure, and rudely bade her begone. "The Lady of Barbazure sees nobody but her confessor, and keeps her chamber," was the invariable reply of the dogged functionaries to the entreaties of the agonized mother. And at length, so furious was he at her perpetual calls at his gate, that the angry Lord of Barbazure himself, who chanced to be at the postern, armed a cross-bow, and let fly an arblast at the crupper of the lady's palfrey, whereon she fled finally, screaming, and in terror. "I will aim at the rider next time!" howled the ferocious baron, "and not at the horse!" And those who knew his savage nature and his unrivalled skill as a bowman, knew that he would neither break his knightly promise nor miss his aim.
Since the fatal day when the Grand Duke of Burgundy gave his famous passage of arms at Nantes, and all the nobles of France were present at the joustings, it was remarked that the Barbazure's heart was changed towards his gentle and virtuous lady.
For the three first days of that famous festival, the redoubted Baron of Barbazure had kept the field against all the knights who entered. His lance bore everything down before it. The most famous champions of Europe, assembled at these joustings, had dropped, one by one, before this tremendous warrior. The prize of the tourney was destined to be his, and he was to be proclaimed bravest of the brave, as his lady was the fairest of the fair.
On the third day, however, as the sun was declining over the Vosges, and the shadows were lengthening over the plain where the warrior had obtained such triumphs;—after having overcome two hundred and thirteen knights of different nations, including the fiery Dunois, the intrepid Walter Manny, the spotless Bayard, and the undaunted Dugueselin, as the conqueror sat still erect on his charger, and the multitudes doubted whether ever another champion could be found to face him, three blasts of a trumpet were heard, faint at first, but at every moment ringing more clearly, until a knight in pink armor rode into the lists with his visor down, and riding a tremendous dun charger, which he managed to the admiration of all present.
The heralds asked him his name and quality.
"Call me," said he, in a hollow voice, "the Jilted Knight." What was it made the Lady of Barbazure tremble at his accents.
The knight refused to tell his name and qualities; but the companion who rode with him, the young and noble Philibert de Coquelicot, who was known and respected universally through the neighborhood, gave a warranty for the birth and noble degree of the Jilted Knight—and Raoul de Barbazure, yelling hoarsely for a two-hundred-and-fourteenth lance, shook the huge weapon in the air as though it were a reed, and prepared to encounter the intruder.
According to the wont of chivalry, and to keep the point of the spear from harm, the top of the unknown knight's lance was shielded with a bung, which the warrior removed; and galloping up to Barbazure's pavilion, over which his shield hung, touched that noble cognizance with the sharpened steel. A thrill of excitement ran through the assembly at this daring challenge to a combat a l'outrance. "Hast thou confessed, Sir Knight?" roared the Barbazure; "take thy ground, and look to thyself; for by heaven thy last hour is come!" "Poor youth, poor youth!" sighed the spectators; "he has called down his own fate." The next minute the signal was given, and as the simoom across the desert, the cataract down the rock, the shell from the howitzer, each warrior rushed from his goal.
* * *
"Thou wilt not slay so good a champion?" said the Grand Duke, as at the end of that terrific combat the knight in rose armor stood over his prostrate foe, whose helmet had rolled off when he was at length unhorsed, and whose bloodshot eyes glared unutterable hate and ferocity on his conqueror.
"Take thy life," said he who had styled himself the Jilted Knight; "thou hast taken all that was dear to me." And the sun setting, and no other warrior appearing to do battle against him, he was proclaimed the conqueror, and rode up to the duchess's balcony to receive the gold chain which was the reward of the victor. He raised his visor as the smiling princess guerdoned him—raised it, and gave ONE sad look towards the Lady Fatima at her side!
"Romane de Clos-Vougeot!" shrieked she, and fainted. The Baron of Barbazure heard the name as he writhed on the ground with his wound, and by his slighted honor, by his broken ribs, by his roused fury, he swore revenge; and the Lady Fatima, who had come to the tourney as a queen, returned to her castle as a prisoner.
(As it is impossible to give the whole of this remarkable novel, let it suffice to say briefly here, that in about a volume and a half, in which the descriptions of scenery, the account of the agonies of the baroness, kept on bread and water in her dungeon, and the general tone of morality, are all excellently worked out, the Baron de Barbazure resolves upon putting his wife to death by the hands of the public executioner.)
* * *
Two minutes before the clock struck noon, the savage baron was on the platform to inspect the preparation for the frightful ceremony of mid-day.
The block was laid forth—the hideous minister of vengeance, masked and in black, with the flaming glaive in his hand, was ready. The baron tried the edge of the blade w
ith his finger, and asked the dreadful swordsman if his hand was sure? A nod was the reply of the man of blood. The weeping garrison and domestics shuddered and shrank from him. There was not one there but loved and pitied the gentle lady.
Pale, pale as a stone, she was brought from her dungeon. To all her lord's savage interrogatories, her reply had been, "I am innocent." To his threats of death, her answer was, "You are my lord; my life is in your hands, to take or to give." How few are the wives, in our day, who show such angelic meekness! It touched all hearts around her, save that of the implacable Barbazure! Even the Lady Blanche, (Fatima's cousin), whom he had promised to marry upon his faithless wife's demise, besought for her kinswoman's life, and a divorce; but Barbazure had vowed her death.
"Is there no pity, sir?" asked the chaplain who had attended her.
"No pity?" echoed the weeping serving-maid.
"Did I not aye say I would die for my lord?" said the gentle lady, and placed herself at the block.
Sir Raoul de Barbazure seized up the long ringlets of her raven hair. "Now!" shouted he to the executioner, with a stamp of his foot—"Now strike!"
The man (who knew his trade) advanced at once, and poised himself to deliver his blow: and making his flashing sword sing in the air, with one irresistible, rapid stroke, it sheared clean off the head of the furious, the bloodthirsty, the implacable Baron de Barbazure!
Thus he fell a victim to his own jealousy: and the agitation of the Lady Fatima may be imagined, when the executioner, flinging off his mask, knelt gracefully at her feet, and revealed to her the well-known features of Romane de Clos-Vougeot.
LORDS AND LIVERIES.
BY THE AUTHORESS OF "DUKES AND DEJEUNERS," "HEARTS AND DIAMONDS," "MARCHIONESSES AND MILLINERS," ETC. ETC.
I.
"CORBLEU! What a lovely creature that was in the Fitzbattleaxe box to-night," said one of a group of young dandies who were leaning over the velvet-cushioned balconies of the "Coventry Club," smoking their full-flavored Cubas (from Hudson's) after the opera.
Everybody stared at such an exclamation of enthusiasm from the lips of the young Earl of Bagnigge, who was never heard to admire anything except a coulis de dindonneau a la St. Menehould, or a supreme de cochon en torticolis a la Piffarde; such as Champollion, the chef of the "Traveller's," only knows how to dress; or the bouquet of a flask of Medoc, of Carbonell's best quality; or a goutte of Marasquin, from the cellars of Briggs and Hobson.
Alured de Pentonville, eighteenth Earl of Bagnigge, Viscount Paon of Islington, Baron Pancras, Kingscross, and a Baronet, was, like too many of our young men of ton, utterly blase, although only in his twenty-fourth year. Blest, luckily, with a mother of excellent principles (who had imbued his young mind with that Morality which is so superior to all the vain pomps of the world!) it had not been always the young earl's lot to wear the coronet for which he now in sooth cared so little. His father, a captain of Britain's navy, struck down by the side of the gallant Collingwood in the Bay of Fundy, left little but his sword and spotless name to his young, lovely, and inconsolable widow, who passed the first years of her mourning in educating her child in an elegant though small cottage in one of the romantic marine villages of beautiful Devonshire. Her child! What a gush of consolation filled the widow's heart as she pressed him to it! How faithfully did she instil into his young bosom those principles which had been the pole-star of the existence of his gallant father!
In this secluded retreat, rank and wealth almost boundless found the widow and her boy. The seventeenth Earl—gallant and ardent, and in the prime of youth—went forth one day from the Eternal City to a steeple-chase in the Campagna. A mutilated corpse was brought back to his hotel in the Piazza di Spagna. Death, alas! is no respecter of the Nobility. That shattered form was all that remained of the fiery, the haughty, the wild, but the generous Altamont de Pentonville! Such, such is fate!
The admirable Emily de Pentonville trembled with all a mother's solicitude at the distinctions and honors which thus suddenly descended on her boy. She engaged an excellent clergyman of the Church of England to superintend his studies; to accompany him on foreign travel when the proper season arrived; to ward from him those dangers which dissipation always throws in the way of the noble, the idle, and the wealthy. But the Reverend Cyril Delaval died of the measles at Naples, and henceforth the young Earl of Bagnigge was without a guardian.
What was the consequence? That, at three-and-twenty, he was a cynic and an epicure. He had drained the cup of pleasure till it had palled in his unnerved hand. He had looked at the Pyramids without awe, at the Alps without reverence. He was unmoved by the sandy solitudes of the Desert as by the placid depths of Mediterranean's sea of blue. Bitter, bitter tears did Emily de Pentonville weep, when, on Alured's return from the Continent, she beheld the awful change that dissipation had wrought in her beautiful, her blue-eyed, her perverted, her still beloved boy!
"Corpo di Bacco," he said, pitching the end of his cigar on to the red nose of the Countess of Delawaddymore's coachman—who, having deposited her fat ladyship at No. 236 Piccadilly, was driving the carriage to the stables, before commencing his evening at the "Fortune of War" public-house—"what a lovely creature that was! What eyes! what hair! Who knows her? Do you, mon cher prince?"
"E bellissima, certamente," said the Duca de Montepulciano, and stroked down his jetty moustache.
"Ein gar schones Madchen," said the Hereditary Grand Duke of Eulenschreckenstein, and turned up his carroty one.
"Elle n'est pas mal, ma foi!" said the Prince de Borodino, with a scowl on his darkling brows. "Mon Dieu, que ces cigarres sont mauvais!" he added as he too cast away his Cuba.
"Try one of my Pickwicks," said Franklin Fox, with a sneer, offering his gold etui to the young Frenchman; "they are some of Pontet's best, Prince. What, do you bear malice? Come, let us be friends," said the gay and careless young patrician; but a scowl on the part of the Frenchman was the only reply.
"Want to know who she is? Borodino knows who she is, Bagnigge," the wag went on.
Everybody crowded around Monsieur de Borodino thus apostrophized. The Marquis of Alicompayne, young De Boots of the Lifeguards, Tom Protocol of the Foreign Office; the gay young Peers, Farintosh, Poldoody, and the rest; and Bagnigge, for a wonder, not less eager than any one present.
"No, he will tell you nothing about her. Don't you see he has gone off in a fury!" Franklin Fox continued. "He has his reasons, ce cher prince: he will tell you nothing; but I will. You know that I am au mieux with the dear old duchess."
"They say Frank and she are engaged after the duke's death," cried Poldoody.
"I always thought Fwank was the duke's illicit gweatgwandson," drawled out De Boots.
"I heard that he doctored her Blenheim, and used to bring her wigs from Paris," cried that malicious Tom Protocol, whose mots are known in every diplomatic salon from Petersburg to Palermo.
"Burn her wigs and hang her poodle!" said Bagnigge. "Tell me about this girl, Franklin Fox."
"In the first place, she has five hundred thousand acres, in a ring fence in Norfolk; a county in Scotland, a castle in Wales, a villa at Richmond, a corner house in Belgrave Square, and eighty thousand a year in the three-per-cents."
"Apres?" said Bagnigge, still yawning.
"Secondly, Borodino lui fait la cour. They are cousins, her mother was an Armagnac of the emigration; the old Marshal, his father, married another sister. I believe he was footman in the family, before Napoleon princified him."
"No, no, he was second coachman," Tom Protocol good-naturedly interposed—"a cavalry officer, Frank, not an infantry man."
"'Faith you should have seen his fury (the young one's, I mean) when he found me in the duchess's room this evening, tete-a-tete with the heiress, who deigned to receive a bouquet from this hand."
"It cost me three guineas," poor Frank said, with a shrug and a sigh, "and that Covent Garden scoundrel gives no credit: but she took the flowers;—eh, Bagnigge?"
"And flung them to Alboni," the Peer replied, with a haughty sneer. And poor little Franklin Fox was compelled to own that she had.
The maitre d'hotel here announced that supper was served. It was remarked that even the coulis de dindonneau made no impression on Bagnigge that night.
II.
The sensation produced by the debut of Amethyst Pimlico at the court of the sovereign, and in the salons of the beau-monde, was such as has seldom been created by the appearance of any other beauty. The men were raving with love, and the women with jealousy. Her eyes, her beauty, her wit, her grace, her ton, caused a perfect fureur of admiration or envy.
Introduced by the Duchess of Fitzbattleaxe, along with her Grace's daughters, the Ladies Gwendoline and Gwinever Portcullis, the heiress's regal beauty quite flung her cousins' simple charms into the shade, and blazed with a splendor which caused all "minor lights" to twinkle faintly. Before a day the beau-monde, before a week even the vulgarians of the rest of the town, rang with the fame of her charms; and while the dandies and the beauties were raving about her, or tearing her to pieces in May Fair, even Mrs. Dobbs (who had been to the pit of the "Hoperer" in a green turban and a crumpled yellow satin) talked about the great HAIRESS to her D. in Bloomsbury Square.
Crowds went to Squab and Lynch's, in Long Acre, to examine the carriages building for her, so faultless, so splendid, so quiet, so odiously unostentatious and provokingly simple! Besides the ancestral services of argenterie and vaisselle plate, contained in a hundred and seventy-six plate-chests at Messrs. Childs', Rumble and Briggs prepared a gold service, and Garraway, of the Haymarket, a service of the Benvenuto Cellini pattern, which were the admiration of all London. Before a month it is a fact that the wretched haberdashers in the city exhibited the blue stocks, called "Heiress-killers, very chaste, two-and-six:" long before that, the monde had rushed to Madame Crinoline's, or sent couriers to Madame Marabou, at Paris, so as to have copies of her dresses; but, as the Mantuan bard observes, "Non cuivis contigit,"—every foot cannot accommodate itself to the chaussure of Cinderella.