CHAPTER XXXIV. CONCLUSION
I had few inducements to prolong my stay at Naples. The society in which I moved had received a shock so terrible that for some time, at least, it could not hope to recover, and an air of gloom and despondency prevailed, where so lately all had worn the livery of pleasure.
I made my farewell visit, therefore, at the court, and the various embassies, and set out for Paris. This time, grown wiser by experience, I did not seek to astonish the world by any gorgeous display of my riches. I travelled with but two carriages, one of which contained my luggage; the other, a light “coupé,” I occupied alone. My route lay through Rome and Florence, across the Apennines to Milan, and thence, by the glorious scenery of the Splügen, into Switzerland; but I saw little of the varied scenes through which I journeyed. My whole thoughts were engaged upon the future.
I had once more won the great prize in the world’s lottery, and I never ceased catechizing myself in what way I should exercise my power.
From what I had already observed of life, the great mistake of rich men seemed to me, their addiction to some one pursuit of pleasure, which gradually gained an undue ascendency over their minds, and exercised at last an unwonted degree of tyranny. The passion for play, the love of pictures, the taste for company-seeing, the sports of the field, and so on, ought never to be allowed any paramount place, or used as pursuits; all these things should be simply employed as means of obtaining an ascendency over other men, and of exercising that sway which is never denied to success.
Some men are your slaves because your cook is unrivalled, or your cellar incomparable: others look up to you because your equipages exhibit an elegance with which none can vie; because your thoroughbreds are larger, show more bone, and carry the highest condition. Others, again, revere you for your Vandykes and your Titians, your Rembrandts and Murillos, your illuminated missals, your antique marbles. To every section of society you can exhibit some peculiar and special temptation, which, in their blind admiration, they refer to as an attribute of yourself. Your own fault is it if they ever discover their error! The triumphs of Raphael and Velasquez shed a reflected light upon him who possesses them; and so of each excellence that wealth can purchase. You stand embodied in the exercise of your taste, and in your own person receive the adulation which greatness and genius have achieved.
To accomplish this, however, requires infinite tact and a great abrogation of self. All individuality must be merged, and a new character created, from the “disjecta membra” of many crafts and callings.
To have any one inordinate passion is to betray a weak spot in one’s armor of which the cunning will soon take advantage. Such were among my meditations as I rolled along towards Paris; and so long as I journeyed alone, with no other companionship than my own thoughts, these opinions appeared sage and well reasoned; but how soon were they routed as I drove into that gorgeous capital, and saw the full tide of its pleasure-loving inhabitants as it rolled proudly past! How vain to reason farther upon the regulation of a life to which wealth set no limits! how impossible to restrain one’s self within the barriers of cold prudential thought, where all was to be had for asking!
Ah, Con, your philosophy was excellent while, sitting in the corner of your coupe, you rolled along unnoticed, save by the vacant stare of some vigneron in a blue cotton nightcap, or some short-legged wench in wooden “sabots;” but now that you stand in the window of your great hotel in the Place Vendôme and see the gathering crowd which inquires, who is the illustrious arrival? your heart begins to beat quicker and fuller; you feel like a great actor, for whom the house is already impatient; nor is the curtain to remain longer down. You are scarcely an hour in Paris when your visitors began to call. Here are cards without number, – officers in high command, courtiers, ministers, and aides-de-camp of those whose rank precludes the first visit. The “place” is like a fair, with its crush of equipages, the hotel is actually besieged. Every language of Europe is heard within its “porte-cochère,” and your own chasseur is overwhelmed with questionings enough to drive him distracted.
Is it any wonder how the poor man adulates wealth, when those in high station – the great and titled of the earth – are so ready to worship and revere it!
My first care was, of course, to present myself before the Prince, my gracious master, and I drove at once to the Tuileries. There was a reception that morning by the King, and the Duc de St. Cloud led me forward and presented me to his Majesty, with a very eulogistic account of my services in Africa.
The King listened most graciously to the narrative, and then, with a cordial courtesy that at once put me at my ease, asked me several questions about my campaigns, all ingeniously contrived to be complimentary to me.
“Yours is not originally a Spanish family, Count; I fancy the name is Celtic.”
“Yes, Sire, we came from Ireland,” said I, blushing in spite of myself.
“Ah, very true. There was always a great interchange of races between the two nations. And have you never tried to trace back among your Irish ancestors, so as to learn who are the lineal descendants of your house?”
“I have been hitherto, Sire, rather a man of action than of thought or reflection. To obtain possession of a property belonging to my family, I undertook a journey to, and a long residence in, Mexico; and although successful in this, a subsequent misfortune deprived me of all I owned, and left me actually in want. The good fortune which led me to take service under your Majesty has, however, never deserted me, and I am enabled once again to assume the station that belonged to me.”
The King heard me with apparent pleasure, and after a few generalities about Paris and my acquaintances, said: “His Royal Highness the Duc de St. Cloud has asked me to appoint you on my personal staff. There is not at the present a vacancy, but you shall be named as an extra aide-de-camp in the meanwhile.”
Overwhelmed by this distinction, I could only bow my gratitude in silence; and, with an air and show of great devotion, I retired from the royal presence. Thus did proper feeling suggest the truest politeness; for had I been more assured, the chances were I should have endeavored to say something, and consequently committed a very grievous breach of etiquette.
The following day I received an invitation to dine at Court. The company was numerous, and among them I discovered the young English attaché who had so insolently treated my demands on my first visit to Paris. With what sovereign contempt did I now look down upon him! He was there, exactly as I left him, muddling away in the petty details of his little routine life, – signing a passport or copying a despatch, playing off the airs of grand seigneur to couriers and laquais de place, while in the same time I had won honors and rewards upon the field of battle, and now stood while the Prince leaned upon my arm and chatted familiarly over the assembled company. Nothing gave me a more confident sense of my own standing in the world than the feeling with which I now regarded those whom once I looked up to with a kind of awe. It is precisely as we discover that the hills which in childhood we believed to be gigantic mountains are mere hillocks, that in after life we find out how indescribably small are many of those we used to think of as “high and mighty.”
I therefore sneered down my poor attaché, and as I passed him, I believe I even suffered my sabre to jar against his leg, not without hoping that he might notice the slight, and seek satisfaction for it. In this I was disappointed, and I left him, never to trouble my head more about him.
Among the pleasures which awaited me in Paris, none gave me more sincere satisfaction than the renewal of my acquaintance with De Minérale, who, however, could never believe that my good fortune was other than some lucky accident of my African campaign.
“Come, out with it,” he would say. “You robbed a ‘Smala,’ you pillaged a ‘Deira,’ or something of the sort. Tell me frankly how it was, and, on my honor, I ‘ll never print it till you ‘re dead and gone. In fact, if you persist in refusing, I ‘ll give you to the world, with name in full. I ‘ll describe you as a fellow that picked up a treasure in some small island of the Mediterranean, and turned millionnaire after being a pirate.”
“Put me down for fifty copies of the book,” said I, laughing; “I’m rich enough now to encourage the small-fry of literature.”
Thus did we often jest with each other, and we met continually; for when not invited out myself, I gave entertainments at home, at which I assembled various members of that artistic set in which I had once moved, – a very different order of society from that in which I mixed in Naples, and, I am free to own, with far less claim to real agreeability. The “wits by profession” were not only less natural than the smart people of society, but they wearied you by the exactions of their drollery. Not to laugh at the sorriest jest was to discredit the jester, and the omission became a serious thing when it touched a man’s livelihood. In fact, from first to last, in whatever country I have lived, I have ever found that the best – that is, the highest society – was always the most agreeable as well as the most profitable. Its forms were not alone regulated upon the surest basis of comfort, but its tone ever tended to promote whatever was pleasurable, and exclude everything that could hurt or offend. So is it, your great aristocrats are very democratic in a drawing-room, – professing and practising the most perfect equality; while your “rights of man” and “popular sovereignty advocate” insists upon always being the king of his company. Forgive this digression, my dear reader, if for nothing else than because it shall be the last time of my offending.
I had now enjoyed myself at Paris about two months, or thereabouts, in which, having most satisfactorily arranged all my monetary matters, and – besides having a considerable sum in the English funds – found myself down in the “Grand Livre” for a couple of million of francs, – a feature which made me a much-caressed individual in that new social order just then springing up, called the “financière” class, one which, if with few claims to the stately manners of the “Faubourg,” numbered as many pretty women and as agreeable ones as could be found anywhere. Had I been matrimonially disposed, this set would certainly have been dangerous ground for me, – the attentions which beset me being almost like adulation. The truth was, however, Donna Maria had left an impression which comparison with others did not efface. I felt, if I were to marry, it might as well be for high rank and family influence, since I never could do so for love. My nobility required a little strengthening, nor was there any easier or more efficient mode of supporting it than by an alliance with some of those antiquated houses who, with small fortunes but undiminished pride, inhabited the solitudes of the “Faubourg St. Germain.” I cannot afford space here to recount my adventures in that peaceful and deserted quarter, whose amusements ranged between masses and tric-trac, – where Piety and Pope Joan divided the hours. The antiquity of my family and the pureness of my Castilian blood! had been the pretensions which obtained admission for me into these sacred precincts; and there, I must say, everything seemed old and worn out: the houses, the salons, the furniture, the masters, servants, horses, carriages, – all were as old as the formalities and the opinions they professed.
Even the young ladies had got a premature cast of seriousness that took away every semblance of juvenility. Whether from associating with them, or that I had voluntarily conformed to the staid Puritanism of their manners, I cannot say, but my other acquaintances began to quiz and rally me about my “Legitimist” air, and even said that the change had been remarked at Court.
This was an observation that gave me some uneasiness, and I hastened off to the Duc de St. Cloud, whose kindness had always admitted me to the most open intercourse.
“It is quite true, Creganne,” said he, “we all remarked that you were coquetting with the ‘vieux,’ – the old ones of the Faubourg; and although I had never any misgivings about you, others were less charitable.”
“What is to be done, then?” said I, in my distress at the bare thought of seeming ungrateful.
“I’ll tell you,” said he: “there’s the post of secretary of embassy just vacant at Madrid; your knowledge of the language, and your Spanish blood, admirably fit you for the mission. Shall I ask for it in your behalf?”
I could scarcely speak, for gratitude. I was longing for some “charge,” some public station that would give me a recognized position as well as wealth.
The “Duc” hurried from the room, and after an absence of half-an-hour came back, laughing, to say: “This was quite a brilliant idea of mine, for the Minister of Foreign Affairs was just in conversation with the King, and seeing that they were both in good humor, and discussing the Madrid mission, I even asked for the post of ambassador for you, – ay, and, what’s better, obtained it, too.”
I could not believe my ears as I heard these words, and the Prince was obliged to repeat his tidings ere I could bring myself to credit them. “And now for a little plan of my own,” resumed he; “I am about to make a short visit to England, and, better still, to Ireland. You must accompany me. Of course I travel ‘incog.,’ which means that my real rank will be known to all persons in authority; but, avoiding all state and parade, I shall be able to see something of that remarkable country of which I have heard so much.”
I acknowledged a degree of curiosity to the full as great, but bewailed my ignorance of the language as a great drawback to the pleasures of the journey.
“But you do know a little English,” said the Prince.
“Not a word,” said I, coolly. “When a child, I believe I could speak it fluently, – so I have heard; but since that period I have utterly forgotten all about it.” This may seem to have been a gratuitous fiction on my part, but it was not so; and to prove it, I must tell the reader a little incident which was running in my mind at that moment. A certain Tipperary gentleman, whose name is too familiar for me to print, once called upon a countryman in Paris, and, after ringing stoutly at the bell, the door was opened by a very smartly dressed “maid,” whose grisette cap and apron immediately seemed to pronounce her to be French. “Est Capitaine, – est Monsieur O’Shea ici?” asked he, in considerable hesitation.
“Oh, sir! you’re English,” exclaimed the maid, in a very London accent.
“Yes, my little darlin’, I was asking for Captain O’Shea.”
“Ah, sir, you ‘re Irish!” said she, with a very significant fall of the voice. “So,” as he afterwards remarked, “my French showed that I was English, and my English that I was Irish.”
Now, although my French would have passed muster from Cannes to Caen, my English had something of the idiomatic peculiarity of the gentleman just alluded to; and were I only to speak once in Ireland, I must be inevitably detected. There was then no choice for it; I must even consent to talk through an interpreter, – a rather dull situation for a man about to “tour it” in Ireland!
As the Prince’s journey was a secret in Paris, our arrangements were made with great caution and despatch. We travelled down to Boulogne with merely one other companion, an old Colonel Demaunais, who had been for some years a prisoner in England, and spoke English fluently, and with only three servants; there was nothing in our “cortège” betraying the rank of his Royal Highness.
Apartments had been prepared for us at Mivart’s, and we dined each day at the French Embassy, – going to the Opera in the evening, and sight-seeing all the forenoon, like genuine “country cousins.” The Court was in Scotland; but even had it been in London, I conclude that the Prince would have been received in some mode which should not have attracted publicity.
Ten days sufficed for “town,” and we set out for Ireland, to visit which his Royal Highness was all impatience and eagerness.
Never can I forget the sensations with which I landed on that shore, which, about a dozen years before, I had quitted barefooted and hungry! Was the change alone in me; or what had come over the objects, to make them so very different from what they once were? The hotel that I remembered to have regarded as a kind of palace, where splendor and profusion prevailed, seemed now dirty and uncared-for; the waiters slovenly, the landlord rude, the apartments mean, and the food detestable! The public itself, as it paraded on the pier, was not that gorgeous panorama I once saw there, – the mingled elegance and fashion I used to regard with such eyes of wonderment and envy. What had become of them? Good looks there were, and in abundance, – for Irish women will be pretty, no matter what changes come over the land; but the men! good lack, what a strange aspect did they present! Without the air of fashion you see in Paris, or that more strongly marked characteristic of style and manliness the parks of London exhibit, here were displayed a kind of swaggering self-sufficiency whose pretension was awfully at variance with the mediocrity of their dress, and the easy jocularity that leered from their eyes. Some were aquatics, and wore Jersey shirts and frocks, loose trousers, and low shoes; but they overdid their parts, and lounged like Tom Cooke in a sea-piece.
Others appeared as élégans, and were even greater burlesques on the part. It was quite clear, however, that these formed no portion of the better classes of the capital, and so I hastened to assure the Prince, whose looks bespoke very palpable disappointment.
In Dublin, however, the changes were greater than I expected. It was not alone that I had seen other and greater capitals, where affluence and taste abound, and where, while the full tide of fashion sets “in” in one quarter, the still more exciting course of activity and industry flows along in another; but here an actual decline had taken place in the appearance of everything. The shops, the streets, the inhabitants, all looked in disrepair. There were few carriages, nothing deserving the name of equipage, – none of that stir and movement which characterize a capital. It all looked like a place where people dwelt to wear out their old houses and old garments, and to leave both behind them when no longer wearable. Windows mended with paper, pantaloons patched with party-colored cloth, “shocking bad hats,” mangy car-drivers, and great troops of beggars of every age and walk of mendicancy, were met with even in the best quarters; and with all these signs of poverty and decay, there was an air of swaggering recklessness in every one that was particularly striking. All were out of temper with England and English rule; and “Ireland for the Irish” was becoming a popular cant phrase, – pretty much on the same principle that blacklegs extinguish the lights when luck goes against them, and have a scramble for “the bank” in the dark. The strangest of all was, however, that nobody seemed to have died or left the place since I remembered it as a boy. There went the burly barrister down Bachelor’s Walk, with the same sturdy stride I used to admire of yore, – his cheek a little redder, his presence somewhat more portly, perhaps, but with the self-same smile with which he then cajoled the jury, and that imposing frown with which he repelled the freedom of a witness. There were the same civic magistrates, the same attorneys, dancing-masters, – ay, even the dandies had not been replaced, but were the old crop, sadly running to seed, and marvellously ill cared for.
Even the Castle officials were beautifully consistent, and true to their old traditions; they were as empty and insolent as ever. It was the English pale performed over again at the Upper Castle Yard, and all without its limits were the kerns and “wild Irish” of centuries ago.
How is a craft like this ever to take the sea, thought I, with misery and mutiny everywhere! With six feet of water in the hold, the crew are turning out for higher wages, and ready to throw overboard the man who counsels them to put a hand to the pump!
But what had I to do with all this? Nor would I allude to it here, save to mention the straits and difficulties which beset me, to account for changes that I had never anticipated.
We dined everywhere, from that viceregal palace in a swamp, to the musty halls of the Chief Secretary in the Castle. We partook of a civic feast, a picnic at the waterfall; we had one day with the military! And here, by the way, I recognized an old acquaintance of other days, the Hon. Captain De Courcy. He was still on the staff, and still constant to his ancient flame, who, with a little higher complexion and more profuse ringlets, – it is strange how color and hair go on increasing with years, – looked pretty much what I remembered her of yore.
“You had better wait for your groom, Mons. Le Comte,” said De Courcy to me at the review, as I was dismounting to speak to some people in the crowd of carriages. “Don’t trust those fellows. I once had a valuable mare stolen by one of those vagrants, and, what was worse, the rascal rode her at a steeplechase the same day.”
“Pas possible!” exclaimed I, at the bare thought of such an indignity. “What became of the young villain?”
“I forget, now, whether I let him off, or whether he was publicly whipped; but I am certain he never came to good.”
I felt a flush of anger rise to my cheek at this speech, but I checked my passion; and well I might, as I thought upon my own condition and upon his. To have expended any interest or sympathy as to the boy, besides, would have been absurd, and I was silent. Among our invitations, was one to the house of a baronet who resided in a midland county, only a few miles from my native place. We arrived at night at Knockdangan Castle, an edifice of modern gothic style, which means a marvellously expensive residence, rendered almost uninhabitable by the necessity of having winding stairs, narrow corridors, low ceilings, and pointed windows. The house was full of company, the greater part of whom had arrived unexpectedly; still, our reception was everything that genial hospitality could dictate. One of the drawing-rooms had been already converted into a kind of barrack-room, with half-a-dozen beds in it; and now the library was to be devoted to the Prince, while a small octagon tower leading off it, about the size and shape of a tea-tray, was reserved for me. If these arrangements were attended with inconvenience, certainly nothing in the manner of either host or hostess showed it. They and their numerous family of sons and daughters seemed to take it as the most natural thing in life to be thrown into disorder to accommodate their friends; not alone their friends, but their friends’ friends: for so proved more than half of the present company. Several of “the boys,” meaning the sons of the host, slept at houses in the neighborhood; we actually bivouacked in a little temple in the garden. There seemed no limit to the contrivances of our kind entertainers, either in the variety of the plans for pleasure, or the hearty good-nature with which they concurred in any suggestion of the guests. All that Spanish politeness expresses, as a phrase, was here reduced to actual practice. Everything was at the disposal of the stranger. Not alone was he at liberty to ride, drive, fish, shoot, hunt, boat, or course at will, but all his hours were at his own disposal, and his liberty unfettered, even as to whether he dined in his own apartment, or joined the general company. Nothing that the most courteous attention could provide was omitted, at the same time that the most ample freedom was secured to all. Here, too, was found a tone of cultivation that would have graced the most polished society of any European capital. Foreign languages were well understood and spoken; music practised in its higher walks; drawing cultivated with a skill rarely seen out of the hands of professed masters; subjects of politics and general literature were discussed with a knowledge and a liberality that bespoke the highest degree of enlightenment; while to all these gifts the general warmth of native character lent an indescribable charm of kindliness and cordiality that left none a stranger who spent even twelve hours beneath their roof.
The Prince was in ecstasies with everything and every one, and he himself no less a favorite with all. Every fall he got in hunting made him more popular; every misadventure that occurred to him, in trying to conform to native tastes, gave a new grace and charm to his character. The ladies pronounced him “a love,” and the men, in less polished, but not less hearty, encomium, called him “a devilish good fellow for a Frenchman.”
The habits I have already alluded to, of each guest living exactly how he pleased, gave a continual novelty to the company; sometimes two or three new faces would appear at the dinner-table or in the drawing-room, and conjecture was ever at work whether the last arrivals had been yet seen, and who were they who presented themselves at table?
“You will meet two new guests to-day, Count,” said the host one day, as we entered the drawing-room before dinner: “a Spanish Bishop and his niece, – a very charming person, and a widow of nineteen! They came over to Ireland about some disputed question of property, – being originally Irish by family, – and are now, I regret to say, about to return to Spain in a few days. Hitherto a severe cold has confined the Bishop to his chamber; and his niece, not being, I fancy, a proficient in any but her native language, had not courage to face a miscellaneous party. They will both, however, favor us to-day; and as you are the only one here who can command the ‘true Castilian tongue,’ you will take the Countess in to dinner.”
I bowed my acknowledgments, not sorry to have the occasion of displaying my Spanish and playing the agreeable to my fair countrywoman.
The drawing-room each day before dinner had no other light than that afforded by a great fire of bog deal, which, although diffusing a rich and ruddy glow over all who sat within the circle around it, left the remainder of the apartment in comparative darkness; and few, except those very intimate, were able to recognize each other in the obscurity. Whether this was a whim of the host, or a pardonable artifice to make the splendor of the well-lighted dinner-table more effective, on the principle of orators, who begin at a whisper to create silence, I know not, but we used to jest over the broken shins and upset spider tables that each day announced the entrance of some guest less familiarized to the geography of the apartment.
On this particular occasion the party was unusually large; possibly a certain curiosity to see the new guests had added to the number, while some of the neighboring families were also present. Various were the new names announced; and at last came the Bishop, with the lady of the house upon his arm, the young widow following with one of the daughters of the house. I could only distinguish a very white head, with a small black skull-cap, a stooping figure, and a great gold cross, which, I concluded, represented the holy man; something in black, with a very long veil descending from the back of her head, being as evidently the niece.
A few formal introductions were gone through in clever pantomime, dinner was announced, and the company paired off in all stateliness, while the host, seizing my arm, led me across the room, and in a few words presented me to the fair widow, who courtesied, and accepted my arm, and away we marched in that solemn procession by which people endeavor to thaw the ice of first acquaintance.
“Your first visit to Ireland, I believe, Señhora?” said I, in Spanish, wishing to say something as we walked along.
“Yes, Señhor, and yours also, I understand?” replied she.
“Not exactly,” muttered I, taken too suddenly to recover myself; “when I was a boy, a mere child – ” I here by accident employed a Mexican word almost synonymous with the French “gamin.” She started, and said eagerly, “How! you have been in Mexico?”
“Yes, Señhora, I have passed some years in that country.”
“I am a Mexican,” cried she, delightedly. “Tell me, where have you traveiled, and whom did you know there?”
“I have travelled a good deal, but scarcely knew any one,” replied I. “At Guajuaqualla – ”
“Oh, were you there? My own neighborhood, – my home,” exclaimed she, fervidly.
“Then probably you know Don Estaban Olares,” said I.
“My own father!”
I turned round; our eyes met; it was just at the very entrance of the dinner-room, where a blaze of light was shed on everything, and there upon my arm – her hand trembling, her cheek colorless, and her eyes swimming in tears – was Donna Maria! Neither of us spoke, neither of us could speak! – and while her eyes wandered from my face to the several decorations I wore upon my breast, and I watched with agonizing intensity the look of terror she threw down the table towards the place where her uncle was seated, I saw plainly that some painful mystery was struggling within her mind.
“Do not let my uncle recognize you,” said she, in a low whisper; “he is not likely to do so, for both his sight and hearing are much impaired.”
“But why should I not claim him as an old acquaintance, if not a friend, Señhora, if he be the same Fra Miguel?”
“Hush! be cautious,” cried she; “I will tell you all tomorrow, – to-night, if there be a fitting opportunity. Let us talk of something else, or we shall be remarked.”